[moron4hire]

To the extent that my understanding of European current events is aided by shared culture and a much better coverage of history, even including many more modern events, I find my near-complete lack of understanding of Chinese culture is a serious impediment to my understanding of articles like this. My university history classes basically ended at the Boxer Rebellion, with a brief interlude into using the Great Leap Forward as a hit piece against Mao (which, to be fair, he seems to have deserved, but that's all it was meant as. It wasn't meant as history of China).

For example: isn't China supposed to be Communist? How are there so many ludicrously rich people? Clearly, I'm missing some part of the equation in there that explains why I have this perception.

It's vexing because I tend to want to "fix" problems in understanding as soon as I identify them, yet I have no idea how one would gain an accurate image of China from the outside, given how much I've been told they control information flow.

[laurent123456]

They control their citizen's access to information, but from outside it's not difficult to get a relatively accurate picture. This book [0] for instance was quite helpful in understanding how the CCP controls the country and, as a result, how many things work in China.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/The-Party-Secret-Chinas-Communist/dp/0...

[monstruoso]

>For example: isn't China supposed to be Communist?

No. It is state capitalism. The communist label is used in the same manner as the democratic label of the democratic people's republic of korea.