[politicalist]

On China, Martin Hart-Landsberg had a couple informative articles on Monthly Review. (I didn't know Lenovo came from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.)

http://monthlyreview.org/100201hart-landsberg.php

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2005/mhlpb300705.html

I agree that China "makes capitalists giddy", even though it developed with intense government planning. The Communist Party controls the unions, which the Washington Post said that Wal-Mart loves, in contrast to its hatred of more democratic US unions. (I'm sure that more corporations than just Wal-Mart are so giddy.) Workers capture very little of the GDP, compared to China's wealthy elite, and have lost much of their social support. And GDP is itself an ideological measure for many reasons; for example, it doesn't track systematic costs (so people getting cancer from pollution raises GDP).