That's how the cycle works....and when there are no countries left you build them up until they are worth attacking. Left wing politics and economics at it's darkest finest.

True my hope is that China will move towards Capitalism faster than we are moving away from it. Poetic Justice if their was a switch but that's reading to much in the one month experience. I will say one thing. When we did get to walk around Dailen, freely and unescorted, it was amazingly like a combination of San Francisco and Oakland minus the crime and with double the commerce right down to commercial, retail enterprises many of whom were setting up internet sales systems even back then. The grasp of capitalism and free market economics while not complete seem to surpass those in any of our cities. Our main guide made an off hand remark that astounded me. "We have realized someone has to pay for everything and the old system did not fill nor fit our goals. So we kept some parts and borrowed from others more successful. Hong Kong has been a great teacher. I had jotted that down within a few minutes so it's not exact but fairly accurate.

Education is a big deal. To be assigned to our ship maintenance and refit project the managere had atteded a full degree program in structural engineering, a second in marine engineering applications and a third in Business Management.As I recall about eight or nine years at 35 he had been working in his field for five or six years. He was not from the coastal area but from Inner Mongolia. He explained the government still assigns people to where they are needed. We have no idea what schools if any nor where we will work ....
.

What they have done is move from the International Socialist Model which holds the State owns everything to the National Socialist Model which allows private ownership and management using something called Fascist or State Economics. That particular subset states the Party will control every aspect of the private ownership in short laying a patina and a thin one at that over Marxist Economics. It is one of the very few differences between the two as it holds the 'manager or private owner' responsible for failure of government directives but does not reward success.

In 2009 my ship's crew delivered the ship to Dailen in the Yellow Sea area for it's five year overhaul. The shipping company had failed to obtain Visas for the crew. We stayed sequestered for 30 some days on the ship at the dock while the work proceeded. No one agency would approve issuing visas in China without the approval of another or more than one other. When the company offered to pay any fines for the self confessed misdeed and any costs involved they were threatened with arrest for attempted bribery. One of the company officers attempted, with all our passports, to fly to Singapore and have the visas issued there as out of the country issue was required. He did get arrested for having 30 plus passports.Then released. Singapore Chinese embassy refused he flew to the USA and used a visa service which should have been done to begin with and returned - finally we had three days ashore and then flew back via Korea.

Each part of the process was filled with each part of the Chinese Government national and provincial afraid to create an appearance of wrongdoing. That's how finely tuned the complete fascist control of the new capitalistic financial support system had progressed. Made some extra money though but declined to rejoin for the trip back when the ship was finished.

Mindsets take a while to change....For them to be like the Capitalist countries of Scandinavia, New Zealand and Others who others who are not Socialist but have leanings as they can afford them for some social benefits will be driven by the transistion from bicycles to cars which has infected even the military.

Enjoyable trip and our counterparts who spoke English were quite open about discussing most topics. Like most situations the governments are at odds the people just want to be left alone.