The Hollywood studio DreamWorks Animation recently announced a bold move to crack China’s tightly protected film industry: a $330 million deal to create a Shanghai animation studio that might one day rival the California shops that turn out hits like “Kung Fu Panda” and “The Incredibles.”
What DreamWorks did not showcase, however, was one of its newest — and most important — Chinese partners: Jiang Mianheng, the 61-year-old son of Jiang Zemin, the former Communist Party leader and the most powerful political kingmaker of China’s last two decades. ...
The spoils system, for all the efforts to keep a lid on it, poses a fundamental challenge to the legitimacy of the Communist Party. As the state’s business has become increasingly intertwined with a class of families sometimes called the Red Nobility, analysts say the potential exists for a backlash against an increasingly entrenched elite. ...
Critics charge that powerful vested interests are now strong enough to block reforms that could benefit the larger populace. Changes in banking and financial services, for instance, could affect the interests of the family of Zhu Rongji, China’s prime minister from 1998 to 2003 and one of the architects of China’s economic system. ...
Sound anything like the moneyed elites on this side of the Pacific?
As I was reading this, I was thinking of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, CitiCorp, and the irrepressible Jamie Dimon of J.P. Morgan-Chase. And I thought about how a majority of Americans don't want to prop up the big banks. But let's get real. If our mega financial institutions get in trouble again, the government will ride to the rescue one more time, no matter which party is in power.
The Reds in China have their privileged, powerful, wealthy few. And we have ours.
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I think back to the Tiananmen Square protest and think, "Well, at least we have the vote."
We'll see how useful THAT is in the years to come.
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