China - Worker's Paradise

Or not. In a nation that still claims to be a workers paradise, through official Government news sources - the only news sources - there seems to be a huge number of miners dying on the job. If the "Peoples Republic" is losing over 5,700 a year then what must the death toll be in capitalist America? It must be well over 1,300 based on death rates. Right? No. According to information from the US Dept. of Labor in 2002 only 67 miners died in the US.



That makes the death rate in China .463 per 100,000 while in the US it's a fraction of that, only .023 per 100,000. It would seem to my untrained eyes that miners are a lot better off in a evil capitalist empire where they have political freedoms to vote for parties more receptive to mining issues and mine operators live under the threat of death by litigation if they don't maintain a safe environment than they are in a communistic workers utopia.



Does Hu Jintao care about the miners?

So what's the sudden bashing of China? I read John Derbyshire's review of Patrick French's Tibet, Tibet, It's a good long rip of everyone involved in the whole Tibet affair, including the Tibetans themselves, but Mao started it and so I am all fired up. Thus it is that China's mining industry is feeling the wrath of my pen. China may well become the next hyperpower but they have a long long way yet to come. If you want your house in Home and Gardens it had better be in order, window dressings won't cut.