Dear Members;

In China factories hire most of their workers from rural areas where life is quite grim and mostly uneducated. Many, by the hundreds of thousands migrate to cities looking for work to better their lives and to send home some of their earnings to their families left hundreds of miles away. They don't know anybody usually when going to cities looking for work. They are quickly picked up and their eagerness to please they follow instruction and orders by slave drivers to perfection. A manager parades up and down the isles of tables with workers, mostly women, hunched over their piece of work. They are more than excellent when it comes to following instruction regarding assembly and manufactureing of goods. They can copy anything.

Many of them work in fear. Many have commited suicide. And one is known to have been worked to death, literally. They work their full shift as hard as they can and as swiftly as possible or the wrath of hell descends upon them. They are housed in barracks with 30 or more in a room with 2 or 3 tier bunks. It's almost like prison with little personal freedom. They put in long shifts and these factories go 24/7 and they certainly do produce. Owners hate holidays because many workers leave when they have the chance and some don't come back. Recycling goes on because many are looking for work anyway. No real problem except it is a pain in the neck for them to retrain. They say so openly.

It's against the communist constitution to organize unions. No unions exist in China. It's against the law.

In this climate of cheap labour factory bosses become very, very wealthy. In the domestic market a golf shirt, any designer brand you wish to think of, British or American sell for 50 Yuan and the same shirt here is like $60.00.

If you can imagine the accumulation of wealth by individuals you ain't seen nothing yet. Billionaires are crawling everywhere. My goodness, China discovered capatalism only 10 or 15 years ago. 10 years ago in a desolate area of nothing China decreed this huge space of land would become a Special Economic Zone. It is called Shenzhen and today there are over 7 million people there. There are several Special Economic Zones in China. Hong Kong and Macau belong to China. The ordinary Chinese citizen is not free to go to these cities. Special visas are given to very few mainland Chinese people.

Look for an American car in the streets of Hong Kong and it is a rare find. I saw one Buick van, once. Mostly Porches, BMW, MB, and all high end vehicles you can imagine. I saw several Rolls Royces on the streets. Most 5 star hotels have a Rolls parked in front of the entrance and at least one other, like a Ferrari for example.

The wealthy Chinese show off in a grand scale. In Hainan Island a large track of land was wanted for some project and it required expropriating a bunch of farms to assemble the land they wanted. A very huge outcry and protest by the farmers resulted, 22 gathered to protest to be exact. Troops came in, killed about 5 of them, end of protest; project on schedule. On this same Island of Paradise there is a most beautiful golf course which I toured with the groundskeeper superintendant's escort in his private golf cart (Has headlights, among other special things). The club house was a Taj Mahal and approaching it from the 18th tee, which by the way is a par 6, 826 yards (I had to take a picture to show my golf buddies) long. I asked the ground's keeper, who by the way came from Korea, why this? His reply was the Chinese attitude is that if you want to build something build it big so the rest of the world will pay attention. This golf course was immaculate to the point where I had to say (It was only 2 years old) they must consider your value in weight of gold. His reply was; "I'm just a grass grower to them".

I could go on and on but in general workers are treated like slaves and work for pennies. So you may wonder why the country is so wealthy?? It's humans using humans to promote wealth for the few. Sounds Capitalistic doesn't it but the difference is we have Unions, and through Unions we have protection. In the Communist way there is no protection for the beleaguered line worker, so workers are constantly abused and pushed to the limits. Frequent death in Coal mines...... enough said I'm not going there. I just wanted to give you a first hand account from a Canadian who live there for one year how the common man and woman is treated in the labour force. The surroundings are cheery and nice if you have the money but down beneath it is not nice at all.

Is this the type of country Chavez wants for his Venezuelian people? Because it certainly looks like that is where they are heading. Expropriate all and make every Vz citizen dependent on the State as in Cuba.

I ended up saying more than I wanted to and apologize for using up so much space because all in all it changes nothing. If you kick me off, that's Okay. Actually this board is getting bored recently because there is no real useful news about any progress for us shareholders and posters are only regurgitating junk. Just like mine. Like who cares anyway.

"One man with a gun can control 100 people." I read that somewhere.

Good luck to all;

Go KRY.