Economics, Politics, and Religion: Social Justice

The purpose of this blog is to discuss topics in Economics, Politics, and Religion from a social justice approach. I am a strong believer in ethics; and I truly believe that no anlytical methodology is strong without an ethical perspective that, at least, attempts to assign people their respective rights.

However, there will be posts that don't analyze all topics through ethics; but all posts will mantain a tangent to one of the three subjects.

Link Creative Destruction, or Destructive Creation? An urbanization dilemma

The answer to the last question—“what will rise in its [Kashghar’s place], and why?”—is very simple. All one has to do is go to Shanghai or any major city on China’s eastern coast and take a road trip to Yunan (China’s most ethnically diverse province). All one will observe is tall building in an organized manner, all designed by Western architect architects, replacing and eating old Chinese architecture. To an unobserving tourist, this might seem as great feat of development; however, in reality, there is nothing culturally and aesthetically pleasing about this development. It’s like paying $1500 to go half way around the world to see a larger and bigger New York.

Where there are no tall skyscrapers, but reconstruction of the old cities, the ethnic population has been completely marginalized. For example, Li Jiang, one of very famous tourist destinations in Yunan, China, has been completely commercialized. To a visitor, the city seems like a re-built Shoalin Temple; an escape from China’s busy and chaotic metropolises. However, a half an hour discussion with the local people will paint a different picture.

The ethnic people have been limited to dancing in the bars as dolls and doing other menial jobs, such as taxi drivers (or worse, as sex workers). All the shops and businesses are owned by Han (ethnic majority) people. I wouldn’t be surprised if the fate of Kashghar is similar. I went to Xinjaing province, of whose Kashghar is the province, in 1994. I would hate to see the beautiful place, culture, and its people replaced by another “new Li Jiang”—a systematic marginalization of people in the name of re-development/urbanization.

There is nothing wrong with developing new urban centers on modern construction codes of safety—one can learn from the Malays. The problem with China is that it has blinded itself with “objective” notion of economic development. Subjectivity and insightful intellectualism is absent from their discourse of economic mobilization of its whole nation.