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Ironic too, in that this celebration is taking place in Shanghai, the jewel in the crown of Chinese openness and capitalism prior to Mao's China. In that fifty years, capitalism has enriched the West, and has already begun to show it's dark side. But the dark side of communism has been evident for much longer...

Fifty years.... Fifty years since Mao's Asiatic form of the Marxian doctrine transformed the economic system of China and was later to lead to the not-too-crazy catch-cry "The East is Red", as Vietnam, North Korea and most of Indo-China succumbed and the rest of South East Asia almost went the same way.

In that time, we have seen a state rule supreme. The ideas of Marx and Mao were clearly not enough to win the hearts and minds of China's 2 billion people. They had to be enforced by an all-powerful state. As Mao correctly noted... "Power comes out of the barrel of a gun"...

As the recent Falungong issue demonstrated, rendered to Caesar was not only what was Caesar's but also what was God's. The state ruled supreme over other forms of group solidarity aided by ancient Confucian culture, ammoral as it related to the new fangled ideas of Mao communism, but nevertheless exploited by the Maoists for it's ability to create a compliant populace. For the great part of that fifty years, communism failed to significantly increase the quality of life for the working people, and China's preference to deal with the ideologically correct Russia and East Germany meant China was unable to take advantage of learning from the rising capitalist West. They backed the wrong gee-gee.

Chinese refugees from communism cover the world. From Taiwan, to Singapore and Malaysia and Thailand, to San Francisco and hundreds of other places, the overseas Chinese have been at the fore- front of capitalist ascendency. They still have an attachment to the motherland, and most want nothing more than to return to the country of their birth or of their ancestors. But a country is much more than political system, and like it has before, endures while political masters come and go.

In Shanghai today, Mao's chosen successors celebrate fifty years of communism with a possé of chosen capitalist stars from the West. The irony of course, is that with the end of the era of ideology, both their Western guests and the Chinese elite have come together on the basis of a common interest.. exploiting China's potential of 2,000,000 people as money making machines for others.

Fifty years.. In the context of Chinese history it is a very short time. Yet when most of the world thinks of China, they immediately think of communism. Flip up the concept "China" in a focus group and the most popular word association is "communism". One hundred years from now, the communist experiment in Asia will be viewed merely as an unfortunate and relatively short though tragic blip in the already colourful history of China. Chinese civilization at one time surpassed Western civilization today.

There is much more to China than fifty years, and the next ten years will prove it as China enters the global economy with the roar of a tiger. That entry will not be because of a glorious 50 years of ideology, but because the people are greater than any political system that attempts to control them. Reformers in the communist party, the overseas Chinese, and the Chinese people will see to that...

..So CNN is "Celebrating Fifty Years of Communism in China"?

What we want to know is... Who is paying them off?

Is it the same group of US capitalists who convinced Clinton in the last three to four years to lay off human rights concerns in China and make up with Chinese leaders as there was so much filthy lucre to be made?