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OPINION
Page 4
Friday, February 6, 1987
The Michigan Dc il
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Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan
China
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state
Vol. XCVII, No. 91
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, M1 48109
Unsigned editorials represent a majority of the Daily's Editorial Board
All other cartoons, signed articles, and letters do not necessarily represent the opinion of the Daily.
S av'e University Terrae
THOUGH HOSPITAL PLANNING
officials deny a conflict of priori -
ties, the tearing down of the
University Terrace is exactly that.
The Board of Regents decided to
replace the only reasonably-priced,
family housing that remains close
to campus with a new addition to
the growing number of hospital
parking structures.
In its Medical Campus Master
Plan, the Regents has clean, pro -
jected figures on parking space de -
ficiencies on the Medical Campus
for the next eight years. These
figures serve as a justification for
the plan to raze student housing.
It is true that expansion sites in
the hospital area are limited, but the
University should do all it can to
preserve the valuable housing that
still exists.
While it is understandable that a
monstrous building such as the
new hospital would cause in -
creased parking complications,
there are alternatives to just
throwing up parking structures in
immediately surrounding areas.
The University considered the idea
of satellite parking, (the use of
shuttle transportation between
parking lots and buildings) but
rejected the proposal simply
because of the lack of receptiveness
on the part of the medical com -
munity. As a result, over forty
students and their families are
forced to seek new housing in an
already overcrowded market.
As opposed to some of the other
University residences, the Uni -
versity Terrace has continued to be
a popular place. It has an extensive
waiting list for those who would
like to live there. It possesses the
unique combination of proximity to
central campus within a familial
community. Instead of destroying
this housing for a place to park a
car, the University should build
more like it.
By Henry Park
The single-mindedness of the major
press organs in the United States prevents
a serious consideration of political issues
in China, such as the recent student
protests in China in favor of Western
democracy.
Anyone who reads the major newspapers
or even most of the academic work done
in the United States on China knows that
the situation in China is "reformers"
versus "conservatives."
In more blatant ideological terminology
the same distinction will arise as
"pragmatists" versus rigid "dogmatists."
If one is extremely lucky, one will read
that the situation in China is a conflict
between those who want "capitalistic"
reforms versus those who want
"bureaucratic" control.
In case anyone could not figure it out,
there are good guys and bad guys
according to the mainstream media.
Thanks to the media and most academics,
the U.S. public learns that the bad guys
struggle to maintain their own power -
a profound revelation.
In the U.S. media, whatever is good in
China's changing situation is a result of
"capitalistic" "reforms" and anything bad
is the work of "conservative" "bureau-
crats," who fight from "entrenched"
positions.
If anyone can find a major newspaper or
magazine in the United States that has
covered China in the last decade from a
perspective that the capitalist "reforms"
are not a good thing, I might admit that
the U.S. media is not completely
monolithic. (Sorry, that was not a typo.
It's the United States that looks
monolithic to me, at least its multi-
million dollar media.)
In my travel to China it shocked me
that the major wire services and papers
would have one or two people each to
cover all of China. Certainly there must
be a thousands of reporters in agreement
that it's the "conservatives" versus the
"reformers"?
Unfortunately, respected scholars, who
.have lived and stud.ied in China, such as
William Hinton, who would offer a
different perspective than the one
available in the mass media have next to
nil influence beyond academia and an
occasional book review in a popular
periodical.
Even serious analysts such as Orville
Schell, who at least report the negative
aspects of "reform" in China have no
circles of influence as tight as the one
pronouncing on China's supposed new
dynamism.
In the United States, crucial first
impressions of China are a product of the
work of a handful of journalists with a
relatively uniform view. The majority of
citizens and scholars have a gut-level
response to China based on frequently
published diatribes against the atrocities
of the Chinese Revolution, the Great
Leap and the Cultural Revolution.
Inevitably and on cue, friends, relatives
and co-workers who know of my interest
in China ask me what I think about the
demonstrations in China? Am I hopeful
for democracy in China? Is it at least
likely with the economic reforms that
China will not return to the chaos of the
Cultural Revolution?
The truth is that the terrible tensions
between "reformers" and "bureaucrats" or
"democrats" and "totalitarians" do not
interest me.
Although it is apparent that some
people - e.g. students, intellectuals, and
some peasants - want to move faster
with the reforms than others in China,
the fact is that China is already basically,
capitalist.
After ten years of "reform" though, the
press does not speak of reform as the
status quo. Rather it continues to
lambaste the ominous past of the
Cultural Revolution, which itself only
lasted ten years. '
This in itself is a clue. It is rather
convenient to blame problems in China
on lingering socialism - translate
"conservative" influences - and attribute
all good trends to reforms. In this, the
government of China and the U.S. press
agree.
Thus, the rapid progress of the
"economic reforms" in China, which is in
reality a capitalist social revolution, is
obscured by the very press organs that
trumpet its virtues.
apitalist
The equation bureaucrats=
conservatives=past socialist influences
should now read bureaucrats=state
capitalists. The struggles between
"reformers" and "conservatives" are ak
to the struggles between Friedmani je,
pro-market economists and Keynesian
economists. The struggle is within ttie
capitalist class.
Capitalism has progressed so far in
China that the U.S. press now attac zs
Peng Zhen, one of the first targeted
capitalist-roaders of Mao's Cultural
Revolution, as a holdover from the
socialist past.
That China is already capitalist 1
indicated in several figures available in
Beijing Review and other official
Chinese sources translated by the U.S.
government through its Joint
Publications Research Service (exact
references available upon request.)
-Over 60% of agricultural production in a
country which is 80% peasant is for the
free market.
-Over half investment that occurs in the
economy occurs outside state plans, tha4
is by the enterprises themselves.
-Families allocated their own plots of
land have replaced the previous dominance
of collective agriculture.
-Revolutionary committees, partly
composed of workers, that ran factories
during the Cultural Revolution are now
defunct. One-man-management now
stresses a strict division of labor.
Management has the technical authority
to hire and fire workers.
-Where state run factories used to turn
over their product to the state, there, is
now a corporate income tax of 55%. The
remainder goes to the enterprise to invest
and distribute as bonuses as management
sees fit.
'Profit is the official goal of the state-run
factories. As in the United States,
mergers are conducted with a view to
consolidating the best profit-extracting
management.
-Millions of private enterprises hive
arisen in the cities as an officially
sanctioned means of absorbing the rising
ranks of the unemployed.
It is high time to assessCChina's
changes in economic organization: Next
week, we will examine what groups have
benefited and which have lost out in
China's capitalist social revolution.
Women, not objects
LAST WEDNESDAY 30 Ann Arbor
residents andUniversity students.
protested a lingerie-modeling show
at Dooley's bar. More protests
such as this one are necessary to
overcome the sexism that is
commonly promoted and accepted
in advertising.
Unfortunately, many young men
took the lingerie show as a little
joke that they enjoyed. The real
joke, however, was the claim that
the models were selling lingerie at a
bar.
The protesters are right to point
out that the use of a woman's body
to promote a bar's business has
serious implications. Exploitative
events such as the lingerie show
encourage men to think of
women's bodies as objects used to
sell other objects.
Leaflets hAnded outat, the rally
said "eroticize equality, not
exploitation!" In this way, the
organizers separate the issue of
erotic needs, freedom and
appreciation from the issue of
using women's bodies for totally
extraneous purposes such as
selling beer.
Until Dooley's renounces the
lingerie show, students should
picket, not patronize, the bar.
It is possible that sexist
advertising is so widespread that
nothing short of its legal abolition
will stop the objectification of
women. On the other hand, if there
is enough outspoken opposition, it
may become unprofitable to use a
woman's body for business
purposes.
Park is an Opinion Page editor.
LETTERS:
Rally against racist hatred on Diag
To The Daily:
February is Black History
month and it is an important
time for Americans to look
back on our past and examine
where it has brought us and
how we have gotten to be the
nation we are today. If you are
thinking, "Oh, I'm not black,
this letter has nothing to do
with me," please read it any
way. Black History month,
and this letter, are about a lot
more than the history of black
people. Though great strides
against racism have been made
by both individuals and groups,
racism is still one of the most
alive and one of the most
devastating social diseases we
know today. Like other
"social" diseases, racism is
easily spread, and requires
responsibility, personal action,
and group efforts at education,
to combat effectively.
Racism is part of a greater
national (human?) problem--
hate. People hate, learn to
hate, and are taught to hate,
everyone who is "other" than
the hater. Whites hate blacks
and blacks hate whites; Jews
hate Arabs and everyone hates
Jews; whites hate Asians or
American Indians or almost
anyone whom we have
previously mistreated, and we
grumble that we are tired of
hearing about such-and-such
"ancient" injustice now. But
never forget that somebody
hates you, because of an
attribute which that same
somebody thinks defines you.
Everyone hates somebody,
maybe in small amounts or
subtle ways. And if we do not
own our hate and recognize it
and wrestle with it, we will
never excorcise it from our
lives and our souls.
Sometimes, amazingly but
consistently, people who work
for the same larger goals hate
each other because the chosen
paths or methods to that goal
are different. It is so rare that
we can actually rise above our
apparently huge differences and
get at the key concept that lies
underneath: every body is a
human body and every human
deserves equal respect and
concern and courtesy; and every
equally as important, we must
work to recognize similarities
and to behave on the basis of
those similarities.
Cheering cheerleaders
Whoever it was in
Couzens who decided to declare
"hunting season" on people o
color is, in my opinion,
nothing short of demented.
Those individuals are deformed
with the disease of hated,
inflicted by hatred's blindness:
they are blind to the fact that
they are exactly the same as"the
people they chose to terrorjze.
Oh, their church might ber a
different name, or their hair a
different texture. But they ar
all children of this earth ant ii
they do not beware they will
'destroy our earth. Nothing
good can come of hate. Hate
slaughters, and destroys, #nd
reproduces itself in mass
quantities. It must be
squelched and faced down
everywhere it occurs. There
will be a rally thi
Friday, February 6, a
noon in the Diag. It is an
anti-hate rally. Please,
struggle with your demons of
hate--care about justice, gnd
equality, and love--come tohe
rally and show those demented
slime that they are a pathtic
minority.
L AST WEEK THE University's
Board of Intercollegiate Athletics,
prohibited cheerleaders from per-
forming stunts which involve
raising their feet more than three
feet off the ground. This ruling is
unprecedented in the Big Ten, and
the Daily feels that the decision is
unjustified and uninformed.
According to team supervisor
and coach Pam St. John, the ruling
eliminates virtually all of the team's
stunts, including "even the
simplest, easiest stunts that Junior
High girls would do."
Cheerleaders are dedicated ath-
letes who work very hard at their
activity and should be allowed to
perform without unnecessary re-
strictions.
Don Canham, who is the
Board's head, and the rest of the
Board did not analyze the situation
very carefully. Cheerleading
wasn't even on the agenda at this
particular meeting, and not even
stunts the cheerleaders do that are
safe and we should reverse this. I
tend to believe that we
overreacted."
The fact is cheerleading is not
one of the more dangerous sports.
According to the Consumer
Product Safety Commission
Report, cheerleading ranks 186 out
of 200 college sports in terms of
injury risk.
Moreover, Michigan cheer -
leaders take safety very seriously.
They practice for hours every
week, not to mention months of
clinics, and even a required
intensive-training camp over the
summer. Given this tremendous
commitment to safety by the
cheerleaders, the University should
allow these athletes the same
opportunity that is allowed to
students who participate in all other
sports - the right to take a certain
amount of risk in order to display
their talents.
Opponents will no doubt argue
.. s it m _ 0
-Amy Ruth
Simoi
Corrections:
In a letter to the editor
("Accusations, half-truths deter
peace," 12/8/86), which the
Daily mistakenly reprinted
("Israel seeks peace in the
middrle pet_" 11 iIR nmit,
)1 0