This report includes some parts that are beyond the maturity of youth. This is the cruellest moment in the life of societies…I am under no illusions and do not except to wake up one morning to see the resurrection of freedom in our country, as if by a stroke of magic….No, no; decay, and decay for a period whose end I cannot fix and which will last for not less than one or two generations—is our lot…I shall witness the evil only, I shall die in the midst of the darkness. The designation graveyards, rooms in abandoned buildings, has an interesting genesis. At the corner of one of Sacramento’s housing projects, described by a local journalist in this way: “Sure, there are always problems. Its official name is Site 5, Project SA527-B, but residents began calling in ‘The Graveyard’ years ago. Poverty breeds crime, and crime bred more of itself. But when a tidal wave of cocaine rocks descended on the place ten years ago, crime seemed to put The Graveyard in a stranglehold. The pulse of the community grew faint. Residents began dying out of The Graveyard and prospective tenants refused to move. So basers [crack users and dealers] claimed the vacant apartments for themselves.” In time, The Graveyard’s abandoned apartments became overrun by crack dealers and users, the smell of drugs is vented from one apartment in to the apartment next door, and other people were unknowingly getting contact high, and being exposed to germs from their neighbor’s apartment. The problem got so bad that the county government began boarding up the project’s vacant rooms. However, the name took on a life of its own, and was renovated. People now deal crack out of the fire escapes, look outs stand out on the corner at night. There is a methadone clinic down the street. Community members fear walking by that building because of all the noise, violence and drug and alcohol abuse. Some people even run by it when the fights break out. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
To future highlight this illustration: “It’s an empty house, empty room. So somebody like go into this room, the first one there. They might put a board you know, you have cloth, you know a bucker of water to bathe and sh*t. I did it myself. Put up those boards and sh*t, sometimes curtains hanging over the door, this room had no doors, no windows, nothing like that. I know’d this one place off Capital Avenue where this lady set up in a burned out apartment. She was sort of a wh*re/crack head/skeeezer/bag lady who’d do anythin’ for crack and for food for her tick baby [a prostitute’s child fathered by a john], her base baby [a child conceived and gestated by a crack-using mother]. For a hit on the pipe or for some food or money or drug or cigarettes she’d let you smoke in her digs and she’d suck your prick too.” And finally, somewhat related to graveyards are base cars—abandoned automobiles that sever as places to smoke crack, to have sex, or to exchange sex for crack. Organized crack houses are reportedly few in number in Sacramento. The environment in these establishments is far more controlled than in any other type of crack house, with the owners more visible and closely monitoring all activities. Violence and general chaos are uncommon. The ambience is described as clam, and children are not permitted. They have more workers than other crack houses, most of whom maintain order inside or watch for police: They would have people outside, lookouts. Way up and down the street, like on the corner. And another guy sitting in the yard like he was cleaning the yard or something. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
“There would be like a bouncer at the door with a gun to watch to make sure no cops or anything would walk in. Or to make sure that there were no problems within the place itself. Just to make sure it secure for their sake.” Purchasing crack in organized houses is more structured than elsewhere. Several have specific hours of operation. Upon arrival, a customer is sold crack, seated with a pipe, and strict order is maintained. To further highlight this illustration, “You can’t come in the house after 8.00. Other than that he passes it through the window. Before 8.00 you can come in and he lays them [crack and crack pipes] on the table and you can pick what you want. Sometimes you walk in and he is sifting it [cocaine hydrochloride] with the baking soda so he can cook it and tell you to come back in fifteen minutes. When you walk in they have a person that pats you down to see if you got any weapons on you, and then you go through the doors then they have a person that brings you a torch. And they set you up to table and OK when you first walk in the door its goin; back a little bit you buy your rocks at the door. They have a little stand. They have all the rocks you want from five dollars all the way to a fifty-dollar rock. And you pick out which one you want, whatever your money can afford and then they have someone escorts you back in the back, and that’s where we smoke at. They give you a pipe, they give you a torch, and then your own your own. It wasn’t like these abandoned burned-out houses that you see here in the city. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
“This house was very nice, very organized; he had house pipes, torches; he supplied lighters, screens, drugs; everything you needed was right there to prevent so much traffic. Once you get there if you have enough money, you can sit there and use the house pipes and everything. If you only came there to buy a nickel [five-dollar rock] or a dime [ten-dollar rock], you got it and left. Finally, direct sex-for-crack exchanges do not occur in the organized houses. One prostitute noted that “they let the hookers and skeezers in the door only if they was going to buy crack. The house is for buying and smoking only. They let us cut deals there, you know, but you can’t sex there. Got to go someplace else, usually out of the customer’s car.” Interviews with 35 women and 17 men in Sacramento revealed a progression into the drug World that for some, especially the women, ended in virtual slavery to pimps and more importantly to crack. All of the fifty-two informants had long histories of drug use. For almost all of these subjects, alcohol and tobacco use preceded their illicit drug-using careers. Marijuana use began at a mean age of 14 years. A significant proportion of the group experimented with inhalants, hallucinogens, stimulants (uppers), and depressants (downers). Some 40 percent had histories of intravenous drug use, including some cocaine, heroin, speed, and/or speedball (heroin mixed with cocaine). All of the men and all but one of the women had used cocaine (non-IV) during their teenage years, with 75 percent using the drug on a regular basis. Crack use began for both men and women by age 25. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
In terms of current drug use, defined as any use during the thirty-day period prior to the interview, crack clearly predominated. Crack was smoked for as long as it was available and users had means to purchase it—with money or sex, stolen goods, or other drugs. It was rare that someone had just a single hit. It was typical that they spent fifty to one hundred dollars in one period, with binges lasting three or four day. During these smoking cycles, users neither ate nor slept. Some informants purchased crack over two hundred times in the thirty-day period prior to student recruitment. While many of these crack users binged for several days in a row, over half (58 percent) used the drug on a daily basis. For every day they used crack, they were high from as few as three ties to as many as fifty times. Moreover, once crack was tried, it was not long before it became a daily habit. One-third of the sample used crack daily immediately after first trying it. An additional 27 percent used it daily by the end of their first month. For many of the women in this study, the craving for crack led eventually to prostitution. Once they ran out of money and things to sell, they found they could always sell themselves. The following quotation, drawn from the transcript of a 28-year-old African-American crack user legally employed as a shipping clerk, clearly illustrates a characteristic aspect of the sex-for-crack phenomenon. She details her first exchange of sex for crack and how it came about. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
“I had my last paycheck, that was $107. That day I went straight from there [work] with a friend guy and copped some drugs. I bought $25-five nickel rocks. We drunk a beer, we needed the can to smoke on. So we sat there and we smoked those five rocks and you know, like they say, one is too much and a thousand is never enough. And that’s the truth. Those five rocks went like this [snaps fingers], and I had maybe about $80 left. I had intentions of takin’ my grandmother some money home for the kid. But I had it in my mind you know I was, I was just sick. I wanted to continue to get high so push came to shove and I smoked up that whole day. OK all the money was gone, all the drugs was gone. About 0.00 we went and sat in the park. Usually when we set in the park, people will come over and they’ll have drugs. I stayed out because I couldn’t give an account for what I had did with the money. My grandmother done thought that I was goin’ to pick up my check and comin’ back. So I walked down this street—you know you got people that will pick you up. So this guy stopped, and I got in the car, and I never did any prostituting but I wanted more drugs. So this guy, he asked me: “How much would you charge me for a head?” That’s oral sex. And I told him $40. And so he say, how much would you charge me for two hours to have just sex not oral sex? And so I told him $40 so he say: “OK get in,” and he tool me to this hotel. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
“He had about six rocks. I didn’t want sex. I wanted to get high, so we smoked the rocks and durin’ the time I sexed with him. So after I sexed him, he gave me the money, and after the rocks was gone I still wanted to get high. So he gave me more money to go get more drugs. We went into another hotel. By that time it was maybe 6.00 in the morning. By that time I done spent all my $40. It wasn’t nothing I had done wasted the money.” The individuals interviewed in this study had sexual histories that began early and involved many partners. The mean age of the first sexual intercourse was 14 years, with the females being involved in sex almost a year earlier than the males. The first sex-for-money exchange occurred at a mean of 23.2 years. During the thirty-day period prior to the interview, the sexual activities of the fifty-two informants were extensive. Among the seventeen male crack users, more than half had twenty-five or more male sex partners, and five of the seventeen had a hundred or more male partners. In addition, 60 percent of these male crack users had more than twenty-five male sex partners during the same period. Moreover, 42 percent participated in vaginal sex more than twenty-five times; 88 percent participated in oral sex more than twenty-five times, just under half participated in rear end-insertive coitus at least once; and 30 percent engaged in rear end-receptive coitus during this thirty-day period. Finally, 30 percent of these men masturbated other men (“hand jobs”). #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
The women appeared to have many more sexual contacts than the men. Almost 90 percent of the women had a hundred or more male sex partners, and 11 percent had as many as twenty-five female partners. Some 39 percent of these women participated in traditional coitus more than fifty times, 57 percent engaged in sodomy more than fifty times, 20 percent participated in rear end coitus, and 29 percent provided men with hand jobs. Respondents performed a wide array of acts involving pleasures of the flesh. This might include generic sodomy (a “brain”) or a specialized variation (“slow neck” or “fast head” or a blood sucker who performs acts on women at a certain time of the month). Moreover, the majority of the respondents reported performing acts involving pleasures of the flesh that they would do while on crack and/or for crack and doing so for a penny (one hit on a crack pipe) or less. For example, a 31-year-old male prostitute reported: “As a matter of fact, when you are high on crack you’ll do almost anything. We [the respondent and his boyfriend had sex in front of other people, and one male joined us. Usually I gave the other guy head while we had anal intercourse.” Most parents would like to keep their children from strolling down this road, so they raise them in the ways of God and attend weekly church services, Bible study, and teach them to pray. When you hear the phrase “the law of chastity,” do you know what it means? You probably get a lot of mixed messages about it. All kinds of media, and sometimes even friends and family, have different opinions about it. And the World actively teaches things contrary to what the Lord teaches. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
So what exactly does the law of chastity mean? The law of chastity is the Lord’s term for His commandment to live a life of sexual purity and virtue. Living the law of chastity is for both men and women, and it means you do not have any sexual relations before marriage, and [you are] completely faithful to your spouse after marriage. However, being virtuous and chaste is about more than just pleasures of the flesh. Treat others with respect, not as objects used to satisfy lust and selfish desire. The law of diminishing returns is a principle stating that profits or benefits grained from something will represent a proportionally smaller gain as the point of optimization is exceeded. So, somethings become less desirable or useful after they are done so many times. This is why purity is important. Your body is a temple of God and not something you want to just give away, abuse or let other people abuse. Before marriage, do not participate in passionate kissing, lie on top of another person, or touch the private, sacred parts of another person’s body, with or without clothing. Do not do anything else that arouses lust. Do not arouse those emotions in your own body. Note that the Lord’s standards do not change just because two people really like each other and both agree to the behavior. When you respect other people, the Lord, and yourself, you will keep the commandments—and that means no sexual relationship or arousing sexual feeling outside of marriage. The Lord really is serious about this. “The prophet Alma taught that sexual sins are more serious than any other sins except murder and denying the Holy Ghost,” (see Alma 39.3-5). #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Creativity in interpersonal relations refers to the actor’s capacity to free him or herself from established routines of perception and action, and to redefine situations and act in the new roles called for by the new situations—in short, it means inventiveness in interpersonal relationships. Of all the components of competence we have considered, creativity is perhaps the most difficult to specify and to investigate. Nevertheless it is evident that competence in interpersonal relations requires some such group of qualities and skills. It therefore becomes necessary to develop research on the conditions for their optimal development and utilization. Participation in social relations which are permissive rather than repressive, equalitarian rather than hierarchical and authoritarian, mutual and reciprocal rather than unilateral, is favorable to creativity. Rotation of functional positions among the participants in a social relationship is a source of new experience, providing a broadening base for creativity and increasing the probability of its development. Role-reversal in role-playing is an almost universally usable substitute device when more extended rotation of roles is not feasible, as with children and parent. Participation in social relation where diversity and individuality are valued above uniformity and conformity increases the probability of creativity. Extensive and obligatory routine is unfavorable to creativity. Routine in a particular activity may be favorable to creativity insofar as it frees the individual’s attention, energy, and other resources for creative activity in another area. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
A balance between established routine, preferably flexible, varied, and of limited range and duration, and opportunity for deviation from routine is optimal for creativity. Some areas of the individual’s experience and activity must always be subject to routine, but procedures which encourage the variation of routine activities increase the probability of creativity. Situations which provide challenges that exceed the individual’s previous achievement without exceeding one’s ability are favorable to the occurrence of creativity. Even if the challenge exceeds one’s usual conception of one’s ability, a condition favorable to creativity exists, provided true ability is not overchallenged, and particularly if the support of significant others can be introduced to bolster unrealistically modest judgment of ability. The suspension of one’s own judgment regarding one’s ability is important in such a case. Resultant spontaneity may permit the individual to go ahead and act creatively, even though one’s usual conception of one’s ability would lead one to appraise the situation as threatening and demanding withdrawal. Experiences increasing self-esteem will increase the probability of creativity. A distinction between self-esteem and self-satisfaction ( a seeking for stability, permanence, perpetuation of the status quo of the self) is necessary. Self-esteem is conceived as a positive self-valuation operating independently from changes in other areas of the self-system. Involved in self-esteem is a kind of detachment which permits a person’s appraisal of one’s general worth to stand independent from particular success and failure events; critical appraisal of products is thus not seen as directed against the performer. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
If experiences are provided affecting the individual’s self-organization and symbolic processes, so that one’s threshold of stimulation is lowered and one becomes able to be more fully responsive to the stimulation of other people and interpersonal events, the probability of creativity is increased. A playful and sociable atmosphere—as created by the capable host—is the best example. Passivity caused by wrong acceptance of suffering consists when the self-actualized accepts suffering with Christ in the way of the cross. To fulfill this surrender one passively yields to suffering in whatever form it may come, believing that suffering with Christ means reward, and fruitfulness. One does not know that psychopathic offenders can produce counterfeit “suffering,” and that one may be accepting suffering from them though believing it to be from the hand of God, and, by so doing, giving ground to them. And what does one consider “suffering” to be? Both conduct disorder in the life which cannot be got rid of, and suffering in the life which cannot be explained. By recognizing the truth of deception the first can be got rid of, and the latter explained. Suffering is an obvious factor in motivating a person to take a certain course. So it is a great weapon of psychopathic offenders to use in controlling people, for by suffering they can drive an individual to do what one would not do otherwise. Not realizing this, the believer may entirely misinterpret the suffering one goes through. Self-actualized individuals are often suffering for others, perhaps even for the country as a whole. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
They look upon themselves as martyrs when they are really victims, unaware that “suffering” is one of the chief symptoms of deception. By putting a human into suffering, the psychopathic offenders gleefully ease themselves of their enmity and hatred to man. The theonomous union of religion and culture can be expressed in yet another way, by the relation of the holy to the secular. Consecration is the first principle of the secular. By this, nothing is essentially and inescapably secular. Everything has the dimension of depth, and in the moment in which the third dimension is actualized, holiness appears. Everything secular is potentially sacred, open to consecration. Nor is the mediation of the churches, of religion in the narrow sense, necessary for this consecration. For the dimension of depth in the secular is religion—religion in the large sense of ultimate concern which cannot be restricted only to an ecclesiastical sphere. Once the autonomous, self-sufficient surface of the secular is broken through by an unconditioned concern, the holy reveals itself in the depths of the secular. In that moment, the universe is God’s sanctuary. Every work day is a day of the Lord, every supper a Lord’s supper, every work the fulfillment of a divine task, every joy a joy in God. In all preliminary concerns, ultimate concern is present, consecrating them. The concrete way in which consecration is effected is symbolism. When, under the influence of ultimate concern, a thing become a symbol of the holy, then to that degree it is sacred and participates in divine holiness. No object, no person, no activity is excluded from the possibility of symbolizing the holy, for everything in the World rests on the ultimate ground of being. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
The first principle, then, offers the possibility of finding the holy in the secular; the second principle, the convergence of the holy and secular, maintains its necessity. The secular resists self-transcendence, but this very resistance produces the emptiness and meaninglessness which characterized the finite when cut off from the infinite. An exhausted secularism is driven to ask the question of a meaning and power of being beyond itself; it seeks the holy. On the other hand, the holy cannot manifest itself without the secular, for it is through the finite alone that the infinite can express itself. It is through holy “objects” that holiness must become actual. Consequently, although they remain in tension, the poles of the holy-secular converge upon one another. The third and last principle is that of the essential belongingness of religion and culture to each other. In the existential, actual condition of mankind, the holy is separated from the secular, and this constitutes the state of sin. Essentially, however, they are untied in that religion is the substance of culture, and culture the form of religion. Therefore, in the essential order the holy and the secular are not found as hostile or even divided spheres; rather, together they form a union in which the autonomy of the finite is not destroyed, while at the same time it achieves transcendence by revealing in its depths the presence of the infinite. The fact that in the existential order they confront each other from behind unyielding barriers is tragic witness to the state of sin and separation in which man lives. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
Religion itself, namely, a religious culture beside a secular culture, a temple beside a town hall, a Lord’s supper beside a daily supper, prayer beside work, meditation beside research, caritas beside eros is proof for all the World. This duality can never be fully overcome in history, but it should be prevented from widening into an unbridgeable chams. The poles of the holy-secular can be at least fragmentarily united. The above principles that relate the holy to the secular render intelligible the term “Protestant secularism.” The term “theonomy” may be objected to because its use by Catholics has created connotations of a clearly heteronomous character. Therefore, it may be wise to speak, in certain cases, of “Protestant secularism.” Theonomy indicates that neither ecclesiastical heteronomy nor secular autonomy can have the last word in human culture. For the shallow creations of an autonomous culture lack substance, and heteronomy rides roughshod over secular forms. However, theonomy is more than a needle which flickers between two extremes on the culture-gauge: There is, however, a difference between a culture which is theonomous, determined by direct and intentional expression of an ultimate concern, and a culture which oscillates between an empty autonomy and a suppressive heteronomy. Ultimate concern is the positive, life-giving taproot of theonomous culture. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
When it comes to the new-style global organizations, the question of whether some non-national “gladiators” ought to be represented in World bodies is closely related to the deign of new organizations on the World scene. A key question facing the architects of the new global order is whether power should flow vertically or horizontally. A clear example of vertical organization is the European Community, which seeks to build, in effect, a supra-government that would, according to its critics, reduce the present countries of Europe to the status of province rather than sovereign nations—by imposing supra-national controls over currency, central banking, educational standards, environment, agriculture, and even national budgets. This traditional vertical model seeks to solve problems by adding another echelon to the power hierarchy. It is “high-rise” institutional architecture. The model, congruent with the emerging forms of organization in the business World and the advanced economies, flattens the hierarchy rather than extending it upward. It will be based on networks of alliances, consortia, specialized regulatory agencies, to accomplish ends too large for any single state. In this system there is no higher level of top-down control, and specialized agencies are not grouped hierarchically under a nonspecialized central body. It is the equivalent of “low-rise” architecture. It parallels the flex-firm. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Around the World today, the EC is being closely watched and, very often, taken as the only model for regional organization. Thus, the proposal to clone the EC is loudly heard, from the Maghreb and the Middle East to the Caribbean and the Pacific. A more revolutionary approach would be to lace existing organizations in each of these regions together, without imposing a new layer of control. The same might be done between nations. Japan and the United States of America, for example, are so closely intertwined economically, politically, and militarily, that decisions in one have immediate high-impact consequences in the other. Under these circumstances, the day may arrive when Japan will demand actual voting seats inside the Congress of the United States of America. In return, the United States of America would no doubt demand equivalent representation in the Japanese Diet. In this way would be born the first of many potentials “cross-national” parliaments or legislatures. Democracy presupposes that those affected by a decision have a right to participate in making the decision. If this is so, then many nations should, in fact, have seats in the U.S.A. Congress, whose decisions have greater impact on their lives than the decisions of their own politicians. As the World goes global, and the new system for wealth creation spreads, demands for cross-national political participation—and even cross-national voting—will bubble up from the vast populations who now feel themselves excluded from the decisions that shape their lives. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
However, whatever form the global organizations of tomorrow assume, they will have to pay more attention, both positive and negative, to the Global Gladiators. To what extent should groups like religions and global corporations, as well as transnational trade unions, political parties, environmental movements, humans rights organizations, and other such entities from the civil society be represented in the institutions now being planned for the World of tomorrow? How can one keep a crucial separation between Church and state at the global level to avoid the fearsome bloodshed and oppression that has so often resulted from their fusion? How might terrorists or criminals, warlords and narco-killers be quarantined? What legitimate global voice might be given to national minorities oppressed at home? What missile defense or chemical-warfare defense measures should be regional or global, rather than left to purely national responsibility? No one can afford to be dogmatic in answering these dangerous questions of the not-so-far-off future. The questions themselves sound strange, no doubt, in a World that still conceives of itself as organized around nation-states. However, at the dawn of the smokestack era, nothing sounded stranger, more radical, more dangerous than the ideas for French, English, and American revolutionaries who thought that people and parliaments should control kings, rather than the reverse, and that lack of representation was cause for rebellion. In many countries, such ideas may provoke passionate objection on patriotic grounds. The proto-fascist French writer Charles Maurras in the 19th century expressed the traditional view that “of all human liberties, the most precious is the independence of one’s country.” However, absolute sovereignty and independence have always been mythical. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
Only countries willing to opt out of the new system of wealth creation forever can avoid plugging into the new global economy. Those who do connect with the World will necessarily be drawn into an interdependent global system populated not by nations alone, but by newly powerful Global Gladiators as well. We are witnessing a significant shift of power from individual or groups of nation-states to Global Gladiators. This amounts to nothing less than the next global revolution in political forms. The shift toward heterogeneity in the emerging World system will sharply intensify if giant nations splinter, as now seems eminently possible. The Soviet Union is fast-fracturing, with Gorbachev desperate to hold the parts together in a much-loosened framework. However, some pieces will almost surely flake off and assume strange new forms in the decades to come. Whether part of the Post-Soviet Union or not, some regions will inevitably be drawn into the economic vortex of a German-dominated Europe; others into the nascent Japanese sphere of influence in Asia. The backward republics, still dependent on agriculture and raw material extraction, may huddle together in a loosened federation. However, rational economic considerations could easily be swept aside by a tidal wave of republic, and Byelorussia merge into a giant mass based on Slav culture and a revivified Orthodox church. Islam could glue some of the Central Asian republics together. China, too, could split up, with its most industrially developed regions in the South and East severing their ties with the great rural-based China, and forming new kinds of entities with Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and perhaps a reunified Korea. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
The result might he a giant new Confucian Economic Community, countering the rise of Japan, while further strengthening the significance of religion as a factor in the World system. To assume that such changes will happen without civil war and other conflicts, or that they can be contained within the obsolete frame of a nation-based World order, is both shortsighted and unimaginative. The sole certainty is that tomorrow will surprise us all. What is brilliantly clear, then, is that as the new system of wealth creation moves across the planet it upsets all our ideas about economic development in the so-called South, explodes socialism in the “East,” throws allies into killer competition, an calls into being a new, dramatically different global order—diverse and risk-filled, at once hopeful and terrifying. New knowledge has overturned the World we knew and shaken the pillars of power that held it in place. Surveying the wreckage, ready once more to create a new civilization, we stand, all together now, at Ground Zero. In China, state owned companies have been put into a competitive environment where they have to rely more and more on themselves and less on the state, and to work hard to become profitable. Though they remain the core part of the Chinese economy, their status is drastically changing. The conventional perception of an SOE is that of an enterprise operating under tight supervision of a government agency and relaying on the state coffers for funding, shielded from competition, and pursuing the goals of the government’s economic and social policy (such as achieving certain numerical targets for production of particular goods, providing employment, or even supporting social welfare institutions like hospitals or kindergartens). #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
These goals are often achieved at the expense of commercial viability and profitability. Therefore the government has to provide financing to keep the enterprise going. This perception has to be reconsidered. A different, nonconventional type of SOE also exists and, furthermore, plays an increasingly important role in many emerging market countries in Asia and beyond; that is to say, SOE-market-style. Run by professional managers with a high degree of decision-making authority, they do not rely on the state’s soft financing but borrow at commercial rates or rise funds at the capital market. They full participate in competition both domestically and, more and more often, internationally. They pursue profit maximization as a major goal. In such companies, private investors often hold a minority stake. They may be listed on the stock exchanges at home and overseas. The SOEs of this kind are often more efficient, competitive, and dynamic than private companies. The SOE’s shift from the traditional to the market-style pattern is a major source of China’s structural transformation, giving its economy enormous energy to grow. This is the direction of change its major vector. In real life, many Chinese state-owned companies are currently still on their way between the two patterns described. Since the start of the market reforms, step-by-step, the government has been reducing the scope of SOEs’ products covered by the direct planning system, which kept the state responsible for financing, supply of necessary equipment and intermediate goods, price setting, and selling the products. The so-called zhenqqi fenkai policy was launched, meaning the separation of the government’s functions from enterprises’ business operations. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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Randolph Harris II International 