Blog update: Crucial information for my later posts

I will soon have my first post uploaded. Before that I want to apologizes for my poor English skill since it is my second language and my friend who use to help me with my English is away. If anyone who want to fix my post a little, you are certainly welcome.

My topic will be about Urban Planning under Socialist Ideology, it's my reply to Richard Klosterman's article "Arguments For and Against Planning", try to fix his blind spot. But before that I want to briefly explain China's economic system. This way, it will be much easier for readers to understand the background of the issues addressed in my post and my recommended reading.

China has transformed it's pure planning economy into a Socialist Market Economy in later 70's of the last century. So what is the so called Socialist Market Economy? How it distinguish itself to other economy system such as western Market Economy?

To put it in the simplest form: Socialists believes private ownership of land is a way to legalise rubbery. Because people who has land, the bourgeois can use it to produce products and sale them to make money. While people who doesn't have land, the workers will have to hire themselves out to those who has land. So the workers will forever be bonded to bourgeois' and make money for them. This is inequality to the workers. But after decades of practice in pure planning economy, while the government can provide people with basic needs and equality, the economy was developing in a very slow speed. Nobody can get rich. Why? Because in pure planning economy, the market lacks competitions to encourage people to be innovated, to create better products to better suit people's need. There were little is any luxury goods for the people during planning economy period. That is why the standard of living in China was generally lower compare to the people in the west.

The Socialist Market Economy is the answer to solve that problem:
While ensure the public ownership of land and raw materials, the finished goods and service industries are opened to all form of ownership. Now, any citizen has the rights to rent a piece of land  and then buy raw materials from the government to create products and sale them in the market. This way, different companies will always trying to differentiate their products to get ahead of others in intensive competition. In the same time, the government will use their power to direct the market and stabilise the market prices for various goods (since they control the land and raw materials) according to the need of the nation. One of the best example would be last year, the central government decide to stop mining rare earth materials and stop sell them to foreign countries to protect China's national interests. And since anyone can rent land, this way it provides citizen with better equality because nobody owns the land forever. It is similar to the land ownership in ACT Australia introduced by the labor party, but in a more aggressive manner. Because in ACT, the government doesn't control the raw materials. Plus in ACT, the period of time for the renting of land is 99 years, but in China it is set to 75 years.