See this at:
money.cnn.com|
Added on 08/31/06
In Ma's case, though, the courts refused even to hear the suit. Many of his clients were harassed and imprisoned for their presumption. When Ma persisted, going as far as petitioning the highest authorities in Beijing, he was arrested, taken into...
See more 
In Ma's case, though, the courts refused even to hear the suit. Many of his clients were harassed and imprisoned for their presumption. When Ma persisted, going as far as petitioning the highest authorities in Beijing, he was arrested, taken into custody, beaten, and convicted of "disrupting social order." His sentence: five years hard labor. Ma Wenlin's story, told in Wild Grass: Three Stories of Change in Modern China by Ian Johnson, is first of all a specific human tragedy, both for him and for his overburdened clients, who scrape a mean living from the soil of the Loess Plateau, only to have their savings confiscated by corrupt, greedy and unaccountable officials. But it also evokes a larger question: Are the impulses that animate the repression against the likes of Ma a comparative economic disadvantage for China? And if so, might India, with its radically different traditions of democracy and freedom, eventually surpass China as an economic force? At first glance, the answer to... See less 
.value, '<a href="http://www.kaboodle.com/reiras/china-e-asia.html"><img alt="" src="http://cn1.kaboodle.com/hi/img/2/0/0/28/f/AAAAAgtX8DIAAAAAACj7AQ.jpg" width="100px" /></a>','http://www.kaboodle.com/reiras/china-e-asia.html','1');)
