>China, the most capitalist culture ever to embrace a collectivist ideology.
>

>I indeed was counting by countries as that is the most feasible way to do this. In russia there are still people that easily could be categorized as communist. As for china. How would you categorize it? It certainly is not a democracy and the call it a capatalistic country would be far off either. The fact is that if China would go to war, you'll have to face 1+ Billion communists.

I think the remaining Communists in Russia are either those who suffered from the transition - pensioners did very badly as rubel crashes and their incomes remained fixed. The safety net broke and that was very unfortunate for a lot of people. Oddly enough, those who had priviledged positions in that ostensibly egalitarian socieity, the nomenklatura, adjusted to capitalism - especially in its most vicious manifestaions - rather well. They sold themselves the assets of the state and continued the gangsterism of the Breshnev years <g>

China - state control the economy with the army and party officials having control positions in industry with a workforce controlled by organs of the state. There really is a model for that - Italy, Germany, Spain in the 1930's. Fascism with an Asian face.

But the dragon swallowed Hong Kong - and as we see now in Shanghai - Hong Kong may yet digest the dragon. <s>

'Heaven is high, and the emperor is far away'