Li Daokui
What a tumultuous time the year 2005 has turned out to be. A little over the second half mark, the rosy garden of economics was already under a shroud of some murky substance, and thickening as time went by. “Rethinking of the reform” was the proper name of it labelled by those long in the tooth, primed to dust off with their noble “ism” in the thankless battle of hammer and sickle. True to form, a quixotic romance of the old war-horses.
That aside. In time, however, that rousing logo had taken a quirky turn, morphing into some rallying cry that helped rustle up sizable forces of hostile hodgepodge determined to take on the entire cohort of academic economists. All of a sudden came the surging rumpus in all directions, so persuasive that even those serenely-looked professors began to run for cover. It was all too obvious, by then, that the academy pack was under a siege. Ghastly still, there was fire and brimstone staring them right in the face as the wild-eyed tub-thumpers ran amok, starting to pick them off one by one like in the duck hunting.
A poignant scene to revisit, but it was not without its plausibility. As it is, the country at present is in the middle of the transition. Like all the ripping changes, it inevitably brings with it not just the winners, but sadly the losers, the sceptics and its fierce critics, who have been up in arms almost from the way in. Clearly, something somewhere at some opportune moment has to be evoked just to help set their unsettled minds more or less at ease. Little wonder, then, the folks who have seen the better days chose to put on some rare show of unity under the banner that spoke their pieces, now that they have had to cast about for some fancy ways of venting their state of wrath.
What really boggles the mind, however, is of their actual prey that took the form of the eggheads of academy rather than the fatheads of the powers that be who are, in fact, the can-doers frequently caught red-handed. Well, part of the clarity may lie with the state of the regime that still renders it a nervy and pricey bent of wagging and pointing the finger at the Party reign. Plus, it was not entirely unjust, as they may have insisted, to take the economists as fall guys picking up all the tabs. After all, the blueprint of the reform was the handiwork of that brainy tribe that has since been accused of being bought over by the vested interests.
