IF THE economy in China worsens, the ensuing political crisis will be worse than anything which has been seen in the former Soviet Union or Eastern Europe according to a leading Chinese poet, Duo Duo.
Duo Duo has been in the West mainly in Canada, since the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989, which he witnessed while working as a journalist for the Peasants' Daily. On June 4th of that year he left China for a previously planned tour to do with his poetry, and has not been back.
Born Li Shizheng in 1951, he took Duo Duo (after a daughter who died in infancy) as his pen name. Duo Duo is in Ireland on an Amnesty International speaking tour.
Before the Tiananmen massacre he had been a supporter of the government. "However, since the massacre we all have the same ideas about democracy, though we might disagree on how to get to freedom. When the government used soldiers to kill people it was a big shock," he told The Irish Times.
"For 5,000 years of Chinese history nothing has really changed in the system. The students and intellectuals want change. But it won't be easy, change is not something that will come in a year, or even in 10 years.
"The problem is - what will we do after the revolution? The communists scare people by saying that if the central power is gone there will be chaos and control by the mafia."
However, in some areas this is coming already, according to Duo Duo. The economic reforms which came in the 1980s have led to the growth in corruption and the development of a new capitalist class. "There are about a million people who are millionaires in Chinese terms," he said. "But it is a huge country, with a big population. There are about 100 million who are very poor. The south east is quite rich, but in the northwest people are very poor.
Corruption is rife, he said. For example, people charged with quite serious crimes can buy their way out of jail, while people accused of minor offences are often held without trial.
Much of the poverty is in the countryside, where farmers are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. Fertiliser is expensive, and the price of the main crop, rice, is very low.