A strange note from Germany

(via Rajeev Ramachandran of Teeming Multitudes) We have this rubbish from Gabor Steingart, head of Der Spiegel's Berlin office:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,443306,00.html
Apparently, this essay is excerpted from a best selling book. Excerpts from the excerpt:
"Their secret is stoic perseverance, the weapon they use to pursue their own interests while at the same time disregarding ours. What looks like a market economy in Asia, actually follows the rules of a type of society which former German chancellor Ludwig Erhard liked to call a "termite state." In a termite state, it is the collective rather than the individual which sets the agenda. Tasks that serve the aims of society's leaders are assigned to the individual in a clandestine manner that is barely perceptible to outsiders. It is a state that encourages as much collective behavior as possible but only as much freedom as necessary. We don't know what they feel, we don't know what they think and we have no way of guessing what they are planning.
......
The Asian elite politely brush off everything that matters to us -- the social framework surrounding daily working life, the idea of individual achievement and state-guaranteed fair competition. What we see as essential characteristics of a civilized society, they see as nothing more than bourgeois niceties.

The state (India) or party (China) is responsible for setting prices, promoting technology, ensuring provisions of raw materials, protecting industries and providing the impulse for just about any kind of economic or political activity.
.....
The military alliance which was forged in the Cold War could be carried over into the global economic war."
At this stage, I stopped reading the article. Rajeev quotes Schiller: "The gods themselves fought invain against stupidity".