China's literate peasants are revolting? For what exactly?

■"For Chinese, Peasant Revolt is Rare Victory: Farmers Beat Back Police In Battle Over Pollution," by Edward Cody, Washington Post, 13 June 2005, p. A1.

■"China Is Said To Consider $15 Billion Bailout of Stock Market," by David Barboza, New York Times, 15 June 2005, p. C2.

■"China's Haier Looks at Maytag As Possible Target for a Takeover," by Richard Gibson, Wall Street Journal, 15 June 2005, p. C4.

■"Travel Industry Targets China: Global Tour Operators Revamp to Lure Growing Middle-Class," by Kristine M. Crane and Alex Ortolani, Wall Street Journal, 15 June 2005, p. A12.

One of my all-time favorite Mel Brooks' lines comes from his most underrated film, "The History of the World, Part. 1" Harvey Korman's Count de Money says to King Louis of France, "Your highness, the peasants are revolting." To which Louis answers, "You said it. They stink on ice!"

First piece is interesting recounting of peasants fighting the establishment and growth of a highly polluting industrial park. After petitioning right up to the Premier, they started a tent community of protesters at the park, filling its ranks with old retirees they hoped the policy would be reticient to treat roughly.

But of course the cops cracked heads just like always.

Reading this story is like reading about labor unions' strikes in America in the early years of the 20th century. My Mom would tell me the story of striking milk farmers during the Great Depression meeting with my grandfather, their lawyer, in his basement while the cops were looking for them all over town. My grandpa would send my Mom to the door to lie to the cops, telling them that no one was home. We forget this sort of cops-cracking-skulls labor history, but we had loads of it.

It's happening all over China, and Bob Kaplan's "literate peasants" are proving to be less of a superpower threat to America than a major thorn in the side of China's political leadership as they try to keep the economic juggernaut rolling. Thousands of protests and acts of violence are said to occur across China each year, and the biggest drivers are land grabs and resulting pollution.

Here's my prediction: China will becdome a global leader in pollution controls and abatement within a generation, and the leadership won't do it because it's nice but because they consider essential to their survival as a political elite.

When the commies start multibillion dollar bailouts of stock markets, you know they'll do anything to survive, ideology be damned. China needs a healthy capital market, as one expert put it, but it also needs a healthy environment. Peasants, especially those literate ones, are ready and willing to riot over either point.

China, as always, runs a far bigger race with itself than with the United States or any other imagined opponents. It's running a race to morph as much of that literate peasantry into an urban middle class as quickly as possible. It'll need a whole lot of everything to pull that off, so don't look at a Chinese buyout of Maytag as an assault on an American economic icon, but rather as the desperate reach of a national industry working its ass off to provide for that emerging class's needs across the boards.

Still, factor in the environmental requirements of all those washers, and you wonder if China won't pioneer the waterless system of cleaning clothes that many leading experts are touting as a practical way to shrink the Gap (and remove unwanted wrinkles) without too much environmental cost.

Finally, that growing middle class is increasingly attracting the attention of the global tourism industry, with predictions floating the possibility of 100 million Chinese tourists reaching foreign shores each year by 2020. On average (for now), they tend to spend about 1000 Euros per trip, and they favor luxury items and shoes most of all.

Geez, come to think of it, when Vonne and I were in China last year meeting baby Vonne Mei, we bought mostly luxury items and shoes!

Unless you consider bone carvings and cross-stitching with human hair to be essentials . .