What about small businesses?

During the weekend, I was shopping with my wife and walked by a Bombay store with a sign of "going out of business". There was another one near my home with the same sign for over a month and I even took the advantage of its big discount to buy a wooden game board for my wife's grandfather. But by the time I saw the second one, I realized that this isn't a single event, it was the whole company that went under. At a time of "subprime crisis", "credit crunch", "record high oil price", and "looming recession", the Wall Street favorites are falling from the sky, but more than the stock market is suffering the consequences.
Yes, I am talking about small businesses. Those are the ones who benefit last from the economic boom and suffer first from the bust. However, outside the pure economic calculation, there are political and moral risks of ignoring them. American politicians understand these risks perfectly well. Because SB not only mean opportunity and innovation, but also jobs and peoples lives. Clinton's administration did a pretty good job on helping SB. In fact, when economic hard time comes, politicians are under pressure to safeguard SB, but this time, protectionist elements seem to be in the promised package. I can only hope that the next president would have a proper plan to stimulate SB and at the same time fend off protectionism.
In order to create more jobs, you need to have healthy and prosperous SB. That applies to China as well. Unfortunately, nationalistic mentality and GDP focused economic growth path have long prevented the government from constructing a comprehensive plan to assist the development of SB. People nowadays are talking about the stock market, heavy industries, energy and resources, but most of them are about big companies and state monopolies. Government officials and economic pundits in China are talking about "bigger and stronger" or "climb the value chain". Rising cost of materials and labor, weakening support by the government, rising scrutiny by foreign governments, continuous limitation on service sectors, and tightening credit market all work against the survival of many SB in China. That's why this so called "rising China" is only cheered or feared outside China (particularly in D.C.) while inside people are struggling to catching up with the wild CPI. And that's why if harmonious society were to be realized, the Chinese government had to learn from other countries (including the U.S.) about how to encourage and develop SB.

参见中国轻工业联合会行业研究处处长郭永新1月8日的采访记录。