Predictions about China's future
TokyoMango's Lisa Katayama has kicked off a new column on Asian futurism for IO9 with five predictions about the future of China:
1. The dystopic Communist regime will continue.Coming Soon from China: Dystopic Futures, the Next Steve Jobs, and a World Full of Drumming AndroidsWhile some China experts think that democratization is an inevitable first step to total economic domination, Andy Nathan, author of How East Asians View Democracy, believes otherwise. "China has authoritarian resilience," he says. "If (the current regime) was not supposed to survive modernization, it's proving very adaptable." In other words, as long as Hu Jintao's government can prove itself efficient albeit its shortcomings, the people will continue to sustain their loyalty to it.
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This is a little short-sighted. The Chinese need US/Japan trade like the US needs foreign oil. The day our congress stops selling-out our working-class to cheap manufacturing will be modern China's toughest moment.
But I guess the author is right. Asian 'human-rights' are quite a bit different than ours, and I think Chinese nationals will concede to just about anything (short of foreign occupation) to attain what they see as their rightful place in history.
Ugh. Once again, a China commentatory analyzing China wihtout a clue.
In the west we have an odd set of irrelevant beliefs about the inevitability or even desirability of western-style democracies. But these assumptions just don't map onto the reality of China very well.
For instance, we have this view of the Chinese government like it's some vast parasite that has attached itself to the Chinese people, who are all constantly thinking about the day they will one day be rid of it and "free". In reality, the government reflects and is intertwined with a lot of the beliefs Chinese people have about society, human rights, and the underlying importance of food, clothing and shelter, along with economic and social progress of their extended family.
As long as the government continues to reflect the deeper Chinese values, it will continue to exist. "Freedom" (according to western definitions) will never be highest on the agenda, unless the government's ability to support the Chinese in their aspirations breaks down and becomes a hindrance to further progress in the areas that matter the most.
As harsh as it may sound: the Chinese communist system is a well-oiled machine and it works quite fine. The old imperial system had outlived it's "mandate of heaven" and has been replaced by something that is not all that different in it's strict regulations and when (or if) the time comes, then the mandate of heaven of the current regime will also expire.
The Chinese regime is very effective though in shutting down everyone who thinks otherwise, not only since Tiananmen. If there is to be some change, it has to come from within. At the moment in this happy nationalist vibe nothing is going to happen.
Human rights are universal.
First Post comes close to saying, "They don't value life like we do." ("Asian human-rights are different than ours"...speak for yourself.)
It is racist.
In fact in the first posts second paragraph I can sub in "American" for "Asian" and "Chinese" and it makes "good sense" too.
It's racist...human rights are universal. Get over it.
The only difference is to what extent does a given government observe and respect those rights...which can only be denied, never lost.
Science too is universal...technology does act over time as an equalizer and leveler...think of paper, block-printing, gunpowder, the compass....we all owe each other and our futures are entwined.
Last point: To have a chance to think of China's future with any hope of being accurate, I think it advisable to study China's past first. There is an awful lot of very interesting history in China.
I can't let this pass without plugging J. Needham's "History of Science and Civilization in China", in many volumes. Fantastic work, everyone should look at it before they start to opine as to the possible futures of a fifth of all humanity. IMHO.
"Asian human-rights are quite a bit different than ours..."
http://cryptome.org/jail-rape.htm
I still don't understand why China was awarded the Olympics anyway. Before people start pulling out the flame throwers my doubts aren't because they're Chinese.
No my doubts are more to do with the fact I can think of quite a few countries that would have welcomed the revenue the games creates, combined with the nagging feeling that the Chinese market is shaping up to have several billion untapped consumers had a lot more to do with the choice.
No, human rights are not universal. Or at least, not all of what we in the western world (and particularly in the US) declare as 'universal human rights'.
For instance, the idea of freedom of speech does not translate all that well into Chinese culture. To some degree, you will find that almost all Chinese believe that there are certain types of speech can "incite" bad behavior and have a destructive effect on society, and should as a result be stopped. (I'd point out that the US anti flag-burning law is similar.)
And whether BoingBoing readers believe that unconstrained freedom of speech is somehow an alienable right, the fact is that China never really passed through a democratic period and later had such rights 'removed'. As a result, most Chinese don't perceive freedom of speech an an inalienable right, and believe that some freedoms must be constrained in order to hold society together.
We can therefore try to argue about whether China "should" have freedom of speech or whether the Chinese government is some external evil that has landed on the people and constrains freedoms, but to do so betrays a naivety and even intellectual imperialism that insists that the things westerners care about the most (or claim to) are necessarily what the Chinese themselves should care about.
Do most Chinese people want more freedoms, including speech? I'd say probably, but it is by no means the foremost concern in their lives. And as long as the current political system can satisfy the lion's share of major concerns, it will continue to exist and evolve, and most people will view the limitations on freedom as a necessary part of the bargain.
Hmm, I get the feeling someone is conflating "what people believe" and "what people will confess to strangers". That's a dubious conflation to make under the best of circumstances; and a totalitarian regime is rather far from those.
A lot of the time, no doubt, these people aren't talking from the heart but rather for the State Security they suspect (fear) will screen the tape, read the resulting article or, for that matter, who may have planted the clown in the first place. What do you expect they'll say?
I'm also rather horrified at the suggested "solution"; neither natural disasters nor terrorist attacks will weaken the central state. To the contrary, enemies (real or imaginary) will strengthen it. Bad political decisions could do it, but not the ones he lists (again, invading enemies — real or imaginary — is to the dictator's benefit).
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Keeper of the Lantern has failed to understand that US *has no* anti-flag burning laws. We just have loud idiots who propose them all the time and get shut down, just like England has the BNP.
The future of China will have to follow changes in the means of production. And I'm no Marxist.
With info-tech IMHO that means ever-greater de-centralization of decision-making and of storage of info(to enable those decisions). Given time technological "best practices" should spread. As well, our tech requires certain minimums standard in education, which means that both here and in China the general march of standardization in all things will continue.
Getting back off-topic, "universal" human rights do not equate to "absolute" human rights, nor to legally-reewcognized rights. My use of the word 'rights' does not arise from the "rights only exist if there is a remedy for their violation" school of rights.
Some of the rights of which I speak are "freedom from" rights. Some are "freedom to" , but I consider even those not to depend for their existence on their recognition by the bearer or her society. Nor do they dictate when or if an individual should or should not exercise those rights, nor does the concept limit various polities in their definition of those rights for the purposes of their various legal systems. Leave the particulars to the wisdom of the individual and her community. The denial of these 'universal' rights occurs inevitably after their exercise...you hardly need a State to deny you your right eg to be free from unprovoked violent physical assault, the right does not even arise for consideration until after the assault.
The rights of which I speak pre-exist the State...in this context or sense of "rights" every State is a Police State, in that their response to the exercise of your rights will illustrate the extent to which your society will tolerate that exercise...but it does not thereby extinguish your right...it is just denying you that right, sometimes for very good and just reasons. Sometimes not. I suppose that what I'm getting at is the ontology of "rights". I'm simply denying that the State can define such.
In addition, sometimes the exercise even of one's unquestionable rights would be ill-advised simply on the basis of good manners.
Certainly the US constitution recognizes that human rights pre-exist the Constitution. As do the classic French revolutionary conception of these.
I am very far from advocating a western-style system of legal rights for the Chinese...they had a very bad time with their own "strict constructionists" (aka the Legalists, in Chinese history). They have lived in great cities for thousands of years, they can come to their own social arrangements.
But human rights are still universal and their denial can ground calls for justice and the decrying of injustice, in any polity, at any point in history.
By what "right" does the government of the PRC torture peaceful political dissidents? Is that some particular Asian value I missed when living in Asia for over a decade? Anyone who really feels that such activity is necessary to keep China safe is welcome to speak up.
No right whatsoever JJasper, no right at all.
Rights are borne by natural individuals , I would call group/State/Corp "rights" by another term altogether, to prevent confusion as to who has rights and what does not.
All publicity for State actions unjustly denying the rights of individuals ought to be honored and applauded IMO.
After 9/11, the West has been coming over to China's argument that it is the prerogative of governments to control their societies in the name of harmony (or security, stability, and so on). Hence the increase in (and public acceptance of, if not support for) surveillance, bans on things like public photography and doing anything too unusual (just in case it's suspicious) and various security theatre which is designed not so much to provide security as to demonstrate who's boss. The West may get a Confucian harmony-first value system before China gets an American individualist-libertarian one.
Peter Hessler, in his "What's Next?" essay for NatGeo's special China issue, brings up another good point:
"In China, though, new cities are strictly business: factories and construction supplies and cell phone shops. Local governments focus on profiteering, and the Communist Party has always discouraged the kind of organizations that contribute in other societies. This is perhaps the nation's greatest human rights challenge. Westerners tend to focus on the dramatic—dissidents, censorship—but it's the lack of institutions that actually hurts most Chinese. Workers are left to fend for themselves: no independent unions, no free press, few community groups. Through sheer willpower, many succeed, but the wasted potential is staggering. In the reform years China has unleashed its remarkable population; the next stage is to learn to respect this wealth."
Link to Peter Hessler's essay on China's future here:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/05/china/whats-next/hessler-text
He also mentions this:
"But few Chinese spend much time thinking about the future. Decades of political turmoil taught citizens that nothing lasts forever, which inspires the fearlessness of the entrepreneurs but also makes them shortsighted. The same is true of the Communist Party. During the reform years, authority has become so decentralized that there's little oversight, and most local governments have to find their own funding. They rely heavily on real estate transactions—a city can acquire farmland, build basic infrastructure, and then sell to industry or commercial developers. Economists estimate that cities receive roughly half their fiscal revenue from such sales, and in many places it's resulted in madcap development, financed by loans from state banks."
Of course human rights aren't universal. They only apply to humans. Silly humans...
"Authoritarian resilience"...? Is this the opposite of the "brittle command structure" of dictatorships that allegedly allowed U. S. troops to overrun Baghdad while Baghdad Bob was still denying anything had happened?
I'm not sure that simply flipping a parameter here and there on an existing body of foreign policy dogma contributes much to the discussion.
Try this on for size: China is a BIG meme, larger than any one brain can contain. (Insert obligatory reference to elephants and some number of blind natural philosophers here.)
It's possible that China's future will not be dystopian at all, although ours might well be. There is a second cultural revolution sweeping through China -- this one quietly green, rather than noisily red -- coupled with a thoroughly post-Maoist dialectal take on gradualism that allows it to embrace coal power production as a temporary step on the way to sustainable alternatives.
I take the Chinese at their word on this, since it is consistent with a Deng Xiaoping party line I first heard in 1975; events (in broad strokes, at least) seem to have borne him out.
The party responsible for the entirely man-made famine that affected the entire country and killed at least 30 million people in 1958-1962 is still in power. Mao's memory is still revered, although he was the chief architect of the famine and did nothing to stop it. The few who worked to stop it found themselves killed or in prison camps, and later found themselves targets of the "Cultural Revolution" for opposing Mao and telling the truth. There was no revolution then or since. Will the dystopic Communist regime continue? Yes, yes it will.
The Chinese see that democracy can get you a "leader" like Bushie, and they think, Democracy is good?
I don't deny there's plenty of wrongs committed by the Chinese government, but there's an old saw about first taking the log out of your own eye. American and Britain in particular, and the west in general, don't have the moral high horse they think they have.
I'm always intrigued how people get so riled up about government abuses occurring in China, but not so much by the same abuses committed by their own governments.
I honestly believe the reason China is big right now, is actually because of the China's very effective communist government.
IMO, the day China fully adopts democracy, is the day China will start to decline.
I just can't see how democracy can effectively keep more than 1 billion people in order.
(even US and UK start to see it like that too. what's with all the "security measures" and "surveillance"?)
I think we need to realise that histories are different. I thought the 5 reasons were actually well reasoned. There is racism in some of the accusations here. People do want a lot of the same things but what they are may not gel with what we think they are. Safety, security, comfort top these. How people go about trying to get them can take many forms. Look at what US citizens have gleefully given up to try to feel safer.
I'm a regular support of groups like Amnesty but I find myself getting really tired of people huffily trotting out "human rights are universal" as though someone hit the button on a tape recorder somewhere. And what are these exactly? List them from memory.
Human rights may be universal but no one has them guaranteed and different people have different ideas about what they entail. As a supporter of the Beijing protests, I wonder where the demonstrations were against the Olympics in Greece, in the US or the ones planned for UK. None of these places lacks the spilling of blood in its quest to maintain power. All of them exist to exert control over people using one ploy or another. Ask a million Iraqis if the US should be protested over human rights? Oh, you can't because they're dead.
The major reason to believe that China will eventually become democratic and roughly westernized is that western culture is extremely erosive. Thomas Jefferson nailed it because he realized that something as prima facie frivolous as "the pursuit of happiness" was a core ideal.
There are very few cultures which can withstand mere contact with Western individualism, because pretty much any human being is going to like what it has to offer him and we are, at base, a selfish species (all vertebrate species are, or they're extinct).
What remains in the world is only those cultures that have some inherent resistance to this, and there're not that many. Islamic culture is in horrible turmoil because some of its people believe that without active, violent resistance, they have nothing to offer that will keep many adherents who would prefer western values.
To think that Chinese culture is somehow different from all the others in the world smacks of thinking that all gods don't exist "except for mine".
(Drew3000, I accept your challenge: freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom to select one's own leaders, the right to life, the right to own property, the right not to be property, and equality in the eyes of the law)
I think that Chinese culture is somehow different. You can conquer China with the most effective military machine in history. (The Mongols.) You can completely overturn the social hierarchy and replace the ruling ideology. (Communists.) The result? China remains China. Mao just became the latest Emperor to start a Dynasty. Capitalism? The Chinese will assimilate it and make their own uniquely Chinese version. Democracy? The same.
Much as the Japanese have absorbed western culture and remained Japanese, The Chinese will do the same. The Chinese will not seek to conquer very far outside their borders, though they will exercise immense influence. They will establish foreign colonies, but these will take on their own identity. They will be the vanguard of Humanity's colonization of Space.
Grikdog:
Good post.
I don't actually believe China's future will be particularly dystopian, though peaking at 1.5Billion people will stretch resources quite a bit (and this is already happening).
Instead, life in China will be and already is a series of compromises and local optimizations. And yet, the Chinese always find a way to get the most out of things and out of their lives.
Last August I was in Chongqing after not having been to China for 20 years (I lived in Shanghai in 87/88). And my feeling was that life in this vast, overcrowded and polluted city was reasonably good for a very large number of people. Or at least, more than good enough to deflect most people from thinking seriously about dismantling the current power structures. (And build what instead? A US-style democracy?)
Is their oppression? Sure. Does it impact the vast majority of people on a daily basis? No. Is there poverty and have nots? Hell yes. But given the vast numbers, the system can be argued to work pretty well.
Oh, let me contradict myself in one area. I think the one thing that might boil over (and is starting to) is in workers rights. The conditions in many of the southern factories are abominable, and workers have very little recourse. And it's precisely when things get intolerable that the Chinese will fight and fight very hard.
The Communist Party, however, will most likely find some way forward and will absorb a certain amount of reform in this area, I suspect, because this would be one area of instability that they likely could not contain otherwise (and we've already seen large demonstrations fighting off the police in Southern China).
Can we please stop referring to China as communist? In communism, the state is run for the benefit of the people. Whether or not you believe that scenario has ever existed anywhere, it certainly hasn't been true in China for decades. China is authoritarian. It is centralist. But it is not communist.
This semantic nightmare stems from the Cold War. Democracy = freedom. Communism = totalitarianism. But that's apples and lawnmowers. Communism and capitalism are economic systems. Democracy is a vague umbrella word meaning rule by the people. Capitalist countries, in theory, run by a variety of types of democracy such as representative democracy. Communist countries, in theory, run by democratic centralism. They are both iterations of democracy and can both be manipulated for good or for ill.
China sucks the life and resources out of its masses to benefit the few, just like any nominally capitalist country. Just because it is centralized and authoritarian does not make it communist.
Ugly Canuck @5 -- Strongly-worded declarative statements followed by the phrase "get over it" are not a substitute for reasoned argument, nor are they likely to convince the people you're accusing of "racism".
All affluent societies become increasingly litigious with time. It happened in ancient Egypt. It is happen to China.
A short-lived market shift? Sure. But China is in love with capitalism and 3 billion people are nouveau rich and hungry for more.
Besides it's like going to one parent when the other said no. Much will be swept under the rug.
free tibet.
Canuk, I agree that human rights are universal. But try convincing the Chinese "man on the street" who is happy making a decent wage and is generic nationalistic. We assume that all Chinese are the overacheivers we see at work in Europe or North America, the dumb ones never move as a rule worldwide.
I now use caution bringing these discussion topic up since it really bothers many non-western university liberal-arts educated Chinese citizens.
Consider also that many Chinese are very racist against the minorities such as those in Tibet due to slanted education and media coverage.
At this point it is like convincing a USAian WASP that the system is bad for human rights.... but it works for them.
@JJasper
By what "right" does the government of the USA torture peaceful political dissidents? Is that some particular American value I missed when living in America for over a decade (and a half)? Anyone who really feels that such activity is necessary to keep America safe is welcome to speak up.
Seems to transpose rather well :/
Antinous #28: If you define "communist" in such a way as to exclude every implementation of communism that's ever existed then it's awfully hard to discuss. Here in the real world, communist nations are always and without exception authoritarian and hostile to human rights (which include economic rights). That's not a bug, it's built right in.
The problem with all authoritarian regimes is that, contrary to popular opinion, they are very inefficient at actually running an economy or governing effectively. China spent much of the last century stuck in a backwater because of their inept and murderous communist regime. To effectively tap into their resources they've had no choice but to introduce capitalism and accommodate economic freedom. Which means that sacrificing ideology and central control on an ever larger scale. My gut feeling is that they'll shrug off the last rusty chains of communism and transition into a representative democracy over the next 50 years or so.
@25: I read that US courts ruled a while ago that "the pursuit of happiness" is legally meaningless, and instead should be read as "the pursuit of profit"; hence, Americans are working longer hours to keep up on the hedonic treadmill whilst use of antidepressants and tranquilizers (and their illegal equivalents) skyrockets.
The only communist societies you'll find in the world today are the pitifully few remnants of hunter/gatherers; they are indeed classless, hence communist. Everything else going by that name is a lie. Don't dignify the bastards by calling them communist. I certainly don't call the USA a democracy.
To everyone commenting: I feel that my ideas on rights are best described as "half-baked".
My feeling is that universal human rights are minimal, in the sense of their content.
For example, I think the right to be left alone is one of the universal rights. Most denials of rights can be factored down to that, I think. But in many situations people should not be left alone. The trick for the "just ruler" is to tell the difference.
As to denial of rights by governments, well, governments have powers and obligations, not rights, and as one of those obligations is to protect the public from violence, there are those who feel (rightly IMO) that it is the government's duty to use those powers in the way which is required in order to fulfill that duty. Some would say that those powers expand to include torture where the duty of the government to its people requires it. With this expansion of power, I strongly disagree.
As to China herself, she has centrifugal forces built into it. The countervailing centralization of power has been a historic process, a response, to those forces. In these contexts individual men and women with their particular rights are as blades of grass in the wind.
China is an immense balancing act.
But Americans should remember that while they have had a civil war, China has had many...
I do agree that China will be the first to colonize space though.
Go humanity go!
Hey Buddy ever been to a monastery? or a convent?
No, but I used to sleep with an ex-nun.
Are you drunk already, Canuck?
First of all there is no 'Western-style Democracy'. The Greeks in ancient Athens had a democracy, we in the West have representative republics as our form of government. In a true democracy we would all get our chance to rule, but because there are so many of us now, we have made the choice to have someone do it for us. Unfortunately, sometimes we choose poorly.
In China, the people don't get to choose who represents them. They don't have an opportunity to challenge their leaders without brutal reprisals. Because they are essentially 'cut-off' from the West and are taught from an early age that we seek their destruction, they do not trust what they hear -or see- in the Western press that they do have access to; as an example, we have seen the reaction to the reporting on the repression of the protests in Tibet. There are a great number of Chinese citizens that still believe that their leaders would never do those kind of things and never lie to them about such events.
Chinese leaders wish to advance their country economically -as well as politically- because they realize that they live in a capitalist world where the centralized economic policies that they employ cannot compete with the West and cannot influence political events and opinions that would benefit their regime. They have learned from the collapse of the USSR that they must deal with the West -just enough- to keep the people happy to the point that they will still accept authoritarian rule and not seek radical political or ideological change. Therefore, they do allow trade and co-operation with Western companies, but those Chinese companies that do business with the West still have a large degree of state control.
China seeks to advance its position on the world stage as an economic, political, and technology power; witness their space program as example of the latter. Unfortunately for China, they are still held back by the antiquated social belief in 'face'. This belief is ingrained in the society and is one of the reasons why they employ secrecy and repression to the degree that they do. For the Olympics to be marred by protests over Tibet would cause a great embarrassment to the current regime's political ambitions to make itself appear as a world player and if their space efforts were to suffer a launch failure that results in the death of the crew or the loss of the vehicle, that could set their space program back ten years or more and cause great embarrassment to the regime's perceived position in the world.
Those that would view the Chinese people's 'concession' to the repressive regime that controls them as their acquiescence to achieving a place in history, fail to understand that a large majority of the Chinese people have never lived with any other type of government. They have been 'repressed' from cradle to grave with many of them having little or no knowledge of how a 'free' society lives. Unfortunately for the current regime, they will have to begin the transition to a more representative form of government -sooner than later. This transition will not be easy -for the Chinese and the rest of the world- as their leaders will have to admit to a great many things that they may be held accountable for.
But try convincing the Chinese "man on the street" who is happy making a decent wage and is generic nationalistic.
How about the hordes who rebuilt Beijing for the Olympics and then were bussed out to the provinces without homes or jobs? Or the people whose children were killed in the earthquake because government officials took kickbacks from contractors, and are now being told to stop complaining or go to jail? How about the bloggers and the journalists? How about the queers? How about the Tibetans and the Uighurs? How about the slaves in the brick factories?
The Chinese 'man on the street' is like the straight, white man in America in the first half of the twentieth century. He appeared to be the whole population, but it turned out that he wasn't. It turned out that he was actually the minority. The dispossessed outnumber the satisfied, but they're too disenfranchised for their voices to be heard above the lies and self-congratulations.
Yeah but I predict they will do it on the whole peacefully, that is , change to a more representative system.
Buddy communal living was "espoused" by the Christian monasteries of the second-fifth century CE. In many ways primitive monastic Christianity was the first communism. And although I am not sure, I think that some Orders are still communal in living arrangements and classless in their internal organization...but I take it that you hold that the only "true" communists are Marxist...I disagree.
As to China's dictatorship-by-committee I must admit that the older I get the more I appreciate gerontocracy....
Sorry Buddy i misread your comment. I see that contrary to Marxism being a criterion for "true communism", some noble (primitive?) tribal grouping is postulated. I must say I disagree double now.
First of all there is no 'Western-style Democracy'. The Greeks in ancient Athens had a democracy, we in the West have representative republics as our form of government
I'm not sure it's possible to take your opinion on the existence of democracy seriously if you think the word "republics" in the second part applies to the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, and Belgium.
#44 Ugly Canuck:
I see that contrary to Marxism being a criterion for "true communism", some noble (primitive?) tribal grouping is postulated. I must say I disagree double now.
I don't think you know what you're talking about, so how can you disagree? Who said anything about ''noble"? You got some Rousseau left over from college, maybe? I was giving a professional anthropological description, with none of that loaded 20th century ideological claptrap. Hunter/gatherer culture has been described for over a hundred years as ''primitive communism.'' Which means kinship-based relationships instead of property-based; classless social order; no hereditary titles or inheritances; no priesthood; no property other than personal. . .
But don't worry about it; soon even the !Kung, our original gene pool, will be gone; so you won't have ANY goddamn communists to fret about. Better get after them Ay-rabs, y'hear?
@45
I have not had the chance to read the constitutions of the countries that you cite in your post. However, if you read the transcripts of the US Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights; nowhere do the words democracy or democratic appear.
'Novus Ordo Seclorum', New Order for the Ages, was intended as a guiding principle in the creation of the new type of government, a representative republic, that the 'Founding Fathers' created with those documents. Their vision was for this 'new order' or new type of government, to be a model for others to follow; because there had not been a "...Government instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..." before that point in time.
It is important to understand that the FFs abhorred the rule of a single individual, in their case King George, even in an Athenian style democracy; because it would allow a single person to control the people without their direct consent. Even in a representative republic, as I said earlier, sometimes we choose poorly, but at least we get to choose.
there had not been a "...Government instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..." before that point in time.
I'd like to point you in the general direction of Switzerland and the Netherlands, both of which existed long before the founding fathers of the United States got around to doing their thing.
Human Rights:
"Nothing is true. Everything is permissible"
"Power grows from the barrel of a gun"
Is it possible to say anything negative about China without being called a Racist?
In my experience, the mainland Chinese disregard any and all laws if nobody is watching, as contrasted by many "Westerners" who have a "policeman inside their head", and may stop at red lights at midnight when no other cars are around.
I'm inclined to agree with the opinions that the West is moving more in the direction of authoritarian Capitalism rather than China moving to Democracy. The tools of the Great Firewall will be refined and turned against us here soon.
There's something else in China's future:
Zbigniew Breszinski's camp seems on the rise to overturn NeoCon domination of U.S. foreign policy, and that will mean a reorientation against China and resurgent Russia, rather than the current dilly dallying in the Middle East.
Zbig likes to fight proxy wars and pit rivals against each other, to weaken any challenges to Anglo American supremacy.
So, watch out China!
Guantanamo #22, nobody here ever said the United States is perfect. Posters on Boing Boing are forever getting riled up about things the US government does. I think the unearned moral superiority here is yours.
Antinous #28, won't that get confusing? *They* call themselves Communists.
It's like Christian denominations: none of them entirely live up to the ideals, but it would be inconvenient and embarrassing to refuse to call them Christian on that account.
You think President McCain's going to hire Zbig? Wow.
Zbigniew Breszinski? What year is this again?
who is the "average" Chinese? Can we agree they agree to the label "Han"? That the Han compose 92% of the general population of China? That this would be one in five of all humans? Is it a safe assumption that if the question were put to them: "what is the best kind of human to be?" the answer would be Han?
What does the "average" Chinese want? The same as everyone else, yes? Looking at the globe, does the average Chinese wish to have a standard of living and wealth comparable to the Americans? I think so. Doesn't everyone?
Is it true America,with five percent of the world population uses twenty to twenty five percent of available resources? Can China duplicate this with one Earth to draw from? What is say India thinking? Africa?
I predict China will meet an escalating crisis of rising expectations versus absolute resource limits. I foresee short term measures involving eliminating minorities in China. There will be serious social problems with tens of millions of mateless men because of the one child policy and prejudice against female offspring. The current economic boom will suffer as the purchasing economies like the USA suffer from their own problems. The global credit market will undergo massive shake-up when all these factors have their self-reinforcing effect. Environmental problems will escalate as more give up on the long term future and seek to shelter themselves with hasty wealthy before the game is over. Internal tensions in China will amplify, pulling the agglomerated modern China back into self-interested separate states with their own cultural identities. Competitor nations will do all they can to accelerate these trends when they appear. Any unforeseeable crises like an avian flu outbreak or internal putsch attempts will exacerbate their situation.
I cannot predict any sustainable outcomes for China based on what I see today. Hope springs eternal, but it would take either a technological miracle, the unexpected sudden collapse of the industrial west or some incredible political event like a popular absolute dictator to get out of the corner they are headed into.
@49, any reorientation against China is a reorientation against funding. Won't happen.
Russia will fit the demonology however, you're right on that one.
I have no idea about the future of China. So many variables. I do find amusement though with arguments about the West defining what democracies look like and, of course, their respect for human rights.
You want to know what the western nations think about civil liberties and human rights? Look into their covert foreign policies. And how that tends to bleed into domestic policy (not just the U.S. either).
Hey, the current gang of lunatics in Washington is full of leftovers from the Reagan and Nixon administrations, so why shouldn't the next bunch have a Carter relic?
@avram - "so why shouldn't the next bunch have a Carter relic?"
Do you keep your tires properly inflated?
I find it funny that most of ya'll are bragging about Democracies...#22 had it right. Democracies are more than likely going to bring about Bushies in power than anything else.
Democracies mean that people are worried about the here and now -- while a good leader should be focused on how our grandchildren are going to survive.
Bushies all want to push the debt to someone else, some other time. They want to scream about taxes, at the same time complaining about national debt. I'm sorry, but you need one to take care of the other. Try to fix this, you are called a commie tax and spend liberal.
*MOST* people care about today and don't care about the future...most people care about security and they are willing to give up rights they don't care about and never used anyways to ensure this security. They are willing to take away *ALL* the rights of those that are different, and more importantly threatening because of the differences, and can't see what is wrong with this.
Democracies are about ensuring those in the majority are not inconvenienced too much. How much is too much? Depends...we learn to live with a lot of pain. A Republic, a representative democracy, helps ensure the rights of the minority are not ignored, but if the majority of the representatives are elected by a group that represents the main majority, its effects are nullified.
Personally, over the last 8 years, I've learned to be dissatisfied and somewhat disenfranchised by democracies. At the same time, I'm not all that inconvenienced and I can get along with life without watching my back...I look like the majority, I dress like them most of the time anymore (no more gothy, gutter punk, freak attire). Unless I'm thrown in jail or injured by this, it is a moral outrage that I think about occasionally and then get back with life. It isn't me getting screwed -- it is my friends. And people I will never associate with.
Most people feel the same way...and while they dislike the policies, it never affected them for the worse.
China? They have something that works with the majority of people. They've learned to live with it. It is just as screwed up as our policies. Not worse, not better. I'd rather deal with the problems in China than the US right about now...percentagewise, I'd be less likely to be jailed. A little more likely to be executed if I were, but I don't fit into the population that would be up for this anyways.
Human rights are universal...and the majority of the world just doesn't care.
Americans willing to give up rights? More so than they were in 1976, at any rate.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/15/AR2008081503497.html?hpid
The news just keeps getting better re:freedom from botherment.
*They* call themselves Communists. It's like Christian denominations: none of them entirely live up to the ideals, but it would be inconvenient and embarrassing to refuse to call them Christian on that account.
Win the battle of semantics, win the war.
For instance, the idea of freedom of speech does not translate all that well into Chinese culture. To some degree, you will find that almost all Chinese believe that there are certain types of speech can "incite" bad behavior and have a destructive effect on society, and should as a result be stopped. (I'd point out that the US anti flag-burning law is similar.)
This isn't a debatable point: this is a matter of fact. Either free speech inspires bad behavior or it doesn't. All facts indicate that it doesn't. Therefore, even insofar that the Chinese belief (as promulgated by its government) about free speech is a cultural belief, it is also incorrect.
-- ACS
I'd point out that the US anti flag-burning law is similar.
The one that doesn't exist?
China is an argument that democracy, at last liberal democracy, does not scale. At least when the scaling is applied to an empire of 1.3 billion people. Politically, modern China is more like the old Soviet Union with the equivalent of Eastern Europe and other neighboring ethnic regions inside its borders. When in history has democracy ever worked to reinforce empire? China's leadership understand that a full-fledged democratic system would threat, and ultimately fragment, what is now China.
ACS:
Well, I think that's an important point. As for inciting bad behavior, the CCP would (and have) made the point that TianAnMen was ignited by "free speech that was out of control" (yes, I'm aware of the oxymoronic nature of that statement). In particular, once you got to factory workers parading in the streets and Newscasters speaking out, JongNanHai (believed it) had to do something. I would argue too that while the vast majority of Chinese citizens would be horrified by the pictures that emerged, they'd also agree "but they had to do SOMETHING". (I remember seeing quotes in China such as, "how would the Americans like it if thousands of people protested in front of the Whitehouse?")
Thus, believing that China "needs" freedom of speech is naive. Perhaps it's true in some objective sense, but this would mean trying to change the minds of hundreds of millions of people about the inherent positive power of free speech.
As for that anti flag-burning "law", I stand corrected (I think), but that doesn't mean it will never get passed...the hillbillies re-elected The Monster in Chief, didn't they?
TaKuan wrote...
"I predict China will meet an escalating crisis of rising expectations versus absolute resource limits."
That's the quote of the day. Absolutely spot on. When I was in China last year, when the subject of the environment ever came up, the response was, "Well, the US raised itself economically by polluting so China has the right to do the same thing". I didn't bother trying to explain the different context and that there may be some major catastrophes on the way due to global warming. In China the view is clearly that pollution is purely a quality of life issue and as a result should be tolerated.
But as TaKuan suggests, when we start seeing some critical and major events, it will become clear that the environment is already pretty closed to taxed to its limit and that further increases in overall prosperity will come at an extremely high price (arguably too high to sustain the political stability China always craves).
China would do well to ignore the West's "advice", as they have a much greater and longer experience of Civilization (that is, living in "cities"="civitas", hence "civilized") than has the West.
History shows that the West does not care about the average Chinese and has abused her at every opportunity. Indeed the only use the West has for China now is as a source of slave labor that they can lecture at will to demonstrate to their own subjects their tender regard for human rights...other carps are aimed at preserving Western dominance in establishing the norms of cultural life...
China should do as she did for most of her history...ignore the West entirely except insofar as it helps her people.
This is what we do to China, is it not?
In fact I think that this is the most likely outcome, judging from the palpable fear of China which is being ceaselessly propagated by Governments and Media...
could China develop an exportable ideology?
China is an argument that democracy, at last liberal democracy, does not scale. At least when the scaling is applied to an empire of 1.3 billion people.
By far the most comparable country in the world to China is an argument in exactly the opposite direction. India has been one of the most successful post-colonial democracies. It's shambolic, it cracks around the edges (though remember their enormous ethnic diversity as compared to China), it's tended toward one-party rule.
But how many other countries let go post-WWII can boast that they've maintained democratic government since day 1? Not many.
I am not sure India IS a democracy. Every Indian is very proud to say "I can vote the bastards out!", but for far too many, India remains a bad place to live. It is possible to have the appearance of democracy. Ask any Floridan. In any case, India is supremely relevant to any discussion involving China. It is the other elephant in the room.
Will India and China inevitably crash head long in competition to fully develop a universal industrial economy? Will the already developed economies play these off against each other? Is an India/China alliance truly impossible?
Tak democracy does not logically imply or entail by necessity a happier or a richer populace.
An Indian/Chinese/American/Russian/European/African "alliance" is possible and the framework already exists for such - it's called the UN - but the US with its openly admitted goal of dominating the World (and other States too) - will have none of it - or rather, like the US now treats China, it will only use it insofar as it is to their perceived advantage in attaining the above-mentioned goal. Not one step further, it appears.
Tak, Confucianism rules in Singapore - last time I checked, Singapore is not China. Fits well with other clan-based societies too from what I can tell. Is not 'filial piety' a desiderata in other societies?
Bah. I meant that other States also use the UN only to advance their own goals, not that the US wants to dom. other States as well as the World...
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JH07Df01.html
India is most certainly a democracy. They had hung parliament after the 1996 election, the BJP ran the country after 1998, Congress took over in 2004. You could argue that the Congress domination-period prior to the 1996 was not a democracy (though by that standard Japan hasn't got one either), but now there's two electable parties which rely on coalition partners -- a healthier situation than in the US, and roughly what happens in Canada, Germany, and several other countries.
One important fact I think a lot of people miss: India's current per capita GDP (using purchasing power parity) is where China's was as late as 1995. They're only 13 years behind, and they have much stronger institutional structures -- by which I mean corporate governance and their banking sector, not their government set-up. They're better positioned to avoid economic wipeouts, which will tell in the long run.
Since we're talking about what things will be like 30, 40, 50 years down the line, that 13-year gap is not that important.
another gift of the Cheney presidency
http://www.countercurrents.org/chan140808.htm
So, do we all agree that the person who wrote this took a look at some "pop" web sites and decided this is what China is going to be?
1. China will continue to be China. Duh. "Dystopic" is a hipster buzzword.
2. China has a plan to boost windpower by 2020. So does everybody else.
3. Joe Chen has developed a couple of web sites and he's the next Steve Jobs? I don't think so. He might be the next "whoever invented facebook" guy.
4. Is there any evidence that the high profile architectural projects in China have "IKEA grade foundations"? This is very racist, it seem to me, hinting that the Chinese don't have the engineers or the brains to realize they need strong engineering. It also goes against what the author said in point 3.
5. Oh, look. I invented a new buzzword: robotic drummers. Now if I can use it in this article somehow.
Moon,
Well, the ultimate defense against charges of racism is if the people themselves are saying it:
Asia Times (Hong Kong) on "disregard for building codes"
Systemic Corruption in the Construction Sector brings Chinese and International Experts Together
China's construction projects 'rushed'
Incidentally, it took me less than five minutes to find these. The Chinese construction industry is notoriously immoral when it comes to safety and quality.
Yeah, but the author wasn't talking about everyday projects, right? The paragraph was about high profile architectural projects.
In the US, I won't go to jail for posting criticism o the government online or in print. In China, I would, even if I were a citizen. So, smashie, it seems your claim of torture and jail of dissidents in the US is rather easily disproved.
I write pretty much every day with harsh criticism of the US government. I do so openly, and without fear. You simply cannot do that in China, and not fear for your safety. You can do it in the UK, Germany, Australia, South Africa, France, Japan, and other free democracies.
The idea, espoused by some here, that the Chinese would simply be unable to handle that kind of freedom is racist. Because there's too many of them? Nonsense. What sort of callous person insists that brutal repression of any real measure of freedom is necessary for keeping a civil society intact?
The thing is, I can't stand the current US government, but I'm able to admit responsibility for my part in being a member of a democracy. I'd rather someone else was in power, but I can say that no one is going to jail me for criticism and peaceful activism, so at least I have a chance to tell people that Bush is an evil bastard who deserves to be tried for war crimes.
Try that sort of criticism of the government in China on a wide scale basis, and you'll go to jail. Excusing the PRC Government's power and right to do those things, or trying to squelch criticism of them by claims of other government's guilt is worse than racist. It's just callous. People who make claims like that would defend anything just because they don't want the boat rocked.
And then they'll go on to criticize the US (which I do too) for invading Iraq.
This isn't out of concern for the Iraqis, it's out of hatred for the US. It's self serving noise that reflexively criticizes the US, and defends anyone who's on the other side no matter what they do.
@ Ugly Cauck, # 70 - No, the PAP rules in Singapore. They're not Confucianist, they're just in charge. Singapore has more free speech than China, but not anywhere near western levels.
Oh Moon, your enormous over-sensitivity about strangers opinions of China is so...... cute.
Please don't call other people racists. The bar really needs to be higher than an oblique IKEA reference - or the word 'racist' becomes quite meaningless.
If you attack anyone who criticizes China (and in my experience, you do so, strongly), and dont' do so yourself, then you should look in a mirror.
i think the chinese place a pretty high premium on "stability" as well as all the other things that its currently working on. that means not democritizing/liberalizing too fast. yeah perhaps that's anathema to our [american] revolutionary spirit but let history be the ultimate professor and let the lesson be modern industrial civilization 101 w/ emphasis on mass telecommunications.
break-neck liberalization wrought havoc on the country of russia during that crazy yeltsin period and the latin american countries during... the 70s? 80s?... both formerly socialist areas of the world liberalized, well, at the behest of western powers... and more recently, isn't iraq another example of democritization [at gun point] occuring so rapidly that it completely destabilizes a region?
the nascent american colonies debated for decades over the type of government they wanted, c'mon. benjamin franklin didn't wake up with a enlightenment light bulb above his coonskin camp, grab a winchester and started a-shootin'.
the 1776 revolution was the final "nuclear option"-"red-button" situation that was the culmination of years and years of debate in the sweltering summers of philly, new york and virginia etc., western-style liberalism doesn't just happen overnight, it is a slow process that can't be rushed if it is to be done right.
with that in mind, consider; chinese history has dealt with brutal, bloody civil war for millenia, barbarians and invaders from every direction, peasant uprisings and revolutions for centuries all the way up till the rise of communism, the unpredictable flooding of the yangtze, constant turmoil and strife.
the idea of "stability" is so deeply etched into the cultural [and because china has the lessons of russia and latin america to draw on] that it simply prefers to take its darn sweet ol' time when it comes to matters of democracy. don't get me wrong i'm not attempting to subordinate one country's dom-po over another's, china vs. the us i'm just emphasizing the element of prudence that china seems to be exercising.
contrast the economies of the two countries for a second. it's a simplistic model but i'm driving towards a more fundamental point about gradual change vs. rapid change. so you can put all your economics straw men back in the barn where they belong. the following examples will be fraught with logical fallacies, pathos, so i'll add the caveat that my only goal is to put things in to perspective maybe, or offer up an alternative view... all in the interest of being a gadfly of critical reasoning. with that said...
take the crash of 1929, oil bubbles, housing bubbles [80s], food and fuel bubbles, tech stock bubble, current housing bubble, the credit bubble: the bubble that creates many tiny bubbles. bubbles float for a while then pop. this whole boom and bust cycle is part of the american thrill seeking mentality [/facetious], but what it really does is give those wall-street-sweater-around-neck-croquet-playing-country-club-having-asshats a reason to swoop in, when john q. public can't tell his ass from his ankle cuz he just lost his pension and has to mortgage their house to feed their kids and put gas in the car, and gobble up even more assets. whee! [un?]fortunately the american consumer has access to fiat currency [thanks to international lenders greasing the cogs of the american consuming machine (the cogs are you and me)] in the form of those funny little plastic cards in all their wallets with the numbers on them- indebtedness disguises the actual poverty of the impoverished american middle class because they've got sweet HDTVs and iPuds. fiat currency has big problems, but to simplify: isn't a farmer in the andes with 200 pesos under his mattress but no debt, more "rich" than an upper-middle class american up to their eyeballs in car payments, mortgage payments, health care payments, credit card bills, with a shoebox in a deep, dark part of the closet filled with even more bills next to the revolver that they put in their mouth every night before having a night cap? woops. T.M.I. the sad fact of the credit bubble that i described is part of this "bubble economy" that keeps all americans in a state of constant fear... fear of the future and fear of ferners [foreigners] the orwellian kind of fear that's less flashy than a chinese smoke grenade to the tummy or a baton to the face, but is more pervasive and mind numbingly constant.
this rant has a point let me find it: china doesn't think that boom and bustery is in the best interest of anyone, itself [commie party] or the society at large. the chinese government fears its people. really. turn that famous tank picture on its head and read it in the chinese context. that guy was going "remember how you commies came into power? peasant revolution, piss us off and you'll have to deal with us". the commies have a commitment to not pissing its people off. the 800 million peasants, 500 million blue collar workers, the 300 million or so chinese part of the middle - upper-middle class, and the rest of the bastards... the repressive chinese army has families out in the fields, in ritzy apartments and dung filled shacks too ya know. while the magical boon of credit may allow americans to weather busts by borrowing from the future, funds to pay for bills now, a boom and bust on the scale of the credit crunch unravelling in america now would screw up everyone's shit in china. china would not like this to happen. despite its double digit growth it has not grown irrationally exuberant [like tech stock *geniuses* did during the clinton era], it is embracing economic slowdown to a *ahem* "modest" 9% because too much growth, too much speculation can cause too much inflation, too much instability in terms of food prices and then *fart sound effect* bust. marx or mao didn't start the commie revolt in china, 800 million empty stomachs did... ya know?
-end of parable-
-commence original message-
i mean, isn't it quite democratic for amendments to laws be tough to be enacted to prevent a dictatorial political climate? if the constitution is so incredibly hard to amend, why do we clamor for a government's regime to do one-eighties whenever we hear that a country isn't acting in accordance with our perspective of democracy?
i'm not quite sure where this whole "topple the government"/"cataclysmic scenario"/"hellfire brimstone"/"civil chaos" attitude towards china comes from. even as an asian-*american* its frankly a bit frightening because bridging the east-west gap has come to define my life, and for the continuing survival of either country, it is of utmost importance to understand and not criticize and especially not to have weirdo nihilistic fantasies about *other* countries.
i've grown up in china and as a chinese-american in the u.s. so i think democracy is like, super-ichiban-umami-deska-cool, i mean, me rikey democlacy, me love democracy long time 5 dollah, and i wish so much that in other countries the value for human rights and human life could be, not just an ideal or an understood implication but, brick and mortar institutions, but democracy comes at a price and it is a sovereign country's [people + gubby-ment included] sole perogative to decide what the price happens to be. for example, a peasant who's saving up to move to the shanghai to earn a higher wage to send his kid to some fancy school in the city so the kid can get a degree and get everyone out of the village might not want to start a revolution as much as the young newly yuppy'd graphic designer, tsing tao sipping middle class loft living chinese dude, the "price" of revolutionary democracy is their current lives + their unsure future lives. [why aren't americans carrying pitchforks and throwing bombs because of the patriot act's egregious transgressions against civil liberties? from everything i read on Bboing, the patriot act pretty much flies in the face of everything this country was built on. but we'd much rather blog about it because the pigs in kevvy vests aren't knocking on our doors yet. our "current + future welfares" are a high price to pay to stir the pot in america, a high price to pay for "more democracy". we'd rather not risk missing american idol because we're sitting in jail after being investigated by the fibs for "unamerican" behavior. we are quite fat and happy with our credit cards and iPuds.]
...but these are the revolutionaries, the intelligentsia and the peasants, nationalize chinese graphic designer yuppy's loft and force him to make socialist realist propaganda and impoverish the peasant at the behest of the state and take away everything from them, then suddenly the "price" of democracy is zero, because they have nothing to lose. its economics again. the "price" of democracy meets what one is willing to pay for democracy, in a repressive gubbyment and voila instant revolution... just add riots. in the mean time, understand that nurturing democracy is just that, nurturing, something a mommy with boobs does, she doesn't admonish an immature child into maturity, she coddles it, understands its weakness and maybe even overlooks its flaws sometimes for the greater goal of watching it become something better than it was yesterday. she certainly doesn't criticize its every mistake, and wishes that it would verge on suicide just so it can "learn from its mistakes". we're talking real people, real lives, real lives that can get caught up in whirlwinds of revolution and die, real chinese lives! real ichiban umami lives, we rikey rife! me ruv rife rong time five dollah!. please let's not incite instability and fan the flames of the already dangerously icky nationalism that is starting to spread all over the eurasian region of the world. you think china is the only rising power to worry about? imagine a russia that asserts itself combined with a nationalistic china augmented by a consumer base like india *shudders*. maybe multipolarity and mutual understanding, not antagonism, is starting to look pretty good.
i'm not going to even broach the subject of american nationalism, but fuck, i will because i feel it too, i feel class/nationalist identity politix crawl up my spine too, on top of that authoritarian china threatens my home in hong kong, it means i'm actually going to have to learn how to speak mandarin and it means rich mainlanders are making everything so goddamn expensive when i go shopping, but i have the benefit of multiple perspectives and a deep appreciation for my chinese history and the monumental contributions that colonial american history has given the world in terms of a small country being able to stand up to a big country and go "fuck your face we're who we want to be"
(the thirteen colonies vs. the british... i mean china was colonized by the british in the form of concessions, right? when is the world going to start realizing that the UK is the real bunch of evil bastards in this world? i mean every villain has an evil british accent in the movies right? vader? it's one thing we asians and the american scots irish have in common. we think the british are assholes.)
condi's statement on the georgia conflict is a profound stance, i believe, on greater american participation on the world scene, one of partnership and multilateralism. i don't even think it needs to be said that if china and the us had stronger ties, more pressure could be exerted on russia to not act as it did in georgia. however mutual antagonism and economic warfare seem to be the de facto attitude to our cousins in the far east.
on top of that the onus is on no one to bridge gaps and change ideas. maybe because people need the open mindedness to recognize where we're being "mean" to a country like we're being "mean" to another person, and the courage to say that it's not nice despite being called unpatriotic, ignorant or a traitor. maybe because the strength to love the enemy comes from within and really is the hardest thing to do, but if we try our hardest to understand something it can become beautiful. chinese people are just like americans, we want big screen TVs, idyllic sundays, food for our kids and nike shoes. we have so much in common don't we?
being asian-american brings to bear all these contradictions and a deep deep deep sad sad sad, want and need to stop the name calling from both sides, i'm trying my best not to be critical of anyone, i don't want to incite flame or stifle conversation, but i want to be controversial and outspoken because i want more talking, more talking and more understanding creates a climate of even more understanding and questioning. if this whole ridiculously long message can try and convey anything its that there is always more than meets the eye, truth and love speak for itself and there are two sides to everything.
Everyone always talks about that Asian ideologies are different and the president of Singapore even once said that Asians don't mind being told what to do by the government, but just because that's how it is and that's what people have become used to doesn't mean it has to be that way. I'd like to point out Taiwan, quite a vibrant democracy, and as most of the people there are ethnically Chinese, it could be considered a prime example of what China could do if they embraced democracy. In fact, Taiwanese freedom of the press even surpasses that of countries we wouldn't expect it to, such as Japan or even France.
Regardless, though, any one who is doing any analysis or predictions on the future of China that leave out Taiwan are totally clueless. The Taiwanese independence issue remains one of the most important issues to the Chinese government, and is the biggest issue in American-Chinese relations. It is also an issue that is very close to the hearts of all Chinese and Taiwanese. And even if somehow eventual reunification were to happen, the opinion of most ambassadors and other people of knowledge in the area agree that with the current warming of Chinese-Taiwanese relations, especially with the new direct flights, Taiwan will influence China and the Chinese people more than China will influence Taiwan.
chinese people are just like americans, we want big screen TVs, idyllic sundays, food for our kids and nike shoes. we have so much in common don't we?
All the nike's and big-screens in the world wouldn;t blind me to repression of freedom.
Which is among the reasons that, even as an American, I don;t have either of them - because NO, I DO NOT WANT THEM at that price.
but what about idyllic sundays and food for our kids? what about when the price of democracy comes to bear on our lifestyles and the lives of those we love? i'm just saying that not everyone has the same sort of moxie when it comes to brass tacks revolution. get-off-my-property-ism might not be as rooted in the culture in china... that's all.
plus, taking things out of context is fun and easy way to censor people. it's a little harder to do when the entirty of the context happens to float a few lines above your post. just a hint for future gestapoism, take my words out of context... far far far away from the context. *wink
R Holdstein - I can't tell who you're snarking at there. You can't be effectively snarky about taking comments out of context..... if you offer none for your own.
but yeah, Sundays and kids. I can't help having Sundays (thank you labor movement!!!), but this (USA) is not currently a country I want to have children in, but at least if I wanted children (plural), I have the freedom, but my responsibility to our finite world tells me I ought not have more than one if I ever choose to breed. If I did that I'd just be making cannon fodder - more infants for the infantry.
Interestingly, very few of these arguments about human rights in China in these comments rely on the simple facts that Chinese themselves have been developing a long and permanent debate about democracy. This movement has been furiously repressed by the PCC. I would strongly recommend to all these experts-to-be to read for example the book by Jean-Philippe Béja : A la Recherche d'une Ombre Chinoise: Le mouvement pour la democratie en Chine (1919-2004). I think unfortunatly its only in French. In any case the argument of the Keeper of the Lantern @ 1 is unreceivable, and has long been the argument of supporters of the communist regime: like if Chinese were unable gentically to be democrats. Unfortunatly the mere existence of Taiwan demonstrates the contrary. And he adds the insult by saying in @27 : ''Is their oppression? Sure. Does it impact the vast majority of people on a daily basis? No. Is there poverty and have nots? Hell yes. But given the vast numbers, the system can be argued to work pretty well.'' Typically these arguments are used by the govt and are all wrong: there is oppression pretty much and people get killed because of it since there is never no way to counter act on the power of any autority; it does affect everyday life in many many ways such as for instance how you argue in front of a govt in order to open a business, to simply DO business, and there is absolutely no way to go againt the will of a local bos of the local govt; the huge invetsments made buy the central govt have proved to be very largely ineffective and if it were not for the private samll businesses China would be dead economically. The system DOES NOT work fine. Simply.
what does a Chinese want?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/aug/08/jiapingwa
Holdstein owns this thread so far. I agree with him.
To paraphrase R.Reagan: "Let China be China".
As a canuck I can see that as governing 30 million democratically is complicated, governing 1,200,000,000 democratically could give one a headache.
#81 - masamunecyrus :
Of course, how does one tell "don't mind being told what to do" from "not able to complain due to fear of imprisonment"? It's sort of had to tell when the only ones who do speak out are locked up.
Trust me, when no one is listening, Singaporeans love to complain. But there's little public dissent.
Singaporeans also go to prison and are bankrupted in civil suits when they criticize the government. Singapore is a gilded jail, nothing more.
JJasper: You are correct of course but the PAP's platform is informed by Confucianism.
But really is not the concept of 'ideology' itself an exclusively European export of the nineteenth and early twentieth century? I mean India has not "exported" an ideology either, nor has Africa ....
Hey Tak if you can afford it Singapore's probably pretty nice.
No accounting for taste, though...
IMO their are similarities between America and China...their futures are inextricably linked.
What similarities? Both cultures admire and laud hard work and social advancement, and both peoples produce more than their share of great men of business ( with different styles, to be sure).
Both peoples share an ambivalence based on history towards the British. Both lay great stress on family life and community.
The share geography in that they are both great Pacific Basin maritime traders and powers, and will both continue to be so in the foreseeable future. They both have very large populations, and both societies value competition and meritocracy in important ways. Both are scientifically adept. Both can be bloody minded if values deemed to be important to national survival are at stake. Both are in some sense Empires....
About #80, R. Holdstein makes what I think is a profound point: All decisions, especially political ones, by a person or "people", micro or macro, are based on a cost/benefit analysis, not necessarily a conscious one, but not necessarily unconscious either.
For all of us "live free or die" types, which I on occasion also get puffed up about, that is really worth pondering. Might explain a lot of outrage and lack of action.
Another thing to consider regarding China or any other oppressive regime; the only way forms of government change is by revolution or collapse, or by recognizing immanent revolution or collapse. They don't just vote kinder gentler versions of themselves into existence.
And even after reading many wonderful comments on this debate, I'll be damned if I have a clue what China will look like.
Well Seamus the devil's always in the details so people avoid talking about details...IMO all politics is and has always been a cost/benefit analysis. Partly the biz school "What will it cost us, what will it benefit us?" type of analysis, and also the "At whose cost? To whose benefit? " type.
Oh and one more similarity : Cash is of great value in both societies, after all "cash" is from the Chinese, IIRC...
@ #79, MADHATTER,
I'll say whatever I want and I won't let your little condescending personal attacks affect me.
If it sounds like a racist statement, I'll call it a racist statement.
I notice you didn't address any of the points I made. Can't you or did you just CHOOSE to attack me?
Wht wsl.
Manners, please.
Hey hey Moon.
Well "racism" means differing things to differing people and Americans in particular are very sensitive (for social/historic reasons) to the charge.
But to quote the Bard, perhaps they doth protest too much...
I think Moon has a point, at least as far as this thread is concerned.
China has serious problems. So does America and (insert name of your country here too). Whose problems are worse?
Who gives a damn?
I think we had all better get back to bailing out our own little rowboats, myself...instead of pointing out that our neighbor's boat is filling up quicker than our own...
I'm with Moon this far - the article was really superficial (I had stopped myself from commenting on this once), and there was a context to the "IKEA-grade foundation remark = suspected racism" that get's elided over in the "need more than an IKEA reference" reply. But let us not insist on justice, we who rely on mercy...
I'm pretty sad about this conversation, or, rather, the gaping hole in it.
One of the great crimes against all of us is that we don't learn the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at all, let alone with the same intensity we learn the Declaration of Independence or Constitution as we should. I'm fairly upset that (from my quick scan of a read) in this intense discussion, framed on human rights, people are treating them as if they're some loose group of undefined principles, just some idealistic "western" philosophy that may or may not be practical or applicable to the inscrutable little yellow people.
The Universal Declaration (and all its addendums and additions and so forth over the years), one of the greatest achievements of the species, IMHO,defines what "Universal" rights are. Explicitly. In 30 articles. Signatories pledge to uphold them and TEACH them. China and the US are signatories.
When starry-eyed utopians like me and Amnesty talk about a "human rights regime" we mean something very specifically based on the Universal Declaration.
At http://grace.evergreen.edu/~dwaall03/final/humanrights.html you can see a presentation of the declaration (what am I doing wrong in writing links in these comments? I try "a" tags, but the address seems to get stripped out). I like it 'cause I made it. Or just search for Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it'll take you right to the UN and the official presentation of the full text.
I wish I'd read this thread sooner so I could have chimed in like this way up when people were still reading and writing, maybe helped us have a more grounded conversation. I'm always commenting late. Oh well, my place in posterity or whatever.
this thread is a day old, not ten years. At any moment, anyone may come along and add value.
+ value.
I get 10%
do your anchor tags like this:
<a href="URL">Verbiage</a>
Ridl owns this thread on the rights thing IMO.
The Declaration's authors got the recipe right and it rose perfectly .... nom nom nom...nothing half-baked about this.
Oh yes Ridl I just drag and drop the link I want to include into the Comment Box. Does your computer not let you do this?
sorry, thought the quotes would make it spell out.
But I refuse to admit defeat, just because I'm too dumb to win. I'm putting a picture of the correct format up on Flickr.
...so, just as this knowledge was handed on to me by Antinous (more gracefully), so now you, young padawan, must use wisely the anchor tag...
I fixed it in your comment. You have to code the greater than and less than signs.
& l t ; without the spaces is <
& g t ; without the spaces is >
lt equals less than.
gt equals greater than.
Geddit?
Thanks again!
You know upon reflection it seems to me that both America and China are similar in one further respect, something else they seem to have in common: complex and idiosyncratic attitudes to the questions of race....
Or so it seems to me, but I am a member of neither society.
An interesting way to predict the future of the political systems of the People's Republic of China and the US would be to look at them as if they were living organisms. Well, which they are, sort of.
How strong is the immune system? How fast and correctly can it recognize and respond to internal and external threats? What is its ability to evolve to meet changes in its environment?
Our freedom of speech is a powerful part of our national immune system. It warns us of potential threats and provides information on how to respond. A free market of ideas enables us to review a wide variety of viewpoints, review their merits and act on them (that"s the Democracy part - very critical if a bit rough around the edges). For example, the environmental movement in this country is entirely an outgrowth of our freedom of speech. And as far as we have yet to go, because of the environmental movement, our country is in much better shape than it would be other wise.
The Labor Movement, Women's Suffrage, Abolitionists, the Civil Rights Movement, etc, were all enabled by freedom of speech in this country. It has been a long, flawed, bloody process, but amazingly enough, each generation in this country has enjoyed greater freedoms and a better quality of life than the preceding.
The tragedy of China is that the best, the brightest, the most idealistic, in fact, those Chinese who love China the most and want to see it a better place for all its citizens are treated as criminals. Because its political system cannot accommodate conscientious rebels, it loses the capacity for incremental improvement. It becomes a system of extremes, where there are only two options: repressively enforced stability or collapse.
A good example of the value of free speech in China would be revealed by a Google search for: "Dr. Jiang Yanyong"
imagine that! I figured Narnian from the start and Scrubb t'was that proved it a la photostream.
Where are the pictures of fat foreign children standing next to grain elevators?
1) thanks to the people that read my rambling #80. aside from the message my post was a study in bad grammar, run on sentences and verbosity... but as a child of both countries us & china, my only dream is the one mlk had about people coming together, i have a lot to say, it might come out a bit biased, emotional, indolent.
2) dig on ridl's comment. #101. but it still important to see how the human rights regime gets framed because we can count on the same type of "ignorance" of the specific tenets that Ridl talks about when we try and talk to the chinese neo-nationalist youth movement and neo-confucianists about what may be viewed as "more western propaganda".... that is unless we make it culturally/historically/economically relevant. if we want to effectively convey a message it is good to know your audience... especially the angry, most opinionated ones... like some young disenfranchised chinese, proud of their nation, vengefully regarding colonialism, witnessing the simultaneous retreat of america from the pedestal sole-superpower-hood and china's economic rise.... rocking 35 gold medals (haha yeah!) so on and so forth... if we can understand the seed of pride that is nestled in the hearts of all men of this earth, we can avoid this idea that... yeah the 'yellow people' are 'inscrutable', well put.
example:
i took a survey for some french dude's intercultural Phd research, but it was all in chinese and i couldn't read it too goodly,
so we sat there and he tried translating his french version into english while i tried to bridge the gap with my shitty french while reading what little i knew of chinese- without only our limited command of each other's language and a dictionary to guide us.
one peculiarity i noticed was a question that in french, went something like "do you believe it is okay to go against the wishes of a group for your own beliefs?" the chinese translation read something like "do you have your own beliefs? would you disregard your parent's opinions in favor of your own?" the researcher expressed some concern but i assured him that it was as culturally relevant to talk about parents as it is to talk about the amorphous, idealized "group".
now if the french version had said "parents" and the chinese version had read "the group" you'd really get a completely different set of responses and the french guy could probably just flush his grant money down a toilet. or bidet.
"Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection."
what about the african tribe that believes children born out of wedlock are harbingers of calamity? the children are summarily killed as a sacrificial appeasement so that the village may live on. do we take the moral higher ground? or do we create ethnographically informed, culturally sensitive policies and communication that might say... slowly change the act of sacrifice to a more symbolic ritual?
slap all the moral relativism out of me, i beg everyone, but also don't deny the power of making something culturally relevant in order to drive the message deeper so we can match what is explicitly said in the dec. of hum. rights to that tiny gem of intuitive love for all life, human and animal, that sparkles within all of us.
i was wrong in saying that human rights was not a "brick and mortar" institution, and i think i am right in saying that when we get to the core of everyone's belief (aka after a few drinks) it's an intuitive concept. unfortunately it is one buried under layers upon layers of culture, history, anger, violence, exploitation, confusion, semantics, mistrust... on both sides. the dec by amnesty is a great guide to frame our debates but like the example of the african tribe above and the absence of any "ideal" nation that truly deserves title of "upholder and teacher", there's the possibility we will get mired in semantics etc.
maybe i can humbly offer up the golden rule, "do unto others..." with the addendum, "only do good" with the purpose of making the spirit of the declaration more "universal" in the sense it is simple enough not to get lost in debate and translation semantics and self-righteousness/riotousness. sorry! i'm not dogging anyone, especially not Ridl's noble post, but this sort of muck and mire tends to happen whenever someone attempts to translate real truth into mere phonetic symbols. perhaps from this jumping off point we don't alienate the angriest/most nationalistic of the audience [china? chinese government? dictators?] that we're trying to convince here.
why preach to the bboing choir? a collection of awesome individuals.
maybe Ridl could find me a chinese translation of the dec? i'm having a hard time using english search engines to find it. i'd love to pick it apart with my sorry little electro-mando-englo-dictionary.
3) #113. unfortunately free speech happens to protect misinformation and disinformation. the idea of 'libel' is not elastic enough to maintain and contain free speech. america is a country where a man's political career can be overshadowed in the public eye by a scream (howard dean).
my dad escaped burma's military dictatorship in the 50s to make a life for himself in america but while he knows he'll never be thrown in jail for no reason like my grand dad was, he feels fear in terms of wire taps, IRS audits, police, investigation by the fbi because of political activism... i tell him he's watched too many episodes of 24 or CSI or whatever, still his fear is th haunting idea that "out there is only a bigger prison"
in ways i can love a country that jails its dissidents and turns them into democratic 'martyrs', more, than a country that creates a climate of self-censorship, ignorance and technocratic class/race brainwashing. sure we have free access to information how does it get used 99% of the time? MOR BRE4K-D4NCE ViD-e-Os!!!1. i can't knock the states because there is really so much freedom. but let's not forget how our news media has been co-opted by corporations... how the patriot act is every bit as frightening as orwellian dbl-spk...
anyway, sorry, but i'm just being critical of american free speech because given the climate of self-censorship, which can be far more repressive/insidious, can we say with straight faces that one form of repression is better than another? here's how insidious it is: i don't even have a fact to stand on in making the "self-censorship" judgement call. *thip thip thip thip* goes the black helicopters... i'm a nut, i'm being overly critical... america... love it or leave it... even if something is better than everything else i can still ask for more. i can still say "this democracy tastes a bit bland, but i mean, it's really good, really, can i have some more?"
do we know everything that goes on in washington DC? is our government any more transparent than any other government when you start getting really high up there in terms of conspiracies, cover ups, covert ops? once again. not a factual leg to stand on. but it is too ridiculous to think under the aegis of "national security" (what a few nuts think is good for everyone unequivocally) a group of people in power will not attempt to maintain power by pooling their resources, exercising that power in a fashion that undermines those who may usurp that power? that's what a conspiracy is. and that's what power likes to do. keep power.
on the other hand let's not forget how important the presence of the internet [at ALL] has been in fomenting free speech in china. even though every forum has a moderator, at least people are talking, and a critical-of-the-gubby-statement has maybe like 5 minutes of air time before mommy-cop-forum-moderator deletes it... i read an article about how forum participators make jokes about the censors, and the censors are pretty good natured about it "it's only my job"... and there's a mutual understanding on some levels that censorship is what we pay for the price of having a forum at all.... that is a human hand in the velvet glove within the iron gauntlet, let's not forget that.
all things considered, let's not be so quick to write off a country's capacity for liberty, people's capacity for freedom, the joker of chance screwing up the best laid plans of moose and men... and at least, let's not forget the progress us slants have made in coming from an ever darker, more brutal repressive communist order to the place it is today. at least there was an inkling within mr. jiang yanyong to speak out... my mom (escaped cultural revolution in the 60s) remembers a time when little children were black listing their parents, mass indoctrination was part of the daily fare, all things cultural were being destroyed in the name of "progress"... so let me tie this all back to post #80 the slow metamorphosis of liberty, versus the quick metastasis of instability.
time, time, time, understanding, understanding, understanding, love, love, love, nurture, nurture, nurture
crap. i reread all the posts for this topic and now i feel like an apologist. please don't take my message the wrong way. i'm going to stop commenting forever! *cries*
Holdstein's still good. As to censorship, patriot act,conspiracies,etc.:
IMO the best cops both in China and America draw distinctions between what people say and what people do. By "allowing" the kind-of-troublesome former you may well get less of the definitely troubling latter. From the Chinese cops' point of view.
As to America the current battle is not to defeat censorship by the State so much objecting to monitoring of lawful activity by the State and others.
I suppose the difference boils down to one of State practices as it appears to me that both States have a desire and ability to monitor their citizens' activities.
If you're starving my guess is both that either Empire would seem to be lacking regardless of which country you happen to reside in.
Oddly as a born optimist I feel and even think in my better moments that both China and America will continue to improve as places to live for the average Joe or Chan as the case may be. That's my 2 cents on this topic...
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/08/18/joshua-kurlantzick-on-the-beijing-2008-olympic-games-not-all-of-china-is-cheering.aspx
Holdstein -
I want to clarify that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights comes out of the United Nations, not Amnesty International. If anything, Amnesty International comes out of the Universal Declaration.
Here is the Mandarin translation for you.
thanks to all the responses, i was glad to see them and got a little glowy
ps - links work now, hurray, it was cuz i was leaving out the quote marks, (annoyed grunt). also that pull the link from the address bar thing is super neat, thanks for the tip, i will use it forever, hurray.
Yes Ridl that Declaration is so good it is as if a Canadian wrote it...
Yeah thanx again for bringing up the Declaration I had forgotten about it , as if only the US Con./Can Con. gave formal rights. People do not mention it enough IMHO.
But we know how the USA treats the UN....they will ensure that it stays unworkable, mostly...
R.Holdstien, you do not read as an apologist. You are informing me as much as I hope I am informing you.
Our best strategic foreign policy would be to maximize our alliance with China because we are better off having a strong friendship with the Chinese on our side if we ever have to put our foot down against Russia than to have both China and Russia alienated from the (presently weakened) western alliances.
If another Georgia situation happens and tensions continue to escalate a return to a cold war (at best) with non-communist Russia, we need to have an assurance of having China there to pressure Russia or at least not have China pointing their anti-western power at us.