China is never likely to become a democratic country -- at least, via the
method that we in the West have espoused in the last 200 years whereby
political parties have only retained, or regained, power by offering bribes
to this or that part of the electorate every time there's an election.
All Western governments are now so deeply in debt that only someone with no
mathematical ability whatsoever could believe that there's any way out via
taxation -- of our children and grandchildren as well as ourselves.
Politicians tell us that we could grow ourselves out of the present
impasse, but that's strictly for punters. Unfortunately, there are another
billion people in the world with a far stronger work ethic than ourselves
who are making most of the consumer goodies today and prospering
therefrom. Sooner or later, a period of inflation leading to
hyper-inflation will ensue that will reduce everyone's debts -- most of
all, governments'.
This wheeze is so much on the cards that some voices are already being
raised against the likelihood of politicians adopting it. The Deputy
Governor of the Bank of England, Charles Bean, said yesterday that it
would be "severely misguided" because "a bit of inflation has a nasty habit
of turning into a lot of inflation". Well, we don't need him to tell us. We
all know that. But does he -- or any intelligent person -- think that
politicians will be able to keep in power without more Quantitative Easing,
more money printing, more inflation? So that politicians still have money
to bribe us with?
Those who have saved money will be hammered. Those in debt will have been
rewarded. But no matter, the overall experience will have been beneficial.
Once new national currencies have been established -- as always happens
after hyperinflation -- then lessons will have been learned and, for about
a generation, individuals and governments will practise good housekeeping.
That, at least, has been the repeated experience of several countries in
Europe. But then, politicians re-learn the trick of offering bribes and the
process starts all over again.
This is not to say that the Chinese system of selecting politicians from
above -- not electing them -- will necessarily fare any better. They, too
-- with their Tiananmen Square experience recently behind them -- are as
aware as Western politicians that people have got to be kept sweet.
Otherwise -- particularly in these days of mobile phones -- people in their
tens of thousands might gather in the streets and . . . well . . simply
walk into parliamentary buildings and take over as they did in Georgia in
2003 (the Rose Revolution).
The Chinese system of governance may not succeed either. But in terms of
historical experience and tradition it's somewhat more likely to. After
all, they've had a system which has been in existence on and off for about
10 times longer than Western electioneering -- ever since Confucius in
500BC. Indeed, it may even be in their genes. A long-standing culture,
itself becoming an important part of the environment which shapes genes,
may have had a slight selective effect on the Chinese character.
At least Bruce Lahn thinks so. One of the leading geneticists in the world,
Chinese born but researching in America as well as in China, thinks that
the Chinese trait of deference and the high status of scholarship in their
country might be quite significant. He took a lot of political flak for
suggesting this in 2005 and, because the feedback was so aggressive,
decided to put brain gene research behind him to concentrate in other areas.
I am pretty certain that, sooner or later, the sort of electioneering we
have in the West today -- really only an extension of little boys fighting
in the school playground -- has got to give way to something similar to
Western civil services of about a century ago -- when they genuinely
believed in public service. Similar, in fact, to the Chinese system. We
need a marriage between experts and public opinion. We need some sort of
tiered arrangement (but not too many) between local focus groups and
competitive debate between those fairly rare individuals who really do have
a high regard for intellectual understanding of problems and not scoring
off one another as politicians do.
I wrote a paper about this some 30 years ago when I was a member of the
original organizing committee of the Social Democratic Party in the UK
during its brief existence. I was carried away at the time by something
David Owen (now Lord Owen) had said at the time about the need for a
completely new method of selecting governments. I tried to put some clothes
on it. Unfortunately, this vigorous new idea got lost when the SDP combined
with the Liberals and produced a fudge. I then resigned (and, incidentally,
so did Owen) and I took no further interest in active politics.
But I'm pretty certain that something like this will develop in due course,
once we've been through hyperinflation and, hopefully, a non-outbreak of
war between America and China. Whether it will develop faster in the West
or the East remains to be seen. Perhaps, once America and China have agreed
a new world currency between them, some of their political scientists might
start meeting together and make proposals that they can present to their
respective governments.
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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