Keith,
Just because political placements in China are unelected does not mean
bribes do not take place. Corruption there is rampant, amongst the
highest in the world in politics and corporations. Feudal or Communist
systems don't stay in power because of tradition, but because of
unyielding centralized power. Certainly not because of integrity or even
functionality.
That such unjust governance could be in part genetic is unlikely because
genes lean towards /survival /of the species. Inequality and oppression
are not the hallmarks of good governance, if one is to presume that good
governance reflects good genetics. (This particular system cannot hope
to prosper once the alleged oil shortage starts hurting.) What you're
talking about is memetic, sooner than genetic; ideas passed on by
writing, speech, ritual and imitation. It is the memes which carry the
culture down the line. Even given the shared cultural environment of
twins, fraternal or identical, what counts most are the unique life
events each person experiences on their own. Because of the scarcity of
twins in China, the case for genetic influence would be a tough one to
nail.
I can't agree that the Chinese work ethic is stronger than that of the
West. Historically, China has been rife with poverty and oppression
through the ages, and especially since the dawning of the industrial
age. Millions of farmers forced into city jobs, for example, because
their land was flooded for the hydro dam. Farmland worked by hundreds of
millions more consumed by industry. It's an overpopulated nation of
primarily long-toiling low wage earners, whose absolute dependence on
their pittance for food precludes any involvement in fundamental
progress in government. Authoritarian rule brutally stamps out any
attempts at change. Any belief in the system is either feigned for
protection or feigned for a better paying job. Anywhere there is
poverty, but also exists industrial livelihood, you have work slaves who
have no choice but to comply with jobs marked by long hours and ghastly
conditions.
Modern economic, social and educational tools and developments will,
however, bring about change eventually. The most recent optimistic case
was the Honda car factory walk-out, which was conducted and ended
peacefully in a 40% wage hike. The internet will, as you touched upon,
continue to be invaluable in initiating and realizing human rights
victories. Survival of the net is assured in China, in part because it
is a tremendous tool of modernization, which global pressure demands of
them, and because it is profit driven--something centralized power
cannot resist.
Natalia/
/
Keith Hudson wrote:
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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