At 14:02 05/06/2010 -0700, you wrote:
(DN) 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.
I never said that. They confess themselves that corruption is widespread.
Transparency International places China about halfway down their corruption
list -- just a shade less corrupt than India -- with another 100 countries
assessed as being more corrupt.
(DN) 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.
I hold no particular brief for China, only that it needs to be paid
attention to because it has more or less held itself together as one empire
since Emperor Qin in 200BC -- so it must have learned a bit about what
makes government work. China is certainly highly centralized on financial
matters and also foreign policy (in looking for resources) but,
increasingly in recent years, there are indications that provinces,
particularly the coastal provinces, are becoming increasingly
self-determining in their economic development. Shanghai, Dalian,
Shengzhen, for instance, take most of their own developmental decisions.
Hong Kong, legally part of China since 1984, is still virtually a separate
country with a separate currency and will probably remain so. Taiwan is no
nearer being re-incorporated into China than it was in 1949.
(DN) That such unjust governance could be in part genetic is unlikely
because genes lean towards survival of the species.
True, but only within the context of the environment which either
reinforces or weakens particular mutations. But, in the case of man ever
since we became civilized, the natural environment also includes the
cultural environment. Just as climate (solar intensity) has changed man's
skin colour in different parts of the world so has culture changed other
traits. There are indications, for example, that Chinese and Japanese
brains are slightly different from Caucasian brains -- being more
mathematical and spatial than verbal when compared with ours.
(DN) Inequality and oppression are not the hallmarks of good governance,
if one is to presume that good governance reflects good genetics.
I don't presume to know what good governance and good genes are. But one
certain genetic trait that appears in every society on earth is that status
differences become very clear between puberty and early adulthood and that
twin aspects of governance by a few and deference among the many always
emerge.
(DN) (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.
That is what Richard Dawkins wrote some 30 years ago in his influential
book, The Selfish Gene. But since then research shows that individual genes
can in no way be regarded as autonomous. They always act in association
with others and very often switch around in their coalitions according to
circumstances. The idea of "memes" as independent pieces of culture has
also fallen by the wayside. It simply isn't a useful way of describing the
complexities of the cultural environment that surrounds a child in its
earliest weeks, months, years.
(DN) 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.
Of course. Even identical twins, born with identical genes, form different
genetic associations (epigenesis) according to slightly different experiences.
(DN) Because of the scarcity of twins in China, the case for genetic
influence would be a tough one to nail.
Twins or no twins have no bearing on the general cultural influence on genes.
(DN) I can't agree that the Chinese work ethic is stronger than that of
the West.
Work ethic is hard to define but people in China and many other countries
when offered a cash incentive work harder and for longer hours than Western
people now do -- but used to.
(DN) Historically, China has been rife with poverty and oppression through
the ages, and especially since the dawning of the industrial age.
Historically you're wrong. It has had several periods of great general
prosperity. When China had a smaller population of about 300 million -- say
up to the Ming Dynasty of about 1400 -- very few of them lived in abject
poverty. Few lived in what is now the rural interior where the soil is now
almost totally impoverished. They mostly lived in regions with rich soil
and worked at intensive horticulture rather than large-scale farming. Even
the poorest serfs among them had a chance of making good if their sons
passed the Imperial exams and entered the mandarinate. Most lived near
sizeable towns or cities with rich public facilities (baths, libraries,
outdoor theatres), many of which were the most advanced in the world --
more than equivalent to the few Renaissance cities of Europe at that time.
(DN) 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.
Millions of Chinese have been affected by these developments in exactly the
same way as millions of European peasants were displaced from their land
from about 1600 and onwards (though not for dams!). But scores of millions
more Chinese have voluntarily migrated to the cities -- as hundreds of
millions more of the poor of the world are now doing.
(DN) 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.
That's a rather a strong way of describing things, but essentially the
worst features are no different from what happened in Europe only two or
three hundred years ago.
(DN) 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.
Yes. Well . . . this is just another aspect of China fast catching up with
the West.
Keith
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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