Some belated comments below: in *BOLD:*
Keith Hudson wrote:
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.
*Cultural environments have hardly been consistent across millions of
years. At best, polymorphisms might raise the score a single point of
variance, but you're still banking on Chinese centralization as
consensus of minds.
**Are you saying that Chinese and Japanese people are /born /with
slightly different brain formation? Or is this from a study (/which
study?/) that was assessing brain activity in adults, following two
decades or more of conditioning? Was any similar study conducted in the
United Arab Emirates, for example, where international scholarships are
being dispensed almost exclusively to students in business, science and
technologies, this being the research area that the ruling princes
consider vital to their future desert once the oil runs out? Perhaps
that's too recent an example, but I'm sure you'd find similar
distribution patterns of brain activity in those candidates. In both
China and Japan the educational systems have been focusing on the same
narrow fields since WWII. These seem to speak of culturally imitative,
or memetic influence. Memes far outrun genes for ability to morph or
reproduce, whereas genetic time frame is far slower. Most of our DNA
sequences are millions of years old. Even rapidly changing genes, eg.
viral resistance, have taken centuries to evolve.
*
(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.
*Not that I haven't noticed the tendency, but this could simply be due
to traditional upbringing, the need for human nurturing and role models
in our youth, or government-generated big brother dependency. What proof
exists of such actual genetic traits?
*
*
*
(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 above mentioned widely accepted bit about genetic association does
not discredit nor discount memetic influences.*
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.
*Dawkins may have been the first to describe memes, and you may not
agree with his interpretation of how/why they replicate, but yet they
exist as transmissions of ideas, and from what I've observed, have not
lost their prominence in scientific dialogue. What have you read that
led you to regard memetics as a poor way of describing cultural
environment complexities?
*
(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.
*As above. Culture changes overnight, but genes don't.
*
(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.
*But are you comparing apples to apples? *
(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.
*The same could be said of most places where population has steadily
increased. and the wealthy have bought up the land. Folk once got by off
the land, by trade or skill. I was not aware, however, that China's
rural interior was chiefly uninhabited for that long.
*
(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.
*Volunteered or pressured due to centralization/concentration of
power/wealth? Globally, these 'volunteers' are victims of Monsantos,
intensive crop and livestock operations.*
(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.
*Just today I heard reports on CBC of 8 other Shanghai factory walkouts.
Foxcon in Shanghai (electronics) experienced 10 suicides as desperate
workers jumped to their deaths, but these martyrs realized a 70% pay
hike for their fellow workers. Honda pay hikes were a mere 24%, as it
turns out. Emails and text messaging have been the primary tools of
communication and organization. The West has been duly warned of
imminent price hikes.
Natalia
*
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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