In the late 90’s I looked forward to Communist China joining the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and had no objection to NZ creating a free trade agreement with them. I was very much in the camp that argued that opening up China to trade would, over time, ameliorate their Communist One Party rule because regressing to something like Maoism would destroy that trade and impoverish China, something that a succession of Chinese Communist leaders had already turned their backs on. The soft embrace of capitalist trading would at least restrain the Party: no more Tiananmen Squares.
I had no illusions that some Jeffersonian democracy would emerge, and I don’t think any of the WTO/FTA boosters thought that either. But something like the one-party states of the Arabian Gulf would be okay, or even something like state of South Korea circa 1970’s-80’s, as distasteful as that might be.
For a while it seemed to be trending that way. The CCP Premiers came and went in a regular, clockwork process that appeared to have put an end to the typical communist fate of a one-man cult-of-personality rule. The economy grew on the back of private sector companies that were allowed to start up and grow quite large, Alibaba being just one, from launch in 1999 to a $230 billion valuation by 2014. The flood of Chinese goods helped keep inflation in the West under control in the wake of the GFC, despite Western governments flooding their economies with money.
But it didn’t last. The rise to power of Xi Jinping in 2012, his ruthless oppression of anybody opposed to him inside the CCP, and then his overthrow of the cycle of transferring power that had lasted almost three decades, signaled a return to the bad old days. This has been reinforced by the suppression of competing sources of power outside the CCP, which has seen even billionaires like Alibaba founder Jake Ma, being forced to “retire”, lest they upset things with criticism.
But as David Goldman (aka “Spengler), economist, author, and long-time journalist and now Deputy Editor or the Asia Times, explains in the article, China as It Is, this was always going to happen – and not because of communism but because of 3000 years of history, including this rather surprising fact about language in the modern nation:
The Chinese government estimated in 2014 that only 70 percent of its people speak basic Mandarin but that only one out of ten Chinese citizens speak it fluently. Six major languages and 280 minor ones are still spoken. Variations among China’s languages aren’t minor. A Mandarin-speaker from Beijing and a Cantonese speaker from Guangzhou won’t understand a word the other is saying. The two languages are as different as French and Finnish.
I knew about the Catonese-Mandarin gap but I had no idea it was that wide, nor about the other languages.
As a result of this and other factors, Goldman explains that while the foundation of Western statehood is civil society, a society of citizens, that’s not how China evolved:
It is not an “organic” nation that arose out of common Sittlichkeit, Hegel’s term for the complex customs and traditions that condition society, but a top-down construct managed by an imperial bureaucracy and tax system.
…
China’s unique geographic conditions required from antiquity a centralized tax system to fund infrastructure and a centralized bureaucracy to administer it. It never persuaded the peoples it absorbed into the Chinese empire to speak a common language or to confess the same religion. Ethnicity has no role in Chinese statehood.
…
Orders flowed from the Emperor to the provincial governor, from the governor to the local Mandarin, and from the Mandarin to the head of an extended family working a farm; its political system resembled nested Chinese boxes. The notion of an individual opinion had no practical value: There was no popular assembly, no Senate, no forum in which conflicting views might be debated.
As a result it never developed any dialectical philosophies like that of the West which buttress our institutions – where dialogue between people, perhaps many people, is used to arrive at an agreement, about the truth of a matter and decisions. Instead the Chinese philosophies evolved to support their way of doing things:
Chinese philosophy focuses on acceptance, hierarchical loyalty, or adherence to authority, in its respective guises of Taoism, Confucianism, and Legalism. It instantiates Hegel’s contention that Vernunft (loosely, critical reason) depends on freedom. America’s founders spent generations governing their affairs through church assemblies, town meetings, and provincial legislators before they ventured to create a republic. The Chinese in their 5,000-year history never had such an opportunity.
Which is why one Chinese “government” (even that word seems out of place) after another resembled what we see in the CCP today. A massive, centralised, technocratic institution with an “Emperor” at the top under which the people prosper – but don’t get out of line. There is no need for this emperor to be revered by the people or even liked; he’s there to stop the whole thing falling apart, and that’s understood by both sides. The Chinese people are well aware of the other side of the coin that appears when their central governments have collapsed; civil war, poverty and even famine.
Goldman doesn’t like this system, he thinks it stifles creativity, and judging by what’s happened under Xi Jinping’s rule he’s correct.
But that doesn’t change 3000 years of culture and history, as Goldman explains bluntly:
Americans imagine that inside every Chinese person an American is struggling to get out. But China is different, so different that the categories of Western political science are meaningless. China will not change because we think it should, or because we want it to, or because we exhort the Chinese to embrace the benefits of democracy and free markets. If it changes, it will do so very slowly. We shall have to deal with China as it is, and has been for thousands of years.
What he doesn’t mention is that it means we should also not hesitate to push back on China in all spheres – diplomatic, economic and military – under some delusion that they’ll behave better if we don’t. This is not due to communism (with Chinese characteristics or whatever) or Xi Jinping, or State Capitalism or any ideology. It is due to a culture deeply rooted in three millennia of lived experience, passed down the generations.
No Minister 
Funny how people whose day in the sun is coming to an end sneer at those who are rising to soon surpass them.
They are nouveau rich
I see Mercedes are laying off workers as China becomes the biggest global manfacturer of motor vehicles.
The writing is on the wall
Well, the graphs anyway.
What do you think this graph actually shows? The vast majority of China’s assets are not publicly traded. Percentage of equity in the FTSE is irrelevant. this graph, like the one showing tech start ups is demonstrating the classic mistake of confusing the measure for the thing measured.
Which is a great way of hiding problems, especially with state ownership, whether partial or 100%, plus other forms of state backing that would be revealed were they publicly traded. There would naturally be a loss of central government control.
And of course there’s always the possibility that, once listed, they’d turn out to be worth much less than CCP thinks they are. Marketplaces are notorious for dashing the golden dreams of governments.
This sounds exactly like those old Labourites constantly moaning about how we “sold the family silver” in the 1980’s state asset privatisations, which they were still repeating in 1999 about plans to sell TVNZ. Yeah! Real valuable asset that turned out to be.
Indeed it is for the Russians. The Chinese are taking the Far Eastern provinces soon and the best and brightest are fleeing the Motherland.
How sad for you Andreei, how very, very sad
Do have any evidence to support your fanciful claim, any evidence at all?
In a time of increasing tensions with Washington why would Beijing attack its greatest military, economic and diplomatic ally? What would be the purpose of such an attack? Is it to gain control of resources that Russia is already supplying them at discount prices? Is it to gain living space so that their shrinking population can move from the warm and developed south into the freezing wastelands of the north?
How would such an attack succeed in an age when surveillance satellites can observe an object the size of a cigarette from orbit and nuclear missiles can fly across Eurasia in minutes?
Or is it that I am just being old fashioned in requiring that claims be supported by logic and evidence and it’s so much more fun to wildly fantasize about things?
Dear Jake,
The Far East possessions of Russia are a long term target for the PRC. Go do some research – its no secret.
They won’t take them by invasion – they wont need to . Russia will be so dependent and its economy so stuff in about 10 years they will give them up willingly for a small price…
David P. Goldman is basically correct, and in this;
“the CCP is Marxist in the same way the Mafia is Catholic; both organizations take their ideology seriously, although its practical significance is limited.”
he is agreeing with my conclusion that the CCP is not Marxist. There is some external Marxist symbolism but the current Chinese regime is going down the paths laid out by every other Chinese regime. It’s just now they are going down them on high speed bullet trains. It’s Washington’s interest to frame their competition with Beijing as a fight between Freedom and Marxism because they have already defeated Marxism once already. However if the competition is between whatever Liberal mélange the West is operating under today and Chinese Imperial Confucianism (or Neo-Imperial Techno-Confucianism) then the competition looks very different. The Soviet Union didn’t last 80 years, however Chinese Confucianist Government is older than Jesus, older than Rome and older than Aristotle. Each of those dynasties certainly fell, they all went through a cycle of expansion, consolidation, stagnation and decline, but the seeds remained in the soil and sprouted to start the whole cycle all over again, at least 11 times by my rough count. By the way this current “Red” dynasty is in the stage of Expansion.
And why is this,
“we should also not hesitate to push back on China in all spheres – diplomatic, economic and military – under some delusion that they’ll behave better if we don’t.”
a reasonable position? What is “behaving better”? Under the CCP, with 800+ million people lifted out of abject poverty into comfortable healthy long lives the Red dynasty has created the largest expansion of human happiness in the history of history. Will your military, economic and diplomatic “push back’ make farmers sow and harvest crops better, builders and mechanics construct better or scientists and artists think better?
Or is it more of the case that things will be “better” when the Orientals acknowledge their natural position as the inferiors of the Liberal West?
That sounds like a Leftist position, where we in the West are supposed to be endlessly guilted and shamed for thinking such things because it’s Racist, Imperialist, White Supremacy, yada, yada, yada.
Meanwhile the Chinese regard both themselves and their civilisation to be superior to ours – so why I shouldn’t I feel that my Western civilisation, all 2,500 years plus of it is superior to theirs? Why are you calling me out on that as a Leftist would, combined with not calling the Chinese out on it?
The funny thing here is that you a parodying yourself.
There is no prescription for a perfect system as even a cursory glance at the human excrement on San Fransisco’s sidewalks quickly reveals.
I didn’t say “perfect”. I said “superior”, which allows for the fact that we have literal shit holes like San Francisco, which I would wager are dirtier than any Chinese city nowadays.
“the Chinese regard both themselves and their civilisation to be superior to ours “
that is you telling me what the Chinese would say about us if they could talk, it is a conversation with yourself inside your own head. Are any quotations, citations or evidence made available? Of course not, none are needed because it is a conversation with yourself inside your head.
But the Chinese can talk, they are perfectly capable of articulate speech, so why don’t you talk to them, or at least listen to them and not what the Americans and British tell you the Chinese are saying, but what they actually say directly. Why don’t you do that?
Are you worried about the language barrier? Well, not only has modern digital technology provided us with excellent translation tools, there are many, many highly intelligent and educated Chinese English speakers, hundreds of millions of them in fact.
Why would you claim to state the Chinese opinion without actually asking the Chinese what their opinion actually is? That is deliberate ignorance, enforced stupidification and a crime again knowledge.
And this,
“…so why I shouldn’t I feel that my Western civilisation, all 2,500 years plus of it is superior to theirs? “
Is that really your position, and is that seriously the reason you hold it? That is just imagining someone else’s position and reversing it to get your own position. Again enforced stupidity, anti-thought.
What makes you think the West is superior?
For 500 years the Western world has ridden roughshod over the rest, using violence to take what it wants.
But those days are over and now the degenerate West is committing Hari Kari.
You don’t see many Asian faces in Gender Studies class rooms, they are all studying engineering and medicine
Show me I am wrong
If there was some foreign power collecting information on how rotten and corrupt the West is today they wouldn’t have to look much further than the contents of this very blog.
50% of the articles posted here are about how dishonest the Western media is, 25% are about how stupid Western politicians are and the remaining 25% are about the lunacy of other assorted institution such as academia.
The very name of this blog is a riff on a TV show that exposed the dishonesty of the British political system. Written in the 80s so it’s hardly a recent development, is anyone claiming that it has improved since then?
The evidence needed to contradict Tom Hunter’s position on “Western Superiority” on a Sunday is simply everything he has written about it on Monday through Saturday for years.
You can’t have it both ways Tom, the Western political system and the societies that create and sustain it are either corrupt or they’re not. It can’t be a morally superior pile of crap.
In order:
– personal experience of drunk Chinese businessmen who got a little too indiscreet, both here and in the US. Even aside from that when I worked in the US we all noted the change in attitude from one of polite reserve in the early 90’s to real arrogance by the end of the decade in the businessmen we dealt with.
– friends who have worked in China and spoke Mandarin (didn’t know any Cantonese speakers funnily enough).A mix of native-born Westerners doing business there and Chinese-native going back for business.
– religious friends who are Chinese natives and a mix of people living here and some still living there.
– A number of other Asian friends I have, mainly Thai and Vietnamese, plus one African, and one Malaysian – all with very wary attitudes towards Chinese business people, and much talk of arrogant superiority.
I could go looking for more citations but the list of people writing about how the Chinese have long regarded the outside world as “barbarians” is rather too long to put here.
In any case, at this point you may as well just call me a liar.
Actually it was a show less about “dishonesty” and more about bureaucracy interacting with the elected people’s representatives (and often frustrating them). Although it was about Britain, people across the West have recognised the same things in their societies. India actually made a local version years ago, and god knows they’ve perfected Sir Humphrey, as Indian businessmen often rage about.
Are you going to claim that the Chinese Administrative State is any different? Public Choice Theory would say no, and that’s before we explore the nature of bureaucracy built upon 3000 years of centralised technocracy.
I never said anything about morality, superior or otherwise. What I claim is that the West has a superior system, even when it’s corrupt, in that it produces superior outcomes.
For example, your earlier claim about how the CCP has lifted 800 million people out of poverty is due not to the Marxism they embraced for decades, let alone the Maoism that almost destroyed them, or embracing the economic systems and practices of earlier dynasties, but by embracing the very Western inventions of free markets and free trade.
As to other cultural things, well….
vs.
Guess whose cultural influence that last one is?
This is what we have forgotten how to do while we wile away our lives navel gazing over gender
https://youtu.be/Uj3vTq7EjPo?si=nK2vpLFMJYUZghm3
@ Andrei
Centuries of success built upon millenia of thinking (and struggle) across philosophy, political systems, military systems and economic sytems.
For 500 years the Western world has ridden roughshod over the rest, using violence to take what it wants.
No different to everybody else. As with Jake above that seems like a very Lefty argument; the sort they use to denigrate their own civilisation because they’re ashamed of it. Which leads to….
But those days are over and now the degenerate West is committing Hari Kari.
Well, that certainly seems to be the Left’s desire. But in case you haven’t noticed the supposedly non-degenerate West isn’t doing too hot either, if by Hari Kari you also mean demographic decline. That includes Mother Russia and Jake’s fave, China – plus everyone outside of Africa.
Oh I quite agree, but since my son studied engineering a few years ago I got to meet quite a few such “Asians”, and they’d have to loved to stay in NZ but felt our economy didn’t hold much future (true).
But they were intending to head for Australia and the US, depending on whether they could escape the debt they owed to their government for their education, since the Chinese ones especially were expected to return and make good on the investment their government made in them, which seemed entirely fair.
But in freely choosing between the West and the Chinese systems, the only ones I met who were gung ho for China were the very rich students. They also made no bones about their family’s CCP connections, which they expected to use.
I seem to be running out of “reply” slots but since I was mentioned here I think it’s acceptable to reply to several points here but I will attempt to be concise.
Concisely, this matter is too important and too large to be run on anecdotes, and what you heard from some guy about what some else thinks about something else is a second hand anecdote. This has about the same evidentiary power as a story you heard from some bloke down the pub.
Now that story could be perfectly true, but unless you are able to interrogate it, cross reference it against verified hard data and concrete reality then there is no way to know if you, he or anyone else aren’t self-selecting and editing. (what are all the other stories this bloke has said? what about all the other blokes in all the other pubs in town, the coffeehouses and tearooms etc. etc.)
As for claims about the huge achievements of modern China, you are falling into the same trap I see all too often in western commentators. Put simply, if something goes wrong in China then the CCP is to blame, if something goes right in China then someone else deserves the credit. Heads I win, Tails you lose. It’s a rigged game. If it’s rigged by dishonesty or ignorance doesn’t really matter but it’s probably 50/50.
There is only one honest way to look at it. The bosses, those in control take both the blame and the credit. If the rise of China is due to free market economics (and it isn’t) then the CCP gets credit for that, they chose it they installed it and they ran it, not the invisible hand of the market, so they get the credit for it.
However the rise of China is not due to free market economics. Let’s just start with one example you are probably familiar with, The Three Gorges dam. Who created that and how? That wasn’t pitched to investors and financed by Wall Street, The City of London or the FTSE and managed by international consultants. This was a multi-generational project of the CCP. The same with electricity generation and distribution, the railways, motorways, airports, hospital, schools and universities and a huge number of megacities.
These are the literally concrete achievements that can be examined and cross referenced, the backbone and vital organs of a massive thriving international market place.
Chinese international trade, cutting edge technology and massive market places predate Adam Smith and Milton Friedman by a considerable margin so they can hardly take all the credit for them.