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GuestBob posted:No single system. Get me drunk and I will ramble enthusiastically about how greater disparities in wealth and economic practices amongst provinces will inevitably push China towards a more federal model. The United Chinese States? UCS sounds cool, like a space nation from Freespace or Supreme Commander
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Mar 18, 2013 03:20
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WarpedNaba posted:The United Chinese States? I think the opposite. Any decentralisation would be absolutely disastrous and lead to the break up of the country within twenty years, because of endless US style wrangling over who gets the money, between the richer and poorer provinces. Lack of central control is causing enough problems as it is, and it's no answer to the main problems of inequality and corruption. Observe how the great depression in the US led to centralization as a way of trying to solve America's issues. China will be similar, and there's no one to push the opposite that won't be ruthlessly purged like Bo Xilai was. People in urban centres grumble about the CCP but they don't have any better ideas, at least not right now. Democracy sounds good in the abstract but the US isn't exactly exemplifying good government these days. Probably to the guy on the ground dictatorship is the worst government... except for all the others. IIRC, the CCP is still a heck of a lot more popular than most western governments, to their constituents. Fangz fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Mar 18, 2013 |
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Mar 18, 2013 03:37
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Hey guys China is already highly decentralized. Local jurisdictions have an almost completely free hand to do whatever the hell they want. That's how you got the whole competing Bo Xilai 'Chongqing Model' versus Wang Yang's 'Guangdong Model.' If it was a centralized state, everyone would just follow the China Model. The really funny thing to do is compare China to Russia. Russia is ostensibly federal, but in practice is way way more centralized then supposedly centralized China that actually operates pretty federally. Fangz posted:I think the opposite. Any decentralisation would be absolutely disastrous and lead to the break up of the country within twenty years, because of endless US style wrangling over who gets the money, between the richer and poorer provinces.
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Mar 18, 2013 03:59
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So is modern China really supposed to be an example of "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics"? Is a mixture of quarantined liberal economic zones (with all the attendant social disparity and urban squalor ) regional patronage networks, and authoritarian political centralism (this is my notion of China's defining qualities based on the media I consume) seen as the goal of the Party elite, or more of a stage or phase? If it's the latter, what comes next? If it's the former, how is it expected to be resolved in regard to the (what I assume are) contrary ideology statements of the party? I mean, I know some of the famous Deng-isms provide a rationale of sorts, for some of it, I guess, but I've heard so many tales of rampant exploitation and abuse of power by economic (rather than political) elites. Not to mention the sins of the party princelings. The Bo family saga really made me take notice; there was plenty of abuse by the party elites in the SU, but it was different. There isn't much more than the thinnest veneer of ideology covering up what seems to be their real motivations, which I guess seem to me more like the kinds of iniquities that you see in traditional ~capitalist~ 'good ol' boy'-ism. I guess what I'm asking is, is there any remnant of the social project of the Chinese revolution left in the modern power structure, or is changing the material landscape of China the only goal, social progress and equity be damned? Considering the misery wrought in China in the 20th Century I could understand that China's leaders would be very wary of trying to do anything but continue to industrialize and maintain a unified political front, but they know there's more to Socialism than just that. Will they ever return to address those other things? Am I missing something here? I'm no China expert.. E: maybe authoritarian political centralism isn't the best description for China's deal. But there's at least a perception that it is. SMERSH Mouth fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Mar 18, 2013 |
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Mar 18, 2013 04:19
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Bloodnose posted:Hey guys China is already highly decentralized. Local jurisdictions have an almost completely free hand to do whatever the hell they want. Meh, maybe education is different but I can tell you that what is an apparently decentralised model in terms of funding and operation retains alot of centralized features, particularly in key areas. For example, the Provincial MoE is responsible for inspecting universities but the criteria they use are set by the MoE in Beijing. The Provincial MoE is responsible for distributing funding but does so to a formula approved by the MoE in Beijing. The inititation of special projects (the 211 Project for example) is the purview of the MoE in Beijing. Don't even get me started on the textbook oversight committee (yep, almost sounds French doesn't it). This is all with regard to HE, which is pretty much the loosest area of education policy and practice which you can get inside the public sector. Historically, the national MoE has had bugger all to do with running universities (at its peak I think it directly administered seven with a couple of wierd ones run by early SOEs and the MoD). Power isn't so much decentralized as delegated. Like I say, maybe education is different but in this area at least, Beijing still holds alot of the cards. [edit] There is the private sector of course, and growing extra-governmental sources of income. In 1997 two Chinese researchers "estimated that roughly 45% of pre-collegiate funding was from non-governmental sources" - and that's for state schools, not private. So, there's an element of unauthorised power accumulation going on too in the grey space between public and private enterprise. I am tempted to just dismiss this as gangsterism but it does indicate that if a system doesn't keep pace with reality then it risks becoming rather irrelevant. GuestBob fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Mar 18, 2013 |
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Mar 18, 2013 04:33
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I.W.W. ATTITUDE posted:I guess what I'm asking is, is there any remnant of the social project of the Chinese revolution left in the modern power structure, or is changing the material landscape of China the only goal, social progress and equity be damned? Considering the misery wrought in China in the 20th Century I could understand that China's leaders would be very wary of trying to do anything but continue to industrialize and maintain a unified political front, but they know there's more to Socialism than just that. Will they ever return to address those other things? The thing you're missing is the way you're analyzing China's leaders and their goals as if there were a unified Chinese government with a credible list of priorities and policy goals and a functional hierarchy able and willing to work towards those goals. Myth #1: The Chinese central government is monolithic and unified. Reality: China's leaders are not of the same mind are working to a considerable but unknown extent at cross-purposes. Total opacity of the system projects an illusion of unity. Myth #2: The Chinese central government has a functional hierarchy. Reality: The official org chart and job titles distributed every 10 years are a poor guide to the actual powers and relationships in the Chinese government. Again, the real system is completely opaque, but it has been impossible to hide the decoupling of nominal and real organization for a long time now. Myth #3: The government is primarily concerned with the problems of the nation. Reality: Judging by what's been coming out of the central government recently (an admittedly poor source of information) and on recent events, the central government is primarily interested in the problems of the party, secondarily interested in the problems of the state, and the problems facing the actual nation (I mean the average person) are somewhere below that on the list. Party infighting has spilled over into the public eye with greater frequency over the last couple years, and the party seems to realize that the state has a crisis of legitimacy going on. These two issues seem to be at the top of their list. The economy and the environment and so on come later, which is a problem because those things are in trouble and getting worse. Myth #4: The government can work towards their policy goals. Reality: China's state organs are in terrible condition. Corruption has eaten away at the central government's ability to get anything done, should they decide to get anything done. State officials are corrupt and self-serving. Party officials are corrupt and don't seem to have much of a job description beyond drinking with cadres and businessmen and loving their mistresses every day. (A official's meticulously-kept journal was recently leaked and I think it's genuine, it's too quotidian to be a fake, and this is basically his average day at work.) Crimes go unpunished, policies go unimplemented or are implemented poorly, industry controls are a bad joke with naked conflicts of interest at all levels... The point is, the government apparatus is compromised or simply doesn't exist when you get down to the level of policy implementation. Fixing any of China's glaring problems will require complete overhaul of the related state organs, and the Party constituencies there may block that reform. My personal analysis of the situation makes me worried. From what I see, the Chinese state/party is sliding down into failure slowly but with tremendous inertia. Deng Xiaoping, in retrospect, had the advantage of breaking new ground. Mao's Cultural Revolution devastated the Party and state establishment and Deng was able to create something new from the rubble. Now Xi and Li are starting with a structure that has become very strong after years of retrenchment under the Hu politburo. (Calling it the Hu administration would be misleading.) They need to make major reforms, and soon, and in a lot of areas, and I don't see how they're even going to stop the decline much less reverse it. I would like to be wrong because I don't want to give up on this country, but I'm glad I have the option of giving up on this country. Most people here aren't so lucky.
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Mar 18, 2013 05:06
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The CCP has recently been very effective at redirecting internal political anger toward harmless boogeymen such as Japan. Given the intensity of anti-Japanese rhetoric that we are seeing starting in pre-school, this could continue to work for a long time. EDIT: Great post by Arglebargle, my experiences here in China lead me to agree 100%. NaanViolence fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Mar 18, 2013 |
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Mar 18, 2013 05:07
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Arglebargle III posted:A official's meticulously-kept journal was recently leaked and I think it's genuine, it's too quotidian to be a fake, and this is basically his average day at work. If I remember rightly, that was lauded by "netizens" as an example of restraint because the official only had one mistress.
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Mar 18, 2013 05:17
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GuestBob posted:If I remember rightly, that was lauded by "netizens" as an example of restraint because the official only had one mistress. But how many homes did he buy for her? And did she have access to fine Hong Kong milk powder? Netizens demand human flesh search!
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Mar 18, 2013 05:18
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GuestBob posted:Power isn't so much decentralized as delegated. I guess it's more like the UK's 'devolved' powers than the US's federal ones. The central government could snap everything back up if they ever wanted to, just like the UK could tell Scotland to eat a dick and close down their kilt parliament or whatever. But for now it functions pretty independently. Your example of education is pretty solid in how the state is supposed to function. Central government creates a policy ---> local governments put policy into action The way it really goes is something more like Central government says they want a thing to happen (e.g. students learn English) and puts forward some policies to make that happen ---> local governments pay lip service to central government policies, then do whatever to try to make the central government's thing happen. Again, that's how you get different, competing 'models' of how things should be done across China. The individual party secretaries are sort of like local lords with fiefs on which they can do whatever, as long as they're generally pursuing the goals of the central government.
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Mar 18, 2013 05:39
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Longanimitas posted:The CCP has recently been very effective at redirecting internal political anger toward harmless boogeymen such as Japan. Given the intensity of anti-Japanese rhetoric that we are seeing starting in pre-school, this could continue to work for a long time. As the economic climate worsens do you think they'll ratchet up the nationalism to try and deflect criticism from the increasingly unworkable political system. All they can really do to keep control is beat the war drums and put on shows of strength. Any attempt at actual force projection would be a monumental disaster.
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Mar 18, 2013 05:55
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Bloodnose posted:...just like the UK could tell Scotland to eat a dick and close down their kilt parliament or whatever. But for now it functions pretty independently. Och. Mon. Not really. Only the Queen can prorogue the Scottish Parliament and she acts on the advice of the First Minister (Wee Ec the 1st). Westminster could dissolve the Scottish Parliament, but it would need a new Scotland Act to do so - in much the same way as it needed a Constinutional Reform Act to create the Supreme Court. The UK Parliament can challenge the Scottish Parliament if it over-reaches its policy remit (goes to war for example) but in devolved areas it has sovereignty. That sovereignty is limited in practice by the Barnett Formula but it exists nevertheless. Anyways, the system is set up so that descision making is fully and completley seperate on devolved matters: Westminster can never, ever pass a law on education in Scotland or interfere with the Scottish legal system for example. There is no simple mechanism for the dissolution of the Scottish Parliament - you'd need to go through the same legislative rigmarole to dissolve it as had to be undertaken to create it. In short, devolution is the wrong word. A chappie called Hanson has written a bunch of stuff on this and he describes the various levels of decentralization in education policy as: Deconcentration -> Delegation -> Devolution Recent research tends to peg China somewhere between decontration and delegation - citing exactly the kind of questions which you've asked about what's really going on. Bloodnose posted:Central government says they want a thing to happen (e.g. students learn English) and puts forward some policies to make that happen ---> local governments pay lip service to central government policies, then do whatever to try to make the central government's thing happen. Well, CLT has been the mandated approach in Chinese English language classrooms since the 1980s but that is still pie in the sky, so I see what you mean. There is a distinction between stuff like that - which is patently ridiculous and was never going to happen anyway - and things like the National Textbook Selection Committee, which approves all textbooks for use in schools and colleges and it is from this list of approved books which local Provincial MoEs can and do choose materials.*1 The national MoE controls between 80% and 84% of the curriculum with the additional content being in the same non-mandatory areas which have recently been included in the university admissions porcess by some institutions (art, music, dance &c.) It achieves this not only through legislative fiat but by managing the broad content of the gaokao, which although developed on a Provincial level is always centrally approved by the MoE in Beijing. Building on your point, it is interesting to note that in the 2005 CET (College English Test) reforms the central MoE seemed to attempt to change teaching practices by altering an examination (causing washback). That people don't pay attention to the noise which generally farts out of official pronouncements is a given, but the MoE still has the power to effect significant change by other means. It still has the power and ability to do things regardless of whether anyone is listening. But as you note, people don't usually listen. In short, as Argle observed, the situation is far from clear and that opacity is probably the biggest issue in play. This is where PRO-Prc comes in a says that opacity is fine so long as you're the one holding the hongbao and if you ain't, well, tough tofu! [edit] *1 This doesn't happen at HE level though. GuestBob fucked around with this message at 08:29 on Mar 18, 2013 |
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Mar 18, 2013 06:21
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pentyne posted:As the economic climate worsens do you think they'll ratchet up the nationalism to try and deflect criticism from the increasingly unworkable political system. All they can really do to keep control is beat the war drums and put on shows of strength. Any attempt at actual force projection would be a monumental disaster. Don't forget about climatic effects on the nation. Cross posting from the climate change thread: http://www.straight.com/news/358181/gwynne-dyer-why-chinese-government-wants-carbon-tax article posted:Last week’s announcement by China’s Ministry of Finance that the country will introduce a carbon tax, probably in the next two years, did not dominate the international headlines. It was too vague about the timetable and the rate at which the tax would be levied, and fossil-fuel lobbyists were quick to portray it as meaningless. But the Chinese are deadly serious about fighting global warming, because they are really scared. There are no words if the bolded is even half-true.
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Mar 18, 2013 23:45
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Nice, isnt that around the same time there will start to be more dependents than people working thanks to the effects of the one child policy? Should be a fun time to live here.
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Mar 19, 2013 01:25
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I don't know how much I believe that article. If China was really concerned about global warming they would be trying to get all countries on board with a carbon tax, not just supposedly themselves.
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Mar 19, 2013 01:49
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Vladimir Putin posted:I don't know how much I believe that article. If China was really concerned about global warming they would be trying to get all countries on board with a carbon tax, not just supposedly themselves. They'd have a hard enough time enacting it on their own soil without pushing others for it. Plus, y'know. Kyoto Protocol. 'S got Kyoto in it.
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Mar 19, 2013 02:12
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I mentioned in the other thread how Hong Kong just had three grisly murders in three days. Well here's a fantastic article detailing the situation of the richest one.SCMP posted:The woman who allegedly tried to behead her tycoon lover before leaping off a luxury Kowloon West apartment block on Sunday had probably planned the murder-suicide, her business partner has revealed. I bolded all the most important parts of this article for Hong Kongers. These are the details that really make the story here  .
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Mar 19, 2013 05:08
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Vladimir Putin posted:I don't know how much I believe that article. If China was really concerned about global warming they would be trying to get all countries on board with a carbon tax, not just supposedly themselves. It seems like a totally token measure to me. 2 degrees+ is pretty much guaranteed at this stage if I'm not mistaken. Problem is, in any case, the CCP also needs to keep up a breakneck pace of development to guarantee their legitimacy, and they presumably know full well that anything more than half-hearted would throw that off the rails (to the extent the Centre would even be able to implement more radical measures).
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Mar 19, 2013 05:26
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I hope the Ministry of Finance will forgive me if I'm not getting my hopes up for a carbon tax of indeterminate size to be established some time in the next two years.
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Mar 19, 2013 06:04
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pentyne posted:As the economic climate worsens do you think they'll ratchet up the nationalism to try and deflect criticism from the increasingly unworkable political system. All they can really do to keep control is beat the war drums and put on shows of strength. Any attempt at actual force projection would be a monumental disaster. If they continue to keep educating people in increasing numbers then nationalism will have diminishing returns. I've taught at bad colleges and good colleges, and even students at the bad colleges are significantly less likely to be blindly jingoistic than the general population.
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Mar 19, 2013 13:02
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Bloodnose posted:I mentioned in the other thread how Hong Kong just had three grisly murders in three days. Well here's a fantastic article detailing the situation of the richest one. Just chiming in to say I'm always interested in your HK updates. It's ridiculous over there.
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Mar 19, 2013 15:15
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Bloodnose posted:I mentioned in the other thread how Hong Kong just had three grisly murders in three days. Well here's a fantastic article detailing the situation of the richest one.
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Mar 19, 2013 15:23
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ReindeerF posted:Seriously? The wife (consort?) of a wealthy Chinese tycoon was distraught to learn that he had a mistress? Isn't that like an American being distraught to learn that your health insurer is trying to screw you or your mobile phone provider doesn't have your best interests at heart? She was distraught to learn that he had another mistress. She was herself a mistress.
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Mar 19, 2013 15:27
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pentyne posted:As the economic climate worsens do you think they'll ratchet up the nationalism to try and deflect criticism from the increasingly unworkable political system. All they can really do to keep control is beat the war drums and put on shows of strength. Any attempt at actual force projection would be a monumental disaster. Still, I deviate from the orthodox view and argue that what's at play is not problems with the political system but with the socio-economic difficulty of trying to run a large and diverse country. That 20% food production reduction projection includes the US and everyone else as well (especially India), and unlike the Chinese it's not even in the consciousness.
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Mar 19, 2013 22:27
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Fangz posted:Still, I deviate from the orthodox view and argue that what's at play is not problems with the political system but with the socio-economic difficulty of trying to run a large and diverse country. That 20% food production reduction projection includes the US and everyone else as well (especially India), and unlike the Chinese it's not even in the consciousness. Oh, the U.S. would probably lose quite a bit more than 20%, but realistically, more than half of the grain crops goes to feedlots, so the US has some production to lose, without hitting up against starvation concerns. Certainly I don't want to see steak be 40 bucks a pound, but poo poo happens. Maybe vat-meat will be viable by then? I dunno, how much of Chinese food consumption is meat, and what would be a realistic per capita adaptation for China?
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Mar 20, 2013 00:12
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Arglebargle III posted:the Chinese state/party is sliding down into failure slowly but with tremendous inertia. This is a really good way of expressing the dynamic that's at work here. Reversing this downward slide would require untangling the ludicrously complicated knots that the Party has tied itself into, and I really don't know how they would gather the willpower to even get started. The corruption, the courts, the police, the local governments, the Beijing ministries, the major industries, the Party bigwigs... their dysfunctions all feed on each other, and put anyone trying to fix any particular one into check.
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Mar 20, 2013 01:41
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Here's an article about justice in this world.Agents shut shops as curbs put sales on ice posted:Property agents across the city are closing their branches as a series of government property-cooling measures continues to bite. I'm loving this so much. I want to drink up all the sweet, sweet realtor tears. It's a really scummy industry and when I lived in an area that was a hotbed for mainland money, they would crowd around the train station and make me late to things.
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Mar 21, 2013 06:12
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Bloodnose posted:
They could supplement their revenue by bottling them. When the mainland realtor tears hit the market, they'll have both brand recognition and no mainland food stigma, so it'll be even better.
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Mar 21, 2013 07:07
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People who pay more attention China than I do, how true is this article in your experience? http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/03/why-the-one-child-policy-has-become-irrelevant/274178/ quote:Before getting pregnant with her second child, Lu Qingmin went to the family-planning office to apply for a birth permit. Officials in her husband's Hunan village where she was living turned her down, but she had the baby anyway. She may eventually be fined $1,600--about what she makes in two months in her purchasing job at a Guangdong paint factory. "Everyone told me to hide so the family-planning people wouldn't find me, but I went around everywhere," she told me. "In the past, that place had very strict family planning, but now the policy has loosened. The cadres worry that there are too many only children here." I asked her if government policy had factored into her decision to have a second child. "It was never a consideration," she said.
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Mar 21, 2013 23:46
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I don't know the details of how many ultrasounds women are required to have but the general tone of the article is right. If you go to China you can instantly understand why they instituted the policy. Unbelievable amounts of people everywhere. 1 million is a huge city in America; it's a tiny city in China. Keep in mind people were urged to have as many children as possible in the past and culturally it is desirable to have a big family (same with most traditional cultures around the world prior to industrialization, since they can help out around the farms). However a combination of the following changes to the one-child policy make it less severe: -Rural residents are allowed up to 2 -Members of ethnic minority groups are allowed up to 2 (and many who are 1/2 ethnic minority will legally classify themselves as minorities to take advantage of such options, further increasing the size of this group) -As the article states, you can have additional children and just pay fines, which many urban residents are able to afford. So as the article states, the only people really getting squeezed are middle class urban families. As Japan, Hong Kong, Europe and the States would all indicate, this category of people tend to have a low birth rate anyway. It is totally fascinating to see all the impacts of the one child policy though. I also like Singapore, where they went from "Stop at Two" to "Have Three or More!" in the span of like 15 years. I don't think governments are very good at figuring out how to get the size of population they want. V Believe you are right in that it's not a recent change for minorities, I was just kind of word vomiting since I have a million thoughts about that policy. VV "Computer parts" however, I'm pretty sure either you or your girlfriend or both misunderstood the law. If that were the case, then there wouldn't be such a severe gender imbalance in the countryside because there would be no female infanticide (since you know you'll get a son sooner or later) hitension fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Mar 22, 2013 |
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Mar 21, 2013 23:59
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hitension posted:-Members of ethnic minority groups are allowed up to 2 (and many who are 1/2 ethnic minority will legally classify themselves as minorities to take advantage of such options, further increasing the size of this group) Can you source this? I thought not only is this not a recent change, but minorities were never limited by the family planning policy.
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Mar 22, 2013 00:14
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My girlfriend's Chinese, and the way she explained it it sounded like the restriction is on boys, not children in general (in other words, you can have as many girls as you want, but when you have a boy that's it). Her family's middle class, though, so maybe that had something to do with it, or maybe she just misunderstood the law. Either way though, she does have a (younger) brother, so I dunno.
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Mar 22, 2013 00:18
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Have there been any internal studies as to the rising gender gap of newborns in the rural areas? I recall a while ago that there was a cause for alarm due to far more girls being aborted once their gender was determined, and that skewed the sexes a little. Have they any idea as to the possible long term issues this might cause?
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Mar 22, 2013 03:36
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You might be interested in this book: Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population . The county I live in has something like a 1.3 m/f birth ratio but schooling is about even by middle school given the number of boys who drop out to do manual labor.
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Mar 22, 2013 03:45
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hitension posted:I don't know the details of how many ultrasounds women are required to have but the general tone of the article is right. If you go to China you can instantly understand why they instituted the policy. Unbelievable amounts of people everywhere. 1 million is a huge city in America; it's a tiny city in China. Keep in mind people were urged to have as many children as possible in the past and culturally it is desirable to have a big family (same with most traditional cultures around the world prior to industrialization, since they can help out around the farms). Ultrasound test to determine the sex is illegal in China. My mainland friend in Hong Kong went through a bizarre scenario where an acquaintance of hers in China was too busy to get an ultrasound in Hong Kong. So she asked us if the ultrasound reports could be mailed to China and have us announce the sex. We asked outright if she's planning for an abortion  We wanted no part of doing her dirty work, and I don't know why she did't just outright bribe the doctor. hitension posted:
computer parts posted:My girlfriend's Chinese, and the way she explained it it sounded like the restriction is on boys, not children in general (in other words, you can have as many girls as you want, but when you have a boy that's it). Her family's middle class, though, so maybe that had something to do with it, or maybe she just misunderstood the law. If your girlfriend's family broke the law, I'm sure her parents would drill that into her head and guilt trip her to study extra extra hard because the parents broke the law. You don't get fined if the first baby is a girl. There's a second chance. You still get subsidized schooling and all that jazz. Yes infanticide happens, but it's more of a "I want a son after 4 daughters and can't afford to raise another" situation than "ewww gross a vagina". quote:The one group that still sticks to the letter of the law are the country's traditional élite: urban residents with proper household registration, or hukou, often in government jobs, who risk punitive fines and dismissal from their jobs for violating the law. In Dongguan, the penalty for a second child in a hukou-holding family can be as high as 200,000 RMB, or $31,000; any woman with a child must have an ultrasound every three months to ensure she is not pregnant. A friend of mine in Shanghai had two abortions in the years following the birth of her daughter. "A lot of entrepreneurs, including some of my friends, have two children," she told me. "But we both work for government units, so we can't." Government workers are supposed to have a "be role models for the masses" so they are examined differently. Heck, if you were discovered having sex before marriage that's already a big no-no. If you were pregnant before married that's even a bigger scandal at work and gets you fired. A few friends who work as school teachers can only have one child. But then again, if the government workers climb up, they might be able to get 4 hukou and 4 separate identities, legally 
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Mar 22, 2013 04:08
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caberham posted:
Alright, that's the impression I got. She said she didn't really know because her aunts all had boys as their first kid anyway. 
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Mar 22, 2013 04:10
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caberham posted:Government workers are supposed to have a "be role models for the masses" so they are examined differently. Heck, if you were discovered having sex before marriage that's already a big no-no. If you were pregnant before married that's even a bigger scandal at work and gets you fired. A few friends who work as school teachers can only have one child. But then again, if the government workers climb up, they might be able to get 4 hukou and 4 separate identities, legally There's occasional rumblings about university graduates or people with masters being given the right to have a second child under any and all cirumstances. You find that the word "quality" is sometimes used in a totally straightforward manner when talking about population in China. I find that scary as hell. Population has always been a bit of a fetish when it comes to imagining the Orient. One of my favourite passages from DeQuincey is: Thomas DeQuincey posted:The mere antiquity of Asiatic things - of their institutions, histories, above all, of their mythologies, etc. - is so impressive, that to me the vast age of the race and name overpowers the sense of youth in the individual. A young Chinese seems to me an antediluvian man renewed. Even Englishmen, though not bred in any knowledge of such institutions, cannot but shudder at the mystic sublimity of castes that have flowed apart, and refused to mix, through such immemorial tracts of time; nor can any man fail to be awed by the sanctity of the Ganges, or by the very name of the Euphrates. It contributes much to these feelings, that South-Eastern Asia is, and has been for thousands of years, the part of the earth most swarming with human life, the great officina gentium. Man is a weed in those regions. The vast empires, also, into which the enormous population of Asia has always been cast, give a further sublimity to the feelings associated with all Oriental names or images. In China, over and above what it has in common with the rest of Southern Asia, I am terrified by the modes of life, by the manners, by the barrier of utter abhorrence placed between myself and them, by counter-sympathies deeper than I can analyse. I could sooner live with lunatics, with vermin, with crocodiles or snakes. All this, and much more than I can say, the reader must enter into, before he can comprehend the unimaginable horror which these dreams of Oriental imagery and mythological tortures impressed upon me. [edit] Incidentally, you can tell he was pretty high when he wrote this - it's not like him to write somethng as awkward as "mere antiquity". GuestBob fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Mar 22, 2013 |
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Mar 22, 2013 05:18
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hitension posted:It is totally fascinating to see all the impacts of the one child policy though. Like singapore, China is also lurching from one demographic crisis to the next, just more slowly because it's bigger. There's a huge bulge of people in their 40s and 50s now who are going to start retiring at China's low retirement age(s) and cause a massive drag on the economy. It's better than an exploding age profile like Iran where 51% of people are under 21, but it's not good either.
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Mar 22, 2013 06:47
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I predict a soylent future!
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Mar 22, 2013 07:16
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Bloodnose posted:I predict a soylent future!  Did someone mention recycling tanks?
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Mar 22, 2013 07:26
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