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Personally I'm most interested in chapters four and five, since I'd like to see the Chinese interpretation of the American political system. What they think works, what they feel doesn't.
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Jan 28, 2020 01:04
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It's from a ways back but since I'm behind on this thread and catching up I wanted to comment on the Amish chapter. This part was interesting because I think it had tells about some of the CCP's internal insecurities about its policies. Obviously modernizing China had been an overriding concern. I don't know that much about Chinese history but I know in many places where leaders felt their country to be backward, there was often concern that the people would not accept modernization and react against it. With the Amish however Huning sees a "backward" ethnicity or whatever you want to call it, but instead of embarrassing other Americans, Americans instead see it as another embodiment of their ideals. I feel like he is criticizing some of his comrades who feel they must use force to compel the Chinese peasants into the modern era, and is using their example to argue that in some cases it may be easier to learn to tolerate groups that resist modernization, while continuing to develop around them. China's kaleidoscopic array of ethnic minorities must be forefront in his mind here. Historically modernization programs in both capitalist and socialist states often involved a great deal violence and resistance, and I bet how to advance "progress" as Huning conceptualizes while avoiding that kind of chaos was why he was interested in the Amish.
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Jan 28, 2020 05:20
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One thing that's crazy I just noticed looking at economic statistics. Back when this book was first published, India and China had almost identical GDP per capita. As of 2017, China's per capita GDP was more than 4x larger than India's. Dang, why hasn't India been able to achieve the kind of economic success China has?
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Jan 28, 2020 06:27
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It is interesting to see the discussion of equality of conditions and welfare. It makes me wonder where Wang stood on the issue of cutting government benefits when it became a major topic later in the nineties. In the nineties the previously relatively generous system of communist benefits was slashed in a ruthless program of cost cutting in the name of government efficiency and competitiveness. It's the kind of policy that's very hard to justify from a philosophical position that emphasizes equality of outcomes. Partly inspired by this thread i recently picked up two books about the recent history of China and the Communist party. The first was The party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers by Richard McGregor. I picked it specifically because it was published in 2010, before Xi Jinping became President. The second book, which I am still only a few chapters into at the moment, is The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State by Elizabeth Economy, which was published in 2019. McGregor's book was an excellent overview of how the Chinese government runs and the CCP's role in it and business. It really helped contextualize recent controversies over issues like Huawei's relationship with the Chinese government. I was at times still left feeling a bit bewildered during talk of the endless committees and party hierarchies and departments that run everything in China, and continue to bemoan the absence of any introductory texts or reference material on the subject. Still I feel like it was a relevant and engaging discussion of modern China and its government. While I'm only a few chapters into Economy's book I'd say it feels less focused than McGregor's and more superficial. I picked it up because there's been a lot of talk about how China is changing under Xi, but even though Economy's whole thesis is that Xi has ushered in a third revolution ( the first being under Mao and the second under Deng), from her own description it really doesn't sound very revolutionary. Almost everything she describes as characterizing politics under Xi's leadership sound about the same as what McGregor describes under Hu Jintao, only maybe exaggerated a bit? Still, her book still seems like a fine introduction to the subject of modern China, even if it doesn't cover much new ground. Unfortunately neither book seems able to answer my most pressing question, which is how the modern CCP squares its adherence to Marxist doctrine and economics with economic liberalism. I have so many questions, like how can you claim to represent a dictatorship of the proletariat when the party includes multimillionaire businessmen? It's hard to judge either author too harshly for this, since I'm not sure anyone, maybe even anyone within the CCP, really knows for sure.
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Mar 6, 2020 23:53
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One interesting contrast McGregor drew between the United States and modern China, is the way their leaders each talk about the military. In the United States it is deemed of utmost priority that the military be apolitical, and this is equated with "professional." The PRC utterly rejects this notion, and instead talks about how it is essential that the army BE political, and that it goes hand in hand with the Communist Party. At times official publications can almost sound hysterical about this point. This strikes me as an interesting ideological difference between the two states, and there seems like a similar division is present in how both states deal with important institutions. In practice when the CCP emphasizes that institutions like the army should be politically active I'm not sure if this actually means anything other than "loyal to the party." Frankly I'm not sure what if anything besides loyalty to the CCP is its politics. Other than a continued insistence on using Marxist jargon, a belief that the CCP must rule China seems to be the only thing its members must agree on. Besides the blaah blaah about stages of development and how oh eventually we're going to institute real socialism in the distant future somehow, I really wonder what they want China to look like. Do they just imagine China in 50 years like it is now, but richer? That I really don't understand. When I think of America's leadership I fell pretty confident that they would say yes to this question, but with China I don't know. I'll be interested if Wang has anything to say about nationalism. Elizabeth Economy talks a lot about Chinese nationalism and how the current batch of leadership have emphasized the "rejuvenation of the Chinese nation." This is another significant deviation from traditional strains of Marxist thought. It sounds positively Romantic even. With Wang writing just at the time when the shift to nationalism was beginning I wonder if his thinking will be more old school or new school. If he does talk about it, I wonder who his influences are. Broadly I'm really curious about the intellectual underpinnings of modern Chinese nationalism and how its proponents with socialist ideas of solidarity.
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Mar 16, 2020 05:14
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Kangxi posted:
that is interesting and I hope he will expand on the subject. I wonder how the leaders in China see the purpose of their party in light of standard Marxist views. Clearly they've taken the role of the CCP well beyond Lenin's concept of a vanguard, there has to be some concept of ideology trumping material interest for it to make sense. Also I hope Wang will contrast American constitutionalism with how the Chinese government operates, as my impression is that it is almost the exact opposite. That is to say the letter of the law is relatively unimportant, while informal arrangements, especially relating to the CCP, trump everything. I'd really like to see that tendency justified from a Chinese perspective.
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Mar 22, 2020 04:38
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Glazius posted:Yeah, that's the trick, isn't it? Finding someone who's both willing to use that power and willing to give it up. It'll be a good day when someone works that one out. No, generally speaking it refers to the concept of a "citizen-soldier" and is associated with the Republican Rome. More specifically it could be taken as a reference to the Roman dictator Cincinnatus, who resigned from the dictatorship and returned to private life as soon as the crisis which brought him to office was over. Squalid fucked around with this message at 00:23 on May 29, 2020 |
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May 29, 2020 00:04
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Baka-nin posted:I'm curious how the Chinese audience reacted to this section, both government and public. I understand there was a very, very slow thaw and attitude adjustment to homosexuality in this period, that slowly opened up in the 1990s. I've read that the first book about homosexuality to receive official publication in the PRC was restricted to a small printing and had to be requested with the article saying a request had to be approved by their employer. It didn't specify if this was purely for civil servants or applied to all workplaces. this sounds almost as convoluted as the process for getting the Victorian English article on gay penguin sex. At least they didn't exclusively release the official publication in ancient Greek!
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Jun 11, 2020 03:44
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