{"id":14872,"date":"2011-10-03T12:00:47","date_gmt":"2011-10-03T11:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=14872"},"modified":"2011-10-03T00:18:53","modified_gmt":"2011-10-02T23:18:53","slug":"and-then-the-decline-and-fall-of-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2011\/10\/and-then-the-decline-and-fall-of-china\/","title":{"rendered":"And Then the Decline and Fall of China?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Talk given in Beijing at the Party School of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, 27 Sep 2011<\/em><\/p>\n

Dear Friends,<\/p>\n

Again you have kindly invited me for an open dialogue; so let us peer into the future of the Middle Kingdom.\u00a0 The background is rapid geopolitical change: the fall of the US Empire–Palestine’s bid in spite of Obama’s threats is an example–the de-development of many countries in the West like USA-UK and the PIIGS; the decline of the state system and rise of the region system with Latin America and the Islamic Community taking shape; the rise of the Rest like those regions and, indeed, the rise of China.\u00a0 The world moves East.<\/p>\n

Yet a rule is written in the stars: nothing human is forever.\u00a0 There is an organic curve: birth-rise-peak-decline-fall.\u00a0 China is human if at a higher level: the comparative advantage of China is not cheap labor or such economisms but the culture, drawing on the san fa<\/em>, the three teachings of daoism-confucianism-buddhism.\u00a0 The Occident would have been much better off drawing on judaism-christianity-islam and<\/em> secularism instead of wasting time fighting each other to death.<\/p>\n

The ability to handle, indeed use<\/em>! contradictions is the key.<\/p>\n

And yet Chinese dynasties–empires in time rather than space–came and went.\u00a0 Chin, Tang, Yuan, Ming, Chin’g.\u00a0 The KMT Nationalist Kuomintang dynasty was Western and short-lived.\u00a0 How about the CPF Communist Dynasty, “socialism with Chinese characteristics”?<\/p>\n

How do we explore this?\u00a0 Any system has problems that can be handled by the system.\u00a0 However, some problems are contradictions between the system and counter-forces.\u00a0 As they accumulate, the system has to yield, sooner or later, like the US Empire.\u00a0 So let us start with the contradictions that brought down the Soviet system (I predicted in 1980 for 1990) and the Japanese system (I predicted in the early 1980s).<\/p>\n

The Soviet prognosis I made was based on six contradictions:<\/p>\n

* satellites wanting independence: China has no satellites.<\/p>\n

* non-Russian cultures wanting autonomy.\u00a0 China has at least 5<\/em>: non-Chinese aspects of Taiwan, Hong Kong-Macao, Tibet, Uighur, (“inner”) Mongolia. (Maybe Manchus?\u00a0 And, is Han-China that homogeneous?)<\/p>\n

* between city and countryside: China has creative approaches; poverty alleviation like in a welfare state. Move West!, urbanizing villages.<\/p>\n

* between workers and bureaucrats-party: the workers wanted trade unions in the struggles for better working conditions;\u00a0 In China too<\/em>.<\/p>\n

* for the people high up: between much liquidity, money, and empty shops.\u00a0 Certainly not a Chinese problem.<\/p>\n

* between the myth of a perfect communist society and reality.\u00a0 China is more sophisticated: process, “permanent revolution”, nothing final.<\/p>\n

Cultural autonomy and trade unions, however, should both be possible inside the system.\u00a0 We are not talking of detaching three enormous provinces, but of cultures, with economies.\u00a0 One Country, Six Systems.\u00a0 Linguistic federalism, like in India, Switzerland?<\/p>\n

The Japan prognosis used external and internal contradictions:<\/p>\n

Japan was so clever in overcoming State-Capital and Capital-Labor contradictions that it outcompeted USA-West in electronics of all kinds, even in some cars, and<\/em> traditional crafts in Southeast Asia.\u00a0 The result was\u00a0 animosity, suspicion, quota systems<\/em>.\u00a0 China too.<\/p>\n

Maybe China has to give more in return for resources and market access?\u00a0 Like giving Africa a four-lane highway from Dar es Salaam to Kinshasa, connecting Asia-Africa-Latin America?\u00a0 Like sharing with others how to lift the bottom of society up, maybe exactly by “capi-communism”?<\/p>\n

Internally, Japan forgot women, the young, the lesser educated, local communities. Shooting up they are destroying an old, yet not creating a new Japan.\u00a0 But the “anti-confucian” cultural revolution in China predated that revolution of women and the young by 2-3 decades.\u00a0 High education became basic for the Communist Party of China-CPC.\u00a0 There are NGOs and prefecture-municipality autonomy all over.\u00a0 And China did not have the Japanese problem of revolts due to the shift from life-long employment to contract-hire-fire.<\/p>\n

But how about civil and political human rights<\/em>?\u00a0 Freedom<\/em>?\u00a0 Like Japan and East Asia in general, China put social-economic rights, like food, first; but it has been “opening up” to freedom at great speed.\u00a0 As visitors for almost 40 years we sense how unspeakable topics have become speakable, and more quickly than when the christian monopoly on thought was yielding in the West.\u00a0 A 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to someone praising colonialism and US warfare in Vi\u00eat Nam, Afghanistan and Iraq was a badly informed expression of Western despair at China’s rise.<\/p>\n

How about democracy<\/em>?\u00a0 In a culture seeing education, wisdom, as the key to good governance, arithmetical democracy by multi-party national elections is unlikely.\u00a0 Locally yes; as multi-person rather than multi-party choice yes; as transparency and dialogue inside the party and elsewhere yes; as citizen petitions using the open windows of bureaucracies yes.\u00a0 That is already a lot.\u00a0 West, take note; learn.<\/p>\n

How to avoid US military encirclement?\u00a0 Handled with Russia, by the SCO-Shanghai Cooperation Organization.<\/p>\n

How about neighbors?\u00a0 A future (North-)East Asian Community, EAC, preferably with Japan, handles that, making islets EAC property.<\/p>\n

Look at shiny, bustling, greening, even aesthetic, Chinese cities today.\u00a0 The CPC has had a good hand. A Mandate from Heaven, it seems.<\/p>\n

Warning: a basic contradiction, capitalism<\/em>.\u00a0 The bottom is lifted up–400 million in 14 years–but the top is lifted even more by all kinds of capital flowing upwards, easily fostering inequality with too much liquidity, too much finance capital, too much speculation on the top.\u00a0 Uncontrolled, this could bring China down.\u00a0 And at the bottom China lets US corporations exploit cheap Chinese labor, paying 1.3% and 3.5% of the retail price for assembling iPods and Barbie dolls.<\/p>\n

Massive popular revolts are rooted in inequality and would remove the Mandate from Heaven because Heaven = People<\/em> (no need to take note, China knows that).\u00a0 So, for Heaven’s and People’s sake, control the finance economy before it steers China down the tracks of USA and EU.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Talk given in Beijing at the Party School of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, 27 Sep 2011 – Yet a rule is written in the stars: nothing human is forever. There is an organic curve: birth-rise-peak-decline-fall. China is human if at a higher level: the comparative advantage of China is not cheap labor or such economisms but the culture, drawing on the san fa, the three teachings of daoism-confucianism-buddhism. The Occident would have been much better off drawing on judaism-christianity-islam and secularism instead of wasting time fighting each other to death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14872\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}