Tales of The Midde Kingdom - Life in China

[John V]

The Chinese mind-set and how it works
Where ever you go in the world, you encounter a culture shock, but nowhere like China.
For decades, China remained isolated and in that time Maoism took root and flourished. In one generation it’s possible to produce a society so alienated from western ideals, which is where most get their knowledge from; that it’s like two separate kinds of human species.

China as a super power
https://ipa.org.au/publications/2168/the-chinese-capitalist-miracle
‘By 1984 when Hu Yaobang, as General Secretary of the Communist Party, had taken this further in asking, ‘Since the October revolution (of 1917) more than 60 years have passed. How is it that many socialist countries have not been able to overtake capitalist ones in terms of development? What is it (in socialism) that does not work?'

The Chinese remain an extremely clever people and unlike the old USSR, saw that communism failed everywhere it was tried. They therefore changed their economy to a capitalist one, but kept the communist party leadership. Those who think a revolution might occur fail to realize that every person in China might not love the system they live under, but would fight to the death to defend it. No anti-war protests here, no burning flags; they’d lose 500 million and not even blink – and if it ever comes to it, they will.

The social system
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015/04/17/chinas-levels-of-bureaucracy-have-gotten-ridiculous-premier-says/
‘Even without corruption, analysts say, a system that has relied for centuries on favors, horse trading and gift giving is now freezing up in the face of the near-evangelical antigraft campaign. “They’re taking away the levers of power,” said David Kelly, research director with China Policy, a research and advisory firm. “There’s policy gridlock,” he added.’

How do you maintain such a system, although it’s trying to change and here lies the clue to China’s success. Unlike the centralized Soviet system, China spreads power to each individual. There is a system of ‘leaders’, each person has responsibility in their own sphere and each has a leader above them.
An example: The man who sweeps the street might be an illiterate peasant, but he can tell the most powerful man where to park his car on his ‘patch’. He is the ‘leader’ of his allotted part of the street. He will not be able to tell you where to catch the number 21 bus as that’s not his job, for that you have to find the person whose job it is to provide bus stop locations and to find that person you’ll need to find the information desk, which is a problem because no one else knows where it is either and if they did, it’s not their job to tell you as then you’d be as knowledgeable as they are. The street sweeper also has a leader and should there be a problem the first question the police will ask him is, “Which leader told you to do that”? A reply of, “Well, I thought that . . .” will land him in deep trouble – it’s not his job to make decisions, he has a leader to do that for him.
Each leader also has a leader and your leader is very reluctant to tell you anything, as then you’ll have as much knowledge as s/he has, which defeats the purpose of having a leader. Everyone operates on a need to know basis and no one wants to lose their bit of power. That’s the key! Limited power is spread around and no one wants to lose their own. Depending on your abilities, you rise through the leadership and become powerful by what you know, which others don’t and are able to use that to your advantage.
It’s a perfect system to control 1.3 billion people through a shared power structure. I’m a leader in the classroom, above me I have a coordinator leader and above us both we have a political leader and so it goes on.

The economic system
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b2f1ef30-47c2-11e4-ac9f-00144feab7de.html#axzz3bCmzAS3M
‘In the west there is an underlying assumption that the Achilles heel of China is its political system. Since the country lacks western-style democracy, its system of governance is unsustainable. Ultimately, China will be obliged to adopt our kind of political system. Yet China’s governance system has been remarkably successful for more than three decades. It has presided over the greatest economic transformation in modern history.’

Firmly under party leadership, there are no shareholders or Bernie Madoff’s, which means no one individual or group can bring down the economy and so it fluctuates, but doesn’t collapse. Like the west, you grab what you can, but unlike the west you aren’t allowed to destroy the goose that lays the golden egg. It is seen as in everyone’s best interests to keep it all going. The banks are all under State control, prices are pre-determined according to wage levels and taxes are kept artificially low or non-existent to encourage spending. According to western economics it should all collapse, but it doesn’t because it doesn’t use the free market laissez-faire capitalist model by which we judge our own system.
Of course there is corruption; knowledge and leader permission cost money, but every corporate leader and the whole of Wall Street would face a firing squad in China and that’s not because they’re capitalist, but because they’d destroy (and have done), their country in a personal quest for profit.
The reason for Chinese individual investment in the west is because the State has the power to access your bank account; having too much money means corruption and so people spend and invest instead of accumulating monetary wealth. The Chinese are just as interested in seeing the west return to pre-recession days as the west itself is. After all, the west were the main buyers, hence the Chinese loans and investment in a future potential customer.

Summary
What all this does is produce a very dumbed down but generally happy society. It’s happy and nationalistic because it doesn’t worry about the future, that’s your leader’s problem. People don’t care where India is located on a map, it’s not necessary in their daily lives to know that. This ‘togetherness’ and everyone pulling in the same direction is what makes China so powerful. A minimum of dissent, no arguments, no cartels; the police are the final arbiters in daily life and follow the party line in a huge police State, which keeps it all on track.
As a Laowai (outsider - foreigner), we are tolerated, even welcomed, but it’s a totally closed and locked in society. China is an experience, not a learning curve and totally different to the west.