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.

[Drummond]

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.

This definitely deserves more attention than I've given it so far ... nearly 4AM as I type, and I'm feeling very tired ! I shall come back to this thread.

But one point that jumps out at my currently foggy brain is your picture of .. what's your wording ? ..

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;

To which I offer the following ...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/b...-massacre.html

The events of Tiananmen Square have been erased from Chinese history. On the 25th anniversary of the massacre, eyewitness accounts are tackling this public amnesia.

To those who watched it unfold – the massive demonstrations across Chinese cities; the sea of protesters’ tents in Tiananmen Square; the open confrontation between student activists and Party elders; the erecting of a “Goddess of Democracy” statue in Tiananmen, right in front of the portrait of Mao – an overturning of Chinese Communist rule seemed genuinely possible in 1989. Then, on the night of June 3, the People’s Liberation Army turned its guns on the people. A handful of vignettes retain a powerful hold on our memories of this year: the pale, hunger-striking students in the square, their banners demanding “democracy or death”; the grainy video of a white-shirted civilian successfully facing off a tank just south of the Forbidden City on June 5.

The writer Paul French has described the protests and their denouement as “the most pivotal moment in modern China’s history”. Both Louisa Lim and Rowena Xiaoqing He justify this claim in their fascinating new books exploring the realities and legacies of these events on their 25th anniversary. In 1989, for the first time in the history of the People’s Republic of China, “people power” threatened to defeat the iron fist of the state. On May 20, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) imposed martial law and truckloads of soldiers began travelling into Beijing, with orders to secure Tiananmen Square. Only a few miles into their mission, however, throngs of civilians hemmed in the lorries, explaining why they were protesting and asking the army to “go home”; a few days later, the troops retreated. “You might have said that our army was big and powerful,” one of the soldiers later told Louisa Lim, “but at that time… we felt very useless.” In order to reassert authority over the capital in early June, the government needed to mobilise armed divisions personally loyal to the country’s veteran leader, Deng Xiaoping.

Inevitably, the consequences of the crackdown of spring 1989 have transformed the destinies of the student leaders, who have had to live with the consequences of their activism in prison terms, exile and political marginalisation. But these events have also fundamentally shaped the China of the past two and a half decades. The bloody suppression of dissent led directly to contemporary China’s headlong drive for materialism: China’s post-1989 leaders accelerated economic reforms, while slamming the door on political liberalisation. The Chinese state’s decision to resort to violence in 1989 was a harsh reminder of the CCP’s ruthlessness: that the party’s chief concern was the preservation of its power, and that its power came out of the barrel of a gun. Popular fear of state violence and preservation of stability have consequently become two of the defining features of post-Tiananmen Chinese politics.

I'm noticing a few differences between your offering and that published by the Telegraph, John V.

Or am I imagining it ?

[John V]

Well, I guess the Telegraph must be right? Please don’t bother coming back to it, read it, believe it or not and if you disagree, go out into the big wide world and report back to us, not from some third hand account you read in the media or have googled. Liberals annoy me Drummond no use pretending otherwise, now go and write an essay opinion of somewhere or something you personally know about and have experienced yourself.

[Perianne]

The Chinese mind-set and how it works
Where ever you go in the world, you encounter a....

Interesting. Very interesting!

[John V]

Interesting. Very interesting!

Thank you. I spent two hours writing this from the top of my head. It’s not meant to be a Ph.D. thesis, but a summarisation based on my own experiences and to show the differences between East and West.

[Perianne]

Thank you. I spent two hours writing this from the top of my head. It’s not meant to be a Ph.D. thesis, but a summarisation based on my own experiences and to show the differences between East and West.

To be honest, it is such a different concept of society that, even though you wrote it up well, I cannot fathom how it actually works. I will think about it for a long time.

[John V]

To be honest, it is such a different concept of society that, even though you wrote it up well, I cannot fathom how it actually works. I will think about it for a long time.

It works because no one person or small group is allowed to bring down an economy. Because of a leadership ethos, there are checks and balances for each decision you take. Banks are government controlled so you can’t speculate and politicians are elected on their expertise, not because they’re photogenic and are good at script written public speaking. People are groomed for high positions depending on their intelligence and so you get this hierarchy that wants to keep its privileges and the masses are happy that it doesn’t all collapse. Obama, in this kind of society, would be a traffic policeman at best because that’s all he can do, organise at a grass roots level.
It’s not a system I prefer because it has no social mobility and too much bureaucracy, but it does work for the Chinese.

[Perianne]

It works because no one person or small group is allowed to bring down an economy. Because of a leadership ethos, there are checks and balances for each decision you take. Banks are government controlled so you can’t speculate and politicians are elected on their expertise, not because they’re photogenic and are good at script written public speaking. People are groomed for high positions depending on their intelligence and so you get this hierarchy that wants to keep its privileges and the masses are happy that it doesn’t all collapse. Obama, in this kind of society, would be a traffic policeman at best because that’s all he can do, organise at a grass roots level.
It’s not a system I prefer because it has no social mobility and too much bureaucracy, but it does work for the Chinese.

As the Chinese people enjoy capitalism and new freedoms, do you see the culture changing with time to a more Western style of capitalism?

[fj1200]

It works because no one person or small group is allowed to bring down an economy.

In general no one person or small group is allowed to bring down an economy in the US either. Unless you count the Federal Reserve or Congress/POTUS but I imagine that a dictatorial mindset could screw up China too.

[John V]

In general no one person or small group is allowed to bring down an economy in the US either. Unless you count the Federal Reserve or Congress/POTUS but I imagine that a dictatorial mindset could screw up China too.

Wall street speculators and banks did a good job. That wouldn't be allowed in China.

[Drummond]

Well, I guess the Telegraph must be right? Please don’t bother coming back to it, read it, believe it or not and if you disagree, go out into the big wide world and report back to us, not from some third hand account you read in the media or have googled. Liberals annoy me Drummond no use pretending otherwise, now go and write an essay opinion of somewhere or something you personally know about and have experienced yourself.

Interesting. All of a sudden, Internet media links have no value ?

The Daily Telegraph, John, as we will both know, is a newspaper of highly reputable standing in the UK. Since they've certainly been around for as long as we've both been alive, and, I somehow think that in all that time they've sent more than one single journalist to more than one Province .... they MIGHT have a greater collective understanding than you, as one single person with a single overall experience and single viewpoint, currently possess of your location and its people.

Your 'Liberals annoy me Drummond' comment isn't understood (i.e your intended context). I am not a 'liberal', nor any form of Left winger type. Between us, it is you who's shown a greater willingness to be critical of America, using the old Leftie argument of 'it's all about the oil' to argue against their military actions. Oh, and as we'll both be aware .. the Daily Telegraph is one of the UK's MORE Conservative newspapers ... so any suggestion of 'left wing bias' from them, just isn't credible.

[John V]

Interesting. All of a sudden, Internet media links have no value ?

The Daily Telegraph, John, as we will both know, is a newspaper of highly reputable standing in the UK. Since they've certainly been around for as long as we've both been alive, and, I somehow think that in all that time they've sent more than one single journalist to more than one Province .... they MIGHT have a greater collective understanding than you, as one single person with a single overall experience and single viewpoint, currently possess of your location and its people.

Your 'Liberals annoy me Drummond' comment isn't understood (i.e your intended context). I am not a 'liberal', nor any form of Left winger type. Between us, it is you who's shown a greater willingness to be critical of America, using the old Leftie argument of 'it's all about the oil' to argue against their military actions. Oh, and as we'll both be aware .. the Daily Telegraph is one of the UK's MORE Conservative newspapers ... so any suggestion of 'left wing bias' from them, just isn't credible.

Drummond, part of my job involves spotting nit-pickers, baiters and those with such a poor level of knowledge that they latch on to other posters but never put their own ideas out for others to see. The Telegraph is media, now if that, google and Wiki is where you get your info from it makes a poor showing. I have you down as a typical product of a UK leftie liberal, integrating yourself with the mainstream because you are unable to articulate anything yourself. I’m not critical of America, I’m critical of every country, its politicians and their policies – it’s what I do for a living.


Now, I’ll tell you what will impress me. Away you go and write a short 1000 word essay on any aspect of the political or social topic of your choice. Post it, no google, no quotes, (we can usually spot plagiarism), in your own words and using your own explanations. Now go away and impress me, I’ll give you an honest opinion and if I was wrong about you, I’ll admit it.

[fj1200]

Wall street speculators and banks did a good job. That wouldn't be allowed in China.

I disagree strongly with the former. Speculators (I don't like that word) more accurately, investors are an essential part of the functioning of free markets; it can be argued that the most speculative, the short sellers, were the ones who more accurately predicted the overvaluations in the US markets. Nevertheless I pin the blame on the Federal Reserve which allowed an excessive monetary supply to build up causing the problems in the first place.

To the latter I think to say that there is no speculation in China is incorrect if the stories I see about the Chinese property "bubble" and the built but essentially vacant cities are to be believed. The "speculation" just moves from the private sector in the US to the public sector in China. Bubbles and the responsibility for causing them is essentially the same in both countries, it's based at the government level and we both have governments, large ones unfortunately.

[John V]

I disagree strongly with the former. Speculators (I don't like that word) more accurately, investors are an essential part of the functioning of free markets; it can be argued that the most speculative, the short sellers, were the ones who more accurately predicted the overvaluations in the US markets. Nevertheless I pin the blame on the Federal Reserve which allowed an excessive monetary supply to build up causing the problems in the first place.

To the latter I think to say that there is no speculation in China is incorrect if the stories I see about the Chinese property "bubble" and the built but essentially vacant cities are to be believed. The "speculation" just moves from the private sector in the US to the public sector in China. Bubbles and the responsibility for causing them is essentially the same in both countries, it's based at the government level and we both have governments, large ones unfortunately.

Yet speculators are what they were, betting on the stock market and investing in shady deals and derivatives. I don’t know about the U.S. but I suspect it probably mirrors the UK. There is now a property bubble from private companies who started projects years ago and are now suffering, but my point is that the Chinese government didn’t join in by deregulation and turning a blind eye. Major UK companies started to lay off workers as early as 2005, even they knew what was going to happen. Tell the truth, we all did didn’t we, but we were too busy maxing out our credit cards and taking on mortgages to care.
The fallacy is that there was this great global crash and blame shifting, but no there wasn’t. It started in the west and the recession affects spread outwards because the peripheries lost their markets.

Regarding the ‘ghost cities’. They’re empty, but most of the properties have been sold as an investment; in a country where the government can look at your bank account, people buy properties, luxury cars and somehow have to spend the corruption profits.
As an aside I live near a ‘ghost city.’ On a walk through one of its many parks we came across a sort of huge ramp with a canopy leading down into the ground and unusually there was a sign in both English and Chinese that said, ‘Public shelter’. Now, this is in an area of no earthquakes or floods and away from major cities. Do they know something we don’t, or is that a conspiracy theory?

[fj1200]

Yet speculators are what they were, betting on the stock market and investing in shady deals and derivatives. I don’t know about the U.S. but I suspect it probably mirrors the UK. There is now a property bubble from private companies who started projects years ago and are now suffering, but my point is that the Chinese government didn’t join in by deregulation and turning a blind eye. Major UK companies started to lay off workers as early as 2005, even they knew what was going to happen. Tell the truth, we all did didn’t we, but we were too busy maxing out our credit cards and taking on mortgages to care.
The fallacy is that there was this great global crash and blame shifting, but no there wasn’t. It started in the west and the recession affects spread outwards because the peripheries lost their markets.

Regarding the ‘ghost cities’. They’re empty, but most of the properties have been sold as an investment; in a country where the government can look at your bank account, people buy properties, luxury cars and somehow have to spend the corruption profits.
As an aside I live near a ‘ghost city.’ On a walk through one of its many parks we came across a sort of huge ramp with a canopy leading down into the ground and unusually there was a sign in both English and Chinese that said, ‘Public shelter’. Now, this is in an area of no earthquakes or floods and away from major cities. Do they know something we don’t, or is that a conspiracy theory?

Everyone is a speculator so it's a loaded term. Nevertheless they were swimming in a pool overfilled by the Fed; they didn't cause the bubble they merely were raised by the water level. I do fear that the Fed has merely created a different bubble causing other assets to rise but we'll see.

So regarding the ghost cities it seems that they have been sold as speculation to speculators. If that bubble happens to burst then whose fault would it be? The speculators or the government who allowed a corruption profits bubble?