It's just a damn shame how the grand canyon wide spectrum of the free press cannot get it right while 80 years of Communist indoctrination and government press has no effect on Chinese opinion of China and the world. We all know how it just takes the Chinese six and a half minutes to read about Custer, the underground railroad, and Watergate to become experts on the US but any American doesn't know anything about China until he's lived there for 20 years. Americans openly criticize every aspect of our government and society despite the fact that we have an incredible amount of freedom and wealth but you guys pay total lip service to what goes on in your country and then try to wash it away with bs nationalism and claims of bias. An ancient people that can't even look in the mirror, grow up already. I also love the whole authoritarianism is better than freedom argument. Like you'd rather give up your child to be raised by an expert than raise him yourself because the expert is more qualified and has more experience in being a parent. That's an awesome argument. How long is it going take you all to figure that one out? It's like a modern Chinese plantation situation. The house slave is more privileged than the field slave and as a result he's more faithful to his master because he has more to lose in fighting for his freedom. How do you say Uncle Tom in Chinese?
I think you are making a distinction with little difference. The industrial revolution wasn't something that happened over a few years but something that occured over about a Century in a half. Yes there were the beginnings of the industrialization as early as the 17th Century but most of the progress was from the late 18th to early 20th centuries. Also if you noted in my earlier post many of the reforms to the English government had started in the 17th Century so the English Monarchy's grip on power was already being loosed even back to when you are saying industrialization begin. Industrial and economic reform went hand in hand with political reform and through much of Europe. Again I would say you need to study US History more or clarify your terms. The US by WWI was already one of the major industrial powers. Because of the size of the US there still was a significant portion of the country that was agrarian but in just the Northeast and Great Lakes region in the later half of the 19th Century you had an industrialized populace comparable to a lot of European Countries along with states with an industrial base comparable in size to Europe. The US didn't industrialize after the two World Wars. The two World Wars were what allowed the US to become a superpower surpassing all of Europe in industrial output. The US was fully industrialized prior to then. True they are different but they are related in terms of what sort of control is exerted by a central authority. While yes the CCP does maintain authoritarian political control its power is still limited by the need to have economic liberalization. While it might not have free elections it has to give up powers in regard to economic planning and regulating market forces so its power is limited, voluntarily so. I will agree that the PRC has and is doing better than India with economic development but keep in mind that India's economy didn't start booming until the Congress party was forced to give up authoritarian power. So whilel India hasn't caught up to the PRC it shows that industrial development certainly isn't dependent on Authoritarian government in this case its the opposite. Except many of those infrastructure developments have also harmed the PRC's development by being wasteful, obsolete and/or cumbersome in some other way. For example I saw a show about the Trans Siberian Railroad and it pointed out that one problem with it was that the trains had to change carriages when it got to the Chinese border because the train track size in the PRC didn't follow an international standard since it was built during the GLF and Mao was paranoid that foreign powers could use Chinese train tracks to invade. Fair enough and I'm sure you love your father but it does sound like you didn't agree with many of his decisions and to me that would seem to explain your attitude.
Once again, I don't think we are on the same page here. You seem to be fixated on the some 50 years prior to and after the Victorian Era. By that time though, the authoritarian system had already induced rapid urbanization, the rise of cities vis-a-vis rural areas. People are no longer tending their tiny plots of land. The labour force available at the disposal of industrialists had never been greater. The Industrial Revolution was the logical next step. Even then, as you yourself had admitted, democracy was limited. How about we rewind another 50 to 100 years hmmmm? When the serfs were uprooted from their lands. I think it's rather hypocritical to state that industrialization occurred in a democracy (especially considering Britain had already began industrializing prior to then) when all conditions were set under authoritarian times. Very well, I will clarify. Two things. One, in your last post, I thought it was interesting that you brought up the American Civil War. Want to hear my take on it? First of all, you'd notice that the country was kept together through an authoritarian decision, namely, the South does not form a separate nation. No self-determination. Then of course, the cause of the war. Keeping the country together obviously was the greatest goal, but there also was the romantisized "free man" objective. But if you look closely, the North was relatively industrialized, but only compared to the South. It was far more urbanized and had much more labour, but could not produce the quality, nor the cost, to export to the South. The South was by contrast, more thinly populated, agrarian and resource based economy. It was perfectly content to export resources (acting more or less like a colony) to Europe while getting manufactured goods in return, with slave labour doing a lot of the heavy lifting. In order to create a market for itself, the North had to destroy this arrangement, and what better way to do that than through 1) An invasion 2) Free the slaves so those labourers would not be available again? Europe of course, was decidedly against it. So my question to you is, would this have been as possible under a non-authoritarian self-determination setting? And secondly, regarding the US' industrialization level. My friend, everything in this world is relative. The US was inustrialized to some degree, but certainly not to most of the European powers at the time. But if the term irks you so, why don't we change the name to the economy "taking off" instead. Once again, I see you blending the line between the economic system and the political system. Let me state again, though eonomics is one of the most important political issues, economics and politics are inherently, separate topics. They are two different spectrums, two different sliders. China was an authoritarian socialist system while it is an authoritarian market economy system. By comparison the US is a democratic market economy system. By another comparison, Canada and Scandenavia are democratic slightly more socialist systems. At the moment, Canada and Scandenavian countries are in many ways (such as social security), more socialist than China, but more market oriented in other ways (such as currency). Complicated, but you see how the various nations fill the various points on the two spectrum? Just because a country is authoritarian need not mean that there is no economic libralization. The only case in which that might happen is if it is a totalitarian system, which hardly ever (if ever) happens. I don't really know what you are trying to say. Once again, I think you are going back to the argument of "perfect democracy." And like I said, in a perfect world, a lot of things would go right. What it essentially sound like you are saying is that if power corrupts in an authoritarian system, it is serve them right but if it occurs in a democracy, it isn't a perfect democracy. So while we are on hypotheticals, IF an authoritarian system gets perfect noble capable leaders... Instead, it is much more reasonable, and realistic, to accept the fact that all systems and susceptible to... weakness. But if not, alright, is India a true democracy right now? Is so then why is it growing at a pace that we should be asking when China would go from tripling India's economy to quadrupling it? Why are the racial/religious/social issues still rampant? And if it is not a true democracy, when will it get one? So um, waste would be eliminated under a democratic system? I'm no fan of Mao's economic policies, but at least in terms of infrastructural developments, his effect was a net positive one. Likewise, I am certain Mao made mistakes, no doubt exacerbated by his lack of economic understanding, but another one trying to predict the future AND shape the future of a country would just as likely make a mistake, regardless of the system. And the gauze size on rail tracks? That makes perfect sense. From the GLF to the 90's, cross border trade with the former Soviet Union was negligible, but the threat of an invasion was very real. In any case I think you are not aware, the exact same thing occurred in Shanxi, with the warlord Yan Xishan, and of course, in pretty much all of Europe. When Germany (or Prussia) invaded France, it had to unload its troops off a German train and onto a French one. When the Soviet Union invaded Germany... So let's stop blaming it on simple Mao paranoia hmmm? Did you notice that the post Cultural Revolution generations are much more pragmatic (and in many cases, scumbags) compared to the prior generations?
speaking of accountability. has the US or any of its allies accepted responsibility for invading Iraq under conveniently fabricated claim of WMD ?
Is it worth my time to answer your post. You are just repeating what Sammy have said. It's getting old. You should go look at the mirror, see if Sammy looking back at you. :grin:
Let me first say I don't agree with MFW. Living in Beijing for two years I certainly want the government to do better. But I want to show my support for him being willing to share stories with us and willing to argue with substance. We might learn something. On the other hand things like KingCheetah's one liners and Decard's complaints are pretty useless and a completely waste of time.
Actually I'm not fixated on the 50 years prior to the Victorian era since I cited British political reforms more than a 100 years prior to the Victorian era. I agree that democracy was limited though in that time but granted that no real democracy existed at that time those were some profound reforms. For that matter if authoritarianism was so key to industrialization why didn't all those other authoritarian countries in Europe, or throughout the World, industrialize then too? Spain, France, Austria were all great European powers but lagged behind in industrial development compared to Britain at that time when as it happens Britain was also making political reforms to reduce the power of the Monarch and grant rights to its citizens. First off the Civil War wasn't very much of an authoritarian decision in regard to that the majority of the country supported it and the party in power was elected under a free election and even during the war ran for office too. Granted it wasn't a purely democratic decision but on the scale of democracy versus authoritarianism it was closer to democracy. Also you are missing the fact that the North had industrialized under a democratic system so authoritarianism had nothing to do with that. In regard to your question whether the South cound idustrialize without authoritarianism I will point out that first the South wasn't completely unindustrial as place like Richmond, VA were major manufacturing centers. While yes I will agree in regards to the South the Civil War was an act of authoritarianism the net result was greater democracy. In contrast the previous more authoritarian regime hampered industrial development by making it economically possible to maintain an agrarian system since a large portion of the labor force couldn't leave the land. In fact the Civil War and the end of slavery had a profound affect on industrialization overally since it allowed many former slaves to move on their own accord to industrial centers like Chicago and Detroit. Again I would say you should study history more. The US before WWI was already considered one of the major industrial powers. It wasn't a superpower but they latter half of the 19th C. was on par with Britian and others. Consider again that many of the breakthroughs of the industrial revolution including electrification, the airplane, the assembly line were all developed in the US prior to WWII and that the US GDP at the turn of the 19th Century had a per capita income exceeding most European nations. First off if you are seperating the systems then you really can't say that an authoritarian political system supports industrialization when industiralization is largely a function of economic development. While yes an authoritarian system can order a lot of factories to be built the economy to support continued industrialization won't happen without subsequent economic development. If you are saying that these things really don't have that much to do with each other you are undermining your own argument. I feel though that there is a relationship to these two has political control cannot be divorced from economic control and there is a relationship. I will agree with you though that there are no such things as pure systems but in most cases economic liberalization has gone with political. One may follow the other countries like Japan, SK, and ROC political liberalization occured after economic. This is the basic problem with authoritarian systems is that if the leadership isn't good then it is very difficult to change that leadership. While democracy has problems at leaderhip there still is the ability to vote out the bad leadership. You are missing the point. It isn't that India is doing better than the PRC but that its great economic [g]growth[/b] didn't really happen until after it became more democratic. To the credit of the PRC its authoritarian leaders were better than India so in the case of India the COngress party hampered economic development. Deng recognized that the PRC needed economic liberalization long before India did. At them same time though consider what if Mao had realized the PRC needed economic liberalization back in the 1960's where the PRC might be now. I'm not sure how much of a net positive the infrastructure udner the GLF was since much of it was very inefficient and needed to be dismantled under current development. Further the economic dislocation with having to dismantle that old industry is a drag on the PRC's economy. Yes its hard to make predictions about the future but that is why centrally planned economies and authoritarian systems have problems since they are trying to not just control things like political and economic developments but trying to predict them. Good point. A bit of self deprecation?
