How China's Leaders Steer a Massive Nation

[xchrom]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/putting-the-plan-into-action-how-china-s-leaders-steer-a-massive-nation-a-843593.html


The entrance to the Forbidden City in Beijing: Europe, immersed in both a debt crisis and a crisis of meaning, is not only mesmerized by Asia's rising powers, but is also asking itself how governing works in these countries. China's economic success also raises another, more outrageous question: Is it possible for an undemocratic government to be a good one?

Western democracies consider themselves to be efficient, farsighted and just -- in other words, prime examples of "good governance." But in recent years, the euro and debt crises, along with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan , have shattered faith in the reliability of Western institutions. Disconcerted Europeans are casting a worried eye at newly industrialized nations like China and Brazil . Can the West learn something from countries that for so long sought its advice? This is part IV in a four-part series looking at how the world is governed today. To read the introduction, click here. For part I, on Brazil , click here. For part II, on the United States , click here. For part III, on Denmark, click here.

When Duan Tingzhi dreams, he sees a future filled with fountains. He dreams of water shooting into the air throughout his new city, to the delight of its residents. According to the newspaper, one day there will be one thousand fountains in the Lanzhou New Area, a region north of the old city of Lanzhou.
For now, Duan sees only sheep, sheep with dirty coats, as gray as the skies above them. The sheep walk across Duan's wonderful, multi-lane, freshly asphalted street, and they're disruptive. They remind Duan, the man with the building authority, of just how far away the container terminals, the football stadiums, the sea and indeed the future still are from northwestern China, and how much work it will take to get there. Duan is so busy that he even sleeps in the New Area during the week, and he no longer has time for his family or for journalists.

And yet it isn't often that someone shows an interest in Gansu Province, a relatively poor province of mountains and deserts, and so Duan leans across the conference table and speaks as if he were trying to conjure up the future. The province has "great potential," he says, slicing through the air with the edge of his hand to punctuate his arguments. First, he says, everything is already there: airports, railways and highways. Second, there is "unlimited electricity." And third, the province has rich mineral resources, including coal, oil and nickel. Of course, he adds, it also has plenty of workers.

[JNelson6563]

1. From what I've read this is a very bad idea.

China seems to enjoy it's economic growth by using the people like the endless resource that they are there.

I know when I have an endless supply of something I don't worry about it and use with reckless abandon. When I don't have a whole lot of something it is treated much differently.

Julie

[Igel]

3. Every system has a strength.

Even dictatorship. Get a really good, wise dictator with a bunch of good, wise lackeys and they can move mountains. The problem is that the people who are good and wise tend not to be dictators. Autocracy is a mixed bag, with mostly average but power-hungry people rising above their level of competence.

Democracy is good in that it knocks out the crappiest and cruellest most of the time, but it also weeds out the best and brightest. It tends to put those who are a bit above average, but not too far above average, in the driver's seat. And then it puts a governor on the gas pedal. It has the same problem as dictatorship, though: The people who run for high office also tend to be power hungry. Those with the strongest convictions that they are the man with the right ideas for the time are among the worst, because then all their opponents don't just represent diversity of thought but are either wrong (usually intentionally wrong) or just evil, depending on how you want to express pretty much the same idea. To the extent they can convert a democracy into a dictatorship, they do.

The objection will be that many of those seeking power do it for altruistic reasons. Few dictators just want power: Those who do are among the most tractable. Stay out of their way and don't challenge their power-grabbing and you're probably safe. Those who are dictators for altruism or any other -ism are those who insist not just on power and outward obedience but also on right-thinking. If you're on their hit list it's hard to assuage them. And since what they want seldom happens, people being what they are, their hit list grows and grows.

[rug]

2. It's democratic centralism without the democracy.

It doesn't work when the proletariat is replaced with the plutocracy.