Posted on 09/06/2019 10:50:22 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
I'm discouraged by how many Chinese-Americans I talk to feel the same way, many of them former Hong Kong residents. Some of them even believe the Beijing line that Trump ordered the CIA to pay the violent protestors, and they will not listen to explanations of why it would not be in the interest of the USA but of Beijing to stage violent acts. All of these people will be voting Democrat next year, despite their personal financial gains under the current Administration. There is no reasoning with them.
The Confucian concept of "Respect your elders - your elders make up the state - therefore, the state is always right" predates Communism by millennia - and will apparently outlast it by millennia.
“Generally speaking these people are closer to the middle class “
I don’t know exactly who are the “these people” you are speaking of.
Regardless, my reading of the mainland Chinese on the whole, is “freedom” will always be second to money, being able to obtain money, and being able to spend money as they want. As long as the dictatorship does not ruin the economy, there will be no great Chinese political upheaval and the dictatorship will remain in place.
The people you were talking about! In their perception they earned it and not as if the government gave them anyway. Most received it as a result of business operations or as salary from business operators. It is not perceived as a government handout. And money in itself is freedom of sort.
“You left out the Pearl River Delta region and there by missed the entire point of what is happening.”
And what specific reference to the Pearl River Delta was I supposed to make, and what difference does it make to my general comments.
“What you describe is in fact not universal or still correct”
You’ll have to be more specific to be understood.
What I said was the largest single cohort of “middle class” in China is government employees/workers and yes they feel obliged to support the government and its policies.
The trick of a middle class is to have a majority of population as part of it. It is somehow about that in China and public sector is rather small in China if you think of it as a Communist country which of course it isn’t.
No less than 80% of Chinese employees work in private sector. That’s comparing to slightly over 40% in 1995.
Private business are not school kids in basements handcrafting spark plugs anymore. There are people coming to modern factories and getting relatively good paychecks. They have HR, sales departments, boards of directors, all private and paid accordingly.
The system is pretty much fascist in nature but it works a lot like a system you are used to.
Again, your theory is a theory, and their is no sign that it is not still a myth that economic liberalization will lead to political liberalization. That sold, and is still being sold as the rationale for “opening” and engagement with China. It is proving to be no more than a theory, and objectively a myth.
Do you know any functional republic which is not middle class? Let’s start at this point.
And then try to name a poor country which is a functional republic. Some say India but we all know it is a joke.
That means the theory you discard has merits. And there are volumes written to prove it.
I am telling it not to advocate ‘opening’ China. It is a big question does US need a free China as a rival.
Yet, you seem to think (in error in my view) that it is, simplistically a “middle class” that CREATES “republics”; as if the dictators in China are creating a middle class that will magically depose them. No proof.
It is not if the authorities would be able to maintain public sentiments in this case. I generally believe the Chinese government thinks along the same lines you do. They understood they need economic liberalization to get where they are now and also believe they would be able to ride the wave and maintain political control.
South Korea is a nice example. I am not sure about China but it seems like applicable to Russia.
It was a corrupt but non-communist yet authoritarian regime for quite some time but economic growth produced the Middle class which finally changed it. The country is now first world.
“It was a corrupt but non-communist yet authoritarian regime for quite some time but economic growth produced the Middle class which finally changed it. The country is now first world.”
LOL
Russia is a mobocracy, middle class or no middle class.
It has not changed. Its political culture is the same, with different titles and more a change of appearance.
It went from the imperial Czars to the Soviet Czars (they adopted the systems of the imperial czars) to the interregnum of Yeltzin to Putin’s mobocracy. Putin’s rise was predicted, predictable and expected. The only two organized groups with any organizational means when the Soviets fell was the KGB and the Russian mobs. The mobs greased the financial wheels and the KGB ran the cover for them. By the middle of the Yeltsin era 60% of Russian banking was in the hands of the mobsters. Putin is and was their KGB Prince. He still is. The rest is for show.
Its culture, not politics or economic theory, and culture is stronger than religion, politics or economics.
The cultures of both China and Russia are very deep and very embedded in the psyche of the people. Their present leaders do not need to resist their culture, merely navigate a route that hijacks it for themselves and occupies it as the previous rulers have.
Japan was feudal read mobocracy not that long ago. South Korea was a sort of mobocracy too.
Many things appear to have changed while under it all are less changed than they appear.
The video just came off a little "salesmany" to me. Like the amount of time they spent on Chinese M2. How many people could tell you what M2 is? Most people who say they know probably think it's some kind of BMW. And the 2 year time frame until the CCP collapses prediction. Those are oddly specific things to focus on.
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