CHINA'S LIABILITY?

[Mike Barton]

Mike, the 'Nazis' were the government and members of the party. Those doing the invading and in due course being defeated were the Germans.

This is partly me being pedantic, but also me believing that referring to Germans as Nazis is another little step in the whitewashing of history, perpetuating the myth that the Germans were victims of the Nazis. This position will, of course, suit today's Germans, but it is a falsehood.

A not unreasonable point, although I made it in the context that the people who usually credit Stalin's government, do so on the basis that he beat "the Nazis".

But yeah, I take aboard what you say.

 

[gaijin]

Japan has a population a tenth the size of China, the others even less so.

And there is the issue

Anybody who believes that a country the size of China, particularly one that is still mired in poverty outside of the cities, can just transition to democracy is delusional. It would create problems on a global scale.

Whilst I doubt that the current regime plans on changing this century, at least, it really is the best option for the foreseeable future.

 

[retread2]

A not unreasonable point, although I made it in the context that the people who usually credit Stalin's government, do so on the basis that he beat "the Nazis".

But yeah, I take aboard what you say.

Thanks Mike. Beating the Nazis alone would have been easy. It was the several million Germans that made life difficult.

 

[smartascarrots]

The Chinese Communist Party has brought China out of poverty largely by abandoning all the batshit crazy Communist policies that left post-war China mired in poverty while the rest of East Asia caught up with and surpassed the rest of the world economically.

The batshit craziness was limited to about 10-15 years of the later Mao era (20, if you include their ebb). The PRC has tended towards an almost social-democratic approach for most of its existence, with only major strategic industries being state-controlled. That's much the same approach as was used in Taiwan and Korea and arguably Japan too although there the social networks controlling things were far more informal than the CCP.

What kept China mired in poverty were a) that it's been fighting civil wars almost continuously for 50-odd years up to 1949, with the added embuggerance of hugley extractive foreign concessions and the unbelievably destructive Japanese war; and b) that it's just unimaginably huge and wealth can be diluted remarkably fast across such a population.

 

[Mike Barton]

The batshit craziness was limited to about 10-15 years of the later Mao era (20, if you include their ebb). The PRC has tended towards an almost social-democratic approach for most of its existence, with only major strategic industries being state-controlled. That's much the same approach as was used in Taiwan and Korea and arguably Japan too although there the social networks controlling things were far more informal than the CCP.

What kept China mired in poverty were a) that it's been fighting civil wars almost continuously for 50-odd years up to 1949, with the added embuggerance of hugley extractive foreign concessions and the unbelievably destructive Japanese war; and b) that it's just unimaginably huge and wealth can be diluted remarkably fast across such a population.

The reasons you cite that kept China in poverty (Japanese war, civil war etc) could just as equally apply to Taiwan and South Korea.

You say that these countries don't count because they are small and China is large but that is a straw man argument, the relative size is irrelevant. South Korea pursued western style capitalism and quasi-democracy (up to a point, a big dose of cronyism and military rule helped along the way), North Korea pursued Maoist policies, one of those is a basket case where the population that isn't confined to the gulag eats grass the other is a fantastically developed world-beating economy. Size matters not a whit.

Sure the absolutely batshit policies only lasted 20 years (albeit the 20 most crucial years of the post-war East Asian reconstruction), but the fact is China and the Communist Party continued its Brezhnev-like policies well into the 1980s.

China is the phenomenal success it is today, and I give full credit to the Chinese in their success and move up to their rightful status in the world, in spite of the Chinese Communist Party, not because of it. Under the Nationalists or any non-CCP government it would probably have reached World Number One Superpower status in the 1970s.

 

[gaijin]

You say that these countries don't count because they are small and China is large but that is a straw man argument, the relative size is irrelevant.

No, it isn't. It is, literally, the most salient point.

 

[smartascarrots]

No, we need to feed a decades long, low-level terrorist war that takes up much of the CCP's leadership's time, money, and Chinese blood.

I believe we tried that in the same area with the Soviets. A bit of a pyrrhic victory that turned out to be.

 

[smartascarrots]

The reasons you cite that kept China in poverty (Japanese war, civil war etc) could just as equally apply to Taiwan and South Korea.

Not really, no. Taiwan and Korea were Japanese colonies, not Japanese targets. The war was not fought in their most productive lands, nor was Japan systematically destroying their industry, agriculture and transportation capabilities in the course of prosecuting their war.

What parallel could be drawn between the three is that they all formed 'developmental states' under pretty nasty dictatorships and this allowed them to build their economy without any of the distractions of democracy.

In the PRC, initial economic development focussed on growing heavy industry and the post-war recovery was pretty standard industrialising fare until they ran up against a workforce shortage in the Late 40s/early 50s - that was when the batshit policies kicked in and they tried to run a Lewis development model at the same time as overhauling their agricultural sector. Encouraging the most effective manpower to the cities while simultaneously experimenting with unproven crop husbandry techniques using the sick, lame and lazy... well, you don't need to be Malthus to predict how that would turn out.

 

[Mike Barton]

No, it isn't. It is, literally, the most salient point.

I really don't see how size matters in this context, either a socio-economic policy works or it doesn't. South Korea versus North Korea, their two respective developmental paths had absolutely nothing to do with size and everything to do with their government's policies.

Japan was not an insignificant country, it's economic development had nothing to do with its size. If size was a detriment to economic development then Canada and the United States would be basket cases.

And anyway, China's subsequent boom has actually only affected a relatively small sector of China, vast areas of the interior remain in pretty relative poverty. So size wasn't the determinant factor but rather the policy pursued and frankly the policies pursued by the CCP were appalling and destructive to development for decades.

When the Party wised up and abandoned all their previous nonsense, the country entered a period of immense growth, growth that could have been achieved decades earlier if someone other than the Communists had been in charge. Size was the least relevant factor.

 

[Mike Barton]

Not really, no. Taiwan and Korea were Japanese colonies, not Japanese targets. The war was not fought in their most productive lands, nor was Japan systematically destroying their industry, agriculture and transportation capabilities in the course of prosecuting their war.

What parallel could be drawn between the three is that they all formed 'developmental states' under pretty nasty dictatorships and this allowed them to build their economy without any of the distractions of democracy.

In the PRC, initial economic development focussed on growing heavy industry and the post-war recovery was pretty standard industrialising fare until they ran up against a workforce shortage in the Late 40s/early 50s - that was when the batshit policies kicked in and they tried to run a Lewis development model at the same time as overhauling their agricultural sector. Encouraging the most effective manpower to the cities while simultaneously experimenting with unproven crop husbandry techniques using the sick, lame and lazy... well, you don't need to be Malthus to predict how that would turn out.

So you're saying South Korea in the 1950s wasn't a devastated wasteland? Compared to most of China at the time South Korea was one big smoking crater.

And yet from that basis South Korea built a world-beating economy based on ship building, steel making and latterly electronics, while China under the Communists engaged in suicidal ideological navel-gazing leading to mass slaughter and famine and could barely produce cast iron cooking stoves.

I am sorry, it is quite simply undeniable that the greatest factor holding back China from achieving its rightful place in the world for most of the second half of the 20th century was the Chinese Communist Party. To then give it credit for realising how imbecilic it had been for the previous 40 odd years is stretching the historical record to breaking point.

 

[smartascarrots]

South Korea versus North Korea, their two respective developmental paths had absolutely nothing to do with size and everything to do with their government's policies.

As Adam Smith would doubtless put it, the natural endowments of the two would make a definitive difference on their development paths. The North has lots of barren land and horrifically cold winters (it is effectively a Siberian peninsula, after all) , while the South has the bulk of the arable land.

About the only thing the North had going for it initially was its mineral resources and the scope for hydroelectricity generation.

 

[smartascarrots]

And yet from that basis South Korea built a world-beating economy based on ship building, steel making and latterly electronics, while China under the Communists engaged in suicidal ideological navel-gazing leading to mass slaughter and famine and could barely produce cast iron cooking stoves.

With massive aid and investment from its allies, ROK managed to work miracles but let's not fool ourselves that it did so on its own. It also started from a relatively high level of industrialisation by Asian standards, having been a factory for the Japanese war effort in China.

The PRC, on the other hand, had virtually nothing west of the coastal strip that wasn't peasant-agrarian. They lost most of their heavy industrial capacity in the North East to the Nationalists' scorched earth policy and Soviet looting, then had to pay almost immediately for the Korean War and support to the Vietnamese nationalists in their war against the French and Americans.

Incidentally, the PRC's GDP during the Great Leap Forward showed growth consistently over 5%, which would tend to refute your theory that Communists can't spur economic growth - of course they can, especially if the start point is so low. All they have to do is get things to work somewhat and hey presto.

 

[LeoRoverman]

you don't need to be Malthus to predict how that would turn out.

Excuse one’s ignorance, I know there was famine, didn’t that lead to fears of over population and one child policy?

 

[smartascarrots]

Excuse one’s ignorance, I know there was famine, didn’t that lead to fears of over population and one child policy?

Not at that point, no. The One-Child Policy was a product of extrapolations in the mid-1970s which showed that the population would outstrip the country's ability to feed it, let alone improve the standard of living. In the 1950s, Mao was still banking on surviving a nuclear war with the US through having more people than they could nuke.

The GLF was essential an attempt to force an industrial revolution by creating a surplus of urban labour and improving agricultural efficiency to feed them. The trouble was, nobody realised the extent to which the rural poor wanted to **** off as far away from the countryside as possible and earn a living indoors, so as soon as the government relaxed the household registration (hukou) rules the young and healthy buggered off at Warp Factor 9.

This left the very old, the very young, the very badly educated and the very crippled as the largest demographics and opened the doors to some utter looney-tunes ideas about how to make up the productivity gap. Add in a brutally coercive political system which demanded adequate food supplies for the cities and the rural folks were pretty much at the mercy of whether their local party heads had a conscience or not. Yang Jisheng's Tombstone is one of the finest works on the subject, although not one to read if you have any illusions about your fellow man.

It's also one of the reasons why the government has been so reluctant to carry out wholesale reform of the hukou system to this day. They learned what could happen.

 

[SkippedOnce]

How long until they disappear for some 're-education'?

'Chinese doctors in Wuhan have been secretly filmed admitting that they knew how serious coronavirus was at the start of the outbreak but that they were ordered to lie by authorities.

'The damning testimony, which adds to the growing evidence that the Chinese Communist Party intentionally misled the global community in the early stages of the pandemic, is contained in a new documentary by UK broadcaster ITV called Outbreak: The Virus That Shook The World.

'China informed the World Health Organisation (WHO) of the first 27 cases of COVID-19 on December 31, 2019, but did not report any deaths until mid-January – and even then were insisting there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission.

'But senior medical professionals in Wuhan, filmed by a citizen journalist, say they knew about deaths as early as December and that it was clear the virus was spreading between people.

“We all felt there shouldn’t have been any doubt about human-to-human transmission,” one doctor said in the footage, broadcast on Tuesday night UK time. “Actually, at the end of December or beginning of January, the relative of someone I know died of this virus. Many of those living with him were also infected including people I know.”

'Another doctor said: “We knew the virus transmitted from human to human, but when we attended a hospital meeting we were told not to speak out. Provincial government leaders told the hospitals not to tell the truth.”

Wuhan doctors told to lie about COVID severity in secretly filmed video (news.com.au)

 

[PhotEx]

And he said this with a straight face

@Banker @Trackpen - Thoughts?

Xi Jinping warns against new Cold War in Davos speech

 

[LeoRoverman]

Isn’t it amazing that Beeb has inside information, that is common, or relatively so, knowledge. This will really undermine the Boris Grr lobby.

 

[lacrabat]

And he said this with a straight face

@Banker @Trackpen - Thoughts?

Xi Jinping warns against new Cold War in Davos speech

Time to dust off the Vickers MMG's.......

 

[Yokel]

Paranoid thought for the day:

1. Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran are in cahoots, repress their own populations, and are a sort of alliance against the rules based international system.

2. All three have been known to engage in disinformation, political interference, and coercion by force.

3. COVID-19 has caused real problems for NATO in the Euro Atlantic theatre and for the Coalition Maritime Forces in the Middle East.

Bit of a gift horse for them... Vlad, Xi, and the Iranian leadership do not care too much if thousands of their own people die.

 

[smartascarrots]

I can't speak for Moscow or Teheran, but Beijing are bang onside with a rules-based international order - they just want to replace the ones currently making the rules.