While talking about my new contract with the university, I had an interesting conversation with the Assistant Foreign Affairs Officer about my class, the international programs and China in general. Most of my regular readers here know about my “experimental class” last year. It was kind of edgy and progressive for a country like this. This year, it was cancelled and our School of International Studies was merged with the English Department. What they did was start a new International Student Exchange Curriculum over in another department. The last year has brought a lot of frustration as some in the school have worked to try and get my class back. In my discussion with the AFAO, she told me about the complicated process of getting things done. I I said that we were always told that the Chinese government was a dictatorship. If there was a person in charge who wanted my program, why can’t they just order it to be done and it gets done. She laughed; then said China hasn’t been that way for a long time. Then she went on to explain how China was about getting along, making compromises and building consensus – which can take a long time. That is something that I had come to realize last year, but it never really sank in. The last year and a half has been awesome, eye opening and educational. All I can say is, that if you still view China as a “communist dictatorship”, then you should perhaps read this book as a primer: amazon/China-Became-Capitalist-Coase-Ronald/dp/B00DJFUYJK/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1396002208&sr=8-3&keywords=how+china+became+capitalist Don’t let your politicians or others mislead you into thinking that China is your enemy, is some kind of threat to the American way of life, or is the cause of economic problems in the U.S. What you will learn, if you look into how things operate, China is not much different than the U.S. About 40-45% of the Chinese economy is based on “capitalism”. The rest is a combination of government owned enterprise and what in the U.S. is called “Public Private Partnership” (PPP). In China, PPP is called “Socialism with Chinese Aspects”. In the U.S., the government subsidizes just about everything: sugar, corn and most foods – either through direct subsidies to producers or “food stamps”. Even the most outspoken “conservatives” (like Congressmen Marlin Stutzman and Michelle Bachmann) got rich off of government subsidies. The Koch brothers, the single largest financiers of Tea Party candidates and events continue to have their business ventures funded by tax dollars and supported through subsidies. Without government bailouts and supports, the U.S. wouldn’t have an auto industry anymore. Without government bailouts, which were needed mainly because of the excessive corruption, Wall Street would have collapsed. Even the most out-spoken promoters of “free markets” turned to the government to socialize their losses and privatize their profits. Approximately 47% of the American people live on some form of direct government assistance in the form of social security, welfare, unemployment, disability, Medicaid/Medicare, etc. So what’s the difference? In China, although there are dozens of political parties, there is one party that rules the country through a process of compromise and consensus. In the U.S. , although there are over 100 political parties, there are only 2 that are allowed on most ballots. Then those 2 try to work out some compromise and reach a consensus. In places like Fort Wayne, there is literally one party – just like in China. That party is called the Downtown Improvement District. It is an unelected group of private investors who control the ballots of both parties and the election board. So what’s the difference there? The one ruling party here in the city of Baotou is less corrupt and not nearly as hypocritical. There in Fort Wayne, you have one mayoral candidate (Harper) who is supposed to be the “most conservative”. Yet, his approach to economic development is straight out of Deng Xaioping’s manual. Again, the difference is here they call it “Socialism with Chinese Aspects” where Harper calls it “Public Private Partnership”. One other difference is that “Mao” Harper doesn’t believe in bidding for contracts with the local government, preferring to award contracts to campaign contributors and cronies of the Downtown Improvement District. So, that about sums up my experiences in Baotou here in China and Fort Wayne back in the USA: Both equally “communist”/”capitalist”, with the Chinese being less corrupt.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 10:53:29 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015