China paid a huge price for its last Stalinist-style crushing of democratic dissent in 1989 and not just in its loss of world standing. Many of China's most brilliant minds voted (if they could) with their feet, to the west. Many are now returning and the Chinese government is welcoming them and planning incentives to maintain that homecoming.

They still struggle with the yoke of a communist central government (as witnessed by the central government's obsession with internet censorship) and state control - the western political disease that infected China - but that is slowly subsiding. They are a pragmatic people (with an aversion to political chaos) and its unlikely that a Tunisia / Egypt / Libya democratic revolution will happen there. The disease of communism will need to atrophy over time driven by economic affluence born of merit over privilege.

Soren wrote on Feb 28^th, 2011 at 10:40pm:

It would surprise you if you could live in China for a while and listen to ordinary conversations. Nobody likes the current autocracy. Things will have to change. Whenever you get a rich middle class, change happens. Hopefully it will be a gradual process of change.

It doesn't work quite like that - prosperity/middle class leading to freedom.

It always starts with a group/class that is already free and has a stake in society, through taxation and social institutions. Western liberal societies started with the aristocracy enforcing its freedom from arbitrary royal rule.

Nevertheless, a rich and free class is no guarantee for anything. A lot of people having a lot of money does not alter the way they relate to each other and the broader, lower classes around them. WHat is necessary is a fundamental (metaphysical) view that they are all equal at the most elemantaly level, even if not in their possessions. This is the fundamental metaphysical view that allow for the expansion of the political franchise from the aristocracy to the lesser nobility, the propertied commons (burgeoisie), the unpropertied commons (workers) and finally women. It is not in the economic interest of the already enfranchised to extend the franchise. It happens only when powerful moral (ie metaphysical) arguments are presented, often backed up be the force of arms. Ultimately, however, the moral argument must be compelling for a sustained expansion of the franchise.

But not every culture rests on the fundations of ultimate equality of all its members. There are societies where inequality is the foundation, where the entire moral code starts out with inequality. In such societies revolutions lead to changed management but not greater freedom for all. That's basically what has been happning pretty much everywhere to the east and south of the Bosphorus.

I took the kids to see the entombed warriors at the Gallery. It occured to me that China is the place for the mammoth undertaking that in the end adds up to world historical folly: the Great Wall, the 9000 terracotta warriors, the cultural revolution. Borges characterises the mindset interestingly by describing 'a certain Chinese Encyclopedia,' the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, in which it is written that animals are divided into:

those that belong to the Emperor,
embalmed ones,
those that are trained,
suckling pigs,
mermaids,
fabulous ones,
stray dogs,
those included in the present classification,
those that tremble as if they were mad,
innumerable ones,
those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,
others,
those that have just broken a flower vase,
those that from a long way off look like flies. "

Complete, refined and fabulous, yet odd and useless. (Or its use is not obviou to the Chinese, to be more historically accurate...)

Karnal wrote on Mar 1^st, 2011 at 10:38am:

An ode to filial angst.

NorthOfNorth wrote on Mar 1^st, 2011 at 9:19pm:



Well, they can aspire all they like but aspiring for prosperity is not the same as aspiring for freedom because the two are not interchangable.

Soren wrote on Mar 2^nd, 2011 at 9:33am:

Yet both (aspirations to prosperity and political freedom) owe their realisation to having the personal wherewithal to do so... and nothing empowers like eduction.

Soren wrote on Mar 1^st, 2011 at 6:18pm:


Very reminiscent of De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (Martianus Capella), but of course that was a real work as opposed to a fictitious one.