Saturday, April 14, 2012

What the U.S. Can Learn from China, by Ann Lee - Book Review.

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Ms. Lee, who is a gifted college professor, chose 2012 for the publication of this text that might have been more timely two or so years ago, despite a cogent assessment of current economic conditions in P.R.C. as greatly improved and characterised by multiple commercial successes, especially in view of the economic health of China as illustrated in 2008 going forward.  Ms. Lee first speaks in this book about her many contacts in P.R.C., and through her experiences in academia and other pursuits, including her career in securities trading, that America develop more trust, integrity, better emphasis on education, re - write some of its more outlandish laws, re - build its infrastructure, focus on competitiveness - all this in realizing her future potential.  Further, Ms. Lee indicates China now has more of everything than most any world power at this point - more college grads, more billionaires, automobiles, and companies, in addition to its expanding G.D.P. that currently is at 8.225 trillion U.S. dollars. 
China is nonetheless still an emerging market country, and a source of cheap labour where people are flocking to the cities and where agriculture, the heart of the Cultural Revolution some time ago, has given way to other business activities.  Ms. Lee notes the dictates of the grossly - indebted western powers to the emerging markets have mostly been destructive due to things like an Oriental high regard for education and its emphasis on Confucian thought.  The western powers themselves apparently have financial troubles at this point due to immoral business practices, wealth inequalities, and inappropriate emphasis away from things like proper education / pedagogy and fair pay for a day's work.  There are no guarantees in the world of democracy, but America has a long - standing waning of people participating in democracy itself through exercising their right to vote, and a waning itself of values on education and equalities.  The U.S., apparently to Ms. Lee with respect to China is more like a plutocracy and / or an Alice in Wonderland.
As a response to the lack of success of the Cultural Revolution, the leadership in China has classically re - interpreted its lessons to place its legacy today on uniting the party to serve the Chinese people.  This has the effect of making Chinese leaders more proactive and a view in the Orient of democracy as a tainted system at present.  "Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics" in this text is a form of that system as helped by the state in calling for labour's drive to succeed and watching over the state and the enterprise, where decisions are centrally controlled and the people have a comprehensive business strategy including central planning.  The closest thing to the Five - year Plan in China in the U.S. is apparently named as the federal budget process, and this process apparently suffers from, as do some other areas of the U.S. economy according to Ms. Lee, "short - termism," or myopia - the hedge funds that ballooned during the 2000's and then later had difficulties staying afloat are used to illustrate this. 
Operating a business in the P.R.C. is referred to in the text as "Swimming with the Sharks," given the overall enormous success of the innovative enterprise zones and state - owned enterprises, that she incidentally suggests might be a good recipe for the U.S.  Other difficulties are suggested concerning the American economy, including the manipulative villains who run some financial centers, lobbies and so forth.  The commercial approach of China to Africa and Latin America is discussed as a successful "win - win" model of business development.  In this narrative, only Israel, U.K. and Canada are supposed to be friends with the U.S., not too rosy a picture.  The U.S. on the other hand is supposed to have excellent societal traits such as its sales people, a strong dollar, evident public cynicism, and the glamour of the media.  Ms. Lee suggests goals currently being pursued in P.R.C. in the area of macroeconomics including eradicating hunger, increasing the wages of the working class, and avoiding tragedies such as that currently in the Sudan.  She calls upon the growth models as preached by Soros, Rogoff, Summers, and Zoellick; including the consideration of a single global currency, and more effective use of S.D.R.'s.  She also acknowledges China's sketchy human rights record and Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiao bo, ominous military developments in both the U.S. and China, and other politics of ascendancy.  The text goes on to caution the reader about stagnation in China despite a bright and just future. 

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Why don't you just stick to "Turandot," the food and drink, and so on?

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With all that is being taught about the P.R.C. lately in schools, and with the books that have appeared about its style of capitalism as state - sponsored with heavy emphasis placed upon labour productivity and discipline, we as Americans and westerners might take a different approach to P.R.C. and its current role in the world, even as the second most powerful world economy, and without respect to revisionism.  Once one reads about the "Great Leap Forward," "Hundred Flowers," "Cultural Revolution," "Gang of Four," and even stories about the beginning of the last century in places like Bei jing and Shang hai and the role of these and other places, including Nan jing, up through and including the Chinese revolution that ended with the founding of the P.R.C. in 1949; it is impossible to skip over the way this nation treats its own people and the way it presents them to the public here in the West.  We could take a lesson from the former soviets on how to deal with our own commercial and business self - interest and the Chinese in reminding them of some of their bureaucratic shortcomings resulting in lives pilloried and wasted, many of them in building the society in China today as restrictive and productive as it apparently is as compared to the western world.

It might be possible, and this without professing a moral higher ground, with regard to the P.R.C.'s current market power and growing military and public financial interests and insinuations, to appreciate the culture of P.R.C. (not T'ai wan) as having led up to this for a long time, even from before pre - revolutionary days.  One comparison one might make between mainland China of old and today starts with the T'ai pings who can be likened to communist conservatives who showed a kind of Christianism in their belief system, however distorted that vision of Christ was.  The Chinese communists of today with their apparent assimilation of western methods and commercial ideas and practices appear as somewhat palatable followers of western methods, and agnostic at the most (again seemingly) with respect to their attitudes about western people that actually range from extreme xenophobia to ordinary Orientalism.  This is similar to the use of western ideas used by the T'ai pings to try to take over the country during the mid - 1800's, provoking a bloody civil war that threw a good part of the provinces and Bei jing back politically and commercially quite a ways, given the status of Hong Kong, Shang hai and other places, including the capitol after the civil war there had ended.

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It is entirely possible the primacy, however implied by commercial statistics and business methods and rules to date as developed by the Chinese for their own purposes, of the P.R.C. at this point should be called upon to fall back on its laurels of Oriental culture, arts and hospitality, including the overall national emphasis on social interactions and festivities and holidays.  What might prompt this?  When was the last time you valued a product as "Made in China" for anything other than its strictly financial economy?  Without respect to public finances that are needed by its satellites in Asia and the role P.R.C. currently plays in public finance, that country should continue to try defying its role in the world as a rich copy cat, for example, among others, but at the same time need accept that its style of economy pretends to and bears and depends upon being a witness to the detriment of the Occidental powers.  This is in the doctrine of its core ideology and the pronouncements of the country's founders, not so long passed, in Mao T'se toung and Zhou En lai, and others sacrificed on the internal hecatomb of that country starting with its, again internal uprisings at the end of the Qing dynasty.  In exemplary mainland Chinese fashion, the current leadership has made all attempts to get away from this through doubling and redoubling financial and commercial efforts as managed, and as expanding the political and military outreach of the country in a kind of indirect belligerency against all its liberals.  With respect to the legacy of the past, the political role of P.R.C. and its satellites at this point needs be re - examined with respect to the overall legitimacy of its demanding role in world affairs (as the "Crouching Tiger, ... .")