& BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2022-01-09 Su: First: Like me, Noah Smith is trying to become, not a China expert, but less China-ignorant. I would add Barry Naughton <https://gps.ucsd.edu/faculty-directory/barry-naughton.html> and Yingyi Qian <http://voxchina.org/show-4-41.html> to the first rank of those with accessible expertise on the Chinese economy today: Noah Smith: Six Books on China: ‘If you want true expertise on that country’s economy, I suggest checking out: Dan Wang <https://twitter.com/danwwang>, Damien Ma <https://twitter.com/damienics>, Shuli Ren <https://twitter.com/shuli_ren>, Liqian Ren <https://twitter.com/liqian_ren>, Victor Shih <https://twitter.com/vshih2>, and George Magnus <https://twitter.com/georgemagnus1>…. [But] I try to read…. So I thought I’d write some reviews of the most recent books I’ve read….
I always thought W. F. Buckley was creepy, but reading his defense of White domination of Blacks is just plain icky. These "enlightened whites" were the same folks who spat at, cursed at, and threatened little Black girls going to school; going to school is " equip[ping] the ["]Negro["]-...to cast an enlightened and responsible vote ." But apparently not to Buckley.
3000 years ago? Start of the Iron Age. This is actually the beginning of a lot of specific agricultural developments (rice cultivation in Japan, farming in Kenya)
It's a military turning point as the Iron Age starts.
We're not entirely sure what all the causes were, but 3000 years ago is this, so this is what was happening at that point:
This is the same time the Phoenician alphabet is developed.
Massive collapse of societies throughout the Old World, massive new technological developments... I don't think I know enough to pin down which ones are the cause of the end of the male-reproduction bottleneck, but it's quite clear that it's associated with cataclysmic societal change throughout the Old World.
> And, without good historical analogies to rest myself on, I confess that my own attempts to grasp the reality of China in my mind have all proven very inadequate
Just as there is no -- or really even any -- historical analogy to the American Oil Empire, there isn't a close historical analogy to the modernisation of China.
19th Century American industrialisation doesn't form a good example because the scale is all wrong and because the driving factors are central policy and investment from very large corporations who have no country but profitability.
Trying to analogise forced-draft industrialisation to suit specific needs -- whether the USSR, the social tooling to support the RN up to and through the Napoleonic Wars in the Pirate Kingdom, or the various national mobilisations of the World Wars -- doesn't work because those are all driven by external factors, rather than an internal policy goal.
I think it works pretty well to view it as a food, safety, and prosperity social contract absent ideological commitment to any particular means.
I may be able to explain what you missed about China.
"But, I have always believed, the closure of society that the maintenance of party domination requires will break the developmental model. Energies that would otherwise be entrepreneurial will be devoted to ascending within the party, controlling non-party elements, and bribing the party to leave your business alone. "
After Mao was discredited due to the Cultural Revolution -- after the post-Cultural-Revolution backlash -- this was not the dynamic for decades.
This dynamic only started taking hold again with Xi Jinping, who spent all his energy attacking intra-party rivals and rising to the top personally, while not actually being competent at anything else. (And despite this, the provincial governors are quite clearly more powerful than he is and have been openly ignoring his mandates on matters like energy policy!)
Under the previous committee governments, after Deng Xiaoping and before Xi weaseled his way into power, the party was organized firmly as a collaborative (no single supreme leader) which actively promoted science and was organized for the betterment of society. While Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao were technically at the top, they actively avoided personality cults and rejected one-man rule, and sought technical expertise on all matters.
It is perhaps best to think of the CCP during the 80s and 90s and 00s like the political machines which controlled many cities in the late 19th century US -- yes, they were party machines, yes, they were corrupt, but their focus was on civic betterment. They wanted to pave the roads and provide clean water and have fast trains and streetcars and build skyscrapers, and they *got it done*.
It was only when the graft levels started exceeding the productivity that this fell apart and people got mad -- Tammany Hall was popular until the Tweed Courthouse was five years over schedule, two times over budget, and not finished yet. When they stopped getting the job done, that's when people started tearing down the machines. Chicago's machine was more focused on getting-it-done than others and survived much longer.
It may not be obvious that a corrupt, patronage-centered, graft-oriented government can be a *well-run government*. But it can. If the party prioritizes getting things done for the mass of constituents first, then it's a stable dynamic. And this can last for generations, provided the cultural norm in the party is "The alderman keeps the voters happy and keeps the streetlights on". Which it was for the CCP for 30 years.
It's only when the party starts prioritizing cult-like loyalty -- or internal status fights over power positions -- ahead of *getting the job of city government done* that the bad dynamic takes hold. This change only really started happening in post-Deng China when Xi made his power grab.
Well I do hope you get to that mini-course and report back. With regard to China, I'll be interested to see how the following plays out: http://file770.com/the-world-in-worldcon/.
I always thought W. F. Buckley was creepy, but reading his defense of White domination of Blacks is just plain icky. These "enlightened whites" were the same folks who spat at, cursed at, and threatened little Black girls going to school; going to school is " equip[ping] the ["]Negro["]-...to cast an enlightened and responsible vote ." But apparently not to Buckley.
3000 years ago? Start of the Iron Age. This is actually the beginning of a lot of specific agricultural developments (rice cultivation in Japan, farming in Kenya)
It's a military turning point as the Iron Age starts.
We're not entirely sure what all the causes were, but 3000 years ago is this, so this is what was happening at that point:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse
The previous society disappeared.
This is the same time the Phoenician alphabet is developed.
Massive collapse of societies throughout the Old World, massive new technological developments... I don't think I know enough to pin down which ones are the cause of the end of the male-reproduction bottleneck, but it's quite clear that it's associated with cataclysmic societal change throughout the Old World.
> And, without good historical analogies to rest myself on, I confess that my own attempts to grasp the reality of China in my mind have all proven very inadequate
Just as there is no -- or really even any -- historical analogy to the American Oil Empire, there isn't a close historical analogy to the modernisation of China.
19th Century American industrialisation doesn't form a good example because the scale is all wrong and because the driving factors are central policy and investment from very large corporations who have no country but profitability.
Trying to analogise forced-draft industrialisation to suit specific needs -- whether the USSR, the social tooling to support the RN up to and through the Napoleonic Wars in the Pirate Kingdom, or the various national mobilisations of the World Wars -- doesn't work because those are all driven by external factors, rather than an internal policy goal.
I think it works pretty well to view it as a food, safety, and prosperity social contract absent ideological commitment to any particular means.
I may be able to explain what you missed about China.
"But, I have always believed, the closure of society that the maintenance of party domination requires will break the developmental model. Energies that would otherwise be entrepreneurial will be devoted to ascending within the party, controlling non-party elements, and bribing the party to leave your business alone. "
After Mao was discredited due to the Cultural Revolution -- after the post-Cultural-Revolution backlash -- this was not the dynamic for decades.
This dynamic only started taking hold again with Xi Jinping, who spent all his energy attacking intra-party rivals and rising to the top personally, while not actually being competent at anything else. (And despite this, the provincial governors are quite clearly more powerful than he is and have been openly ignoring his mandates on matters like energy policy!)
Under the previous committee governments, after Deng Xiaoping and before Xi weaseled his way into power, the party was organized firmly as a collaborative (no single supreme leader) which actively promoted science and was organized for the betterment of society. While Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao were technically at the top, they actively avoided personality cults and rejected one-man rule, and sought technical expertise on all matters.
It is perhaps best to think of the CCP during the 80s and 90s and 00s like the political machines which controlled many cities in the late 19th century US -- yes, they were party machines, yes, they were corrupt, but their focus was on civic betterment. They wanted to pave the roads and provide clean water and have fast trains and streetcars and build skyscrapers, and they *got it done*.
It was only when the graft levels started exceeding the productivity that this fell apart and people got mad -- Tammany Hall was popular until the Tweed Courthouse was five years over schedule, two times over budget, and not finished yet. When they stopped getting the job done, that's when people started tearing down the machines. Chicago's machine was more focused on getting-it-done than others and survived much longer.
It may not be obvious that a corrupt, patronage-centered, graft-oriented government can be a *well-run government*. But it can. If the party prioritizes getting things done for the mass of constituents first, then it's a stable dynamic. And this can last for generations, provided the cultural norm in the party is "The alderman keeps the voters happy and keeps the streetlights on". Which it was for the CCP for 30 years.
It's only when the party starts prioritizing cult-like loyalty -- or internal status fights over power positions -- ahead of *getting the job of city government done* that the bad dynamic takes hold. This change only really started happening in post-Deng China when Xi made his power grab.
Well I do hope you get to that mini-course and report back. With regard to China, I'll be interested to see how the following plays out: http://file770.com/the-world-in-worldcon/.