Book Reviews/China/Long

Re: [spiers] Book Reviews/China/Long

The answer is simple. Chinas communist economy is based on systematic plunder
not private property rights. The recent prosperity they enjoy now will soon
disappear unless they change their govt. Could it be westerners are encouraging
this with our trade defecits? Hahahahah
spiersegroups wrote:
When I first went to China in the mid-1970's, I was confused as to how Hong
Kong,
with no resources, could be so rich, and China, with massive resources, could be
so
poor. Nowhere was the contrast so stark as crossing the bridge at Lo Wu, where
we
had to disembark the Hong Kong train and stroll across the border to re-embark
on a
Chinese train to Canton. The Hong Kong border police were sharp, disciplined,
lively,
friendly and their cousins across the bridge, literally cousins, were sloppy,
unhappy,
sullen and dull. That difference ran through everything on both sides. How
could
this be? How could the China that gave the world Shang bronze, silk, paper,
tea,
amazing ceramics, stunning architecture, gunpowder, the stirrup, not to mention
literature and ten thousand other useful things, could end up so poor, so
uninventive?

I mention in my book that China has been under foreign control for some 500 of
the
last 1,000 years. I developed a hypothesis that under foreign domination, China
does
not thrive. Further, given Chinese history, there is nothing in Chinese culture
that
would bar China from assuming a position in the first rank among the nations
today.
Later, when I took a sabbatical from work to finish a bachelors degree in Asian
studies, I came across a professor who made the same point, except about the
Chinese under the Yuan Dynasty when poetry and art flourished. He proposed
since
all industry would benefit the Mongols, the Chinese elite retreated into the
reflective
arts, and the industrial arts re-emerged when the Ming tossed the Mongol
invaders
out.

But here is the problem with my hypothesis, China was poor, and is poor, but
clearly
Mao Tse Tung and all his associates were Chinese, so China clearly spent the
last
century under Chinese control.

Or not.

I just finished two books by Laszlo Ladany, a Hungarian lawyer, fluent in
Chinese,
who spent the 1940's in Shanghai and North China and moved to Hong Kong in 1949
eager to see how the new China would develop. He started China News Analysis, a
weekly summary of Chinese media and party documents. His reports were required
reading in all of the intelligence services around the world, if nothing else to
double
check what the home services were learning. He died in Hong Kong in 1990. The
first
book "Law and Legality in China" is a summary of Chinese law in history, and
then
covers specifically law under the Peoples Republic of China. In essence Ladany
demonstrates China had all power in the hands of the party, with party members
exempt from the law, and chaos otherwise. So, under Chinese communist rule,
things can be very bad indeed. Think power with no responsibility.

The next book was more to the point: The Communist Party of China and Marxism,
1921-1985: A Self Portrait. It is a strange title. But his success as a China
watcher
stems from his discipline of working strictly with documents from the Chinese
Communist Party, and reading their official publications. Hence the
"self-portrait,"
that is, Chinese Communism as the Chinese Communists tell it. Ladany also met
with
escapees, refugees, defectors and anyone else heading in or out of China (recall
China was closed to the world for at least 10 years, and had only one
ambassador, to
Egypt, during the cultural revolution). Ladany even consented to meet with me a
couple of times, but back then there were only a couple of hundred Americans let
in
China twice a year, and I was one of them.

As the Communist party tells it, Chiang Kai Shek and Mao were revolutionaries...
both looking for something to fill the vacuum of the crumbling Qing dynasty.
Chiang
choosing nationalism, and the founders of the Chinese Communist Party in the
20's,
Mao among many others, turned to the recently victorious communists in Russia
for a
plan of action. The degree to which the Chinese "communists" did not understand
what communism was, and the degree to which they slavishly followed Moscow is
astonishing to read. All this by page six! As the book progresses, communism in
China was a Russian operation, which begs the question, how could so few people,
under foreign direction, manage to take over a country? Ladany lays this out,
translating from the Chinese documents.

According to the communists, the nationalists were winning the war on the
communists at every step, forcing a grand retreat, or the Long March to Yan'an.
Lucky for the communists, the Japanese invaded, tying up the nationalists, and
Moscow directed the Chinese communists to ally with the nationalists in the
fight
against the Japanese. At the same time, the communists were to avoid any heavy
lifting in the struggle while doing everything they could to undermine the
nationalists, especially in public opinion. One result was after the US victory
over
Japan, US generals, short of the manpower necessary to garrison North China, had
to
rely on surrendered Japanese troops to maintain order. So in spite of the
victory, the
Chinese citizens were still facing Japanese bayonets and soldiers. The
communists
offered an alternative. The communists were given equal rank in international
negotiations, as the Soviets insisted. Although a history, the book proceeds
almost
like a novel, so read it for the details. But as I proceeded, I felt confident
that my
hypothesis was in fact a worthy theory. Chinese communism was merely a Eastern
European import, not Chinese.

I recall reading Mao's little red book in China, and being astonished at how
banal it
was. (This is not unique, everything I've ever read by any politician has since
proven
to be as bad). Through constant struggles, anyone with any education or wisdom
was
purged in China, so the farther along the communist progressed, the cruder and
more ignorant the leaders left standing. Forgive me for repeating myself, but
this is
what the communists say about themselves, after Deng Xiaoping gained power.
Recall the rehabilitation of many past leaders, such as Liu Shaoqi, and
criticism of
even Chairman Mao.

I took particular delight in Mao's campaign for More Faster Better Cheaper, an
effort
to bring material benefits to the Chinese peasant through communism. Now,
correct
me if I am wrong, but more faster better cheaper comes through free markets, or
given human nature, relatively free markets.

To review the argument in How Small Business Trades Worldwide, innovators
introduce new and better products, and eventually conservators "steal" the
product
and lower the cost and widen the access to the item, service or agricultural
produce,
through economies of scale. At the same time access (distribution) widens, the
quality improves and options emerge, giving more better cheaper faster.

Think telecommunications, travel, energy, distribution, and even beer. In the
last 3
decades we saw all `deregulated' to some extent, and in that measure in these
fields
we got more better cheaper faster.

This free market is not what democrats or republicans call free markets... when
they
say free market they mean policies that reward their friends and punish their
enemies
(each has a different set of friends and enemies, while there is a super class
that
benefits either way, not unlike the super bowl, where one loses and one wins,
but the
owners clean up regardless, making money off of taxpayer funded stadiums).

The free market is not `capitalism.' Capitalism is a term coined by the enemy
of free
markets, slick because it describes one function in the free market, and that is
capital
formation. Capitalism is to a free market as a carburetor is to a car:
important, but
not the thing. Free markets precede governments, let alone any "ism." Free
markets
are merely exchanges between neighbors, and cultures evolve in part to protect
(the
root of the word "legal") free trade from either coercion or fraud, or both.
Like
natural law, indeed as part of the natural order, free markets already are, and
how,
given the terrain, climate, resources and human genius the Chinese cultures grow
around what is natural in man, so it is different from what, say the Saxon
cultures
grow around what is natural in man.

When Chinese revolutionaries grasp something temporary and possibly the worst
experiment in human history and manage to impose it on China, the results were
starvation, murder, theft and every other conceivable disaster. (And to read
Ladany,
about the riskiest career choice a human could make in the last century was to
become a communist. No one slaughtered more communists than communists.) Not
only did China fail to get more better cheaper faster, they ran out of
toothbrushes.
Forget about vitamin E. The Chinese clinched it...in every attempt, socialism
bring
less, slower, more expensive and worse. You can say the Chinese had astragalus
and
other wonderful home remedies from traditional Chinese medicine, but they did
not
have those either since production and distribution of everything collapsed.

The book entertains the question as to whether China was ever communist at all,
or
simply in a constant conflict of a Trotskyite sort. In any event, constant
purges wiped
out the educated class, leaving the army in control of the country, with Mao on
top.
Well, of course, if communism had just one more chance, like Cambodia, it would
work, but it never does. (Of course pure communism works, but only in
monasteries
where a closed economy of people who have died to the world and prove their
dedication to Christ by submitting to a Prior. Not everyone is called to that
life.)

I watched the change from the Maoists being in control to Deng Xiaoping gaining
control, and I was under the impression that the chaos stopped with Deng. Not
so,
according again, to the communists. And obviously, in 1989, the Tien An Men
square
debacle showed the conflicts continue. No one can riot like the Chinese, and
films
come out of China regularly proving this art is gaining popularity. They do
have the
advantage that in a riot, the more the merrier, and in all things Chinese, a
large
crowd is assumed.

Back to my hypothesis: on page 453 of the latter book, there it is... Ye Qing,
who
studied in Paris with Zhou Enlai, and with the Communists in Moscow in the
1920's
left the communists in 1927 calling them "just more warlords who split the unity
of
the country." He said "communism was a European product, an imported foreign
commodity" His argument was the divided China presented a temptation the
Japanese
could not pass up. Because of the communists the Japanese invaded, and 50 years
of
misery ensued. Ye's argument from the 1920's was recalled in the 1980's because
precisely that question was being asked in China... how did communism ever help
China? To ask the question is to know the answer.

But one thing is clear. Can you name the leader of China? I had to look it
up. No
more all-powerful Chairman. Rational law is being instituted. Freedom is
growing
and economic opportunity with it. Anyone who travels to China can see it is
changing, growing fast. China now lends the United States money, to help us
out!

It is not so much that China has instituted reforms that are helping Chinese,
but that
the communists have so little control that the Chinese people are very free
indeed.
What we are seeing, are Chinese, relatively free of foreign influence, are
exhibiting
the creativity any nation would show, and succeeding quite well. As Chinese.

The communists tried to wipe out China's past, as the Soviets tried in Russia,
as Pol
Pot tried in Cambodia. It didn't work. There is a group in China, in charge,
called the
communist party. They are about as communist as I am. There is no Soviet Union
calling the shots (so to speak.) The Chinese are rebuilding China after a
disastrous
century, a century in which China's fate was largely decided by foreigners.
This next
century I think we'll see China reassume it's natural place in the world and
begin to
offer mankind the fruit of its genius. In the natural course of events, a China
that is
1/4 of the world's economy would be a very good thing, no more a threat than New
York is to California. Each getting rich benefits the other. Competition means
to
"strive with," competition is not combat.

India is reassuming its rightful place as well.

Magnetism belongs to nobody, and the Chinese are making great strides in
magnetic
levitation transportation, a cheap clean and fast way of moving things. Coupled
with
computer technology, they very well may leapfrog America in advanced
transportation
and distribution. Just as Jobs at Apple took GUI from Xerox and built a fortune
on it
while Xerox could not catch a profit, so China will take what naturally belongs
to
everybody, in their relative freedom and their natural genius as humans, (merely
Chinese in this instance), and profit.

USA cannot do mag lev for the simple reason too much of our economy is based on
subsidies to the auto and airline industry. In 30 years, taking a flight in USA
will be
as quaint (and as embarrassing) as riding a rickshaw in Hong Kong is today, when
Red Wind Transport can deliver you door-to-door 300 miles away in one hour flat,
providing any personal services you desire on the way. America will have this
last.

There is no doubt that Americans can outperform any other nation on earth, for
reasons I'll lay out some time soon, although currently we are mired in policies
that
are disastrous for the American people, if not the elites.

I expect the next thirty years are going to be far more interesting than the
last thirty,
depending on your work. I am convinced one ought not work for anyone else, lest
the next thirty years be uninteresting, or worse.








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