China's Next Great Leap

With Hong Kong moving ahead of USA and London as a source for financial transactions, Communist Party initiatives may be all the more worth considering.

The fountain head for information on China State initiative information is the Communist Party.

As I mentioned last week, the Chinese want to clean up business practices, and to quote from an article:

BEIJING, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- China will strive to establish a social credit system nationwide to ensure sound and healthy social and economic development, China's State Council, or Cabinet, said Wednesday.

China needs to create an honest and faithful society through system improvement and enhanced education, as lack of credibility remains a prominent problem, according to a statement released after a State Council executive meeting chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao.

Within the party there are various schools of thought, and debate among various approved news outlets, similar to what we have in the USA with the right wing Washington Times and the left wing Washington Post, or the right wing WSJ editorial page and left wing WSJ front page, or Fax vs CNN.

There are two party organs to watch, the liberal China Daily and the more hard core People’s Daily.  Here is the article covered by both:

China Daily

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/usa/business/2011-10/20/content_13940066.htm

People's Daily

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90778/7621765.html

Now both articles are essentially the same, originating from Xinhua News Agancy, (New China News Agency). 

Here is a kind of follow-up article which are the parts of such campaigns... China Daily 

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-12/29/content_14349109.htm

And the People's Daily

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90780/7620945.html

This should give you a sense of the differences of the editorial outlook of the two organs. And here is a site that allows you to track back to the source, which can be interesting.

http://www.cpcchina.org/2011-10/19/content_13942951.htm

What we see is the Chinese Government recognizes a problem, which is the start of the campaign.  They are introducing solutions, such as developing and IPR regime, at the behest of Western governments who have made it a requirement to be a member of the WTO.  

But there are problems with IPR, one being China was wealthy and creative in the past without IPR, Hong Kong moves to #1 without IPR, and IPR is a western cultural artifact, and may not work in the Chinese milieu.

By these articles China is also announcing the means for measuring progress, and that is credit files on every Chinese citizen.  No doubt a credit file is a measure of something, but I am not sure what.  Perhaps the Chinese authorities are using the term in a way that makes sense to the Chinese, and it translates poorly.  I'd like to know about this.

So what we have is a recognition of a problem, a tentative and doubtful solution, and a means for measuring progress.  the authorities are exercising more options than those officially announced, and perhaps some treatment will emerge that is valid and reliable.

If IPR was the solution, then China would be flogging it more and looking for alternatives less.  When the articles say

Meanwhile, the government should enhance its own credibility by increasing transparency, and strengthen education on social honesty, it said.

it is a giveaway the authorities are still open to other methods, although specifically here the party is referring to its government.  Rating services like Yelp may do far more to improve matters than an IPR regime.

Of course, when searchign for the terms used by the communist party, you are likely to end up at a white house website.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment

Sigh.

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