This is a timely article, Mike. The Smithsonian channel has just come out with a terrific series on both the history and future of China. You don’t need to read too hard between the lines to see that China is currently making a bold bid to show that the American form of democratic government might not be the best form of rule for average citizens. In fact the more I see of modern China the more impressed I become.
Sure it has its fair share of graft, corruption and civil rights violation as any form of government conceived by humans would experience. But, still, it seems lightyears better than the political circus that American citizens are sujected to at present. Indeed, there is none of the nonsense as here where politicians feel compelled to appeal to voters worst instincts in order to gain power, or where one party is willing to throw the entire nation’s best interest under the bus in order to prevail. Nor is there a super rich cadres of folks sucking up the nation’s wealth for personal gain and leaving the human and physical infrastructures to decay.
While I’m no expert on Chinese governance it would seem that their one party system has developed its own internal set of checks and balance over the last thirty years. Moreover, not only does China revere its senior citizens, it also still retains rock solid faith in its technical professionals, science and truth. They have in effect produced a kind of asian social capitalism. It would be virtually impossible for an incompetent, lying Donald Trump type character to rise up to high office in China as it is currently structured.
The proof that they are doing something really good in China can be seen in the explosion of massive, relatively clean cities, a super fast rail network that is rapidly expanding to all parts of the country, a cutting edge method of effectively transmitting electrical power over great distances, while at once there is a rapidly growing middle class supported by middle class entertainment venues.
And yes pollution is still a huge problem in the cities, but here, too, a massive technical campaign with wind and solar is underway to overcome this one large fly in the social ointment. I hate to say it, but there is more “by and for the people” in todays China than in our own voter suppression America.
