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Why Do China's Reforms All Fail?
Submitted by Yang Hengjun via The Diplomat,
Compared with the “revolutions” (peasant uprisings, armed rebellions, palace coups, etc.) that toppled dynasties in Chinese history, the goal of “reform” has been the exact opposite: to perpetuate the dynasty. Ordinary people have roughly the same impression of “revolution” and “reform” as instruments of “change.” But actually, in the 2000-year history of China, there has been one purpose for reform: avoiding change. Reform is used to keep the existing system in place. In Chinese history, “reform” and “revolution” alternated over time. Revolutions often succeeded, and so China became the country with the most peasant uprisings and dynastic changes in the world. But few reforms were successful.
From a modern perspective, almost all reforms in Chinese history can be classified as “failures”: from Shang Yang’s reforms in the state of Qin to the rule of Emperors Wen and Jing in the Han dynasty; from Wang Mang seizing power to Wang Anshi’s Song dynasty reforms; from the Ming and Qing dynasty decision to shut China off from foreign contact to the Westernization movement during the late Qing… None of these movements can really be called successful. Worse, the reformers themselves generally met tragic ends.
Why is this? To simplify, there are three common factors.
First, as opposed to other reforms recorded in world history, almost all of China’s reforms were done purely for the benefit of the ruler (the emperor). The reforms adjusted the ruler’s policies on how to control the people, how to manage the four classes (scholars, peasants, artisans and merchants), how to exploit the peasants’ land, and how to fill the treasury with taxes. None of the reforms touched on philosophies of holding power, or the methods of governance, much less centered around public interests.
China’s reformers saw the interests of the common people as objects of reform, rather than reforming the regime in order to benefit the people. As a result, these reforms never touched the ruling dynasty, but only caused power struggles between the interest groups involved. Compared to revolutions (which are either loved or feared), the people were generally indifferent to “reform.” And reforms without public support fail utterly once they encounter counterattacks from interest groups and opposition parties. For the common people, the failure of the reforms was nothing to mourn.
Second, many vigorous reforms in Chinese history had one thing in common: The reformers were not the highest ruler (the emperor). Many had been (provisionally) selected by the emperor to act as pioneers for the reforms — and as scapegoats when reforms failed. Reformers like Shang Yang, Wang Anshi and the late Qing Westernization school all suffered this fate. The people who held supreme power were usually governing from behind the scenes. They maintained a certain distance from the reform, which left plenty of room to maneuver. If the reforms succeed, those in charge will take the credit; if the reforms fail, they will sacrifice the reformers. Under these circumstances, the reforms would be half-hearted from the beginning — so much for “top-down” reforms. By contrast, the series of reforms conducted directly by Emperor Wu in the Han dynasty and by Tang dynasty emperors were more effective.
Third, all the reforms in Chinese history aimed to perpetuate the current system, rather than changing the existing regime. Some reforms failed, and the reformers were dismembered (like Shang Yang) or died in disgrace (Wang Anshi). But even then, leaders kept the parts of the reform policies that could help maintain the existing system, turning the reforms into cogs in the authoritarian machine.
Those reform measures that served to consolidate centralized authority often succeeded. For example, the state monopolies on salt and iron created by Guan Zhong in the 7th century BCE have a parallel today in the state oil monopoly. However, ideas like the separation of powers and equal distribution of wealth (which the common people cared more about) were often hijacked by interest groups or abruptly halted by the emperor. As a result, vigorous reform movements in China, no matter how significant their policies were at the start, withered away. After a few decades, the reforms had been reduced to nothing but tools to help exploit the people and control the opinions of citizens.
Of course, the biggest problem encountered by Chinese reform movements is that there’s no way to change the system itself, which has lasted for 2,000 years. All you can do is make it more perfect, more refined — and more evil. In this sense, all reforms in China’s 2,000-year history had no chance of succeeding, and we should be thankful they failed.
Today, many scholars say that if Sun Yat-sen had not been in such a hurry to create a revolution, then the Qing dynasty’s constitutional reform could have succeeded. They have a rich scholarly imagination, but lack literary imagination: Can you imagine a scenario where, from the Qin to the Qing, institutional reforms succeeded? Everyone in China would have a “Manchu queue” and would kowtow every morning, yelling “Long live the Aisin Gioro clan!”
Whether reforms can be successful is related to whether the system can change, and whether the authorities are willing to change the system to pursue a higher goal… Looking at China’s current reforms from the perspective of Chinese history, there’s good reason to be pessimistic. But we shouldn’t say that there’s no hope or no way forward. The reformers should learn from China’s history. Reform needs to be “top-down” and backed by the strong determination of the core leadership. At the same time, the reformers should begin by placing the people’s interests, the future of the nation, and national security as their highest goals. They should avoid only caring about the interests of those in power or the concerns of interest groups.
These things are precisely what China’s historical reformers did not do, and were not willing to do. If in the 21st century, rulers still hold the same thoughts and ideas as those reformers in history. If they do not boldly seek to reform the system for the benefit of the nation and the people but try to maintain the existing system, then they shouldn’t even try to reform. Otherwise, even if the reforms don’t fail, they will bring chaos, and could hasten the arrival of revolution.
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Who has time to care about the stupid China ? I am trying to figure out how I am screwed by the Obama healthcare reform.
Mysteriously, there is a cross function between the two regimes, supporting the same goals. It is as if these guys meet a few times a year outside of elected govt and decide what they are going to shove up our ass?
The US has "reformed" itself from a mostly free country to a mostly authoritarian country.
The Chinese reforms are failing because the Chinese people are sinking their money into Bitcoin!!
imho, they still have not learned the lessons on bank notes since first invented in the Han Dynasty 118 B.C....
So, until they can "fix" the messes they have brought to planet earth, all their reforms will fail --- call it fate, karma, or whatnot.
Or, simply "allow" the buried mercury river the First Emperor created, so it may metal to metal, back to Gaia's embrace.
Believe what you want to believe. Curses are real.
Because managing billions of humans is hard.
Wai China li fom fei ling? Sam ting wong, sam ting a wei wong! Mei bi sam dei...
Yu tu stu pid
Don't over look Deng Xiaoping who pushed through the most radical economic and cultural reforms in world history. These reforms were so successful they resulted in the greatest economic miracle ever seen.
CUI BONO
The central state denizens benefitted the most, which supports the theme of the post.
i found it amazing that so few has known that Deng was educated (coached perhaps) in France before the CCP came into existence. Who funded his and others study overseas?
Communist leader Deng Xiaoping was son of a LAND OWNER
He was sponsored in a work-study program by another Chinese in France who came from line of chinese civil servents but wanted to rebel.
CCP is not "communist" in its purest sense....it was and still is for Chinese elites to restore Chinese authority and prestige on the world stage during the times of European and Japanese colonialism....
Karl Marx wasn't born too poor either.
Most revolutions happen because son of a wealthy elite is dissatisfied of the status quo's selling out to foreign powers and disguises rebellions as pro-commoner pro-underdog to gather power and finally bring about a social change in hopes of greater benefit to the country.
US will only transform when son of a wealthy banker becomes disgusted of his family and associates abuse of priviledge in position of wealth and power while sellling out America to foreign interests.
You seem to forget who called the play for Tian An Men in 1989 - Deng Xiaoping.
Yes, China made fantastic gains in wiping out extreme poverty, but:
China is second in the world with the number of billionaires;
China is third in the world with the number of millionaires.
Although Chinese can buy a Mercedes-Benz, Google is currently blocked.
Dung Xiaopenis was piece of crap tyrant! Is wipe out poverty by first wipe out citizenry stand in way of totalitarian regime. Forward Soviet!
and 6.4 is still remembered in Hong Kong, tomorrow, 15 years to the day.
It's no coincidence that 75 countries came up with cash-for-clunkers programs at the same time. They're all con artists.
Wee Don No
Yu kan lai ting chinese, tu?
Ho Li Kao.
Yu Kan Too
Yang Hengjun worked in the Chinese FO.
He's probably a PRC spy or a double-agent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Hengjun
Same thing in the US and the EU since "democracy" has the very same ingredients. Let's face it, it's Kali Yuga since 5000 years. For actual liberation one simply chants the holy names of God.
As long as there are central planners, government monopoly on power and the ability to buy favors, all governments will eventually fall...and not nicely, either.
"Reform needs to be “top-down” and backed by the strong determination of the core leadership. At the same time, the reformers should begin by placing the people’s interests, the future of the nation, and national security as their highest goals. They should avoid only caring about the interests of those in power or the concerns of interest groups."
And then everyone held hands and sang 'Kumbaya'. Freaking lightweights at 'The Diplomat' again.
It's about POWER. It's about CONTROL. It always has been. If anyone in control or near the seat of power actually wanted to fix things for "the people" it would have been accomplished HUNDREDS of years ago.
Revolution? Sweet.
When does the U.S. get one? Been way too long.
wrong
its merely process control "reform" as simple move to the mean. you have look longer term ranges.
I find it intellectually stimulating how the long history of China illustrates the general patterns of the ways dynasties rise and fall. The Chinese history exceeds Roman history in that regard, since there are few more thousand years of it available.
This is the first article from The Diplomat republished on Zero Hedge that I have found actually worth reading. Of course, it is bullish on Doom, or Doomish, in its reasonable extrapolations regarding what the Anglo-American (Zionist) banksters' empire is going to to do in the foreseeable future.
Most of my current political expectations are due to applying what this article says to the USA, and relatively related countries. The differences are that things are now globalized, and amplified by technology to become trillions of times worse than in Ancient China. However, the basic patterns of expected entrenchments of psychological and political action patterns, or social habits manifested during Chinese history, are what I would expect for the USA, and relatively related countries, except for those developments to be Way BIGGER, and Way FASTER, than during the previous epochs of Chinese history.
Chi-mera with two heads, one ass.
dup
The Chinese history exceeds Roman history...
If you want to you a western example of a long lasting empire than u should the proper one.
http://empires.findthebest.com/q/27/2515/How-long-did-the-Byzantine-Empi...
Yeah, the word Byzantine does not have its current dictionary definition for nothing!
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/Byzantine
"excessively complicated, and typically involving a great deal of administrative detail"
China had many technological advantages, centuries before the West. However, it was NOT China that invaded and conquered the West, but the West that did that to China. The reasons were primarily its entrenched "Byzantine" Bureaucracy that stultified China, in ways which did not allow the developments possible in a more divided and squabbling Western Hodge-podge of nations.
(As well, there appears to be some genetic component to that, due to such prolonged periods of acculturation, as can be seen by looking at a day care with more Chinese children, contrasted to a day care with more Western children.)
China was the "middle kingdom" that did not dwell on the concept of "evil" so much, because they tended to be able to absorb and assimilate those who tried to conquer them. Meanwhile, the Middle East went totally psychotic with their history of endless waves of military invasions and matching environment destruction. It is not for nothing that Neolithic Civilization rooted in the Middle East mutated into Western Civilization, with its utterly psychotic Judeo-Christian traditions, which are only matched for their madness by the Islamic insanities.
Relatively speaking, China was pedantic and pedestrian, compared to the bubbling caldrons of slavery and deception which were the foundation of Western Civilization. It makes perverse sense that the Anglo-American (Zionist) Empire is the most globally dominate one today!
It is those banksters, or the plutocrats, who ARE doing the following:
http://rwer.wordpress.com/2014/06/02/plutonomy-and-its-12-point-manifesto/
The Plutonomist Manifesto:
"Because democracy is our worst enemy, we must work to convert every democracy in the world to a fake democracy.
We, The One-percent, achieve these conversions of the system of government through three forms of targeted ownership.
a. Owning mass media, the internet and the Web.
b. Owning all major political parties. We achieve this ownership by making the electoral process extremely expensive, thereby making election dependent on our financial support.
c. Owning economists. In today’s world the economics profession determines what the electorate sees and does not see regarding the economy. Therefore it is imperative that we control it. We achieve this by maintaining remunerative revolving doors, by financing think tanks and university economics departments, by funding Trojan Horse organizations to co-opt non-One-percent economists, and by our Nobel Prize.
In countries with real democratic traditions, plutonomy revolutions are achievable only by using Trojan Horse Methods (THMs). Subversion rather than violence or open campaigning is our means of conquest.
The use of THMs means that sometimes we must be seen to give support to our opponents.
We must be vigilant against leakages (for example, the Citigroup documents) of the existence of our program.
When approached always give lip-service in support of democracy.
The middleclass is both our means to success and our ultimate obstacle. It is they, not the poor, who have what we want. Hence the necessity of THMs.
Ridicule all suggestions of our existence as the work of conspiracy theorists, and label people who support middleclass interests over ours as “leftists”.
Channel funds to the emerging neo-fascists parties in the US and EU countries because their shenanigans camouflage our redistributions.
We must work to expand and refine our armoury of redistribution mechanisms.
The success we have had in the USA and the UK in redistributing middle-class income and wealth to ourselves must now in the next 15 years be duplicated across Western Europe, most especially in France and Germany.
Our goal of receiving forty percent of income and owning 80 percent of wealth is achievable in most countries of the world my mid-century."
As this article above indicated to me, there will NOT be any "reforms" to prevent the Plutonomist's Manifesto from continuing to be implemented! So far, I see no reasons to doubt that about 99% of North Americans are going to continue to act like Zombie Sheeple, or incompetent political idiots, by allowing the banksters to carry through their agenda.
Of course, the BIGGER PROBLEMS for everybody are way worse:
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2014/06/01/the-money-valve-ii/
The Money Valve II
... “Remains to be seen if a Chinese-Ruskie alliance is strong enough to combat the economic sanctions and loss of credit from the International Bankster Cartel. … In the current case of the Ruskies and China, they are trying to break free of this and may be large enough to do so, but even if they succeed it just crashes the whole global trade system. No win situation there, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”
In the end, China is another social pyramid system, controlled by lies, backed by violence, which is therefore headed towards its own mad self-destruction, the same as Western Civilization is. Everything about the history of the failure of Chinese "reforms" is going to apply to "reforms" of the more globalized systems, i.e., total failures, other than those things which succeed in more centralized systems of lies, backed by violence, which finally end up becoming even more madly self-destructive failures.
WE ARE HEADED THROUGH DEBT INSANITIES CAUSING DEATH INSANITIES. THERE ARE NO "REFORMS" WHICH WILL BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN. HENCE, THERE WILL EVENTUALLY BE CAUSED CRAZY COLLAPSES INTO CHAOS, WHICH MAY BE CALLED "REVOLUTIONS" BY THOSE WHO MIGHT SURVIVE THROUGH THOSE?
+1 "utterly psychotic Judeo-Christian traditions"
p.s. Latent junkers: Don't jump to conclusions (if that's possible) as to why I found this to be so funny.
Byzantine decline began in 1182 when Manuel Comnenos died. And then the Venetians and Crusaders occupied it for 60 years from 1204 onwards. The return of the Palaelogos did not save Orthodox hellenism from a slow decline as they lost Anatolia, their bread basket, to the Seljuks and other turkomen.
The date of 1453 is symbolic. But the Mediterranean was LATIN from 1204 onwards; Venice and Genoa ruled commerce and East West exchange. So the true time span of Byzantium power was 500 to 1200...
Just my take. And, the Crusades were already a sign of the ominous decline of Orthodoxy as Alexis Comnenos ASKED for Latin Crusader support leading to 1099 Jerusalem fall to their hands, after his defeat at the hands of Seljuks in 1071. That let the Latin fox into the orthodox hen pen.
The Mongol destrucution of Arab power-- Baghdad/Damascus dynasty Blues under Mamluke boot-- after having evinced the Crusaders-- did the rest.
It spawned Ottomans and Safavids in the region. What we underestimate is the dividing lines of Western Cilvilzation that have coloured its 2000 year history; now reappearing in Ukraine and Eurozone.
Today the USA plays at Charles V's universal empire. We know how that ended. As for the Chinese and their new Mongol Empire and India and Moghul type resurgence, it never allowed them to catch up with the west as oriental obscurantism has always been check mated by Greek inspired LOGIC.
What the West has lost in the current age of its American led preeminence is its sense of ethics and what western man has lost is his sense of honor.
We are now a civilization of machiavellian liars in our top down "democratic" constructs.
I agreed with your conclusion:
What the West has lost in the current age of its American led preeminence is its sense of ethics and what western man has lost is his sense of honor. We are now a civilization of machiavellian liars in our top down "democratic" constructs.
I often think of the Ancient Greek defeat of the Persians was the deciding moment which separated East from West. The more individualistic, honor-based, military organization was able to defeat a much larger, but more slavery based, despotic military organization.
The banksters' centralized collectivist systems are gradually destroying the relative individuality that made the Western World able to advance and conquer the rest of the world. We ARE rotting from the inside, from the head down! Due to that process, there appear to be no practically possible political reforms ... one can only "hope" for things to get bad enough, but not too bad, to enable some "revolution."
If you read ancient greek mythology you hear of Zeus sending Hermes to Earth in order to save humanity from itself by launching the age of heroes.
Prometheus gave us knowledge but "greed" for power destroyed Man's value systems and the age of heroes was a way of giving man--western man-- a sense of values; that the rational age then consecrated in Platonicien morals and Aristotelian ethics.
There is a chronoligal chain of western evolution that goes back to Troy and Homer the poet created the backdrop for the great Greek age that has spawned modern western man.
Marathon was the battle that saw the historic age emerge from its mythical predecessor.
...If you reed Penthouse Letters, you know we're doomed....for eeternity
Yeah, I agree that: "Marathon was the battle that saw the historic age emerge from its mythical predecessor."
I saw that as the success of the more individualistic, or more self-motivated, military force developed in the West that was able to defeat the Eastern military forces, despite those Eastern military forces made of far greater numbers. From that flowed the ability of Western Civilization to advance, and conquer the rest of the world. However, that too then has fallen, as the paradoxes of failure from too much "success" worked themselves through.
Who made you 2 judge and jury? Anyone that wants an impartial view of the Byzantine Empire should do their on due diligence and disregard the fake revisionists here.
They did build that huge Canal 1500 years before anyone else in the world could even conceive of something like that.
I will give the West credit that upon discovering "we're pretty stupid actually" we did go on a canal building spree to beat the band.
"Financed Chinese style" as well...purely with paper, all inflated away.
So "forget the reformers" for a moment and ask yourself "what happened to all those Dynasty thingys."
the late qing reforms failed because the main easily accessable coal mines in east asia next to water transport were next to nagasaki. taiwan and manchuria had the next most easily accessable mines, but were captured by the japanese relatively early in the game. this story is almost the mirror image of what happened in west europe between england and germany: longer coastlines relative to area means you have an early mover advantage in industrialization.
Terra-cotta economists ....
Respect is due to the Ming founder .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ming_dynasty
So you think you had it tough ?
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hongwu_Emperor
Early life[edit]Zhu Yuanzhang was born into a poor peasant family in a village in Zhongli, present dayFengyang, Anhui Province.[7] His father was Zhu Shizhen (???, original name Zhu Wusi ???) and his mother was Chen Erniang. He had seven older siblings, several of whom were "given away" by his parents, as they did not have enough food to support the family.[8]When he was 16, the [[Yangtze River ]] broke its banks and flooded the lands where his family lived. Subsequently, a plague killed his family, except one brother.
Destitute, Zhu Yuanzhang accepted a suggestion to take up a pledge made by his late father and became a novice monk at the Huangjue Temple,[9] a local Buddhist monastery. He did not remain there for long as the monastery ran short of funds and he was forced to leave.
For the next few years, Zhu Yuanzhang led the life of a wandering beggar and personally experienced and saw the hardships of the common people.[citation needed] After about three years, he returned to the monastery and stayed there until he was around 24 years old. He learned to read and write during the time he spent with the Buddhist monks.
He went on to conquer China .and kicked the mongols out (no mean feat) .
What have you done lately ?
Top Down never worked for Sun Yat-sen and certainly not for Chiang Kai-shek. Sun Yat-sen was a good man with glorious intentions (not those leading the path into hell) by the 'Black-hand[s]'? Chiang Kai-shek wanted to be the Emperor, and cared for only the rich as did the Qing Dynasty under feudalistic/ barbarian rule (authortarian/ fascist?)!
As far as holding onto the old dogma's and ideologies, Mao was way ahead with his unique concept of 'The Four Olds: old thoughts, old culture, old customs, and old habits... should be purged'!
Not bad for a lowly junior librarian from Beijiang Library,fighting the impossible guerrilla war by himself with just words backed up by actions and direct communication with all the peasant masses.
In 1976, Mao realized Deng Xiaoping would soon lead China down the Capitalist-Road, once he died! So as it is written, on Sept.9, 1976 the Great Helmsman passes away. And the fear of greed that he had predicted, brought out by capitalism would undo all he had endured for the betterment of life,regarding the Proletariet!
nice read, thankyou
jmo
Chinese, like the Americans, do not listen to the wisdom of their betters.
When the Master governs, the people
are hardly aware that he exists. - Tao Te Ching
The Master of course being God, the Absolute Truth. Political figures and other temporary rulers of course don't understand this.
The author is deaf and blind that's why he's admitted into The Diplomat :-) lol
guess the a$$hole never reads this, published in 2010... besides, only the blind and deaf who is able to conveniently ignore the number of population of around 1.4 billions to cater | geohive
"China and India: awakening giants, feet of clay"
By Pranab Bardhan
Pranab Bardhan of the University of California, Berkeley, talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about his new book ‘Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay: Assessing the Economic Rise of China and India’. HE ARGUES THAT SIGNIFICANT POVERTY REDUCTION IN BOTH COUNTRIES IS MAINLY DUE TO DOMESTIC FACTORS – NOT GLOBAL INTEGRATION, AS MOST WOULD BELIEVE. The interview was recorded at the London School of Economics in May 2010.
The reality is very, very impressive in the case of China. It's an unparalleled achievement in history. Because there are always controversies about poverty numbers. But, I think the basic truth would be there, whichever numbers, poverty lines you use, etc. So let me take a crude one but it's easily available, which is the World Bank number, and let me take one dollar a day as the poverty line, in 2005 prices.
So if you compare China between 1981 and 2005, which is the latest data that the World Bank will give you. So in 24 years, about 625 million people have been raised above this one dollar line, poverty line. Never before in history this has happened. Within 24 years, less than a quarter century.
Pranab Bardhan: Well, these two countries, being enormous, as you said, obviously attract attention when they start rising and this is a historic phenomenon. If you go back to 1820, if you take the calculations of Angus Maddison, who recently died, actually. 1820, half of the world income was coming from these two countries. Jump to 1950, nine percent. That's a big decline. The projection is that 2025, the two together will be about 36 percent.
So it's not been restored to half a world income, but then, it’s significant. In 200 years, that's a big change, and the rise has happened in the last 20, 25 years. So such a short period, such a big change, particularly in China, has attracted obviously a great deal of attention.
Most of the interest I see in Western media and also some in academia, is interested what this implies for the rest of the world. That is not the focus of my book.
My book is trying to understand what has happened to these masses of people in these two giant countries, and under what constraints they live. So in that sense, it's an obvious comparison. Both are ancient countries, both are primarily agrarian countries until very, very recently. In terms of national income, they're not primarily agricultural countries anymore. In India, it's about 17 percent of GDP, in China, it's about 12 percent.
[...]
Read on http://bit.ly/deeEw6
As soon as I realize that the article is drawn from "The Diplomat" and written by a Chinese, I've lost interest.
"The Diplomat" is a US-funded propaganda garbage dump operating out of Japan
is daily China bashing a thing now?
i mean, I love when ZH goes after the Chinese data. Especially the hard data like electricity usage, railway volume, copper stockpiles... (all of which have bottomed out though which may explain why they haven't been referenced here lately)
but the-diplomat articles? really?
Dynasties come and go. The CPC's hold on power is based on their ability to raise the standard of living for everyone. When people can't continue to enjoy a rising standard of living, the CPC's mandate from Heaven will disappear. With its property bubble, the authorities won't be able to prevent the implosion.
I'm surprised some commenters actually found this Diplomat piece to be readable, as opposed to their regular trash.
As a history enthusiast, let me debunk a few of the total failures of historic knowledge in this piece.
- Shang Yang's reforms were the most successful and long-lasting in the entirety of Chinese history, ever. Shang Yang's reforms went on to transform the Kingdom of Qin from a peripheral state into a military and economic powerhouse that ate the 6 other Chinese states alive. All subsequent Chinese Dynasties adopted Qin rules, Shang Yang's reforms were the founding backbone of Imperial governance in China for almost 2000 years.
You'd have to royally fuck up any pretence of knowledge on Chinese history to even get this one wrong.
- Wang Mang was an usurper of the fucking throne, and a deadbeat nutcase one at that. His reforms included training wild animals to fight on the battlefield: because fearmsome beasts are scary, and scary beasts(who can't wear armour and are bigger targets than humans) will beat soldiers armed with crossbows anyday, yeah, and even when those savage beasts get shot by enemy arrows(from a cowardly distance), they won't go crazy and lash out at the closest humans possible(which would be their own soldiers) and rampage through their own lines first, nope.
You want to wonder how did someone with such magical 'reforms" fail? oh and don't forget most of the country was calling for his head on a pike, for being an usurper of the throne and all...
- Ming and Qing dynasty's decision to shut the door to the outside world... how the fuck is that even considered a reform or attempt at reform?
As for the rest, when the examples given are already totally bunkum, you know you don't even need to continue reading.
It's not enough the regular Diplomat writing are BS, now we are getting fed totally fantasy history, what's next? rainbow unicorns?
I'm guessing Yang hengjun was betting on his readers being all white so he can write whatever magicals fantasies he can pull out of a 6 yr old's ass and get away with it. Either that or maybe Yang Hengjun isn't a real person just some made up persona like 'Wang Han Lo"... I can't imagine anyone who has even had a primary school education in Taiwan or the mainland can come up with this BS take on their history.
All this bumble about failed Chinese reforms. Yes, much like America but not quite. China still has a GDP of about 7% right now. To die for by America's pathetic GDP standards.
And how did China perform in the recent Great Recession(still ongoing for some)? The Chinese ran rings around America's economic response and recovered her GDP within one year. while the US Obama govt still fumbles and stumbles and always blames the Republicans. Bitchy, useless, leaderless and rudderess doesn't really cut it for this crap performance by America.
And why has China's economic response run rings around America's response ?
Because the Chinese govt really does fear its people. They fear failure and another revolution.
And the American govt performance in the Great Recession? Think TSA, think NSA, think unresonable Homeland Security Expansion, think Snowden, think FEMA, think govt corruption, think elite rule, think golden toilets etc.
America's govt scared of her citizens?
'Hope and Change' ???
Yuh think ???
And then idiot authors like the one above take time out to whinge and criticize Chinese reforms. It's really sick.
A poor joke for sure...
slowsmile China, compare with one US city, http://crime.chicagotribune.com/chicago/shootings
...paraphrasing... "China ain't ready for reform"? (quoting Paddy Bauler, Chicago)
Corruption is a massive problem in China. Much of the recent growth in China after 2008 came from a massive 6.6 trillion dollar stimulus program that expanded credit and poured massive amounts of money into the system. This money encouraged expansion and construction with little regard as to real demand or need. Like a plane on autopilot China continued in the direction it had been on.
Now China finds itself in a credit trap. For years the people of China have had the habit of saving much of what they earn but the low interest rates paid at banks has not rewarded savers. With few investment options much of this money has drifted towards housing and driven housing prices sky high. The economic efficiency of credit is beginning to collapse in China and the unwinding of China’s giant credit spree could be very painful. More in the article below.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2014/03/china-and-great-credit-trap.html
Chinese reforms fail because they rack disciprine.
How do we figure China has a "2000-year history"?
The elephant sitting in the corner of the room according to the few translations that I have read, is the Chinese Civil Service Examinations. You have to go through it to get access to power and to an extent wealth. The main complaint is that it is to dependent on rote memory to pass, but people don't trust a test based on original thinking to judged fairly, so there it sits.
This is a problem for educational policy, that is the emphasis on rote learning, throughout East Asia and one of the reasons the wealthy send their kids to university in the West.
Excuse this overly simplified and compressed comentary on the subject.
I once thought that communism was modeled after the hive mentalitiy of ants. Then I realized that its really more like a hive of retard ants that wollow in their own filth.