Ten Things China Does Right
and we don't
Imagine a continuous civilization on the other side of the world, unchanged for millennia, ruled by Imperial dynasties grander than Rome’s, unaware of Greek philosophy, the alphabet, democracy, Christianity, individualism, feudalism, the Renaissance or the Enlightenment, whose people surpass ours in intelligence and whose institutions surpass ours in effectiveness. Now picture it thriving today, exceeding us in every field of endeavor. Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilizations.
If we are to develop a realistic China policy, says Ben Rhodes, we must face the reality of China as it is. In Foreign Policy, Stephen M. Walt even suggests asking what Beijing is doing right. Let us count the ways.
What China does right
Hires honest geniuses. Since Christ’s time, the government has hired only morally exemplary men who graduate in the top 0.02% of its civil service exam. Says President Trump, “People say you don’t like China. No, I love them. But their leaders are much smarter than our leaders. And we can’t sustain ourselves like that. It’s like playing the New England Patriots and Tom Brady against your high school football team.” The proof of the pudding is in the eating and, to date, Chinese brains are beating Western brawn hands down.
Keeps the everyone on the same page. Because they all share Confucian values, Chinese are almost unanimous about matters like gender, right and wrong, child rearing, marriage, work, money, getting ahead and, especially, governance. As Prime Minister Wen Jiabao told a Harvard class, “China has big problems but, when a billion people cooperate to solve them, they become small problems”. 96% agree that their country is heading in the right direction: towards two societal goals Confucius described two-thousand five-hundred years ago. The first, a xiaokang society, will have a Gini Coefficient like Norway’s 27%, and be complete by 2049. Then they’ll move onto the next stage, building a radically communitarian dàtóng society.
Remains stable, predictable. Love it or hate it – and ninety-percent of Chinese love it – their government transfers power smoothly, squelches factional squabbling, keeps every Five Year promise and honors its international agreements.
Enriches everyone. By allocating 58% of GDP to wages, China has doubled incomes every decade since 1980. This has afforded 96% home ownership and raised Chinese net worth to four times US levels. (Carl Icahn: “Net worth of median households is basically nothing. We have major problems in our economy”).
Contains corruption. Even during the go-go years, corruption never influenced policy-making. Instead, local officials who channeled corruption in policy-supporting directions often escaped detection, while those who thwarted policies were fired or jailed.
Saves money. Three thousand tight-fisted Congressional volunteers insist that policies, programs and projects pay for themselves. They delayed the Three Gorges legislation for decades, until now it repays its construction cost every four years. The high speed rail network bonds returns 8%, and water sales to wealthy Beijing pay off the world’s biggest engineering program, the South-North Water Transfer. Most debt is backed by income streams.
Treats women well. There are more self-made female billionaires in China than in the rest of the world combined, and the majority (51%) of senior Chinese executives are women. Not only are women extraordinarily safe in public – an overlooked element of women’s liberation – but they can retire on full pensions at
fifty-five.
Educates everyone. Ten million college graduates matriculated this year, half
STEM majors, all debt-free. Their education was literally the world’s best:
Creates a defensive fortress and invests its peace dividend in developing propellants and explosives for longer ranged, harder hitting, more accurate missiles than ours. 24x7, automated, ‘dark’ factories each produce 1,000 missiles a day. Russia’s shared its S-400 technology in 2019, now its defensive weapons are two generations ahead of the West’s. Their naval architects used the USS Gerald Ford to benchmark their new carrier, the Fujian, which has a bigger flight deck, two-plane elevators, more powerful, reliable EMALS, and more powerful missile defenses than the Ford. Says Major General John G. Ferrari, “If we were in a war with China and it stopped providing parts, we wouldn't be able to build the planes and weapons we needed. Crucial categories of industry for U.S. national defense are no longer built in any of the 50 states”. Forty per cent of our weapons’ semiconductors are sourced from sole providers in China, where many manufacturers have strangleholds on critical technologies like rare earth refining, nuclear modernization and hypersonics.
Respects other countries’ internal affairs. Regardless of maritime boundary squabbles, China has neither meddled in another country’s internal affairs nor sponsored a regime change. 135 grateful nations have joined its trade and security organizations as a result.
Little else but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice is required to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism. Adam Smith.