Political Power in China and America will decide the fates of both nations.
Oligarchies come in flavors. America’s oligarchy rules Shogun style, through a popularly elected puppet government guided by an unalterable Constitution created by the oligarchy and amplified through a puppet media which is free to discuss oligarchy-approved topics.
China’s political power is Overt while America’s political power uses the Puppet model.
It [Citizens United] violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and congress members. So, now we’ve just seen a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over. … At the present time the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that is already in Congress has a great deal more to sell.” President Jimmy Carter
Using data drawn from over 1,800 different policy initiatives from 1981 to 2002, in “Testing Theories of American Politics,” Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page say,
“The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence… “the best evidence indicates that the wishes of ordinary Americans…have…little or no impact on the making of federal government policy. Wealthy individuals and organized interest groups—especially business corporations—have…much more political clout…the general public [is] … virtually powerless . . . The will of majorities is…thwarted by the affluent and the well-organized, who block popular policy proposals and enact special favors for themselves . . …Majorities of Americans favor specific policies designed to deal with such problems as climate change, gun violence, an untenable immigration system, inadequate public schools, and crumbling bridges and highways . . .Large majorities of America favor various programs to help provide jobs, increase wages, help the unemployed, provide universal medical insurance, ensure decent retirement pensions, and pay for such programs with progressive taxes. Most Americans also want to cut ‘corporate welfare.’ Yet the wealthy, business groups, and structural gridlock have mostly blocked such new policies [and programs].”
The U.S. is an oligarchy, not a democratic country. American democracy is a sham, run by oligarchs who run the country and control the nation’s ‘news’ media. Political Power is different in China and America. Our time-honored form of governance has worked elsewhere for millennia but, sooner or later, anonymity engenders irresponsibility and conservative rigidity leaves the polity out of step with changing times. By common consent, it has worked for the USA and accomplished much to point to over the past 250 years but stopped sharing the fruits of a growing economy in 1978*–which is really why we’re cranky.
Because Political Power in China is held by workers and political power in America is held by owners:
- The median wage of a full-time male worker (and those with full-time jobs are the lucky ones) is still more than 3% below what it was 40 years ago.
- The median earnings of all US males in the 45-54 age bracket with four years of higher education – some two million Americans, all but 150,000 of them white – actually peaked in 1972 at some $55,000 in 1992 dollars; they stagnated through three downward economic cycles until 1989, before sharply declining to $41,898 by 1992.
- The average nominal minimum wage in China nearly doubled between 2011 and 2018, and wages for workers in State-owned enterprises rose even faster. At the same time, the government has expanded other forms of social protections for workers, all while pursuing industrial policies geared toward boosting innovation and productivity growth, thus moving the country up the global value chain.
- China’s per capita income up 8.8%. For the 39th year, Chinese wages outpace GDP growth.
- For the 40th year, US wages lag GDP growth.
We may not be crazy about our oligarchy, our deep state, but we recognize it as a natural way to run things and we don’t ask too many questions as long as it shares the goodies which, lately, it hasn’t. Our wages have been falling for 40 years and, in the past decade, 99% of us have lost 40 percent of our net worth. Is it any wonder we’re grumpy?
Political Power in China and America
Most Chinese have experienced real leadership meeting a real mission, and they have fallen over themselves to join. They want to belong. They believe. They will work for virtually nothing. They will beg to be part of something bigger than themselves.it and can understand it at a gut level and far from being alient to them, they know. China’s real mission and they’re are falling over themselves to join the ruling oligarchy, the Communist Party, whose elite membership is capped at ninety million.
They’ve been ruled by the same oligarchy for 1,000-2,000 years, depending on how you count it, pretty much continuously. The oligarchy has always been chaired by the revered head of state and staffed by geniuses. Its operating principle has always been ‘compassion’.
Sometimes it was less compassionate–when foreign invaders usurped the throne–and sometimes it was more compassionate, honest, ingenious, prosperous, caring and even liberating** than any government in history–as during the Song Dynasty. Because the acknowledged founder of China decreed that everyone should follow Confucius’ instructions on running a country and thenceforth compassion was the accepted, expected operating principle and still is.
Confucius’ elevator pitch to rulers, “Be exemplary for your compassion for the common man”, planted a seed in 500 BC that germinated when Jesus was born and Chinese oligarchies have been working that way ever since–with time out for invasions and civil wars, of course.
The current oligarchy is chaired by the revered head of state and staffed by geniuses. Its operating principle is compassion.
We accuse Chinese politicians of all kinds of mistakes which mostly have to do with not doing things the way we do things. But they know what’s expected of them and they have almost zero chance of surviving unless they consistently demonstrated compassion by taking care of everyone. Apparently China is happy with its oligarchy: 90% of them support its current policies and 85% of them trust it. By sheer coincidence, 100% of them have doubled their wages every ten years since 1980 and 90% of the own their homes and university is free and streets are clean and safe. Just sayin’.
China’s oligarchy is working for the Chinese because it knows the rules and so do they. There’s no argument about what ‘government’ does. Not even a mad ruler would announce that he was suspending Confucian compassion for the foreseeable future. His easily-foreseeable future would last no more than 48 hours.
Some compassion is really all anyone expects of their native oligarchy, regardless of its style. The Russian have got their groove back because they’ve got a very Russian oligarchy working (murderous barons subdued by a clever emperor) and 85% of them are over the moon about it because it’s working, even for pensioners and the poor–always the acid test.
A good political organization produces plenty of good leaders who agree with the organization’s mission. Every year, the brightest one million Chinese university graduates, the country’s brightest one percent, take the Civil Service Examination, guokao, competing for 27,000 low-paying jobs. That’s a pass rate of .03%. Nevertheless, next year, another million will take it as the brightest kids in the country have done for thousands of years. If those who pass were chosen solely on IQ scores, then it means that everyone in China’s government is more than ‘very gifted’ and many are flat out geniuses with IQs of 150-160. Today, as ever, the only way into China’s elite is through government. Money won’t get you there. That’s why the brightest people work in government. Prestige. More prestige than a US Senator (though not nearly as much power). That’s a good organization.
The peasants depended on soldiers to do the defending, who made leaders that turned around and oppressed the peasants. Some peasants rebelled and overturned the leaders, but the rebels would become soldiers and oppress the peasants in turn. This cycle was stopped when Mao Zedong’s communist agrarian revolution took power. The rights of the peasants are protected and defended. Mao understood that without peasants who grew food for the city folks, there would be no art and science; there would be no civilization. Without the peasants who grew food for the soldiers, the greatest armies would fall in a matter of days. Maoism is therefore an example of political power based on the support and the shared benefits of the peasants.
Mao understood that the peasants must be prepared to defend their rights and their land, and that they must be armed to do that, because their enemies would be well armed. Hence the quote: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Peter Man
Westerners don’t understand political power in China, and don’t understand the Chinese Communist Party.
There is a profound belief in the West that a one-party system is unsustainable because it is incapable of reform. That is not born out by the history of the CPC. It has, more than any other party in the world, displayed a remarkable ability to reform. Perhaps the most dramatic illustration was the transition from Mao Zedong to Deng Xiaoping. Deng recognised that the Maoist system was stymied and introduced two fundamental reforms: he embraced the market as integral to Chinese socialism alongside the state and planning; and integrated China into the global economy. Such a profound shift could only be executed by a party possessed of huge self-confidence and with very deep roots in society. It is also a reminder of the essential pragmatism that informs the CPC. “Seek truth from facts” lies at the heart of its philosophy and has been the underlying principle of the reform period. This has never been the case more than now. Professionalism, experimentalism and the scientific method are the hallmark of Chinese governance.
In the West, the debate about governance has been overwhelmingly organised around the principle of electoral democracy. State competence is regarded as very much secondary. The opposite is true in China: state competence is primary. This is closely related to the importance attached to meritocracy, both now and historically. In order to rise to the highest levels, the party requires a very high level of education and the broadest experience of managing a modern economy and society. Two examples will suffice to illustrate the extraordinary competence of Chinese governance: first, China’s economic rise over the last 40 years, the most remarkable economic transformation in modern history; and second, the manner in which China succeeded in eliminating the pandemic, which was a triumph of governance. Martin Jacques
Views of the balance of power between U.S. and China |
