Chinese Government Confiscates Bibles

They lasted longer than the Cultural Revolution. Don’t ask me why.

Japan and Germany? They’re already among the worlds most rich and advanced countries when they changed to a democratic government, right? I already said the problem is that human rights and democratic governments don’t jive with economic progress in the poor (former colony) countries, especially the large scale countries. From Africa to South American, none of those countries really become a developed country no matter how hard they tried.

WW2 had its toll on both countries. Anyway, you’re right that stability is important (a common point that China before Mao and Russia after the fall lacked), but strong and democratic aren’t mutually exclusive. I’m not saying what works for e.g. Finland will work for China. I just think China is a strong and secure enough country to give more human rights to its citizens. Economic initiatives aren’t a privilege of totalitarian systems after all.

Thanks for giving an insider’s point of view.

India has been doing worse, but it also had the wars with Pakistan on its back, which mustn’t have thrilled foreign investors. Plus, the Indian govs weren’t friendly to investors for decades (and often for good reasons).

Quite interesting comparison of Chinese and Indian economic growth, I must say – the world’s largest democracy vs. the world’s largest dictatorship(?). Sun already mentioned that China outpaced India in GDP and personal income growth; but there is also a phenomenal divergence in the foreign investment, where China leads India by a 10 to 1 margin. China (Chinese entrepreneurs) also developed a hefty appetite for acquiring offshore companies (or their assets) like IBM, Maytag or Unocal. In a few years, if the trend continues, China might surpass Japan in the ownership of US based corporations.

If this is “NEP on steroids” mentioned in my previous post, then Grandpa Lenin must be laughing his ass out somewhere in the commie heaven. And now I am thinking: if NEP wasn’t abandoned by the man of Steel (Stalin), then the famous “three hour line-ups for peaches and oranges” would be only a myth, and maybe the Unbreakable Union of freeborn republics would’ve grab more gold medals in the last Olympics than China and USA combined.

Maybe it can be change to “treasure a peace and stable society when the economy goes well” or “value the big chance of having a better life when there haven’t be a chance like this for over a hundred years”. This is a human nature if you view it without a “human right glasses”.

In a really normal society most of people’s main concern should be the thing affect their everyday life like food, cloth, house, transportation entertainment, etc. How could those people care about those social infrastructure, political system thing when they feel it has nothing to do with their life? The Disintegration of the Soviet Union is mainly because their people suffered a serious living material shortage.
But in China now the goverment often say we are a poor developing country that need to study from the world, while media from the west keep saying how bad China is and what a rich and free heaven the US and West Europe are. When people in China traveling abroad they find these places are not so amazing, actually many of them have a drop in living standard both materially and spiritually( the reason is complex, though), they will even find they have more chance back home.
They lack the facts to persuade these people, right?

I guess you must had a lot of pressure since the torch incident. Your point seeds of nationalism sowed in kids from a very early age does not match the fact that during that incident many old people who is already an adult before 1949, many of the overseas Chinese who haven’t been to China for a long time and many Taiwanese and HongKongnese came to help. Isn’t the nationalism seeds sowed long before the the Communist Party by the outside invaders?

Basicly you can speak waht you want in China( no publication), but when it comes to the foreigner level, there’s one thing no one should touch-“against the National integrity”, this is the most sensitive topic that only can be talked about among Chinese. China already suffered too much in the endless civil war and invasion, a foreigner form the former aggressor try to say anything against the integrity will have his image overlap with the former invaders. And if someone insist on doing that in China, I will advise him try that near a hospital.

Isn’t it a big progress to actually have a working rule? Hu Jintao can peacefully retire after his 8 years, while Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang can compete (inside the party) to be the next. This is much better than many of the countries with a Putin or Mao that refuse to step down.

When I talk about a more democratic system in 30 to 50 years, I never mean it must be a “several party fight” system (may be or not) nor letting the ruling elite lose the game. It must be mutual benefit to everyone and far from the democracy US running everywhere in the world forceing everyone to accept. Maybe let the Central Government control over the big syndicates to adjust the economic developing by reduce economic imbalance cause by the monopolies, have an adequate legal system, a better working People’s Congress, a high public welfare, a minarchism government try not interfere civil affairs and respect the Constitution.

WW2 didn’t really destroyed Japan and Germany, most of their industrial facilities and engineers remain. They even receive more economic aid, far more than the money given to the countries the invaded, because they became the frontline of the cold war.

India battled Pakistan while China battled Soviet Union, considering China is actually behind Pakistan in the war with India, I think it’s China who payed more. Anyway India and Pakistan are from the same country, China might have a endless “south China vs North China” war if we do not have Mao’s power (now is only a mainland vs Taiwan). Isn’t already shows that every social system has its advantages and weaknesses, and we should chose social system according to what we need?

I’m really happy that I can write this long in English and someone can understand my basic idea. Mostly I only use English to play vedio game.

Germany, Japan. Practice makes perfect btw.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33331.pdfU.S. Occupation Assistance:
Iraq, Germany and Japan Compared.
A recovery is much easier than buid from zero. Like Japan already recover and surpass its old self in 1951 because the Korean war.

I fogot this part.
Japan is still one party dominant system, where some argue the Japanese people as well as Japanese special interests have gotten so accustomed to Liberal Democratic Party that until quite recently they might have found it hard to imagine it any other way. The LDP is full of “hereditary” politicians directly inherited from the pre-war goverment before 1945.
As I remmber South Korea, Taiwan was military government until 1987, and Singapore is stil one party dominant now.

You can see the Chinese Communist Party is learning from Japan to keep its dominant place in the long term future no matter how China will change. They nearly succeed(if there is not a huge economic crisis in 20 years that destroy all), with a US acquiescence. I’m not a fool to challenge its status when there’s no hope to win, but I see there is chances to something big with in the system.

True in 1980s and 1990s people in China talked about changing the political system thing and US’s democracy, but it has become almost silence along with the further economic development. It seems the only quarrel now is between the
Maoist( popular among the poor) who demand fairness to the poor and a high public welfare back, and the new left wing ( popular among the elite) who want a higher growth speed and a new ideology to spread.

Yeah, Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore are actually still fairly autocratic by our standards. When I say ‘autocratic’, I mean politically autocratic. The people have deep and wide-ranging civil and economic rights, but politically, there’s only moderate freedom. The countries are still largely ruled by plutocrats. In fact, its kind of controversial because academics tend to compare those countries to places like Iraq or the Balkan nations, where its the opposite: people have great freedom to choose their rulers, yet tend to choose rulers who repress their civil rights(for instance, the Turks voting in an Islamist government). The argument being that the Asian model of benevolent rich businessmen being in charge works better.

Of course, my knowledge of all of this is only very generalized.

In the case of Japan and Germany, its also worth noting that these countries had to be deprived of their militaries before they were able or willing to become democratic.

Hm, it’s actually more of a mixed bag. Erdogan became PM of Turkey back in 2002 after an economic crisis and with the traditional Turkish parties extremely weakened (the former governing party couldn’t even get a 5% IIRC). He has had (and still has) judicial problems as they’re trying to remove his political rights and he managed to hold against a new “postmodern coup d’etat”. The last Islamist PM in Turkey was deposed in that way.

In his second elections he got more votes (though less seats, as a third party passed the 10% limit) because even though there are mixed feelings about some of his policies, supporting him was denying the army’s right to interfere in the political life of the country.