CHINA - WAY BEYOND COMMUNISM

Left: Ira at Shanghai Disney with four of my favorite women, my wife Vi, oldest daughter Lisa, and one of our triplet grands, Michaela, a Hospitality major at Purdue University, who was doing a six-month internship at a Chinese resort. Right: Vi in Tiananmen Square under the portrait of Mao Tse Tung, whose visage appears on Chinese currency.

I presented "CHINA WAY BEYOND COMMUNISM" to an interactive audience at The Villages (Florida) Philosophy Club on August 6th 2021. My talk is an updated version of the one I gave nearly four-years ago to both the Philosophy Club and the S.K.I.L.L. Club (CIA retirees). See: Beyond Communism - the Emergence of a Newly Prosperous and Increasingly Capitalist CHINA! (tvpclub.blogspot.com)

Much has changed since our China visit four years ago. 

Chinese leader Xí Jìnpíng is more firmly in control. The two-term limit on the presidency has been removed so he may remain the Chinese leader for life. 

China's one-child policy has been revised to allow -even encourage- two children (or even three). This is in response to an ageing of the Chinese population and a growing gender imbalance. When limited to only a single child, Chinese parents favored male children by disproportionally aborting females. 

Hong Kong and Taiwan are under increasing pressure to unify with the mainland. 

Chinese military and economic control of the South China Sea area is progressing faster than ever. 

Also, the COVID-19 pandemic, which spread world-wide since it originated in China in 2019, seems most likely to have been an accidental leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, rather than from Wuhan's "wet markets".

Key Question

Might the Chinese model of a Single Political Party Ruling over a nearly Uniform population (92% ethnic Han Chinese)

eventually prove to be superior to the Western-Democratic model of 

Two (or more) Political Parties Dueling over a Diverse population (which celebrates ethnic and racial differences)?

Flash-Back to 1958 and 19-year-old Ira

Way back in 1958, when I was 19-years old and a sophomore engineering student at City College of New York, I had a Letter to the Editor published in "the newspaper of record", the New York Times. 

As you may recall, the Chinese Communist Party, under the leadership of Mao Tse Tung, had established the People's Republic of China on the mainland, and chased the Nationalists, under the leadership of Chiang Kai Shek, to off-shore islands, mainly the island of Taiwan and the city of Hong Kong.

My letter was a response to the opinions expressed by JAMES WARBURG (1896-1969), a  German-born American Banker, former financial adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who helped to found the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies. Warburg was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Warburg had called for the United States to evacuate the Nationalist leadership from Taiwan to avoid further conflict with the People's Republic of China. The US President at that time was Dwight D. Eisenhower. We continued our support for the Chinese Nationalists. Warburg wrote that the actions of President Eisenhower in both the Far East and Middle East were "almost inconceivable" and "irresponsible".

Here is my letter as it appeared in The New York Times on September 10, 1958. NOTE: I used the Portuguese name "Formosa" (meaning "Beautiful Island"). That usage fell out of favor in the 1960's. when reading my letter, please substitute "Taiwan" for "Formosa".

I'm particularly proud of the final sentence in my letter:

"The United States is the greatest country in the world and it is time we started acting that way."

Looking James Warburg up in Wikipedia, I found this quote from him favoring World Government: "We shall have world government, whether or not we like it. The question is only whether world government will be achieved by consent or by conquest." 

Well, if you favor world government, presumably on a "one person, one vote" basis, you have to understand that both China and India currently have populations more than four times that of  the US. 

The Key Question

Might the Chinese model of a Single Political Party Ruling over a nearly Uniform population (92% ethnic Han Chinese)

eventually prove to be superior to the Western-Democratic model of 

Two (or more) Political Parties Dueling over a Diverse population (which celebrates ethnic and racial differences)?

China's population is UNIFORM and UNITED - 92% ETHNIC HAN CHINESE. Their political system is MONOLITHIC - ONE PARTY RULES! 

The US population is DIVERSE and SPLIT along officially designated ethnic, racial, and national origin classifications.

(Read how, in the mid-1970's, I was sent on a recruitment trip to the University of Michigan by my employer, IBM Federal Systems, and was required to classify the engineering students I interviewed according to their gender, race, and national origin. Why Politically Correct Racism and Sexism is Evil. I was not allowed to ask the students who applied for possible employment by IBM what their gender, race, and national origin was, nor was I allowed to inform them that a computer record was going to  be made of my classification. Furthermore, I was told I could invite students for an expense-paid trip to our facility in Owego, NY only if they had a specific GPA or more, unless they were a "minority" or female, in which case I could invite them if they appeared qualified, even if their GPA was below the specified number. I also discovered, on that recruiting trip, that some manager at IBM had classified me - and presumably all my fellow employees - by race, national origin, and gender, without informing us!) 

The US is officially about 60% "White - non-Hispanic". Of course, this 60% includes people who identify with many different countries of national origin (Germany, England, Ireland, Italy, France, Poland, Holland, Scotland, ... and so, on and on) but the government has singled-out only those with "Hispanic Surnames" for special treatment. 

Our population is about 19% "Brown - Hispanic Surname". It is about 13% "Black" or "African", and about 6% "Asian". 

THE PLACES IN CHINA WE VISITED - AND THOSE WE DIDN'T VISIT

As the above map indicates, we flew from the USA to Hong Kong in September 2017. Never leaving the Hong Kong airport, we boarded a plane to Beijing. (The total trip, from our home in Florida to the Orlando airport, changing planes in San Francisco, again in Hong Kong, and the trip from Beijing airport to our hotel, took 36 hours! The time in China is exactly 12 hours different from that in Florida! So, 12 Noon in China is 12 Midnight in Florida!

We took what has become a more-or-less standard tour, spending a few days in each of a few business and tourist cities: Beijing, Xian, and Shanghai. Since our granddaughter  Michaela, a Hospitality major at Purdue University, was doing a six-month internship at a Chinese resort in Suzhou, we added a couple of days to our trip to spend time with her, and with her mother (our daughter Lisa) who was on a separate trip to China.

We did not visit three areas: The city of Wuhan, the province of Xinjang, and the nation of Taiwan:

WUHAN: Looking at the above map, you may see the now-infamous Chinese city of Wuhan at the very center of the four cities we visited. Indeed, we flew near Wuhan twice! Of course we had no idea that Wuhan, in late 2019, would become the point of origin for the COVID-19 pandemic. 

XINJANG: Note the warning on the map that the far west provinces shown in yellow, including Xinjang, were places where visitors should "Exercise a high degree of caution". That area is where a racial minority, the Uyghurs, a Turkic people, live, and are not treated well by Chinese authorities. 

TAIWAN: The subject of my 1958 Letter to the Editor of The New York Times was not visited. Perhaps we'll get there on some future trip. Of course, I am pleased that Taiwan is not under control of mainland China. Both China and Taiwan agree that they will -eventually- be reunited under the "One country, two systems for Hong Kong and Macau, with a future of complete national reunification, (one-China policy) with Taiwan." I hope that happens, but only after the mainland Chinese adopt a political and economic system more like that of the Western Democracies. 

CHINA POSES AN ECONOMIC THREAT TO THE US AND OTHER "WESTERN DEMOCRACIES"

The above graphic shows that China, as of 2021, has developed an economic lead over the United States in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). There are several ways to compute GDP and China is still a bit behind the US when "nominal" GDP is calculated using official exchange rates. However, considering the "Purchasing Power Parity" (PPP) method, based on the actual relative cost of local goods, they are ahead. 

Of course, with a total population that is over four times that of the US, so the PER-CAPITA PPP-GDP (shown in RED in the above graphic) of the US is still more than three times that of China.

What Does the Future Hold?

I am a optimist - but, now at the age of 82, also a realist. 

I wish the best for China - our tour guides and everyone we met there were kind and capable and helpful to two elderly visitors (75 and 78 at that time). 

I hope they will continue their remarkable development of emergent prosperity and increasingly Capitalistic economics. On the other hand, I'm worried that their increasingly hostile attitude towards Hong Kong and Taiwan may lead them to use military force to impose their "one-China policy".

Furthermore, their treatment of the Uyghur minorities may turn out to be a model for possible imposition of Chinese sovereignty over much of Southeast Asia.   

In 2017, they added “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” to their constitution. The following three items caught my attention: 

•        “Socialism with Chinese characteristics" with "people as the masters of the country".

•        Governing China with the rule of law.

•        “Socialist core values", Marxism, Communism … “Socialism with Chinese characteristics".

 Note the repeated phrase “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”

What is that, actually? I think it might be summarized in one word: "CAPITALISM!"

Let us review Chinese history on this issue. 

-        1978 – Mao Tse Tung died and Deng Xiaoping introduced "market socialism."

-        "Four Modernizations", agriculture, industry, science-technology, military.

-        "A planned economy is not the definition of socialism, because there is planning under capitalism; the market economy happens under socialism, too. Planning and market forces are both ways of controlling economic activity".

-        1982 Constitution - Civil rights: free speech, press, worship, the right to trial, and the right to own private property.

-        Rights NOT widely followed in practice, but people with connections to the socialist economy have been able to “own” apartments (70-year lease)

-        Widespread Computer, Internet, Cellphone usage - BUT serious issues with censorship,  …

Of course, Classical Marxists will Object to “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” as it begins to look more and more like Capitalism. They will say:

•        A "socialist market economy" is contradictory!

•        True Marxists say what China has  amounts to a full-blown capitalist economic system. [Not YET ‘full-blown” but getting there :^)]

•        Although many enterprises are nominally publicly owned, the profits are retained by the enterprises and used to pay managers excessively high salaries rather than being distributed amongst the population.

•        But, never mind, China (and former USSR) are in a “preliminary stage of socialism”.

•        True Marxism will come when production increases to  the point that resources are virtually unlimited, then true Communism will emerge! 

CONCLUSION

I have great hopes that our children and grandchildren will live in a United States that continues to be economically prosperous and successful in a world with serious ECONOMIC competition, but highly restrained MILITARY competition. However, if it comes to the later, I expect the United States to continue our leadership. As I wrote 63 years ago, when I was 19 years old, in my Letter to the Editor of The New York Times:

"The United States is the greatest country in the world and it is time we started acting that way."

Love to all, Ira Glickstein