Asian values
Here’s an interesting news story:
New revisions to the code of behavior for primary and middle school students no longer require them to “love the Chinese people and love the Communist Party of China (CPC).”
. . .
As well as taking out the demand to love the Party and the public, the new code has also erased general phrases about self-respect and confidence and replaced them with more specific directives.
Meanwhile, more specific rules have been added. For patriotism, the code now states that students should be aware of Chinese history and salute at flag-raising ceremonies.
Students are required to practice garbage classification and live a low-carbon life, while the new code also prohibits them from smoking and drinking as well as Internet abuse.
It also encourages students to express their opinion and listen attentively in class.
The MOE launched the revision work on the code of behavior in 2012, starting a public debate. The current code, published in 2004, was deemed out of date and impractical among many Net users, especially after comparison with students’ codes of behavior in other countries that emphasize self-protection rather than patriotism or loyalty to the Party.
From Mao Zedong to a low carbon life in 50 years.
And here is a very interesting excerpt from Micklethwait and Wooldridge’s excellent new book on governance:
The regime’s enthusiasm for meritocracy has deep roots: Chinese parents have been telling their children for more than 1000 years that “those who work with strength are ruled. Those who work with their minds manage others. Those who excel in scholarship become officials.” Polling indicates that most Chinese like the idea of being ruled by a wise guardian class. The worship of intellectual prowess helps. This is a country where infant formulas are routinely packaged to tiger moms as “brainpower boosters” and McDonald’s Web site features a professor Ronald who offers happy courses for multiplication and language learning.
It is not hard to find examples of the way that bright young people, carefully selected and promoted, are tackling big problems. In Shenzhen a young civil servant called Ma Hong is doing what David Cameron tried to do in Britain: build a big society by getting nongovernmental organizations to deliver public services, mainly care for the elderly. She has dismantled most of the controls on local NGOs, so all they need to do is register with her. By mid-2012 she had brought in more than 5000 “social groups” and paid out several hundred million yuan to them to perform social work. All the groups are evaluated by third parties on things like corporate governance: the higher their rating the more money she trusts them with. By 2012 she had closed down twenty-six NGOs and warned seventy others that their internal standards were not up to par. Already her model is being copied around the country.
Ma epitomizes the businesslike way in which China’s best civil servants are trying to tackle social problems. Her starting point is to look around the world at what works. She studied in Hong Kong in 2005 and noted that some 90% of social work was done by NGOs, paid for by the state. She is also an admirer of Singapore and has borrowed its balance between easy registration for NGOs and stern punishment for underperformance. She wants her social groups to become the engines of Chinese society, “just as private companies are in the economy.” Indeed she thinks that the public sector needs to be changed in the same way as the private sector, with the state creating the right environment for companies and charities to do more of its work. “We are in a transition from a big state to a small state,” she says, “and from the small society to a big society.”
Notice the strange mixture of top-down elitism and Hayekian bottom-up self governance. We need to think about these issues in more than 2 dimensions.
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7. August 2014 at 08:46
Mao Zedong did more than anyone on the planet to reduce carbon. He effectively turned South Korea into North Korea.
7. August 2014 at 09:25
Bababooey, Good point.
7. August 2014 at 10:53
You could say Lee Kuan Yew is the archetype of elitism meshed w/ belief in markets. Lot’s of mainstream folks like Hillary Clinton admire him. And yet, take a gander at LKY’s observations:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lee_Kuan_Yew
On race, gender, economics, and culture, LKY is a brasher version of Pat Buchanan. (Almost as if Hillary never actually listened to what LKY was saying…)
Buchanan’s old school conservatism is our closest parallel to the philosophy of LKY and China’s modernizers. And, of course, Buchanan’s ideas are quite fashionable these days.
7. August 2014 at 12:34
“Whatever the price of the Chinese Revolution, it has obviously succeeded not only in producing more efficient and dedicated administration, but also in fostering high morale and community of purpose. The social experiment in China under Chairman Mao’s leadership is one of the most important and successful in human history.”- David Rockefeller
7. August 2014 at 20:48
@Gabe
That was the Chinese Revolution (i.e., ’49). The “Great Leap Forward” and “Cultural Revolution”, on the other hand, were another matter altogether.
8. August 2014 at 00:56
“Notice the strange mixture of top-down elitism and Hayekian bottom-up self governance. We need to think about these issues in more than 2 dimensions.”
The beauty that shines through here is an enthusiasm for experimentation at many levels, that’s been lost in the West. In the West, the ideological camps are so deeply entrenched that they don’t dare to experiment much, for fear of betraying their core professed beliefs. Actually much politics in the West is exclusively fear based. Conservatives fear immorality, liberals fear free markets and companies, libertarians fear government. It is hard to make political suggestions if the first reaction is not, will it work, but hysterical doomsday fears.
8. August 2014 at 04:37
Brendan, Not sure they agree on economics. Does Lee think America should have trade barriers to imports from Asian countries, but not European countries? I doubt it. Buchanan does.
mbka, Excellent point.
8. August 2014 at 04:37
Japan’s Stock Market Just Had Its Worst Day In Five Months
“While the Asian markets were open, the Bank of Japan reiterated its easy monetary policy framework, as expected. However, it cut its outlook for exports and industrial output.
But we can’t ignore the likely effects of geopolitical turmoil on the markets…..”
http://www.businessinsider.com/japans-nikkei-drops-2014-8
8. August 2014 at 05:05
“Does Lee think America should have trade barriers to imports from Asian countries, but not European countries? I doubt it.”
Buchanan and Lee agree on so much that you gotta hit me w/ a hypothetical disagreement. I have no idea if Lee would want trade protection from poorer nations if he ran the US. He’s on record that immigration of “fruit pickers” hurts the US; that sort of view correlates quite strongly w/ the trade views you cite.
Seriously though, much of what Lee says and does would be impossible for a white dude in the PC-drenched West.
8. August 2014 at 05:12
mbka said: “Actually much politics in the West is exclusively fear based.”
No- delusionally optimistic assumptions underly the repeat mistakes of each party. Both parties, but particularly the republicans, think liberal democracy is an intervention away from blooming in the mid-east. Libs think edu-gaps are gonna be closed by the $30,000th dollar we spend on inner city schools. Repubs think proper marginal tax rates can fix anything, etc. This “fear based” mantra proliferates merely because it is insulting to the other guys. “you’re a wuss” hits harder than “you’re too idealistic”.
8. August 2014 at 06:29
‘In the West, the ideological camps are so deeply entrenched that they don’t dare to experiment much, for fear of betraying their core professed beliefs.’
As oppposed to all the political experimentation east of the Iron Curtain?
8. August 2014 at 07:21
Patrick, that’s certainly fair, but I think it points to looking at things in more than one dimension.
The West, and the US in particular, has certainly had more experimentation than Russia and other top-down economies, particularly in the private sector. The point still stands that politics in the US would be better served by moving toward experimentation. See Jim Manzi, Uncontrolled, http://amzn.to/1ydq4pK .
8. August 2014 at 07:56
@brendan,
Fascinating wiki page on Lee. Despite his authoritarianism, “Asian values’ talk, and the curious layout of the page (Singapore is very fussy about how it is portrayed) I was chiefly struck by Lee’s very Western and familiar turn of mind. At the risk of making a sweeping generalization and exposing my own ignorance, I very often struggle with Asian reasoning (including Indians and, to a lesser extent, Japanese). Their thought processes seem a bit alien and mystical to me and, if I may be chauvinistic and simplistic, lack the sort of clarity that I associate with Aristotle. Not so with Mr. Lee. Crystal clear. Curious that.
8. August 2014 at 09:11
@bryan,
How much of the issue is due to language translation issues?
But yeah, LKY is crystal clear. So why do the Clintons like him? Have they never heard him explain his views on islam, or the source of ethnic malay vs. chinese income disparities, or the harms of “fruit picker” latino immigration into the US, or his views on the idiocy of the majority? You can’t think LKY is a genius and Pat Buchanan is the devil- yet they do.
Any US pol, CEO, sports team owner, etc., that publicly echoed LKY would see their careers end.
8. August 2014 at 09:22
The 10-Year Treasury Yield Touches A 14-Month Low
http://www.businessinsider.com/safe-haven-assets-surging-2014-8
8. August 2014 at 09:27
“While the Asian markets were open, the Bank of Japan reiterated its easy monetary policy framework, as expected. However, it cut its outlook for exports and industrial output.”
Target … The … Forecast … ???
8. August 2014 at 12:16
Off Topic… kinda
This link goes to an interesting article about the organization of ISIS in Iraq. The premise is that the group acts as a “destructive entrepreneur.”
http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/the-terror-business
8. August 2014 at 19:31
Prof. Sumner,
I think you’d really like this new analysis by Kevin Erdmann:
“Interest Rates Should Have Risen More”
http://idiosyncraticwhisk.blogspot.com/2014/08/interest-rates-should-have-risen-more.html
9. August 2014 at 00:13
Brendan,
precisely, it’s the repeat mistakes that underline my point: little experimentation, just pushing the old, tired agendas of the respective camps. Some US agendas include deluded optimism, but trying a different mix from one’s ideological home base is forbidden fruit since it came from the devil (the opponent camp). Also, “the West” is more than the U.S. In Europe there is no optimism left about solutions. The fear of the other party is usually the only reason why people vote for their own. And the parties stoke those fears quite consciously.
Patrick,
this was about modern China’s attitudes, and Singapore. I don’t know where you see an iron curtain reference. My comments were about the will to political experimentation in modern Asia vs a comparative lack of such flexibility in ‘the West’ (US, Europe).
Brian,
about Mr. Lee, I see LKY foremost as a firm rationalist. Singapore is about designing policies for optimal outcomes based on technologies and science, not about emotions. Of course one can always debate precisely which outcome is optimal. But the means to achieve that outcome are chosen rationally.
9. August 2014 at 06:28
Brendan, Lee seems like a rational, future-oriented utilitarian. Buchanan seems like a nostalgic, reactionary non-utilitarian. I do agree that both are somewhat bigoted, so there is that similarity. And I certainly agree about the inconsistency in the views of Lee and Buchanan among many pundits in the US.
Nick, Yes, target the forecast.
Travis, Thanks, I have a post.