| Well ... my two cents. Maybe I am wrong but here they are. I think one of the reasons of the backwardness of China is a combination of centralized imperial power structure and invasions of foreign, mainly nomadic peoples. After the victory of the Qin dinasty which resulted in the creation of the imperial system, china has been most of the time governed by a centralized power/pyramidal structure. When the Imperial dynasties were local (i.e. chinese) there were on the most part oriented to good government of the country. For most of time in known history the government structures in China were far ahead of those in Europe. But when foreign invader successfully conquered China, their may objection was to keep themselves in power while controlling the society. On those government institution were, sometime subtly, transformed into ways to subjugate the Chinese people. My feeling about the last imperial dynasty, of Manchu origin, is that they thwarted the development of China by closing it out of the world. The may reason of this was better control the society and keeps its grip on power. Specially commerce with foreign powers, which could led for example to increased economic power to Chinese merchant classes, and contact with other forms of government. That could put in question the dominance of the ruling Manchu class. The timing was disastrous. At the same time Europe was experiencing the industrial revolution, which pushed its technology and production capacities far beyond those of China, with the final results we all known in the military/colonial conflicts between the west and China. Another disastrous disaster was the prevention of the evolution of the political system in a similar way as it occurred in Japan during the Meiji restoration. The imperial system could have evolved into a sort of Parlamentary Monarchy, which could have facilatated the evolution to more effeicient form of government. But the Manchu Dinasty was considered a "foreign" dynasty. That helped, among other things, quite a bit in creating the basis for the proclamation of the Chinese Republic of doctor Sun Yat Sen. Although the intentions of Doctor Sun Yat Sen were to create a modern China, the disruptions at the political and social levels were to great, as result the country fall in a chaotic situation. Not much luck fur China again this time. The rising of 20th century revolutionary political ideas together with the Chino-Japanese conflict threw China in absolute Chaos. Last but not all was the civil war after WWII and the proclamation of the Chinese Popular Republic. Again China closed itself out of the world and what started as a revolution that promised the final emergence of China, because ideological strait jackets and delusions, turned itself in one of its worth historical nightmares. Only after Deng reforms in 1989 has China started the way towards a more modern society, but from the point of view of an European like me, the current political, economic and social system is highly unstable, and also verydifficult for us to foresee its final outcome. The result... a lot of books about China ;-) My diagnosis of the problem.... Basically, the CCP has no legitimacy to power, they fear they own people more than anything else, but the country can not go back to a closed authoritarian system because, it will fall again back technologically with respect to other countries. History would repeat itself again! There is now a pact wit the devil between CCP and Chinese people, basically is this: do not question my power and I will let you enough freedom so you can prosper and enjoy life. And life is much better now for many Chinese across the social scale, no matter the problems we all see. But the system is, form my point of view, incompatible with what is required to correctly govern a modern society: there is no rule of law, exacerbation of nationalisms as a way to deflect attention from local problems, no way for impartial conflict resolutions, no transparency, no accountability and no way for the people to change things in power... no peoples government (Demo=people) Kratos=government). China, more than any other country, needs the most efficient economic, social and political system possible to be able to compensate the huge mismatch between population size and available natural resources (counting also foreign natural resources!) The current situation in China is similar to a very complex machine, running at full gear, but without systems to correctly detect what is going wrong, why it is going wrong, who/what is responsible of the malfunction and the means to fix it. Such a machine has the risks to run wild at the least chance... with, I fear, dire consequences. I really hope this "machine" can be fixed.... , |
What's Wrong with China?