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Why do Chinese political leaders have engineering degrees?
- sharetea 11y agoThese aren't the smart engineering politicians with a 10 year view China has foisted its fable onto the world. These are the corrupt paranoid politicians who know they are one mass protest away from having all their families disposed. These are fat and lazy billionnaires who have siphoned off local schools, hospitals, people, environments, and is about to abscond with riches. These are the people that see their debt-fueled economy collapsing, and know there's no more workers to be paid in pennies to be exploited. ""In total, 106 members of China's National People's Congress and 97 members of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress, are on Hurun's China Rich List. Their combined wealth hits $463.8 billion" http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-politicians-are-rich-2015-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-politicians-are-rich-... Kyle Bass: China’s $34 trillion banking sector set to collapse 30-40% https://www.trunews.com/kyle-bass-chinas-34-trillion-banking-sector-set-to-collapse-30-40/ https://www.trunews.com/kyle-bass-chinas-34-trillion-banking...
- hitekker 11y agoI would caution against conflating engineering skills alone with thoughtful governance.
- moreorless 11y agoYou sure love to bash on China. It seems like are your submissions/comments are anti-China.
- sharetea 11y agoi don't like evil government. do you? "China 'covertly providing oil to North Korea' Seoul claims Beijing falsifying its export statistics to keep Pyongyang's industry, military operational" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/11230327/China-covertly-providing-oil-to-North-Korea.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/11... Missiles Deployed on Disputed South China Sea Artificial Island, Officials Say http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/18/world/asia/china-missiles-south-china-sea.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/18/world/asia/china-missiles-...
- thanksgiving 11y ago> These are the people that see their debt-fueled economy collapsing, and know there's no more workers to be paid in pennies to be exploited. I know they're evil but from what you've written it seems that China is developing in spite of what the China PR government is doing. It could be better with a better system of government but we have what we have and I fear a disruption in something as big as the government of China would be very bad for the world economy in the short term. As the saying goes, it will likely become much worse before it gets better.
- 1stop 11y agoBut what is your measure of evil? US invaded Iraq twice for oil, and had deployed missiles to all sorts of non sovereign land, that had upset is neighbours. Literally a 1-1 comparison for both your examples. If that is your measure for "evil government" please point out a "good" government.
- drdaeman 11y agoBut... what if there's none?
- kelukelugames 11y agoTo be fair, sharedtea bashes Russia too. He has been warned by dang before. Guess that didn't change much.
- z2 11y agoAgreed, single purpose politically-charged accounts add a lot of noise, and really put a damper on this community's discussion. HN guidelines say to generally avoid submitting off-topic items such as political commentary, so shouldn't that same guideline apply to comments? Besides, one could write a 'bash' script to do the same thing. 1) Find links to negative sentiment news. 2) Find key data and exaggerate in negative direction. 3) Splatter links and data on any HN discussion containing "China"
- ndesaulniers 11y agoAre you addressing them? or their argument?
- dave2000 11y agoSounds like something you could say about a black American who's complaining about racism in America.
- seanmcdirmid 11y agoWhy not bash the message rather than the person?
- hackuser 11y ago> These aren't the smart engineering politicians with a 10 year view China Engineers should not be expected to make good political leaders; it's a much different skill set and job. The two recent American presidents who were engineers were Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter (am I overlooking any?).
- wrong_variable 11y agoThere are very good reasons given but I would like to add a simpler model - from the infamous book Germs, Guns and Steel. In poorer countries, the biggest problem is related to physical disadvantages. European and American Cities face physical disadvantages but nothing compared to Beijing, Delhi or Cairo. The biggest cities in the anglo-euro sphere are nothing compared to the mega cities in Asia. Scaling the living standard of a typical western to the entire continent of asia requires overcoming real limitations imposed by physics and the natural world. This is why engineering and STEM is so strongly focused in many asian societies.
- jernfrost 11y agoI am pretty sure Germs, Guns and Steel, never implied anything remotely like that. If you look at size as a main driver here, that does not match up with reality. South Korea, Japan, Singapore etc, neither of these countries are bigger than your typical mid sized to large european nation. I think people are reading a bit too much into this. In the stage of development many asians nations are today, western nations also had a similar reverence for engineers. What strikes me most when people from developing countries talk about unique cultural traits of their country, is that it merely represent a development stage. I can point to similar traits among earlier generations in my own country.
- pm90 11y agoCould you please provide references? Genuine question. I'm interested to know if American or British society was as obsessed with engineering and medicine at some point as we see today in India and China.
- venomsnake 11y agoThere was that period known as industrial revolution. A lot of the great inventors were either born nobility or knighted. So Britain valued their best engineering minds.
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- kelukelugames 11y agoGetting an engineering degree in China was the equivalent of graduating from an Ivy. At least in the prestige department.
- rmah 11y agoYou can get an engineering degree from most Ivy's :-)
- khc 11y agoIs that true? My impression is that most parents wanted kids to be doctors and lawyers, until very recently at least.
- kelukelugames 11y agoI'm talking about Chinese people in China during my parents' generation. Are you thinking of Asian stereotypes in America?
- byw 11y agoI'd say in America it's mostly just STEM or business/economics, depending on your family background. Business for children of business owners, STEM for everyone else. There's also a clear political divide along this line in oversea Chinese demographics. Lawyers, although well-paid on the higher-end, carry somewhat of a bad rep of being predatory and unreliable income-wise across the spectrum.
- dagw 11y agoAre you talking about Chinese parents inside or outside China?I guess most parents want their kids to be whatever is the most prestigious. In China the means (or at least meant) engineering, outside china that means doctor or lawyer.
- PaulHoule 11y agoAnother good question is why is almost every American politician (and all of the democrats) a lawyer? You definitely see more diversity in Europe where you have Angela Merkel with a physics PhD.
- ZanyProgrammer 11y agoBernie Sanders doesn't have a law degree. Apart from Dr "I probably take too much of my good stuff" Carson, I can't think of a GOP candidate who didn't have a law degree, or an undergraduate humanities/liberal arts/social sciences degree.
- AngrySkillzz 11y agoHerman Cain and Rand Paul are both non-lawyers. Cain actually has an undergrad degree in mathematics and a masters of computer science, surprisingly.
- ZanyProgrammer 11y agoThe vast majority of GOP candidates (with few exceptions) either have law degrees or non STEM undergrad degrees. There, happy?
- j_koreth 11y agoThe vast majority of candidates have either law degrees or non Stem undergrad degrees
- greendata 11y agoMitt Romney and Donald Trump both have business degrees. I'm not saying I do or do not support them but they are not social science/humanities/liberal arts. Unless you count business as liberal arts.
- mtmail 11y agoThere's more diversity in the German parliament (Bundestag), still 46% of members studied either law or economics, only 28 (4.5%) of members studied STEM subjects. sources: http://daten.offenesparlament.de/datenhandbuch_1990-2010/03/03_09/03_09_03.html http://daten.offenesparlament.de/datenhandbuch_1990-2010/03/... (total for 2010 is 620, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/17._Deutscher_Bundestag https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/17._Deutscher_Bundestag)
- em3rgent0rdr 11y agomost Asian leaders have engineering degrees. The flip side of the question is: Why do Western leaders generally lack STEM degrees? Why should the US be ruled by lawyers?
- alkonaut 11y agoAny relevant degree seems appropriate for a politician. Political science, law, economics. Seems much more natural with one of those degrees than a STEM degree.
- ArkyBeagle 11y agoA more common "entry level" position to gain a foothold in politics in urban areas is usually as a prosecutor. The career path is often to then run for DA ( whatever they call it ) of a largish city. I'd trace this back to TR, the decline of machine politics and the rise of meritocratic city governance. Indeed, Barrack Obama offends many Conservatives because his background is as a community organizer, which harkens to their ear back to machine politics. Obviously, this varies.
- Pxtl 11y agoThat's a peculiarity of the US system where the prosecution is heavily politicized and judges are elected. Other Western countries don't generally have that.
- scriptproof 11y agoThey have all failed to become layers, and that is the sole job remaining where you do not need to know something.
- Mikeb85 11y ago> Why do Western leaders generally lack STEM degrees? Because STEM degrees don't give one any insight into governing people. > Why should the US be ruled by lawyers? Politicians make laws. Lawyers know the law. Seems like a good fit.
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- chvid 11y agoI don't know about China. But western societies have developed a system of professional politics where politicians are groomed for politics early on. That is why they often become professional politicians early on and have degrees in a narrow set of fields and from a narrow set of schools.
- gaius 11y agoIt's reached the realms of farce now that seemingly everyone in UK politics has a PPE (politics, philosophy & economics) degree from Oxford. The real power in the country is whoever writes that syllabus.
- jernfrost 11y agoThink that depends a lot on the particular society. My home country Norway certainly "suffers" from the professional politicians, but they still have quite varied backgrounds: teachers, agriculture degrees, economists, political science, machine operator etc. I'd say it depends a lot on to what degree a society is elitist or not. E.g. France and Britain seem very elitist oriented societies where the elite is groomed in elite schools. While a country like Norway is strongly anti-elite and has no concept of elite schools. Every society has their particular traits. E.g. in Germany it seems like having a PhD in some science is almost a prerequisite for getting anywhere in politics to the point where some politicians have felt forced to fake a PhD to get anywhere.
- digi_owl 11y ago> Think that depends a lot on the particular society. My home country Norway certainly "suffers" from the professional politicians, but they still have quite varied backgrounds: teachers, agriculture degrees, economists, political science, machine operator etc. But after a year or more in office, they all seem to walk and talk the same way anyways. And i can't shake the feeling that the diversity is slipping. One of the old boys of AP, and perhaps one of the last with a industrial background to hold a government position, said that when he began he could work a full day at the factory and then go to meetings in the afternoon. But that nowadays you basically had to quit your other job to keep up, even on the local level.
- pg_is_a_butt 11y agoto ching chong their ding dongs?
- ArkyBeagle 11y agoI've read enough Usenet for enough years to suspect that STEM may well be a liability when it comes to "soft" subjects, the sort that politics operates on. Just the realities of government finance and government debt seem to be beyond many in our field(s), because it's a bizarro subject. That China is run by nominally "engineers" could well be a significant problem for them.
- Animats 11y agoThat was also true of the USSR. Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador to the US for many years, writes in his autobiography how he became a diplomat. One day, Stalin was annoyed at his diplomats over something, and remarked that the USSR needed diplomats who were New Soviet Men, like aircraft designers. Shortly thereafter, Anatoly Dobrynin, aircraft designer, was taken by the KGB from his drafting table at the Yakovlev Design Bureau and shipped to the Higher Diplomatic Academy in Moscow. He rose from there to ambassador to the US.
- noname123 11y agoIMHO, STEM careers not sure about now, but before the mid-90's were considered more prestigious in China than medicine and law. Back then, lawyers never really had a spotlight in Chinese commerce or politics given Chinese Community Party's one-party rule and state-owned enterprise dominated economy; also in civilian realm, Chinese business partnerships are governed by "Guanxi," your reputation and standing within your personal network than the culture of litigation in Western world. Also, hate to be blunt, medicine is not as much upheld in esteem (relatively) in China due to the perceived less value of human life and socialized medicine at the time: a country of 1.3 billion people roughly the same size of US with a fraction of the GDP, marred by the Great Leap Forward, cultural revolution and until recently one child policy. Chinese hospitals clinic's queues is more like going to the DMV where you bring and keep your own medical chart and queuing up, compare with the Western medicine's obsession for "personal well-being," "resuscitate at all cost". Individuals are not as considered as the State or the Collective. Now compare the puny individual with fragile bodies and limited agency to the grand gestures of the grand dams that conquer the Yangtze River or big bridges that crisscrosses metropolises. Children are taught at the early age that the reason for the Chinese "Century of Humiliation" is Qing Dynasty's reluctance to reform and adopt Western technologies; Chinese engineers that built railroads and scientists that built nuclear bombs were hailed as heroes as much as say, civil rights leaders in US social studies curriculum.
- pm90 11y agoThere were many reason's for the Century of Humiliation. The Qing dynasty did attempt to reform on a big scale [0], but it was very much restricted in what it could do by western meddling. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Strengthening_Movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Strengthening_Movement
- justicezyx 11y agoNonono The biggest hinder to reform is always from inside...
- rwmj 11y agoThe Qing dynasty was an inward-looking feudal monarchy, which is a terrible way to rule 300 million people. It would have fallen apart one way or another, Opium Wars or not. The Wikipedia page refers to the top-down reorganization, which is the worst way to do reorganization.
- klue07 11y agoIn China, engineering is the most prestigious major as opposed to lawyers or doctors in the US. In highschool, if you aren't very smart, you are told to go into liberal arts. If you did well in school, you almost always went into STEM, even if that is not where your passion lies. So it's not hard to see why there would be a disproportionate amount of Chinese leaders with engineering degrees. On a side note for those who are interested. Here's a list of political figures who are from Tsinghua University (China's top engineering university): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsinghua_clique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsinghua_clique
- klue07 11y agoIn China, engineering is the most prestigious major as opposed to lawyers or doctors in the US. In highschool, if you aren't very smart, you are told to go into liberal arts. If you did well in school, you almost always went into STEM, even if that is not where your passion lies. So it's not hard to see why there would be a disproportionate amount of Chinese leaders with engineering degrees. On a side note for those who are interested. Here's a list of political figures who are from Tsinghua University (China's top engineering university): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsinghua_clique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsinghua_clique
- jordache 11y agoalso the more non-religious Chinese culture would typically lean towards other personal qualities for selecting positions of power. Scientific prowness would naturally be one of the criteria. So none of that "That man is great Christian!" as some sort of qualifier.
- icebraining 11y agoWell, I live in an European country with plenty of lawyers and other law-related professionals as members of parliament, yet the religiousness of the candidates hasn't been a topic for decades, at least.