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>For several decades, China’s breakneck development was seen positively in the United States, and the relatively enlightened authoritarianism of Deng Xiaoping a
by scottlocklin 6y ago
>For several decades, China’s breakneck development was seen positively in the United States, and the relatively enlightened authoritarianism of Deng Xiaoping and his successors was easily tolerated
It was seen positively because our ruling caste of self-regarding morons thought China was more likely to become a liberal democracy as they became more prosperous and integrated with the world economy. An obvious delusion, even at the time. By contrast, the Chinese looked at what happened to Russia and decided to stick with totalitarianism in their economic development.
- gumby 6y agoI think things are far from obvious, at the time, retrospectively, or even now. It’s still early times for the Chinese revolution and I think there’s still a good chance of China becoming more democratic in the next half a century. Xi is literally a child of the revolution and when that generation is gone, the middle classes will have no connection to the old guard.
- scottlocklin 6y agoI think the best you can hope for from China is Singapore -a business oriented Mosleyan fascism. Considering the lack of British influence there: this seems ridiculously optimistic to me. China will be Chinese. Western "Democracy" doesn't appear to be some universal desire of peoples; it's as far as can be told from observation a particularist ideology of Anglo and Franco Europeans. Russia's flirtation with "Democracy" (basically, being a US satellite) ended up being chaotic gansterism accompanied by mass death, and they reverted to their historical mean of being run by a strong man and seem to be happier and better off for it.
- gumby 6y agoKorea, Taiwan and Japan seem pretty happy with it. India, mostly, too. Then of course many smaller countries like Mauritius, Botswana...
- scottlocklin 6y agoSouth Korea with its long history of democracy dating from the early 90s... Had a little help from giant US embassies and military bases in the middle of it for the last 70 years. Imagine if it weren't a US "ally" what it would look like. The idea that things are the way they are today because of some inevitable movement of history rather than submission to pressures from the world hegemon; pretty sure that idea won't survive historical scrutiny. I suppose I could be wrong though! Our state department informs me that I am wrong!
- jeffreyrogers 6y agoAmerica literally wrote Japan's constitution after WWII and had a heavy role in guiding the development of Japan.