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Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

166 points by kkleiner 15y ago

bendmorris 15y ago
Not to nitpick, but they're engineers. The previous President, Jiang Zemin, was also an electrical engineer - before that generation, most leaders were educated by their experiences (i.e. the Long March) and not formally schooled. It is interesting that not only are there cultural differences in the ways Chinese and western leaders approach problems, but also there's the "engineering" approach vs. the "legal" or "social sciences" approach more often seen in western nations.
- moomin 15y ago
  The distinction between a scientist and an engineer is important here. In the dark days of modern China, mathematicians and scientists were regarded with as much suspicion as poets and philosophers. Engineering was one of the most intellectual professions you could have without being regarded as the enemy. (As for lawyers: there's not a lot of point in being a legal expert anywhere rule by fiat is common.) The problem with the "engineering" approach is that it treats stability as an axiomatic good. It's quite hard to incorporate the rights of weird religious groups, troublesome journalists and out-and-out revolutionaries into such a world-view.
  - Unseelie 15y ago
    A lot of that stability approach can be traced back through much of the history of the Han, to the point that I'd argue the engineering background isn't the source of the stabilizing pressure, but rather a facet of the Han culture.
gaius 15y ago
Also Yulia Tymoshenko, rightful heir to the throne of Ukraine, is a cyberneticist. It seems to be a regular trend in former Communist countries, that political leaders have a technical background.
- llcoolv 15y ago
  Not really. For one, China is still a totalitarian (communist is really wrongly used here) country. And also my impression is that Tymoshenko is more of an isolated case - my guess would be that most of the current post-totalitarian leaders are either former officers (Putin, Borissov, Basescu), humanitarian/law majors (Komorowski, Parvanov, Orban, Gasparovic) or economists (Havel). Unfortunately most of them come from the first category :/
  - Wuzzy 15y ago
    I don't know much about the other ones, but Havel most assuredly is not an economist. He has a cultural background and is an author of a number of theater pieces. His successor at the post of Czech president (Klaus) is an economist, so maybe that's where the confusion comes from. Just as a matter of interest - the current Czech prime minister, who, at least in theory, has more power than the president, has graduated in physics, and has actually worked in research for some time. Angela Merkel (coming from Eastern Germany) has also a scientific background (in physics and chemistry). But otherwise, it seems you are right about the fact that there is no such rule about post-totalitarian leaders being educated in engineering or sciences in general.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - llcoolv 15y ago
      I stand corrected - just read that Havel has studied economcs for only two years before dropping out and that's probably the reason I have remembered him (wrongly) as an economist - I must have read it somewhere and it has probably stuck in my mind. Btw, the rest of the Eastern European countries can learn a lot of things from the Czechs.
- gacek 15y ago
  I think it is a trend for current communist countries/dictatorships. Of course there will be corruption and nepotism, but why would you decide on someone without an engineering background to run a country? If you give voting power to the people they'll just choose someone with a nice face and smooth voice, telling its all gonna be ok.
geebee 15y ago
This is a good article, but it does miss one incredibly important piece of the puzzle - the possibility that US citizens have an economically rational aversion to PhDs in science and engineering. A recent RAND study supports this point of view: http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html I think it's critical to make science and engineering a desirable career path for young americans, but simply "making it cool" isn't the way to go - and could (as the article points out) actually be destructive in that it would cause harm to students who responded to the pr campaign only to find long training times and poor career prospects relative to their friends who did law, dentistry, medicine, mba, etc.
- baguasquirrel 15y ago
  That's funny... Americans don't have an economically rational aversion to becoming movie stars in much the same way.
  - pyre 15y ago
    There is a point-of-view that movie stars/rock stars/etc don't really work that hard and get a ton of money and fame, but that seems to actually deviate from reality.
  - geebee 15y ago
    yeah, that is an amusing observation. of course, President Obama and various talking heads don't fret about the shortage of Americans in film school. The serious question is whether we should launch a PR campaign to encourage young people to make decisions that may lead (at least according to RAND) to long training times with poor pay and career prospects relative to other paths typically available to the "best and brightest".
    - xiaoma 15y ago
      If the issue is public policy, then the goal should be public good, not individual good. It's very possible that the best and brightest could live in greater comfort as criminals than scientists, but even if that were the case, any rational government would encourage them to be scientists since that would be better for the country. Edit: Seriously? Care to explain your reasoning, downmodders? Why would a government encourage decisions that are destructive to society?
igorlev 15y ago
If you were educated in a communist country at any time from 50s to 80s you would pretty much by default be either a scientist, an engineer, an architect or a doctor. Most likely an engineer. It's like trying to predict the behavior of a Model-T buyer based on their color preference.
lionhearted 15y ago
But, but, but... they're not democratic! If only they'd put more power in the hands of the common man, they too could enjoy such luminous choices for statesmen as McCain vs. Obama, Bush II vs. Kerry, Bush II vs Gore, Dole vs. Clinton, Bush I vs. Clinton... ...we gotta keep saber rattling that our way is better than theirs. Boo China, boo. Edit: To the downvoter - okay, I'm joking around. But which of these premises do you disagree with? 1. The United States has more electoral politics in choosing its leaders than China. 2. The last 20 years of leadership in China show a much more nuanced understanding of policy and statesmanship than American leadership, where charisma and mass appeal tends to be more important than "hard credentials." 3. There might be a cause-and-effect relationship between point 1 and point 2. Disagree with any of those? Yeah I'm joking around, but it's worth thinking about, no? Or maybe it's upsetting to think about... that I sympathize with...
- pyre 15y ago
  It's maybe a trade-off? Sure we have bozos for politicians in the US, but in the US government corruption usually doesn't lead to people 'disappearing.' Though we're definitely making great strides in that direction.
  - lionhearted 15y ago
    The United States still has, overall, a much better set of governance, courts, regulation, etc. than China. But the USA is trending gradually downwards and China is trending quickly upwards. Now it's interesting, countries can catch up a lot faster than they can lead. If a country is a bit backwards, with the right set of leadership, they can very quickly modernize, becoming extremely important economically and geopolitically in ~30 years when starting almost from scratch. But many of those rapid modernizations peter out once a lot of the proven methods are implemented. Sometimes that means flat growth, like Japan. Sometimes collapse, like Nazi Germany. Sometimes gradual decline, like the USSR. Singapore has done a pretty outstanding job of keeping their upwards trends going and they're about 50 years into their building phase - I think that's the longest rapid sustained modernization in history? So anyways, yes, I'll take the USA's system over China's today. And tomorrow. And probably 5 years from now. But maybe not 20 years from now if all else stays equal, and China can adapt after they've caught most of the low hanging fruit.
przemelek 15y ago
One thing ;-) Author of this text wrote: "You have to be pretty popular to get elected, so should we conclude that Chinese people in general look up to and admire their scientists?" But those in China's government wasn't elected in popular vote and for sure not in election like those in US or other western countries. So it isn't in this way that Chines people in general look up to and admire scientists, but Communists Party of China look up to and admire scientists. But in general I agree, it looks that China and Korea are much more in science than in humanities.
- westiseast 15y ago
  totally - I was wondering how the author could write something so obviously wrong like that?
- huherto 15y ago
  interesting observation. It seems to me that the previous generation of leaders had an aspiration that the new leaders were better prepared than them. I imagine the old leaders had an admiration for science and engineering even though they were not really knowledgeable about it; they probably selected and groomed the new leaders with this in mind.
giardini 15y ago
The linked article is titled "Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are _Scientists_" but... The article it references states "...eight of the top nine political posts are held by _engineers_." but unfortunately does not name them.
orenmazor 15y ago
well that's just great. how many layers do you have to unpeel from our government before you find anybody that isn't a lawyer.
- Apocryphon 15y ago
  Different national political cultures, apparently. http://www.economist.com/node/13496638?story_id=13496638 http://www.economist.com/node/13496638?story_id=13496638
  - stcredzero 15y ago
    WHEN Barack Obama met Hu Jintao, his Chinese counterpart, at the G20 summit in London, it was an encounter not just between two presidents, but also between two professions and mindsets. A lawyer, trained to argue from first principles and haggle over words, was speaking to an engineer, who knew how to build physical structures and keep them intact. The Chinese should build a Space Pier, in the form of a massive ramp with a huge accelerator on it.
tokenadult 15y ago
About a decade ago, when I was studying the history of mathematics, I noticed that in 1776, the world's greatest mathematician (Leonhard Euler) was in St. Petersburg, Russia, just when many of the world's greatest political scientists were either in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (the signers of the Declaration of Independence) or in various parts of Britain (e.g, Edmund Burke and Adam Smith). To this day, the Russian-speaking world exceeds the English-speaking world in the quality of its primary and secondary mathematics instruction, and it is perhaps no accident that the first of the Clay Millennium Prize problems http://www.claymath.org/millennium/ http://www.claymath.org/millennium/ was solved by a mathematician who was educated in Russia. But also to this day, the United States and Britain enjoy an astonishing degree of political and economic freedom and rule of law http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=594 http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=594 and gain many of their best mathematicians and mathematics educators as immigrants from non-English-speaking countries. It is too early to say whether a lot of engineering-trained persons in government is mostly a feature or mostly a bug. I wish China well in going the direction of Taiwan (another place long ruled by technocrats) in developing the rule of law and an open political system with many guarantees of personal liberty. But it is by no means an invariant characteristic of human societies that those with the best math and science minds thrive best over the long term. P.S. You did see below the fold on the submitted article, didn't you, what the blog author thinks China can count on just from the fact of the educational background of its leaders? Not much, just from that fact. P.P.S. to respond to first reply: It's my understanding that the government of the Federal Republic of Germany consciously DE-emphasized technical education after World War II in favor of more emphasis on humanities and social science in the primary and secondary school curriculum. I thought it would trigger a mention of Godwin's Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law if I brought this up at first, but I've read that many observers of prewar Germany under the Third Reich looked at the quality of the scientists there (very high indeed) and thought that Germany would be hard to beat in the war. It is well known to people who read interesting histories of World War II, such as mathematician T.W. Körner's book The Pleasures of Counting, http://www.amazon.com/Pleasures-Counting-T-W-K%C3%B6rner/dp/0521568234 http://www.amazon.com/Pleasures-Counting-T-W-K%C3%B6rner/dp/... that there was a battle of scientists versus scientists in the war to find smart methods for fighting the other side. Ultimately, despite the great advantage that German's prewar primary and secondary schools and universities and civil service system gave Germany in building up a supply of smart technocrats, the Nazis' disregard of personal liberty drove away many of Germany's best scientists (notably, many Jewish scientists) and added talent to the Allied side.
run4yourlives 15y ago
While this is no doubt going to be unpopular here on HackerNews, I'm going to posit the following: This is almost as bad as have 8 of 9 people being Creationists. Better than 90% of a council making decisions for the whole country being of the same persuasion is prone to severe group think. Scientists (or rather, engineers, if you RTFA) aren't immune to this any more than any of us are. If you look at the best run businesses, they are often composed of people with variable backgrounds - people that approach problems from different perspectives. This has two major benefits: First, it allows you to gain from solutions that come from as many types of thought processes as possible and more importantly, it prevents you from blindly following dogma - if you can't convince somebody that doesn't follow your thought patterns of the viability or necessity of a particular idea, it probably shouldn't be perused. One child policies that have resulted in a generation of males without females is pretty much exactly the type of policy I'd expect from a group of engineers.
- Unseelie 15y ago
  As an aside, I'm slightly more concerned with the generation of Only Children as opposed to the generation of 114 men to 100 girls...just to toss another layer of complexity into the mix.
- stcredzero 15y ago
  While this is no doubt going to be unpopular here on HackerNews, I'm going to posit the following: This is almost as bad as have 8 of 9 people being Creationists. ... One child policies that have resulted in a generation of males without females is pretty much exactly the type of policy I'd expect from a group of engineers. Let us hope that they will do a better job with global politics and economics than they did with domestic policy. Has there ever been a culture/major world power besotted with its own engineering prowess? Or is this just a way to describe western civilization in the 19th and 20th centuries? (In particular, Britain, United States, the USSR, and Germany.)
- maxklein 15y ago
  The one child policy was not created by this cadre of leadership. The male/female imbalance also happens in India, which does not have such a policy.
stcredzero 15y ago
Oh, we forgot about our head of the class: China. Astonishingly, since 1980 China has not won a single scientific Nobel Prize. Keep in mind, this is a country of 1.3 billion people. If China is ruled by engineers, then it is ruled by groups that understand the economic implications of the rocket equation and how this can be overcome using existing technology. Moving off-world is going to be the next huge watershed in human history and economic growth, much as the age of exploration and colonization of North America by Europeans was the last one. Making the leap past Type I on the Kardashev scale won't necessarily involve Nobel Prize winning breakthroughs in science. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale Instead, it will involve massive brute engineering and the political will to devote the resources to bootstrap it. The Chinese "Civilization State", ruled by engineers, is in a unique position to marshall those resources and be in the vanguard of what will be an economic and historic explosion of development. http://today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/u-s-needs-to-deepen-its-understanding-149449.aspx http://today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/u-s-needs-to-deepen-its-unde... I've seen this coming for almost a decade. If trends continue, China will not only be the next dominant power, but Chinese Civilization in the inner solar system will be to the last half of the 21st century what North America was to the 20th.
adamc 15y ago
Having
est 15y ago
there is a difference between a scientist and someone with an engineering degree
Apocryphon 15y ago
A relevant article from 2009 contrasting prevalence of American lawyer politicians vs. Chinese engineer politicians vs. French civil servants and so on. http://www.economist.com/node/13496638?story_id=13496638 http://www.economist.com/node/13496638?story_id=13496638
calpaterson 15y ago
Bear in mind that a strong part of this is the fact that these guys are trying to use economic planning. In between all these Americans complaining (fairly) about their country's legal power culture, this is an important distinction. Most Western governments aren't economic planners, so technocracy is less interesting/appealing.
westiseast 15y ago
There's an emphasis on science, but it's not an Enlightenment style love of the scientific method that drives this phenomenon. Why not come at it from a different angle - what good would it be to be a philosopher in China? How far would you get? Or what about lawyers, in a country that has a pretty unhealthy disregard for legal process? No, the reason scientists and engineers form that majority is because it's how you get ahead in Chinese society. China doesn't want (or tolerate) artistic and liberal sensitivities - it wants economic development and industry.
adamc 15y ago
Having trained as a hydraulic engineer doesn't make Hu Jintao a scientist, it makes him an engineer. There's a difference.
varjag 15y ago
They are not scientists, they are administrators with science and engineering degrees.
shmulkey18 15y ago
Perhaps this should cause some reflection on the following question: why do scientists seem to be disproportionately inclined to serve authoritarian regimes? My guess is that scientists believe that people like themselves -- people whose ability in one field they imagine transfers to many others -- should control the world, and those that they consider their intellectual inferiors should shut up and surrender control to cognitive ubermenschen. Unfortunately, that idea hasn't worked out too well in the past.
patfla 15y ago
My reading of the Chinese classics - or rather their authors - is that, historically, the single greatest ambition of China's intellectuals was to advise rulers on better governance. Which didn't seem to me a particularly productive or healthy relationship between the intellectual and political classes.
- forensic 15y ago
  everybody just wants power, nerds and jocks alike
DanielN 15y ago
Chinese government is dominated by engineers for the same reason that US government is dominated by lawyers, Japanese government is dominated by businessmen and French government is dominated by doctors and teachers. These are the most easily accessible prestige positions in the given country.
omouse 15y ago
Scientists in the mold of capitalists and totalitarians? Disgusting.
dimmuborgir 15y ago
Countries should be led by economists, not scientists/engineers. The Chinese economy is one giant mess. Too many imbalances, over-investments and bubbles. The spectacular 10% GDP growth rate was possible mainly because of bullying i.e., artificial depreciation of yuan giving unfair advantage to Chinese exporters.
Eliezer 15y ago
Eight Out Of Nine American Bloggers Cannot Distinguish Between The Concept of A "Scientist" (As In Someone Who Devises Reproducible Experiments To Test Ideas To Determine Whether They Are Right Or Wrong, And Rejects The Wrong Ones) And Anyone In A Technical Profession.
- mahrain 15y ago
  ...and did you know that 78% of all statistics are made up on the spot?
comex 15y ago
"Remember him from Black Mesa? Your old administrator?"
braindead_in 15y ago
Are they scientists or engineers? As far as I know scientists do research, write papers, file for patents etc. etc. and Engineers build stuff. How many papers have the published? Also, being a scientist does not mean that you will be a good administrator or politician. Politics is better left to politicians.
Apocryphon 15y ago
And for some reason, many high-profile, that is, thwarted or captured, terrorists are engineers: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/magazine/12FOB-IdeaLab-t.html?scp=1&sq=Berreby&st=cse http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/magazine/12FOB-IdeaLab-t.h...
cjoh 15y ago
I'll point out its a rookie mistake to compare what is basically the executive branch of China's government to America's representative branch. It's apples to oranges. Looking at the executive branch, the United States has: State, Hillary Clinton, Lawyer Treasury, Timothy Geithner, International Economics Defense, Robert Gates, PhD History Justice, Eric Holder, Lawyer Interior, Ken Salazar, Lawyer Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, Lawyer Commerce, Gary Locke, Lawyer Labor, Hilda Solis, MPA Health Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, MPA Housing and Urban Development, Shaun Donovan, MPA, Masters in Architecture Transportation, Ray Lahood, B.S. Education and Sociology. Department of Energy, Stephen Chu, Ph.D. Physics Veterans Affairs, Eric Shinseki, Masters in English Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, Lawyer Vice President, Joe Biden, Lawyer Chief of Staff, William Daley, Lawyer Director OMB, Jacob Lew, Lawyer Administrator EPA, Lisa Jackson, Chemical Engineering Trade Rep, Ron Kirk, Lawyer UN Ambassador, Susan Rice, Doctorate in Philosophy Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, Austan Goolsbee, Ph. D Economics Better to draw your comparisons with this, than with congress.
rdixit 15y ago
The author first points out that science and engineering Ph.D.'s are disproportionately Asian, and that many return to their mother nations after education. That's true. He then points out that national success is built on the back of technology and science. Also true. But by ending with a back-patting, reassuring comparison with Japan and the claim that Americans have that truly essential quality, "entrepreneurial spirit" and innovation, and Asian nations don't, he makes a claim that reeks of hubris and will likely be quickly proved untrue. Science is the gas pedal, innovation is the fuel-- but without the pedal your full tank of gas isn't going to take your car anywhere. Confidence without substance is empty. My 2 cents
teyc 15y ago
This is a direct result of elections. People chose those who are more like themselves. In China, the political elite also choose those who are similar in outlook. If the original ones were engineers, so to will the new rising stars be engineers.
dreamdu5t 15y ago
So politicians in China aren't bozos, but the politicians in the US are? Oh please. The top 9 government officials are no more intellectual than many of those in Obama's cabinet. Economic growth is not the only measure of success. In fact, it is one of many.
trustfundbaby 15y ago
I wonder how many people actually read the article before commenting
sudhirc 15y ago
They may be because when they were growing up studying science was their ticket to wealth,respect, and power. Arguments, disagreements, and self correction are pillars of scientific minds. Autocratic society in which a small disagreement can result is you vanishing, cannot possible nurture scientific minds.
speleding 15y ago
The article dances around the main reason the PISA scores don't say much about innovation, but doesn't say it: For innovation it's the top 5-10% that counts not the average. I wouldn't be surprised if a study that compared the best 5% of students worldwide showed the US in a very different place, much higher in the rankings.

166 points by kkleiner 15y ago

Not to nitpick, but they're engineers. The previous President, Jiang Zemin, was also an electrical engineer - before that generation, most leaders were educated by their experiences (i.e. the Long March) and not formally schooled. It is interesting that not only are there cultural differences in the ways Chinese and western leaders approach problems, but also there's the "engineering" approach vs. the "legal" or "social sciences" approach more often seen in western nations.

moomin 15y ago
The distinction between a scientist and an engineer is important here. In the dark days of modern China, mathematicians and scientists were regarded with as much suspicion as poets and philosophers. Engineering was one of the most intellectual professions you could have without being regarded as the enemy. (As for lawyers: there's not a lot of point in being a legal expert anywhere rule by fiat is common.) The problem with the "engineering" approach is that it treats stability as an axiomatic good. It's quite hard to incorporate the rights of weird religious groups, troublesome journalists and out-and-out revolutionaries into such a world-view.
- Unseelie 15y ago
  A lot of that stability approach can be traced back through much of the history of the Han, to the point that I'd argue the engineering background isn't the source of the stabilizing pressure, but rather a facet of the Han culture.

gaius 15y ago

Also Yulia Tymoshenko, rightful heir to the throne of Ukraine, is a cyberneticist. It seems to be a regular trend in former Communist countries, that political leaders have a technical background.

llcoolv 15y ago
Not really. For one, China is still a totalitarian (communist is really wrongly used here) country. And also my impression is that Tymoshenko is more of an isolated case - my guess would be that most of the current post-totalitarian leaders are either former officers (Putin, Borissov, Basescu), humanitarian/law majors (Komorowski, Parvanov, Orban, Gasparovic) or economists (Havel). Unfortunately most of them come from the first category :/
- Wuzzy 15y ago
  I don't know much about the other ones, but Havel most assuredly is not an economist. He has a cultural background and is an author of a number of theater pieces. His successor at the post of Czech president (Klaus) is an economist, so maybe that's where the confusion comes from. Just as a matter of interest - the current Czech prime minister, who, at least in theory, has more power than the president, has graduated in physics, and has actually worked in research for some time. Angela Merkel (coming from Eastern Germany) has also a scientific background (in physics and chemistry). But otherwise, it seems you are right about the fact that there is no such rule about post-totalitarian leaders being educated in engineering or sciences in general.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - llcoolv 15y ago
    I stand corrected - just read that Havel has studied economcs for only two years before dropping out and that's probably the reason I have remembered him (wrongly) as an economist - I must have read it somewhere and it has probably stuck in my mind. Btw, the rest of the Eastern European countries can learn a lot of things from the Czechs.
gacek 15y ago
I think it is a trend for current communist countries/dictatorships. Of course there will be corruption and nepotism, but why would you decide on someone without an engineering background to run a country? If you give voting power to the people they'll just choose someone with a nice face and smooth voice, telling its all gonna be ok.

geebee 15y ago

This is a good article, but it does miss one incredibly important piece of the puzzle - the possibility that US citizens have an economically rational aversion to PhDs in science and engineering. A recent RAND study supports this point of view: http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html I think it's critical to make science and engineering a desirable career path for young americans, but simply "making it cool" isn't the way to go - and could (as the article points out) actually be destructive in that it would cause harm to students who responded to the pr campaign only to find long training times and poor career prospects relative to their friends who did law, dentistry, medicine, mba, etc.

baguasquirrel 15y ago
That's funny... Americans don't have an economically rational aversion to becoming movie stars in much the same way.
- pyre 15y ago
  There is a point-of-view that movie stars/rock stars/etc don't really work that hard and get a ton of money and fame, but that seems to actually deviate from reality.
- geebee 15y ago
  yeah, that is an amusing observation. of course, President Obama and various talking heads don't fret about the shortage of Americans in film school. The serious question is whether we should launch a PR campaign to encourage young people to make decisions that may lead (at least according to RAND) to long training times with poor pay and career prospects relative to other paths typically available to the "best and brightest".
  - xiaoma 15y ago
    If the issue is public policy, then the goal should be public good, not individual good. It's very possible that the best and brightest could live in greater comfort as criminals than scientists, but even if that were the case, any rational government would encourage them to be scientists since that would be better for the country. Edit: Seriously? Care to explain your reasoning, downmodders? Why would a government encourage decisions that are destructive to society?

igorlev 15y ago

If you were educated in a communist country at any time from 50s to 80s you would pretty much by default be either a scientist, an engineer, an architect or a doctor. Most likely an engineer. It's like trying to predict the behavior of a Model-T buyer based on their color preference.

lionhearted 15y ago

But, but, but... they're not democratic! If only they'd put more power in the hands of the common man, they too could enjoy such luminous choices for statesmen as McCain vs. Obama, Bush II vs. Kerry, Bush II vs Gore, Dole vs. Clinton, Bush I vs. Clinton... ...we gotta keep saber rattling that our way is better than theirs. Boo China, boo. Edit: To the downvoter - okay, I'm joking around. But which of these premises do you disagree with? 1. The United States has more electoral politics in choosing its leaders than China. 2. The last 20 years of leadership in China show a much more nuanced understanding of policy and statesmanship than American leadership, where charisma and mass appeal tends to be more important than "hard credentials." 3. There might be a cause-and-effect relationship between point 1 and point 2. Disagree with any of those? Yeah I'm joking around, but it's worth thinking about, no? Or maybe it's upsetting to think about... that I sympathize with...

pyre 15y ago
It's maybe a trade-off? Sure we have bozos for politicians in the US, but in the US government corruption usually doesn't lead to people 'disappearing.' Though we're definitely making great strides in that direction.
- lionhearted 15y ago
  The United States still has, overall, a much better set of governance, courts, regulation, etc. than China. But the USA is trending gradually downwards and China is trending quickly upwards. Now it's interesting, countries can catch up a lot faster than they can lead. If a country is a bit backwards, with the right set of leadership, they can very quickly modernize, becoming extremely important economically and geopolitically in ~30 years when starting almost from scratch. But many of those rapid modernizations peter out once a lot of the proven methods are implemented. Sometimes that means flat growth, like Japan. Sometimes collapse, like Nazi Germany. Sometimes gradual decline, like the USSR. Singapore has done a pretty outstanding job of keeping their upwards trends going and they're about 50 years into their building phase - I think that's the longest rapid sustained modernization in history? So anyways, yes, I'll take the USA's system over China's today. And tomorrow. And probably 5 years from now. But maybe not 20 years from now if all else stays equal, and China can adapt after they've caught most of the low hanging fruit.

przemelek 15y ago

One thing ;-) Author of this text wrote: "You have to be pretty popular to get elected, so should we conclude that Chinese people in general look up to and admire their scientists?" But those in China's government wasn't elected in popular vote and for sure not in election like those in US or other western countries. So it isn't in this way that Chines people in general look up to and admire scientists, but Communists Party of China look up to and admire scientists. But in general I agree, it looks that China and Korea are much more in science than in humanities.

westiseast 15y ago
totally - I was wondering how the author could write something so obviously wrong like that?
huherto 15y ago
interesting observation. It seems to me that the previous generation of leaders had an aspiration that the new leaders were better prepared than them. I imagine the old leaders had an admiration for science and engineering even though they were not really knowledgeable about it; they probably selected and groomed the new leaders with this in mind.

giardini 15y ago

The linked article is titled "Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are _Scientists_" but... The article it references states "...eight of the top nine political posts are held by _engineers_." but unfortunately does not name them.

orenmazor 15y ago

well that's just great. how many layers do you have to unpeel from our government before you find anybody that isn't a lawyer.

Apocryphon 15y ago
Different national political cultures, apparently. http://www.economist.com/node/13496638?story_id=13496638 http://www.economist.com/node/13496638?story_id=13496638
- stcredzero 15y ago
  WHEN Barack Obama met Hu Jintao, his Chinese counterpart, at the G20 summit in London, it was an encounter not just between two presidents, but also between two professions and mindsets. A lawyer, trained to argue from first principles and haggle over words, was speaking to an engineer, who knew how to build physical structures and keep them intact. The Chinese should build a Space Pier, in the form of a massive ramp with a huge accelerator on it.

tokenadult 15y ago

About a decade ago, when I was studying the history of mathematics, I noticed that in 1776, the world's greatest mathematician (Leonhard Euler) was in St. Petersburg, Russia, just when many of the world's greatest political scientists were either in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (the signers of the Declaration of Independence) or in various parts of Britain (e.g, Edmund Burke and Adam Smith). To this day, the Russian-speaking world exceeds the English-speaking world in the quality of its primary and secondary mathematics instruction, and it is perhaps no accident that the first of the Clay Millennium Prize problems http://www.claymath.org/millennium/ http://www.claymath.org/millennium/ was solved by a mathematician who was educated in Russia. But also to this day, the United States and Britain enjoy an astonishing degree of political and economic freedom and rule of law http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=594 http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=594 and gain many of their best mathematicians and mathematics educators as immigrants from non-English-speaking countries. It is too early to say whether a lot of engineering-trained persons in government is mostly a feature or mostly a bug. I wish China well in going the direction of Taiwan (another place long ruled by technocrats) in developing the rule of law and an open political system with many guarantees of personal liberty. But it is by no means an invariant characteristic of human societies that those with the best math and science minds thrive best over the long term. P.S. You did see below the fold on the submitted article, didn't you, what the blog author thinks China can count on just from the fact of the educational background of its leaders? Not much, just from that fact. P.P.S. to respond to first reply: It's my understanding that the government of the Federal Republic of Germany consciously DE-emphasized technical education after World War II in favor of more emphasis on humanities and social science in the primary and secondary school curriculum. I thought it would trigger a mention of Godwin's Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law if I brought this up at first, but I've read that many observers of prewar Germany under the Third Reich looked at the quality of the scientists there (very high indeed) and thought that Germany would be hard to beat in the war. It is well known to people who read interesting histories of World War II, such as mathematician T.W. Körner's book The Pleasures of Counting, http://www.amazon.com/Pleasures-Counting-T-W-K%C3%B6rner/dp/0521568234 http://www.amazon.com/Pleasures-Counting-T-W-K%C3%B6rner/dp/... that there was a battle of scientists versus scientists in the war to find smart methods for fighting the other side. Ultimately, despite the great advantage that German's prewar primary and secondary schools and universities and civil service system gave Germany in building up a supply of smart technocrats, the Nazis' disregard of personal liberty drove away many of Germany's best scientists (notably, many Jewish scientists) and added talent to the Allied side.

run4yourlives 15y ago

While this is no doubt going to be unpopular here on HackerNews, I'm going to posit the following: This is almost as bad as have 8 of 9 people being Creationists. Better than 90% of a council making decisions for the whole country being of the same persuasion is prone to severe group think. Scientists (or rather, engineers, if you RTFA) aren't immune to this any more than any of us are. If you look at the best run businesses, they are often composed of people with variable backgrounds - people that approach problems from different perspectives. This has two major benefits: First, it allows you to gain from solutions that come from as many types of thought processes as possible and more importantly, it prevents you from blindly following dogma - if you can't convince somebody that doesn't follow your thought patterns of the viability or necessity of a particular idea, it probably shouldn't be perused. One child policies that have resulted in a generation of males without females is pretty much exactly the type of policy I'd expect from a group of engineers.

Unseelie 15y ago
As an aside, I'm slightly more concerned with the generation of Only Children as opposed to the generation of 114 men to 100 girls...just to toss another layer of complexity into the mix.
stcredzero 15y ago
While this is no doubt going to be unpopular here on HackerNews, I'm going to posit the following: This is almost as bad as have 8 of 9 people being Creationists. ... One child policies that have resulted in a generation of males without females is pretty much exactly the type of policy I'd expect from a group of engineers. Let us hope that they will do a better job with global politics and economics than they did with domestic policy. Has there ever been a culture/major world power besotted with its own engineering prowess? Or is this just a way to describe western civilization in the 19th and 20th centuries? (In particular, Britain, United States, the USSR, and Germany.)
maxklein 15y ago
The one child policy was not created by this cadre of leadership. The male/female imbalance also happens in India, which does not have such a policy.

stcredzero 15y ago

Oh, we forgot about our head of the class: China. Astonishingly, since 1980 China has not won a single scientific Nobel Prize. Keep in mind, this is a country of 1.3 billion people. If China is ruled by engineers, then it is ruled by groups that understand the economic implications of the rocket equation and how this can be overcome using existing technology. Moving off-world is going to be the next huge watershed in human history and economic growth, much as the age of exploration and colonization of North America by Europeans was the last one. Making the leap past Type I on the Kardashev scale won't necessarily involve Nobel Prize winning breakthroughs in science. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale Instead, it will involve massive brute engineering and the political will to devote the resources to bootstrap it. The Chinese "Civilization State", ruled by engineers, is in a unique position to marshall those resources and be in the vanguard of what will be an economic and historic explosion of development. http://today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/u-s-needs-to-deepen-its-understanding-149449.aspx http://today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/u-s-needs-to-deepen-its-unde... I've seen this coming for almost a decade. If trends continue, China will not only be the next dominant power, but Chinese Civilization in the inner solar system will be to the last half of the 21st century what North America was to the 20th.

adamc 15y ago

Having

est 15y ago

there is a difference between a scientist and someone with an engineering degree

Apocryphon 15y ago

A relevant article from 2009 contrasting prevalence of American lawyer politicians vs. Chinese engineer politicians vs. French civil servants and so on. http://www.economist.com/node/13496638?story_id=13496638 http://www.economist.com/node/13496638?story_id=13496638

calpaterson 15y ago

Bear in mind that a strong part of this is the fact that these guys are trying to use economic planning. In between all these Americans complaining (fairly) about their country's legal power culture, this is an important distinction. Most Western governments aren't economic planners, so technocracy is less interesting/appealing.

westiseast 15y ago

There's an emphasis on science, but it's not an Enlightenment style love of the scientific method that drives this phenomenon. Why not come at it from a different angle - what good would it be to be a philosopher in China? How far would you get? Or what about lawyers, in a country that has a pretty unhealthy disregard for legal process? No, the reason scientists and engineers form that majority is because it's how you get ahead in Chinese society. China doesn't want (or tolerate) artistic and liberal sensitivities - it wants economic development and industry.

adamc 15y ago

Having trained as a hydraulic engineer doesn't make Hu Jintao a scientist, it makes him an engineer. There's a difference.

varjag 15y ago

They are not scientists, they are administrators with science and engineering degrees.

shmulkey18 15y ago

Perhaps this should cause some reflection on the following question: why do scientists seem to be disproportionately inclined to serve authoritarian regimes? My guess is that scientists believe that people like themselves -- people whose ability in one field they imagine transfers to many others -- should control the world, and those that they consider their intellectual inferiors should shut up and surrender control to cognitive ubermenschen. Unfortunately, that idea hasn't worked out too well in the past.

patfla 15y ago

My reading of the Chinese classics - or rather their authors - is that, historically, the single greatest ambition of China's intellectuals was to advise rulers on better governance. Which didn't seem to me a particularly productive or healthy relationship between the intellectual and political classes.

forensic 15y ago
everybody just wants power, nerds and jocks alike

DanielN 15y ago

Chinese government is dominated by engineers for the same reason that US government is dominated by lawyers, Japanese government is dominated by businessmen and French government is dominated by doctors and teachers. These are the most easily accessible prestige positions in the given country.

omouse 15y ago

Scientists in the mold of capitalists and totalitarians? Disgusting.

dimmuborgir 15y ago

Countries should be led by economists, not scientists/engineers. The Chinese economy is one giant mess. Too many imbalances, over-investments and bubbles. The spectacular 10% GDP growth rate was possible mainly because of bullying i.e., artificial depreciation of yuan giving unfair advantage to Chinese exporters.

Eliezer 15y ago

Eight Out Of Nine American Bloggers Cannot Distinguish Between The Concept of A "Scientist" (As In Someone Who Devises Reproducible Experiments To Test Ideas To Determine Whether They Are Right Or Wrong, And Rejects The Wrong Ones) And Anyone In A Technical Profession.

mahrain 15y ago
...and did you know that 78% of all statistics are made up on the spot?

comex 15y ago

"Remember him from Black Mesa? Your old administrator?"

braindead_in 15y ago

Are they scientists or engineers? As far as I know scientists do research, write papers, file for patents etc. etc. and Engineers build stuff. How many papers have the published? Also, being a scientist does not mean that you will be a good administrator or politician. Politics is better left to politicians.

Apocryphon 15y ago

And for some reason, many high-profile, that is, thwarted or captured, terrorists are engineers: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/magazine/12FOB-IdeaLab-t.html?scp=1&sq=Berreby&st=cse http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/magazine/12FOB-IdeaLab-t.h...

cjoh 15y ago

I'll point out its a rookie mistake to compare what is basically the executive branch of China's government to America's representative branch. It's apples to oranges. Looking at the executive branch, the United States has: State, Hillary Clinton, Lawyer Treasury, Timothy Geithner, International Economics Defense, Robert Gates, PhD History Justice, Eric Holder, Lawyer Interior, Ken Salazar, Lawyer Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, Lawyer Commerce, Gary Locke, Lawyer Labor, Hilda Solis, MPA Health Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, MPA Housing and Urban Development, Shaun Donovan, MPA, Masters in Architecture Transportation, Ray Lahood, B.S. Education and Sociology. Department of Energy, Stephen Chu, Ph.D. Physics Veterans Affairs, Eric Shinseki, Masters in English Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, Lawyer Vice President, Joe Biden, Lawyer Chief of Staff, William Daley, Lawyer Director OMB, Jacob Lew, Lawyer Administrator EPA, Lisa Jackson, Chemical Engineering Trade Rep, Ron Kirk, Lawyer UN Ambassador, Susan Rice, Doctorate in Philosophy Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, Austan Goolsbee, Ph. D Economics Better to draw your comparisons with this, than with congress.

rdixit 15y ago

The author first points out that science and engineering Ph.D.'s are disproportionately Asian, and that many return to their mother nations after education. That's true. He then points out that national success is built on the back of technology and science. Also true. But by ending with a back-patting, reassuring comparison with Japan and the claim that Americans have that truly essential quality, "entrepreneurial spirit" and innovation, and Asian nations don't, he makes a claim that reeks of hubris and will likely be quickly proved untrue. Science is the gas pedal, innovation is the fuel-- but without the pedal your full tank of gas isn't going to take your car anywhere. Confidence without substance is empty. My 2 cents

teyc 15y ago

This is a direct result of elections. People chose those who are more like themselves. In China, the political elite also choose those who are similar in outlook. If the original ones were engineers, so to will the new rising stars be engineers.

dreamdu5t 15y ago

So politicians in China aren't bozos, but the politicians in the US are? Oh please. The top 9 government officials are no more intellectual than many of those in Obama's cabinet. Economic growth is not the only measure of success. In fact, it is one of many.

trustfundbaby 15y ago

I wonder how many people actually read the article before commenting

sudhirc 15y ago

They may be because when they were growing up studying science was their ticket to wealth,respect, and power. Arguments, disagreements, and self correction are pillars of scientific minds. Autocratic society in which a small disagreement can result is you vanishing, cannot possible nurture scientific minds.

speleding 15y ago

The article dances around the main reason the PISA scores don't say much about innovation, but doesn't say it: For innovation it's the top 5-10% that counts not the average. I wouldn't be surprised if a study that compared the best 5% of students worldwide showed the US in a very different place, much higher in the rankings.