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1Of the 7 countries I’ve lived in, China is far and away
2the poorest and the dirtiest. The western part of the
3country, away from the much more affluent cities in
4the east and the south-eastern coast, is so poor, that
5the average peasant lives on about $2 a day.
6There is a huge difference in living standards
7between east and west China, which is probably
8China’s biggest problem. The western Chinese are
9becoming increasingly conscious of the income gap
10and are growing ever more frustrated and angry. The
11Chinese government in Beijing is putting a lot of
12infrastructure into the west, particularly in the form
13of railways and roads, in a desperate attempt to
14stimulate growth, so that peasants in the area can get
15their goods to markets outside their immediate area,
16and hopefully stimulate economic growth. With
17transport infrastructure in place, outsiders can also
18invest in the poor areas, taking advantage of the low
19wage rates. Nevertheless, the wages paid will still be
20higher than the usual income levels of peasantfarmers. The peasants will choose to work in the
21factories if they are built.
22It is difficult to describe to mono-cultured westerners
23just how dirty China can be. For example, imagine
24that some deranged person in a western country
25decided to dump the contents of 100 household
26garbage cans into a pile on a main street in a western
27suburb. He would be immediately arrested. In many
28cities in China (although less so in the more
29prosperous south east), such rubbish piles are the
30norm. The peasants who create such rubbish piles
31simply consider them to be undesirable necessities,
32because life generates garbage, and the garbage has
33to be placed somewhere until it is finally collected by
34the city garbage disposal workers. For a few hours in
35the week, the streets may be clean, only to be
36replaced by new growing piles of garbage.
37You may ask, “Why aren’t there more large garbage
38containers?” Good question. Maybe the city councils
39consider them too expensive, or maybe they are as
40much accustomed to the dirt as are the peasants, and
41are not disgusted by seeing it lying around
42everywhere.
43A similar story holds for Chinese toilets, which by
44western standards are simply putrid, - i.e. filthy,smelly, and unhygienic. I suspect the expression “shit
45hole of a country” is derived from the third world
46“squat” toilet, over which one has to squat, with no
47toilet bowl to sit on. It can be very uncomfortable and
48almost impossible for fat people.
49The dirt and the poverty will be too much for
50westerners to tolerate, so they will not come to live in
51China in large numbers, until Chinese living
52standards have improved enough and fast enough, to
53be comparable with what westerners, Japanese, etc
54are used to.
55That is happening in some of the larger eastern cities
56in China, e.g. Beijing (pronounced “Bay Jing”),
57Shanghai (“Shung Hi”), Guangzhou (“Gwung Joe”),
58Shenzhen (“Shn Jn”), Hanzhou (“Hun Joe”), etc. The
59richest city in China is Shenzhen. (I am deliberately
60excluding here, Hong Kong, which is a special case,
61that can barely be called a Chinese city, after being a
62British colony for nearly 2 centuries, and is far richer
63than Shenzhen (which by the way is a short drive
64from Hong Kong)).
65I was very impressed by the modernity of Shenzhen
66when I visited it recently. It is utterly western in
67many respects, including its standard of living, i.e. it
68has already largely “caught up” with the west. It isclean, efficient, affluent, the people think and answer
69questions reliably, and are quick witted. It has a
70lovely new concert hall (something of real
71importance to me, who considers such things as the
72“soul of a city”).
73It was the first of the special economic zones, set up
74by Deng Xiaoping (pronounced “Dng, Show(er)
75ping”) the post Mao leader, who broke with Mao’s
76anti capitalist economics and restored capitalism to
77certain regions of the country, before generalizing the
78concept to the whole country later in the 1980s.
79In Shenzhen’s case, it was only a village prior to the
80early 1980s, but has blossomed since. So it is a very
81new, modern city that will catch up to Hong Kong.
82Once that happens there is growing talk that
83Shenzhen and Hong Kong may be merged into one
84big city.
85There are many western foreigners in Beijing and
86particularly Shanghai, which has a lot of foreign
87businesses that are staffed to some extent by
88foreigners who live part of their lives in these cities.
89How to rid China of its poverty and its dirt? This is
90probably the dominant question on the minds of the
91Chinese politicians in Beijing and at lower levels (e.g.at the province, city, town, village levels). China is
92the fastest growing economy in the world, so it is
93only a question of time, before it catches up to and
94overtakes the west, which at the time of writing, is
95the richest region on the planet (i.e. North America,
96Europe, (and Japan, if you count Japan as western, in
97which many respects it is, and other respects is not)).
98Shenzhen has already caught up with the west, in
99most respects. So much of the city is new, brand
100spanking new, that it is superior to the west in
101modernity. The city must be growing at about 15%
102economically each year, with construction cranes and
103huge ultra modern buildings going up in every
104direction one looks. The metro is “Japanese clean”,
105i.e. spotless, which is so refreshing after the dirt of
106most of China.
107One wonders, why the difference? In such a clean
108environment, it would seem a travesty to throw away
109trash or to spit, as do most Chinese in most Chinese
110cities, and certainly in the villages. In Shenzhen there
111are garbage bins everywhere, lined with easily
112replaced plastic bags. One quickly becomes
113accustomed to looking for the nearest garbage bin
114when one wants to dispose of trash.A lesson to be learned here by other Chinese cities is
115that if the city politicians want to have a clean city,
116they should provide lots of rubbish bins and advertise
117that they should be used. But again, I suppose in the
118poor cities, such “luxuries” as plastic bags, and
119having rubbish bins everywhere, would be considered
120too expensive and not a high priority to such
121politicians, who are themselves probably the
122“children of peasants” or ex-peasants themselves.
123About 10% of the people in Shenzhen have college
124degrees, which is a lot greater than the national
125average of 4% (but admittedly cannot compete with
126say, Washington DC, where the percentage is about
12750%). What is so refreshing about the people of
128Shenzhen is that they are not mentally lazy, the way
129most of China is. If you ask them directions, they will
130be clear, efficient, and helpful.
131In most cities in China, and especially, the further
132west one gets, an intellectual sloth takes over, so that
133whenever a little bit of mental effort is required in
134giving directions for example, average Chinese
135people will either simply lie to you, telling you some
136random direction, so that they don’t have to lose face
137by saying “I really don't know”; or they cant be
138bothered thinking, so they just wave their hand in
139some vague “over there” direction. To westerners,who are accustomed to people being helpful and
140respecting other individuals’ needs, this kind of third
141world intellectual sloth and inconsideration is simply
142maddening, and tends to make westerners
143contemptuous of Chinese (“chinks”).
144I don't see any quick easy solutions to China’s “dirt
145and poverty” problem, other than steady, time
146consuming economic and educational development.
147As people get richer, they get cleaner. They become
148more intolerant of dirt, and make more effort to keep
149their environment and their cities clean. The richer
150the cities in China, the cleaner they are. If one moves
151from an area of a city that consists of “city dwellers”,
152it will be a lot cleaner than an area that consists of
153“peasant dwellers” who have recently migrated from
154the countryside.
155On the whole, the city dwellers don't like the peasants
156(especially in Beijing), and look down on them, for
157their roughness, lack of education, lack of modernity,
158lack of sophistication and cunning.
159Cities like Shenzhen and Guangzhou show what is
160possible in China. These two cities are the future of
161the rest of the country. My Chinese wife tells me that
162these cities pay very little tax to Beijing, and largelyignore the capital. They are rich enough to be able to
163do that and do not appreciate Beijing’s interference.
164How can GloMedia help China? I think the biggest
165contribution that the west can make to help China
166become a prosperous happy democracy is to help
167educate it. Once 100s of millions of Chinese are well
168educated with college degrees, they will
169automatically demand and get a democratic
170government. As the cities in which these 100s of
171millions of Chinese live get richer, they will get
172cleaner. The two correlate strongly.
173In Chapter 9, I will talk about something called
174“GSL” (Global Satellite Learning) which, as its name
175suggests, is a global satellite service to educate the
176planet. Stationary orbit satellites will beam down
177thousands of school level and university level
178lectures to educate everyone, using small, very cheap,
179mass produced, receivers that can be smuggled easily
180into dictatorial countries where they are banned.
181This service will help cause the downfall of the
182remaining dictatorships on the planet, until there are
183none left. In China’s case, this will be a bit more
184difficult, because China has the technology to shoot
185down such satellites, but the other dictatorships donot, so they will be vulnerable to the effects of their
186peoples becoming educated.
187GloMedia will also have educational material in huge
188quantities. But the disadvantage of using GloMedia is
189that one has to be rich enough to be able to afford a
190connection to it. Already at the time of writing, China
191has 160 million users of the internet (12% of its
192population, and growing very fast), so even China as
193a poor country is well advanced in this respect.
194When motivated intellectually hungry minds can get
195access to world class education, that is virtually free,
196then they will be able to educate themselves and
197change their lives. The educational impact of
198GloMedia on the world will be profound.
199Dictatorship and Corruption
200I will mention in passing several times in this book
201that I have a private library of about 10,000 books.
202One of my intellectual interests outside my
203professional work as a professor and researcher is
204political science, as should be obvious to anyone
205reading this book. In particular I am very interested
206in a branch of political science called “transitology”,
207i.e. the study of how dictatorships get changed intodemocracies. There are now about 120+ countries in
208the world that are democracies, i.e. about 2/3 of them.
209About the same proportion of Asian countries are
210also democracies at the time of writing, so one
211wonders how much longer will China remain a
212dictatorship?
213One can “calculate” certain interesting answers to
214this question. For example, look at Fig. 1 below
215which shows the percentage of nations that are still
216dictatorships in the world on the vertical axis, and the
217year date on the horizontal axis. By extrapolating the
218trend into the future, one “predicts” that there will be
219no more dictatorships in the world within about 40
220years.
221Since China is changing economically so fast, it is an
222easy assumption to make that it will not be the last
223country in the world to make the transition to
224democracy. Of the remaining dictatorships, most are
225very poor black African, or Arab countries, many of
226whose economies are going backwards in purchasing
227power terms per capita, due to a rapid rise in their
228populations. So let us assume that China will convert
229to democracy before such countries, i.e. before 3⁄4 of
230them. Of the remaining 40 years before all countries
231in the world switch, and assuming a linear
232relationship between the number of remainingdictatorships and time, we can predict that China will
233have switched within about 40*(1/4) years from the
234time of writing, i.e. in about 10 years, so let us say
23510-15 years.
2361950
23786%
238Percentage of
239Countries
240that are
241Dictatorships
2422001
24337%
244Year
2451950
2462001
2472040
248Fig. 1 Percentage of Dictatorial Nations vs. Time
249This number agrees with the result obtained from an
250entirely different argument. Transitology teaches us
251that when countries obtain a standard of living (GNP)
252of about $6000-$8000 a year per capita, then they
253usually switch to democracy. China is in that region
254already (in purchasing power terms at least). But, the
255inequalities of wealth are enormous and growing.The repression of the Beijing government of the
256students who were pushing for democracy in 1989 in
257Tiananmen Square is still fresh in people’s memories
258so they don't want to stick their necks out
259unnecessarily and risk being sent to a Chinese work
260camp (called a “laogai” in Chinese, equivalent to a
261Stalinist style “gulag”). There are many journalists
262and other pro-democracy protestors in Chinese laogai
263at the time of writing.
264As long as the economy is doing well, growing at
265around 10% a year, then most Chinese don't care too
266much about whether the people in power in Beijing
267are democrats or dictators, so long as their standard
268of living keeps rising, and they have a job.
269In fact, under the current Deng Xiaoping policy of
270Chinese capitalism, several hundred million Chinese
271have moved out of a state of extreme poverty in
272which even the next meal is not assured, into a
273relatively more affluent state. This is a major
274humanitarian achievement, quite unlike what was
275achieved (or rather not achieved) under the tyranny
276of Mao, who indirectly starved about 30 million
277peasants to death during the period of the Great Leap
278Forward (1958-1960), when so many peasants were
279pulled out of the fields to man the cottage industries,particularly the village blast furnaces, that there were
280not enough people to harvest the crops. Of the little
281that was harvested, too high a proportion of it went as
282tax to the cities, because the local communist cadres
283lied to their superiors as to the size of the harvest to
284look good in a Maoist era of fear and purges. Also
285Mao wanted the grain to sell to the USSR to buy high
286tech weaponry, such as advanced submarines, from
287the USSR, and starved the peasants to pay for it all.
288All in all, Chinese experts living outside China
289calculate that Mao killed some 70-80 million Chinese,
290which makes him the greatest tyrant in history,
291killing more people than Stalin with his terrible
292purges, and Hitler, the architect of WW2. The
293tragedy of China is that the current CCP (Communist
294Party of China) still venerates Mao, since after all it
295was Mao who put them in power. Mao defeated
296Chang Kai Shek (“Jiang Jieshi” in Chinese,
297pronounced “Jung Ji ye(ah) shr”) in the Chinese civil
298war, in 1949, driving Chang and his followers to the
299island of Taiwan.
300Mao was a rebel, a military revolutionary, with a
301huge ego and ruthless personality. He had a peasant
302background, and was deeply suspicious of
303intellectuals, whom he persecuted when he could. He
304was certainly no economist, and made China worseoff economically after 30 years of his reign, than
305when he came to power.
306His “Great Leap Forward” (actually backward) in the
307late 1950s, and his “Cultural Revolution” of the mid
3081960s to mid 1970s, until his death, caused massive
309hardship. The universities were shut down for a
310decade, people were coerced to spy and denounce
311each other, and high-school students (“Red Guards”)
312were given free train rides to harass the cities around
313the country.
314All this was merely a means by Mao to get himself
315back into power, after he lost status in the CCP
316hierarchy as a result of his mishandling of the Great
317Leap Forward that caused the “Great Famine of
318China”. Mao created a personality cult for himself via
319his cronies. He became a demigod. He then used his
320Red Guards to undermine the power of his rivals,
321causing hundreds of millions of Chinese to lead
322miserable lives for a decade, and multiple millions to
323be killed.
324I see the consequences of this cult, even today. At my
325first university, in the middle of the country, the
326peasants were building a lot of apartment blocks. The
327workers used a picture of Mao as a symbol of safety
328and benevolence, similar to the way Roman Catholicpeasant farmers would use a statue of the Virgin
329Mary. To the Chinese peasants, Mao had become a
330god.
331It is this “Big Lie” that is the current tragedy of China,
332that holds back its general development. Let me spell
333this out, to make it perfectly clear what is going on in
334China at the time of writing. The current Chinese
335leadership is derived from Mao. Mao pretty much
336created the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and put
337it in power. The current generation of CCP leaders
338does not want to lose power.
339Being Chinese, these leaders have never lived in a
340democracy, and hence are accustomed to 5000 years
341of political oppression and dictatorship. They are
342therefore ruthless at stamping out any challenge to
343their political authority, and find such behavior
344perfectly acceptable and normal. Unfortunately for
345China, historically speaking, it is.
346Hence they foster the image of Mao. For example,
347the face of the greatest criminal in history, i.e.
348history’s greatest tyrant, the killer of more people in
349the world than any other, is on the nation’s money.
350That would be equivalent to putting Hitler’s face on
351the Euro. Try to imagine the world’s reaction if
352someone in the European Central Bank (ECB) triedas a sick joke to print a batch of Euros with Hitler’s
353face on the European Union’s currency notes.
354There would be instant, worldwide outrage. Heads
355would fall. Overnight, the culprits would be found
356and arrested. The event would make headline world
357news.
358Yet, this is the norm in China. In fact, history’s
359greatest tyrant is still seen as a demigod by most of
360China’s peasants. It is this that I call the “Great Lie”.
361The current regime in China bans books that are
362opposed to the CCP, or to Mao, that tell the truth
363about how terrible the man was. Of course the CCP
364has to do this, because imagine what would happen if
365it did not.
366The CCP came to power in a wave of optimism and
367idealism. Millions of Chinese really believed that
368Mao would make the country a lot better. He
369promised democracy, to give land to the peasants, to
370strip away the awful exploitation by the land owners,
371who would force the farm laborers to pay 75% of
372their crop in tax to the landlord. The communists
373killed millions of such landlords and redistributed
374their land to the peasants. Of course, the peasants still
375love Mao. They have not been taught about Mao’s
376terrible crimes.Most Chinese peasants today are unaware of who
377caused the great famine or what the real reason
378behind the Cultural Revolution was. So historians,
379who have access to all truths, tend to have mixed
380feelings about Mao. Even the CCP has come out
381officially with a “70% good, 30% bad” assessment of
382Mao (a ratio I personally find ridiculous, but it does
383show that even the CCP admits that Mao “screwed
384up”).
385Once Mao had secured his personal power he ignored
386his former promises to make China a democracy
387(which had been one of the 3 main ideas of the
388founder of republican China (Sun Yat Sen) when he
389took over from the last of the emperors in 1911). Mao
390then set out on a series of cultural revolutions that
391brought chaos to the country, made hundreds of
392millions of people miserable, and made the country
393worse off when he died, 30 years later than when he
394came to power (and killed some 70 million people in
395the process.)
396In the meantime, his arch rival, Chang Kai-shek,
397who fled to Taiwan, set up a capitalist regime which,
398once it was rich enough, converted itself into a
399democracy in the 1980s, as is now happening all overthe world. There are no rich
400Dictatorships are for poor countries.
401dictatorships.
402Hence if Mao had lost to Chang, China would
403probably be far richer now, and possibly even a
404democracy. It might have been a “big Japan”. The
405world would have been very different from what it is
406at the time of writing.
407Today’s CCP, is still a one party state, anxious to
408hold onto power. This becomes increasingly difficult,
409for many reasons, which will be mentioned briefly
410here.
411The original ideology that brought the communists to
412power was Marxist. Mao and others were strongly
413influence by Marx’s ideas on the exploitative evils of
414early capitalism, (i.e. the exploitation by the capitalist
415factory and machine owners of the excess labor of
416their employee laborers, who earned the value of
417their wages by working X hours a day, but then
418worked for a further Y hours a day for the capitalist,
419who pocketed the profits of that excess labor value
420(or as Marx called it, “surplus (labor) value”).
421This Marxist economic abstraction translated easily
422into the practical reality of landlord exploitation of
423the labor of the peasant, where the landlord wouldoften take as much as 75% of the crop that the
424peasant farmers would labor for and harvest. This
425anti-exploitation logic made a lot of sense to a lot of
426people in early 20 th century China. They were
427motivated to modernize China, free it from
428colonialist exploitation by foreigners, to promote a
429sense of pride in the country again, and to make it
430democratic.
431As you can imagine, a lot of Chinese thinkers went
432along with these ideals. But once Mao came to power,
433he implemented some of them, e.g. he got rid of the
434exploiting landlords, he expelled the foreigners, and
435he tried to make China modern. Unfortunately, he
436could not resist becoming a new emperor himself,
437and forgot about his promises of creating a
438democratic China.
439In practice he became the worst dictator in history,
440killing more than any other great tyrant of the 20 th
441century. After 30 years of Maoist chaos, the new
442pragmatic Deng, who had been purged several times
443by Mao, was fed up. As soon as Mao died, Deng
444pushed Mao’s wife and her cronies “the Gang of
445Four”, out of power. He then reversed Chinese
446economic policy by restoring capitalism.The result was an explosion of economic growth, the
447greatest the world has ever known. It is largely
448because of this growth that I have chosen to come to
449China. I want to participate in China’s rise to
450dominance and as a consequence, and over time, see
451it lead the world intellectually on what humanity
452should do with the species dominance question. But
453that is another issue, and not the topic of this book.
454See my first book “The Artilect War : Cosmists vs.
455Terrans : A Bitter Controversy Concerning Whether
456Humanity Should Build Godlike Massively
457Intelligent Machines”, if you would like to know
458more about this issue.
459But, the original ideology that brought Mao to power,
460i.e. Marxism, has gone. Deng realized, and so did the
461rest of the world, based on the experience of many
462countries, that communist economics doesn’t work.
463The basic idea that everyone should work for the
464good of everyone, did not tap into the motivating
465force to work hard for ones own profit and gain.
466Adam Smith (the great British classical economist)
467was a better psychologist than Karl Marx. Smith
468spoke about the “Invisible Hand”, i.e. the idea that
469when people work for their own personal profit, they
470are motivated to work hard. They create companies
471which compete with each other for sales, and thatforces prices down and efficiency up, which
472ultimately benefits everyone. As the Americans put it,
473“All boats rise” (i.e. the rising tide of economic
474efficiency increases everyone’s living standard).
475After decades of communist economics, comparative
476economists looked at the results, e.g. they compared
477China with Japan, or East Germany with West
478Germany, or North and South Korea. The verdict was
479obvious, communist economics did not work. The
480Russian public got fed up waiting for hours for a loaf
481of bread and eventually threw out their communist
482leaders.
483So, if the original communist ideology is no longer
484accepted in China, then why is an old communist
485regime still in power? This question has a lot of
486weight.
487The current Chinese regime is incredibly corrupt.
488China is so politically, economically and socially
489backward by western standards, that it does not even
490have a “rule of law”. (See the last section below on
491this). There are no real constraints on corrupt political
492bosses and administrators to stop them from milking
493off money from the state, state run companies, and
494organizations.The general Chinese public thinks that most CCP
495members are corrupt, and at all levels. Even the CCP
496high level politicians recognize that if the corruption
497becomes bad enough, and it is already very bad in
498China, that the general public may want the CCP to
499be overthrown and replaced by a democracy for that
500reason alone.
501When one is the victim of corruption, one is
502disgusted, and seeks revenge. One wants to go to the
503courts and sue the evil doers, but in China such
504institutions barely exist. There are far fewer lawyers,
505and especially criminal lawyers, in China, in
506proportion to population size, than there are in
507western countries. If one tries to sue some corrupt
508CCP official, then all too likely, the official will hear
509about it, and (ab)use his power to protect himself, or
510even worse, hire some thugs to beat up the trouble
511maker, or worse still, have the trouble maker killed.
512The judiciary, i.e. the courts and the judges, are a part
513of the CCP, i.e. they are under CCP control, not
514independent. They are a part of the problem. So there
515is no effective “escape valve” for ordinary Chinese
516citizens to sue the corrupt officials. Actually, there is
517some. The CCP has made some concession to the
518growing frustrations of the Chinese people, so they
519do provide some legal escape valve, but it is notenough, and of course, it cannot be enough, because
520if it were, the whole CCP would be made illegal.
521As business people become more powerful, they wish
522to be free of corrupt officials. For example, and this
523is only a small case, a friend of my Chinese wife has
524a small retail business, selling light fittings, etc. She
525complains of having to wine and dine corrupt local
526officials, so that they will not make life difficult for
527her, by imposing petty bi-laws that block her business.
528If such things happened in the west, then the business
529friend could simply go to a lawyer or to the local
530council and complain. If the city council did nothing,
531which would be unlikely, then the business friend
532could go to the local paper and kick up a stink that
533the mayor of the city allows such corrupt practices to
534continue. The mayor would then face a torrent of
535negative publicity, and would then probably lose the
536next elections.
537Thus the existence of an independent judiciary (i.e.
538independent of the politicians), the existence of a free
539(muck raking) press, and a democratically elected
540mayor, and higher officials, all the way to the top (i.e.
541presidents and prime ministers of countries) makes
542such massive scale corruption virtually impossible in
543democratic countries. Of course, corruption still goeson, but it is usually far more hidden, more subtle,
544because the corruptors know they have the cards
545stacked against them in democratic countries.
546But, the cards are stacked in favor of corruptors in
547China. Corruption is one of the greatest sources of
548resentment and anger against the CCP and the lack of
549democracy that, if it existed in China, would “quickly
550kill mass corruption”.
551So to thinking educated people, who are conscious of
552the level of corruption in China, the need for
553democratic reforms is obvious. Unfortunately, only a
554small proportion of the Chinese public is well
555educated, and conscious enough to know that so
556much of China’s corruption problem is due to a lack
557of the basic institutions of democracy that any high
558school student would know about in the west.
559The CCP deliberately makes it difficult for the
560Chinese public to become educated into the basic
561concepts of democracy, e.g. :-
562a) Free periodic multi-party elections to choose the
563leaders, forcing them to do a good job and to please
564the majority of the voters, otherwise they are replaced
565at the next election by an opposition party, which is
566always hungry to get into power. This is the basicnotion of Rousseau’s “Social Contract”, i.e. that the
567people make a contract with the leaders that they are
568to serve the people (not vice versa). If the leaders do
569a bad job, the contract is broken and a new set of
570leaders is selected (i.e. voted in) by the people.
571b) An independent judiciary, so that legal disputes
572can be resolved, without the collusion of politicians.
573c) A free press, to muckrake scandals and
574corruption by politicians and officials.
575d) The right to form trade unions, so that employers
576cannot exploit their employees by making excessive
577profits.
578e) The right to free speech, so that people can feel
579free to complain about things they feel oppress them,
580or to disagree with current ideas or ideologies pushed
581by the politicians etc.
582f) The right of assembly, i.e. the right to form
583organizations to contest political power or to lobby
584those in power, or to protest against those in power.
585g) Freedom of religion, i.e. one is free to believe
586whatever religion one wants, and not be persecuted
587because of a particular belief.h)
588Etc.
589China and several dozen other third world nations do
590not have these basic democratic institutions. These
591countries are still politically underdeveloped, and
592their populations suffer correspondingly.
593Personally, I may live another 30 years in China. I
594expect to see the country go democratic during the
595first half of that period, and I expect to see a new
596modern China emerge from that transition in the
597second half. I then anticipate an explosion of Chinese
598creativity, as over a billion people become energized
599by the new China, with a new pride in their new
600dominant place in the world. Once China fully taps
601into its enormous potential, its intelligence, its
602incredible energy, its large population, its raw
603materials, and its rich cultural history, it will change
604not only itself, but the whole world. The 21 st century
605will be China’s.
606But, China has to get through the next decade or two,
607to make that transition, and I hope it can be done
608smoothly. In Chapter 2, I laid out a basic plan as to
609how the CCP could reform itself.Actually, I consider that the a priori odds that China’s
610transition to democracy will be smooth are quite
611good. This opinion is based on empirical
612observations taken from the branch of political
613science called “transitology” which studies how
614countries switch from dictatorial regimes to
615democratic regimes.
616It has noted that in the last few decades, in the so-
617called “third wave” of global democratization, in
618which southern and eastern Europe went democratic,
619so too with Russia, and many Asian countries, that in
620about three quarters of these cases, the transition
621itself did not come from “people power”, i.e. it was
622not the case that the people overthrew the regime in
623an act of mass collective defiance of the regime, but
624rather that a democratically minded faction inside the
625dictatorial regime grabbed power, and led the country
626into becoming a democratic state.
627The fact that this is by far the most common route to
628democracy augurs well for China. Perhaps some not
629so young Chinese “Gorbachev” is waiting for his
630moment in the hierarchy of the CCP to lead China
631into democracy, by reforming the CCP into a new
632democratic entity, with a new name, a new doctrine,
633but with many of the same human players, many of
634whom may be very happy to be part of a modern,democratic China, i.e. a China they can finally be
635proud of, and not ashamed of, because it will lose its
636backwardness, its corruption, its dishonesty and
637poverty.
638With the rise of the internet, and especially
639broadband internet, it is inevitable that hundreds of
640millions of Chinese will be exposed to ideas from the
641west. In practice, they will be largely intellectually
642colonized by them, for the simple reason that Chinese
643intellectual, scientific, technical culture is highly
644underdeveloped at the time of writing. There are far
645too few highly educated intellectuals in China, and
646they are not free to say what they think.
647At the time of writing, most of the world’s new ideas
648come from the west, so until China becomes a highly
649developed country, with freedom of speech, and with
650large numbers of well educated and articulate
651intellectuals, it is inevitable that when China does
652open itself up fully to the broadband internet of the
653world, its intellectuals will be largely westernized (at
654least at first). China has such a long way to catch up
655with the west, in all fields, especially in politics.
656As millions of Chinese business people and Chinese
657tourists travel to other countries and see how much
658richer they are, how much freer, how much morepolitically developed, how much more generous and
659happier they are, then they will feel ashamed of
660China and be motivated to see China modernize, i.e.
661become a democracy, so that China can achieve its
662full potential.
663A similar story holds for Chinese overseas students.
664China sends its brightest students to the west, largely
665to the US and to Europe, who, in 2/3 of cases, return
666to China, having been westernized to a large extent.
667There are hundreds of thousands of such students,
668probably including the future leaders of China. Since
669these students are China’s brightest, they will have a
670powerful influence on China’s future. Since many of
671them will feel ashamed of China’s current
672inferiorities, many of them will be keen to modernize
673China by helping to make it democratic.
674China exists in a world that it becoming ever more
675democratic. China has many neighboring or near
676neighboring countries that are already democratic. If
677China is slow at democratizing, then sooner or later,
678all its neighbors will be democratic states. This
679international pressure on China will help push it to
680become a democracy.
681The most powerful force it seems in causing a
682dictatorial state to become a democracy is the rise ofthe middle class. There are already some 100 million
683middle class people in China. They will increasingly
684have the internet and will demand a stronger say in
685the choice of who rules them. Being middle class,
686they will be far better educated than the traditional
687Chinese peasant farmer. They will be more
688intellectually critical and demand the right to vote
689incompetent or corrupt politicians out of office.
690They will argue that a monopoly company in a
691particular business area is bad for competitive service,
692because there is no competition to keep the company
693on its toes. A monopoly company can afford to be lax
694and offer poor service to the public.
695Similarly with government - a dictatorship can afford
696to be lax in terms of settling the grievances of its
697population. Having a rival opposition party in the
698parliament, keeps the (elected) party which is
699currently in power on its toes, otherwise it will be
700voted out at the next election for not having done a
701good enough job. Elections (i.e. democracy) keep
702governments efficient and doing what the majority of
703the public wants.
704The Individual DisrespectedIn my first weeks in China, living full time, I was
705rudely shocked to learn to what extent the individual
706is not important, not respected in China. In my first
707(university professor) job in China, I had a dishonest
708dean, who would tell me what I wanted to hear, but
709not seem to care that his half lies would soon be
710discovered, and that my contempt for his cunning and
711deception would make him lose respect in my eyes.
712To keep things concrete and so that readers can judge
713for themselves, I recount the following events. I use
714this case as an example of a mentality that is all too
715common, I’m told in China. If, in the 2010s, when
716large numbers of westerners come to China, attracted
717by Chinese salaries, the type of thing that happened
718to me is fairly typical, then China will rapidly get a
719bad reputation in the west for being “dishonest”, so
720that westerners stop coming to China. If that happens,
721it will hurt China very much. It would mean that
722China will never become “Number One”, because for
723any country to become “topdog”, it has to attract and
724keep its talented foreigners.
725Here is what happened to me.
726Prior to moving to China, I had negotiated a contract
727with my future dean. Based on the agreed terms of
728that contract, I quit my US job, shipped my 10,000books, and moved to China – a major commitment
729and life change.
730When I arrived, the “dishonesty” problems started.
731For example, I was told during the contract
732negotiations with the dean that I would not have any
733summer course teaching. When I arrived, he said my
734salary was so high that I had to justify it with extra
735courses (i.e. summer teaching). A few months after
736arrival, I was told by the dean that I had been made a
737full professor of the university by his school (as we
738had agreed in the contract). I later found out that his
739school had no power to do that. I then had to go
740through the main university selection procedure.
741I was told by the dean in the contract negotiations
742that I would have PhD students to supervise. Much
743later, I learned that the main university decided to
744give the school only four PhD supervisor positions
745(in the school’s new PhD program). My dean then
746held a snap meeting to select those four, while I and
747other senior people were out of town. He selected his
748cronies, who in some cases were far less qualified
749than those who were excluded. After a year of such
750events, I got totally fed up and voted with my feet. I
751moved to another university.Such dishonesty would not be tolerated in the west.
752Such a person would be quickly fired, and no one
753would talk to him, but this happened in China, where
754moral standards are much lower, and where there is
755little tradition of respecting the rights of the
756individual, the way that democratic countries tend to
757breed into people. My impression is that in China, if
758you have dealings with people who are outside your
759social circle, then you are “free bait” to be exploited,
760to be used, to be abused.
761This is a commonly held attitude in China that
762disgusts and shocks westerners, because it exists only
763rarely in the west. I suppose it should be expected in
764a culture that is thousands of years old, that has been
765poor and undemocratic for all that time, that it would
766breed a “mean spiritedness” in people, and make
767people tend to abuse others.
768My Chinese wife tells me that prior to Mao’s Cultural
769Revolution, in which people were encouraged to spy
770and betray each other, that behavior towards each
771other in China was much more generous. I hope she
772is right. I hope that what I personally was the victim
773of is not the result of deep seated Chinese cultural
774attitudes that have taken thousands of years to
775develop. If so, then such attitudes may only be
776eradicated with great difficulty, perhaps takingseveral generations of “heavy social engineering”
777based on living in a materially rich, democratic
778culture that tends to make people more generous.
779Only then might Chinese “mean spiritedness” (i.e. the
780attitude that it is acceptable to abuse the rights of
781others) gradually die out.
782I really hope my Chinese wife is correct, and that
783these attitudes are the result of a short historical
784period that can be wiped out fairly quickly, once
785people get richer in China. But, if these Chinese
786attitudes of cunning, of deception, and abuse of the
787rights and respect of the individual, are deeply
788cultural, and (as suggested above) may take many
789decades to be wiped out, then I fear that they will
790cause China to pay a very heavy price.
791What might this price be? As stated several times in
792this book, China has been the dominant nation for
793many many centuries, so it is a powerful part of
794China’s self image to be “Number One”, the most
795civilized nation on the planet, the “middle nation”. In
796fact, China’s name in Chinese is “Zhong Guo”
797(pronounced “joong gwor”), which translates as
798“middle country”.
799I suspect that the major psychological factor
800explaining China’s incredible energy that has made itthe fastest growing economy and country in the
801world is a result of wounded pride. At a deep level,
802Chinese want to be rich, to be respected on the world
803stage, especially after being so humiliated and abused
804by the European, American and Japanese powers,
805these past two centuries.
806So it is a source of tremendous pride to Chinese to
807feel that they are roaring back this century to being
808“Number One” again. But this feeling may be short
809lived. Let me explain.
810We don't live in a world of isolated nation states any
811more. The western world, particularly Europe, lives
812increasingly in a growing world state, with a growing
813world language, a growing world culture that China
814is still only beginning to be conscious of. China’s
815poverty and its CCP still largely keep China cut off
816from this growing world culture.
817In this growing world culture, people are free to
818move where they want to work, more or less. In the
81920 th century, the best brains often chose to work in
820the US, because there they could get a high salary
821and were welcomed into the (migrant) American
822culture.If China wants to be “Number One” this century,
823then it too will have to attract and keep the best
824brains in the world. If China continues to grow a lot
825faster than the rest of the world, then it will be able to
826attract easily the best brains, with high, rich, Chinese
827salaries.
828But, what if Chinese culture, i.e. Chinese values,
829deep seated ones, are repulsive to the rest of the
830world, especially to western countries? What would
831happen to China’s chances of being “Number One”
832then?
833They would be dashed.
834China is the world’s most populous nation at the time
835of writing (although India is catching up fast, with
836nearly 1.2 billion people, to China’s 1.3 billion). But
837even the biggest nation has only 20% of the world’s
838population. If some other place, outside China, this
839century, becomes the intellectual Mecca of the planet,
840then China cannot compete with the other 80%, a
841mass of people four times bigger.
842If the intellectual Mecca is truly attractive, then it
843may also attract China’s best brains, the way the US
844still does today. If this happens, then China will never
845be “Number One”, and will have to suffer the defeatof being forced to abandon its dream of returning to
846its long held position of being “middle country”, i.e.
847top dog. The pain of this defeat will be severe.
848At the present time, the Chinese population lives in
849the hope of returning this century to its old dominant
850spot. But that is not a decision that can be made by
851the Chinese alone. It is also a decision to be made by
852all the many talented foreigners, who will vote with
853their feet as to whether they choose to migrate to
854China, and more importantly, whether they decide to
855stay in China.
856If someone asked me to look into a crystal ball and
857predict the major reason why China “failed” to
858become “Number One” this century (assuming that
859this is what happens, as judged 50 years from the
860time of writing), then I would answer, “Because the
861foreigners, especially the highly educated, highly
862intelligent westerners, could not tolerate Chinese
863values, and in particular, Chinese traditional attitudes
864towards other Chinese and especially towards
865foreigners”.
866For example, if the negative experiences that
867happened to me with my dean during my first year in
868China are fairly typical, (and my research students
869tell me that such behaviors and attitudes are verycommon in China) then I can imagine in the second
870decade from the time of writing (i.e. roughly over the
871period 2015-2025) China will be “judged” by a large
872number of talented foreigners who will be living in
873China during that period.
874If by the end of that decade, most of them vote with
875their feet, one by one, by leaving China, then China
876will gain a bad reputation in the west as being “unfit
877for westerners to live in”. If the major reason why the
878westerners feel in the future, that China is not a fit
879country to live in, is because of Chinese dishonesty,
880Chinese deception, Chinese abusive cunning, and
881lack of respect of the rights of the individual, then I
882would not be very surprised.
883It would be a tragedy for China if it gets a bad
884reputation in the west of being full of (to use the
885abusive term) “lying chinks”. (A “chink” is a
886derogatory slang term for a Chinese person. In
887political correctness terms, it has about the same
888weight as the term “nigger”).
889China will start being judged in about a decade, not
890now. I feel I’m about a decade too soon in China, but
891because of my age, (I’m 60 at the time of writing) I
892would be getting a bit old at 70 to make a major
893cultural shift and adaptation, so I chose to come toChina now, and be the “cultural anthropologist” now,
894watching China go through its major adaptations,
895including I hope, and not too far into the future, its
896transition to democracy, and then witness the
897incredible flowering of creativity I expect to see
898come from a democratic, modern China.
899China should pay close heed to what happened to
900Japan in the 1990s. During the 1980s and early 1990s,
901Japan really thought it might become “Number One”,
902and wrote many books on this theme. However, in
903practice, the many talented foreigners who lived in
904Japan in the 1990s, including myself, nearly all left,
905in disgust, feeling that Japan was not a fit country to
906live in.
907Japan is now doomed to never be “Number One”. It
908can’t do it on its own, its way too small - only a half
909the size of the US population and a mere tenth of
910China’s population. So Japan’s dream of being “ichi
911ban” has evaporated, leaving only a wounded
912national pride in Japan, with only the Japanese to
913blame. The Japanese failed the “can we attract and
914keep the talented foreigners” test, largely due to their
915deep seated racism, their “them and us” mentality,
916that the foreigners could not stomach, so they decided
917to leave the country. They voted with their feet.What China needs to pay heed to is to ensure that
918there are no similar deeply repulsive features in the
919Chinese mentality that may push the foreigners away.
920If the Japanese “failed the test” for being “Jap
921racists”, could it be in the future that the Chinese will
922“fail the test” for being “Chink liars”. It could very
923well happen.
924The westerners will simply not tolerate being lied to
925everywhere they turn in China. They will simply go
926somewhere else, and somewhere else will become
927“Number One”. Maybe India? It too is growing well,
928and is already a democracy.
929What impact will GloMedia and other modernizing
930forces have on China’s disrespect of the individual? I
931think that once China becomes a democratic nation,
932the old behavior of being sneaky, cunning, lying, will
933be seen as being “old China” and be scorned,
934especially by the young generation. Also older
935Chinese will have to unlearn these old habits quickly
936or they will be sued. Once a system of law is installed,
937and there are many more lawyers, then being abused,
938especially in business, will not be tolerated, and
939victims will take their abusers to court. I suspect that
940within a decade after the transition to democracy,
941traditional Chinese deception and abuse of the
942individual will have largely died out, killed offthrough fear of being sued and by being utterly
943discredited.
944Sloths
945I hope that several more decades of capitalist
946competition and the complete destruction of the “iron
947rice bowl” system will cause China to lose what I call
948its “intellectual sloth”, i.e. a form of intellectual
949laziness that shocks westerners. The disadvantage of
950the “iron rice bowl”, i.e. one that will not break,
951implying employment for life in a CCP controlled
952industry, is that one cannot be fired, no matter how
953poor a job one does. Hence it is not surprising that
954many people become sloths. They lose their
955motivation to work well, because they have no fear of
956being fired if they don't work well.
957Capitalist competition forces higher levels of
958customer service. I remember being stunned one
959afternoon by my Chinese wife who led the two of us
960into a state-controlled canteen, and banged her hand
961down on the table demanding service in an extremely
962(by western standards) imperious and rude manner.
963When I asked why she did that (she is after all a
964general’s daughter), she said it was an iron rice bowl
965restaurant and that the waitresses didn't give a hootabout good service. All they wanted was to pick up
966their pay checks, and expend minimum effort. They
967knew they couldn't be fired as a result. They had
968nothing to fear from their sloth. My wife’s table
969banging was so obnoxious that everyone looked, and
970a waitress hurried over to shut up the noise.
971In government travel services, e.g. buying a railway
972ticket, you can come across people whom I label
973“boo jer dowers” (i.e. people who say in Chinese “I
974don't know”, with a vapid look on their face, not
975bothering to wake up their brains to think). I despise
976such people. They are an affront to intellectuality and
977to all that I hold dear.
978Sometimes service can be really bad that way, but it
979does depend on which city in China one is in. In the
980southern and eastern modern cities, intellectual sloth
981is much less prevalent, even dying out. Recently,
982private airlines have been increasing their
983competitive pressure on the railways, so even in the
984short year I have been living in China I have seen the
985level of service go up in the trains. A year ago, toilets
986on trains would fill up and stink because the trains
987had run out of flushing water.
988Fortunately, such incompetence and disorganization I
989have not seen lately. The government in Beijing hasplanned to phase out the state owned industries, and
990to allow them to go bankrupt, but not too fast and not
991all at once, because an army of unemployed in
992Beijing could bring down the government.
993Closer to home, I saw a real “bujerdower” in the
994foreign affairs office of my former school. American
995professors would visit, and have their administrative
996needs taken care of by her. She was lazy and
997incompetent, except for when it came to buttering up
998to the few people who might get her a promotion, by
999becoming a crony of theirs. I remember one
1000prominent US professor say to me privately, “You
1001know Hugo, if that woman were my secretary, I’d
1002fire her”. That was my cue to explaining to him the
1003concept of the iron rice bowl. The American
1004professor just shook his head in resignation, probably
1005thinking, “Thank god I live in the US”.
1006The peasants are notoriously intellectually lazy. They
1007give the impression of being half asleep sometimes.
1008Perhaps one gets like that sitting on a water buffalo
1009all day, ploughing up the rice paddy?! Since I don't
1010have much to do with peasants (all 600+ million of
1011them in China), except for the dirt that they generate
1012in the streets, I don't know them well enough to have
1013first hand experience of their attitudes to life. Thatwill be for my future, once I’m fluent in Chinese and
1014can chat with them, tapping their minds.
1015Shenzhen and Guangzhou show me that China can
1016become modern, intellectually awake and efficient.
1017Other cities will quickly follow suit, and, over time,
1018(not over too many decades I hope), the whole of
1019China. If China wants to be “Number One”, it cannot
1020afford its current reputation of being a nation of
1021“intellectual sloths” and the mass inefficiency that
1022that creates. No country can ever become “Number
1023One” if it takes days to weeks to organize something
1024that takes westerners a day.
1025Guanxi, not Rule of Law
1026One aspect of Chinese life I’m confronted with every
1027time I socialize or step out with my Chinese wife, is
1028the phenomenon of “guanxi” (pronounced “gwun
1029shee”). Guanxi means “relations”, i.e. who you know
1030who can help you reach some goal. For example,
1031imagine you want to get a cheaper price for a room at
1032a hotel. If you know the hotel manager, he might give
1033you a hefty reduction. You have guanxi.
1034One time, my wife and I were in a tourist bus that
1035was stopped by a corrupt policeman to have it pay a“trumped up fine” (in the judgment of my Chinese
1036wife, who said she had had many such experiences).
1037She said to me that if the fine were large enough, she
1038could make one phone call and have it squashed, and
1039have trouble made for the crooked cop. Being a
1040general’s daughter, she knew lots of powerful people
1041who could “pull strings” (which is probably the
1042closest translation of the term “guanxi” in English).
1043But guanxi is everywhere in China. It is the basic
1044social device that makes things happen in China.
1045Westerners call it cronyism, nepotism, favoritism,
1046dishonesty, putting family first, unfair, etc. I can
1047understand where it comes from historically. China
1048has never been a democracy. It has never had a
1049modern system of law, where laws are made for the
1050common good, created by elected politicians.
1051In deeply corrupt and oppressive regimes, over
1052thousands of years, guanxi would offer some degree
1053of protection amongst friends and close
1054acquaintances. There is even “honor amongst
1055thieves” in a sense, but I truly hope in a modern
1056democratic China, with a properly developed rule of
1057law, that there will be far less need for guanxi, to the
1058extent that it currently exists. Of course, there will
1059always be “can you do me a favor”, but not the
1060suffocating guanxi that exists at the time of writing,which is so unfair and unjust in so many respects.
1061The prevalence of guanxi in China is indicative of the
1062country’s political and social backwardness.
1063Puritanical
1064How can China rid itself of its terrible sexual poverty
1065and ignorance? I see several essential steps that are
1066needed. The main one is to democratize the country,
1067so that a dictatorial government cannot impose its
1068sexual standards upon a billion people. Once the CCP
1069falls, or reforms itself into a modern democratic party,
1070the sexual censorship it so notoriously generates will
1071disappear. Hundreds of millions of Chinese will then
1072be free to absorb what they want about sex from the
1073internet, the bookstores and the media. It is then
1074highly likely that Chinese book publishers will churn
1075out “how to” sex books to educate the Chinese on
1076how to have much better sex. That in turn will “free
1077up” the Chinese sexually, and make them happier.
1078Generally speaking, a person who has 200 orgasms a
1079year is happier than a person who has only 20.
1080As the GloMedia gradually comes into being,
1081Chinese people will be exposed more to the sexual
1082attitudes and customs of other cultures and can learn
1083from them. They will see with their own eyes on theirvids and by touristing, the much healthier sexual
1084attitudes of other peoples and be influenced by them.
1085They too will be flooded by sexual images in a
1086modern advertising world, and by the many sex
1087education books in the book stores. The media will
1088be freer to educate the Chinese public into superior
1089sexual techniques, so that the general level of sexual
1090satisfaction increases and the Chinese lose a lot of
1091their traditional “mean spiritedness”, so much of
1092which is derived from a deep seated sexual repression.
1093Given the depth and strength of the culture, and its
1094incredible age, it is likely that there will be a
1095generation gap on sexual attitudes. The older
1096generation will probably keep its repressive “yellow
1097book” mentality towards sex, i.e. not see it as a joyful
1098activity, but rather something as furtive and negative,
1099whereas the more globalized younger generation will
1100reject these older attitudes and adopt a more open
1101and accepting attitude towards sexuality. As a result,
1102Chinese couples will simply live together more often,
1103and there will be far fewer sexual surprises (and bitter
1104disappointments) on “wedding nights”, as the number
1105of wedding nights dwindles away to zero, as is more
1106or less the case in the richest and most socially
1107advanced countries.I feel sorry for so many Chinese on the sexual front.
1108They seem to have so little sexual joy, living in their
1109state of sexual deprivation, repression and poverty. I
1110truly see China’s democratization not only as a
1111source to liberate China’s politics, but also its
1112bedrooms. A billion Chinese will then be so much
1113happier. Under the current repressive regime and
1114cultural sexual ignorance, there are too few Chinese
1115living sexually blissful lives.
1116Two and a Half Years in China
1117The paragraphs of this section were the last to be
1118written in this book. They reflect my opinions on
1119China after having lived in the country full time for
1120two and a half years. The earlier sections on China
1121were written after having lived only one year in the
1122country, so this section will be better informed and
1123less naïve than the above sections.
1124So, what is my global assessment of China after
1125having lived in the country for two and a half years?
1126Speaking bluntly (as I usually do in this book) I
1127would summarize China as being “the fastest
1128changing shit hole country in the world”. I have very
1129mixed feelings about China. I’m both amazed and
1130disgusted at the same time. I’m still living in China,so obviously, on balance, the pros must outweigh the
1131cons for me, but both are considerable.
1132There are days when I ask myself, “My god, why on
1133earth am I living in this bottom third, low status
1134backwater, that is so politically primitive, it is not
1135even a democracy, that is as underdeveloped as the
1136“bottom nations” of the earth (i.e. largely the African
1137black and the Arab nations)?”
1138This book, for example, which I now know is to be
1139published in the US, will definitely not be published
1140in China. A potential Chinese translator, who has
1141already translated about 100 books from English into
1142Chinese, including some famous ones, stated quite
1143clearly to me that this book would be considered
1144“dangerous” by the Chinese government, and would
1145only get me into trouble, i.e. thrown out of the
1146country, so I will have to wait the 10 to 15 years
1147necessary for China to become rich enough to
1148transition to democracy before it can be published.
1149(My first book, on the rise of massively intelligent
1150machines, called “The Artilect War: A Bitter
1151Controversy Concerning Whether Humanity Should
1152Build Godlike Massively Intelligent Machines” was
1153published in both the US (by ETC Publications,
11542005), and in China (by Tsinghua University Press,
11552007)).Not being permitted to publish one’s books in a
1156country is of course by western standards, incredibly
1157primitive. Freedom of speech is taken for granted in
1158most countries on the earth, i.e. 2/3 of them now.
1159China is like Burma, a brutal dictatorship, in the
1160sense that intellectuals like myself are not free to say
1161what they think. That really “pisses me off”. After
1162having lived in 6 previous countries, all of which
1163were rich democracies (Australia, England, Holland,
1164Belgium, Japan, America), not being able to
1165intellectualize in public is a major “black mark”
1166against China.
1167So, after two and a half years, what is keeping me in
1168China, if I have such negative feelings about the
1169place? In a word - “opportunities”. As I write these
1170words, President Obama has just been inaugurated,
1171and the western recession is really starting to bite, so
1172it looks as though the relative strength of China vs.
1173the US, will only tip increasingly in favor of China.
1174I’m in China for the long haul, i.e. perhaps for the
1175next 10-15 years of my career, and perhaps even for
1176retirement, although I’m not sure yet about where I
1177want to grow really old.
1178As an example of China’s superior opportunities,
1179given its superior economic growth rates, I use myown case to illustrate the point. I have spent the past
1180year at a university on the south-east coast of China,
1181where the weather is balmy and the lifestyle is
1182distinctly more modern, more honest, and better
1183organized than in the more centrally located city I
1184lived in during the first year and a half.
1185My new university contracted me to be the director of
1186an Artificial Brain Lab (ABL) with a budget of
11873,000,000 RMB, and the freedom to teach what I
1188liked. (I chose to teach pure math and mathematical
1189physics to graduate students in the 3 departments of
1190computer science, physics, and mathematics, on the
1191topic of Topological Quantum Computing (TQC),
1192which promises to make quantum computers, with
1193their exponentially superior computing power, robust
1194against noise, which is the major problem preventing
1195large scale quantum computers from existing today. I
1196am contracted by the way to write a book on
1197Artificial Brains by the end of 2009 and another on
1198TQC by the end of 2010).
1199Within a few months, the ABL’s budget had doubled,
1200thanks to the ambitions of my young dean. A few
1201months after that, the government of the province
1202made the lab a “provincial key lab”, with a further
12034,000,000 RMB, taking the total to 10,000,000 RMB.
1204I have thus plenty of money to build the brain. TheChinese government, both at province level and
1205federal level, is very keen to develop high tech
1206research and is prepared to put big money into it.
1207Believe me, ask any western research professor, just
1208how attractive such a deal would be, i.e. to be given a
1209ten million RMB budget and complete freedom to
1210teach what one likes. It is undeniably attractive. Such
1211circumstances are the great attraction of China for me
1212and are the main reasons for keeping me in China.
1213My American friends and colleagues have been
1214looking closely at what has been happening to me in
1215China and have been amazed. Not surprisingly, a
1216growing number of them have decided to do the same,
1217i.e. to emigrate from the US to China, at least part
1218time at first, and for some, full time.
1219Thus one is beginning to see the early signs of a
1220“reverse brain drain”. Traditionally, one has seen
1221the most capable Chinese university students move to
1222the US or Europe to do their PhDs, and many of them
1223choose never to return to China, to its grossly inferior
1224salaries and its social/political backwardness.
1225But as anyone can predict, if China continues to grow
1226economically at a rate greatly superior to that of the
1227US, and with its 4 times larger population, it is only aquestion of time before China becomes the new
1228“number one” this century, i.e. the “China rising”
1229phenomenon.
1230I am very conscious of this reasoning, and being a
1231very forward thinking, future oriented person, I tell
1232myself that I’m in the right place, the right country,
1233but I do ask myself frequently, “Am I here too soon?”
1234On the down side, is the sheer lack of development of
1235China. I see it in the faces of the peasants, in their
1236hundreds of millions, namely, the dirty, unwashed,
1237ignorant, brutal poverty that dominates their daily
1238lives. International statistics show that the Chinese
1239have an average annual income of about
1240$3000/year/person (in exchange rate terms), which is
1241about 20 times smaller than that of the richest
1242countries, situated mostly in Europe and the US. The
1243brute reality is that China is a poor country, what I
1244call a “bottom third, low status” nation (as I used in
1245an earlier paragraph in this section).
1246I am not PC (i.e. politically correct). I prefer negative
1247truths to diplomatic lies. I have lived in too many
1248countries to be interested in protecting national egos.
1249I much prefer stating what I see as the truth, even if it
1250hurts the self images of monos. In China’s case, I see
1251a people who have a long way to go to catch up withthe west in terms of education, democracy, life styles,
1252sex roles, sex education, international travel, internet
1253access, living standards, self fulfillment, political
1254assertion, etc.
1255In many ways, I feel degraded living in China. I feel
1256that it is a culture unworthy of me to be living in. I
1257have lived in the best, most developed cultures on the
1258planet, including the US, Europe, and Japan, so with
1259such a basis for comparison, living in China’s 3 rd
1260world backwardness is frustrating.
1261I survive largely by isolating myself in an “ivory
1262tower”, living a “life of the mind”, surrounded by my
126312,500 paper books in my private library and more
1264than 30,000 electronic books and papers. Absorbing
1265such knowledge can be done anywhere on the planet,
1266as long as one has access to broad band internet. Thus
1267the frustrations of daily life in China are minimized,
1268so that I can survive in reasonable mental health, with
1269not too much psychological stress and frustration at
1270China’s daily inferiorities.
1271After two and a half years, how have my views on
1272China and the Chinese changed compared to what I
1273wrote earlier in the previous paragraphs? My views
1274are largely the same, except perhaps I wouldemphasize more the “intellectual slothfulness” of the
1275Chinese mentality.
1276The Americans have an expression, “When the going
1277gets tough, the tough (minded people) get going”,
1278whereas in China, I notice, there seems to be more of
1279an attitude of “minimizing intellectual effort”, or
1280mental laziness. I notice it with my students, and
1281even with my Chinese wife. The Chinese definitely
1282do not have the Japanese “gambare” (i.e. persistence).
1283I suspect that there is a correlation between the level
1284of tough minded discipline of a people and their
1285standard of living. Look at the Germans, the Japanese,
1286and the Americans, on the one hand, and the black
1287Africans and Arabs on the other. In the latter case,
1288both groups have a bad international reputation of
1289having “no can do” attitudes towards performing
1290difficult tasks. This attitude does not generate respect
1291from “first worlders”. The Chinese are not much
1292better on the whole.
1293I can understand a reluctance to persist at a task if
1294that task has been imposed on someone by a
1295dictatorial source. For example, my dean simply
1296ordered various junior professors to work in my lab,
1297independently of whether they were interested in the
1298topic or not. This shocked me. Not surprisingly, thosewho were not interested and who had other agendas
1299were not motivated to work hard at the job at hand.
1300Under Mao, most tasks were imposed. There was
1301very little freedom of choice of jobs. After 30 years
1302of this under Mao, I can understand the Chinese
1303attitude of “doing as little as possible so as not to
1304attract (negative) attention”. It is a rational strategy
1305under a Maoist type dictatorship, but is a mentality
1306that is quite unworthy of survival in a modern
1307democracy (that China is yet to become).
1308I see China’s biggest problem as its government. It is
1309keeping China backward. It stops its citizens from
1310absorbing the television of its neighbors. For example,
1311to get access to the “BBC World” and “CNN”
1312television channels, I had to employ a Chinese
1313company to install an illegal satellite dish that was
1314quasi hidden at the top of my apartment building.
1315Once the present CCP (Chinese Communist Party) is
1316replaced by a democratic government, then the
1317Chinese people can be exposed far more readily to
1318the growing world community with its global
1319mentality that this book is mostly about. The Chinese
1320people will be given the television of many of their
1321neighboring countries. Most Chinese have no idea
1322how backward China is compared to most of theworld, except perhaps for a superficial idea of how
1323much richer Americans are than Chinese, judging by
1324the standard of living shown in American movies.
1325Most Chinese I talk to know almost nothing about the
1326atrocities committed against the Chinese people by
1327Mao, by the CCP, nor that two thirds of countries on
1328the planet are already democracies, nor that the CCP
1329is deliberately keeping the Chinese people ignorant
1330so that it can stay in power a few years more, before
1331it is inevitably kicked out by the rising Chinese
1332middle class (now estimated to number between 100
1333to 200 million people) as has already happened in
1334roughly 100 countries over the past half century.
1335There is a mean spiritedness in the Chinese mentality
1336that I find terribly unattractive. My Chinese wife says
1337that before Mao’s “cultural revolution” in the 1960s
1338and 1970s, the Chinese were a much more generous,
1339kinder people, but considering the suspicion fostered
1340in Mao’s China, where children were encouraged to
1341spy on their parents, neighbor on neighbor etc, in a
1342brutal authoritarian state, mutual trust was the victim.
1343China now has more internet users than the US, so
1344the rising younger Chinese, especially the university
1345educated Chinese know that their own government is
1346censoring them, denying them freedom of speech.Most educated young Chinese would prefer to live in
1347a democracy and feel cynical about their own
1348government. They only tolerate it because at least it
1349has given them the world’s best economic growth
1350rates (over a period of 30 years, since the Deng
1351Xiaoping reforms of the late 1970s).
1352It may be interesting to speculate that the US created
1353world recession may have an interesting side effect,
1354namely the downfall of the CCP, and hence the
1355democratization of 20% of the world’s population,
1356which would be a significant and historical event,
1357when it eventually happens.
1358Many Chinese political economists claim that China
1359needs a minimum GNP economic growth rate of
1360about 8% per year to be able to absorb the huge
1361influx of peasants coming from western China,
1362seeking a superior economic standard of living in the
1363eastern cities.
1364With recession in the western countries, China’s
1365economic growth rate has nose dived, and its export
1366industries have been hit hard by the downturn in
1367export orders from the western countries. This has
1368resulted in massive lay offs due to company
1369bankruptcies and hence greater resentment against
1370the CCP.One of the colleagues in my lab, a young postdoc,
1371says that the general feeling in China is that the CCP
1372is tolerated by most Chinese people, even though it is
1373not elected, so long as it continues to deliver high
1374economic growth rates. If that growth disappears, and
1375people lose their jobs, general frustration against the
1376government will rise.
1377There are already thousands of isolated political
1378protests against the government each year and the
1379number is growing. These protests usually reflect the
1380lack of development of legal institutions in China.
1381The peasants have little redress against corrupt local
1382CCP politicians who exploit them, making the
1383peasants angry and bitter.
1384My prediction in earlier sections that China will
1385make the transition to democracy in about 10-15
1386years from the time of writing, (i.e. around the year
13872020) may be accelerated by the surprise recession in
1388the US, and (because of the economic dominance still
1389of the US economy), the rest of the trading world,
1390this transition may even occur within 5 years,
1391depending on how low China’s economic growth rate
1392falls.The transition will probably occur first in the eastern
1393Chinese cities which already have a sizable middle
1394class. Once a critical mass of educated middle class
1395Chinese start to feel that the CCP is no longer useful,
1396i.e. is no longer delivering the economic goods, then
1397its inherent inferiorities, i.e. its lack of legitimacy, i.e.
1398its not being chosen, not being elected by the Chinese
1399people, will become a major source of resentment
1400and frustration.
1401Any monopoly institution, whether commercial or
1402governmental, is prone to inefficiency. When there is
1403no competing institution to keep the first institution
1404on its toes, motivation to provide efficient service to
1405its clientele or its citizens tends to slide. In my own
1406case, I noticed that the CCP bureaucracy of my
1407university would often take several months to rubber
1408stamp a form that would take an American university
1409administration a week. It is maddening.
1410That same university has rules that in practice have
1411caused me to have no PhD students until after 18
1412months of the ABL project starting. Thus I have
1413plenty of money, but too few full time workers to do
1414the real work. Thus, due to the inefficiencies of the
1415university administration, the money is fine, but the
1416personnel is not. What the left hand is giving, the
1417right hand is taking away.But, since ultimately, it is the money that counts, I
1418will be able to bring in talented westerners to do the
1419work, and have them paid by Chinese grants. That
1420way, China gets the credit. It’s a pity however that
1421my university’s CCP based administration is so
1422inefficient. I would like to see them booted out and
1423replaced by a system that has accountability, i.e.
1424elected, and if the elected administration does a poor
1425job, then they can be voted out and replaced by
1426alternative candidates who are willing to do a better
1427job.
1428I would like to see the same principle applied to all
1429levels of government, including at highest levels, in
1430Beijing. Recently, some Chinese academic and
1431professional people signed a document called
1432“Charter 2008”, which advocated China becoming a
1433democracy. Within days, the Chinese police were
1434harassing the signatories.
1435Such harassment disgusts me. It is such disgust that
1436makes me feel that China is truly a “shit hole
1437country”. It deserves this terribly contemptuous title.
1438CCP inefficiencies exist at every level and largely for
1439the same reason, i.e. the lack of competition, and
1440hence the possibility of corruption, as mentioned inan earlier section. With no free press, such corrupt
1441practices go more easily undetected and unpunished.
1442The local victims of such corruption and inefficiency
1443are well aware of the injustice of such practices and
1444treat the CCP with growing contempt. The initial
1445civic mindedness of the CCP in the pre 1949 days
1446(when the CCP became the ruling party after a bitter
1447civil war against Chiang Kai-shek) has long vanished.
1448Mao promised the peasants democracy, but once he
1449took power, he “forgot all about it”, and became a
1450modern emperor with murderous dictatorial powers,
1451killing about 70 million Chinese, the greatest
1452criminal dictator in history.
1453Imagine then that the western recession is long, and
1454that the CCP is unable to prevent the unemployment
1455rate from increasing significantly. What is then likely
1456to happen? Protests will break out at a greater rate,
1457and in many cities. Perhaps then the middle and
1458intellectual classes (or a democratic faction within the
1459CCP) may feel the time is ripe to launch a Chinese
1460democratic party. With the internet, cell phones, etc,
1461it will be relatively easy to spread the word.
1462Once one city makes a declaration of independence
1463from the CCP, it is likely that many other cities will
1464quickly follow. This is what happened in 1911, whenthe city of Guangzhou, under the influence of San
1465Yat Sen (the father of modern China) declared
1466independence from the Qing emperor, and quickly
1467other cities followed.
1468Once China is a democracy, I anticipate a flowering
1469of Chinese creativity, and the gradual disappearance
1470of Chinese mean spiritedness.
1471Every time I cross the border from Hong Kong to the
1472neighboring Chinese city of Shenzhen (the richest
1473city in China) I immediately feel a sharp lowering of
1474the level of humanity between people.
1475The Hong Kongers have freedom of speech and are a
1476lot richer, having lived under British capitalism for a
1477century and a half. This reflects in their behavior
1478towards each other. They are much more refined,
1479gentle, considerate, and humane. On walking a few
1480hundred meters past the border, one is confronted by
1481the mainland Chinese, who have lived under 30 years
1482of Maoist dictatorship.
1483The Chinese argue with each other, shouting at each
1484other in a surly, mean spirited way, definitely not
1485humane. For a westerner it’s difficult to live in such a
1486culture. It is no wonder I tend to shut myself up in my
1487ivory tower, taking advantage of the superior aspectsof life in China as a research professor, but at the
1488same time pouring scorn on China’s many many
1489inferiorities. I really do feel that in many ways as a
1490westerner, I’m living about a decade too soon in
1491China. The culture is simply not developed enough
1492yet to be considered worthy of a cosmopolitan
1493western intellectual to live in.