I have decided to be good all this week, and focus on how and why China has made such progress, even though the censorship at present is as tightly-enforced as possible, to the extent that all proxies are blocked, and hence half the internet is inaccessible to me. China’s coming out party apparently requires them to restrict my access to information even more than usual.
So when you read me complaining bitterly one day and praising China’s progress the next, perhaps you will understand. I can’t even do research to write posts praising China because the blocks prevent me from using the major search engines.
Today, as I am constrained by time, I would just like to highlight the populist policies that China implemented from the very early days. Universal education (which later became somewhat de-funded, unfortunately) has been widely implemented, and in theory, every family was given an apartment back in the 1980s.
Originally, health care was also provided, however later access has become more restricted as hospitals became effectively independent corporate entities. I believe China will have to provide universal care in the future, but in any case, at present cheap, effective care is accessible to a huge portion of the population.
We should not forget that the Chinese Constitution promises food and shelter to all citizens, and the inclusion of these terms might indicate something about where China was when the document was created. While these rights are not currently actionable, they do set down a clear baseline for the society.
A huge portion of China’s internal investment has been populist in nature. India makes gleaming airports and allows private companies to make lush office parks, but simply allows persistent, extreme poverty to continue in between.
In China, these people in the middle have not been forgotten. China and India were once in very similar straits. Today, China beats India on any number of basic statistics, such as illiteracy rates and educational levels, and in some cases the contrast is stark.
There was no model for this. China has had to move slowly, one step at a time, but has (almost) always continued the move forward, towards peace and prosperity.
So, even though I hate censorship and condemn China’s thin-skin and arrogance regarding foreign events held on foreign soil, I am very sorry to report the truth of this statement:
We did not come to be instructed about democracy.
The lectures about democracy, indeed all the lectures, are over. China has made it, and may have created a better model of development for other poor countries.
Wait, that isn’t right. China will never have the luxury that the US had for so many years, of being able to ignore or eliminate all criticism. The lectures will continue, and China had better get used to them. But the days of exceptionalism, for all nations, will come to an end as a new global balance is struck between a resurgent China and a suddenly-vulnerable US. We aren’t there yet, by any means, (this recent talk of the Yuan as a reserve currency was laughable), but a balance will certainly be struck over the next 20-30 years.
And that balance, if struck properly and fairly, can usher in a long period of global peace and prosperity for an increasing share of the world’s population.