CCP: we’re stupid, it was the economy

I was reading an essay on People.com.cn about another essay:

Here is what the People essay says about the original, which was written by aguy from one Zhou Tianyong, a scholar at the Party School*:

文章总结说，由于革命胜利后，党没有从一个工作中心为阶级斗争的“革命党”转变为一个工作中心为经济建设的执政党，对怎样搞社会主义经济建设并不熟悉，学习了苏联模式，而且在资源配置方式上实行了计划经济，生产资料所有制形式上采取了一大二公的国有制、城镇集体所有制和农村人民公社社队体制，在对外关系上走了自我封闭的道路，发展上倾斜于国防工业和重工业。其结果是劳动生产效率较低，科技人员和企业没有创新和技术进步的动力来源，技术进步缓慢，投资建设浪费较大，与整个世界各国经济社会发展的差距越来越大。可以这样评价：建国后的30年里，在全球经济社会发展的竞争中，我们走了弯路，延误了时机。

Which more or less says that after the revolution, instead of working right away on building up the economy and lifting people out of poverty, China embarked on this Soviet style planned economy, heavily biased in favor of defense and other heavy industries, and closed itself off from the rest of the world. And thus, as a result, China lagged further and further behind the rest of the world economy, and so, taken that way, the first thirty years after the revolution (49-79)–in terms of the world economy (that is, being part of the system), we have taken a circuitous route and wasted very precious time.

I suppose there is nothing new in this: this is how everyone thinks about it now. I mean, what young Shanghainese person would think that being part of the capitalist world-system was bad–it’s just a matter of finding a domestic economic system that guarantees 1. standard of living rises and more people are lifted from poverty and 2. that society remains stable. Which is why, as the old nostrum goes, China is not yet ready for democracy, or rather why it should avoid radical democratization, or more precisely, emulation of those mechanisms of democracy that liberal capitalist democracies favor, ie elections.

But still, to have things change in thirty years is fairly drastic and really does give one pause. THe ideological fig leaf is rotting “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. In truth everyone is just trying to steer the ship in a fairly safe and stable way. No one wants to rock the boat that much. NOt when there is this much at stake. That’s why you bailout banks and that’s why you go fro stimulus packages and that’s why you refrain from introducing elections into a country that doesn’t have that tradition in place. Of course, the problem is that we know that every choice that is made is made in the interest of someone–and that someone often believes that their interests take precedence over that of someone else–and so that is where the debate ought to come in, but that is, actually, the point of democracy. However situating that much energy and democratic energy at the grassroots level would, again, be possibly detrimental in China. Or not. Anyway while all of us debate and ponder various models of growth, our lives pass by–not to say that such ponderings are a waste, no, it’s more a reminder of how short our lives are compared to these magnificent macrohistorical backdrops that we can concoct and hold in our minds. Our minds can see the vast sweep of history, or hell, of the universe–but our bodies are obviously much more perishable.

*Party School. snicker, snicker.

China: Not your typical “Party School” or the use and abuse of ideology

Blogger and author Chen Xingzhi on Bokee talks about his experiences at the Chinese Communist Party School, where they study Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao Zedong, Deng, and Jiang Zemin. He is, of course, a Party Member and no doubt in some kind of leadership position. He spent four months as in the Party School, attending lectures, taking part in discussions, reading, writing reports, etc. This essay is a philosophical reflection on his experiences there, and I found out it to be one of the most moving things I’ve read, in Chinese, in a while. It gets to the heart of the political culture of the Party, but goes beyond that—that is, one reads it and realized how deep the problem is. I hope everyone gets a chance to read it, and if you read Chinese, I hope you read the original. I unreservedly recommend it.

The writer starts off with some light-hearted banter about how dead-boring some of the lecturers and their lectures are: