The current narrative in the u.s. press, including the tech press, is that china is somewhat backward and uncompetitive. Some people even still call them communist. When the reality is quite different, with cutting edge research, products, technology coming out every day.
There are cities in china you've never even heard of that have populations bigger than most major u.s. cities. In something like 50 years the Chinese went from a poor 3rd world country to 1st world, pulling over 500 million people out of poverty and into the middle class.
The u.s. view is stuck in the 1960s-80s view of China. Even the chinese food in the u.s. is old-fashioned and not modern compared to what's in China now.
> In something like 50 years the Chinese went from a poor 3rd world country to 1st world, pulling over 500 million people out of poverty and into the middle class.
So did the Soviet Union. The thing is, you can only have an Industrial Revolution once.
> Even the chinese food in the u.s. is old-fashioned and not modern compared to what's in China now.
Chinese-American cuisine is completely separate from what's eaten in China and must be understood as its own cultural entity.
> In June 1992, Comrade Jiang Zemin explicitly put forward the concept of "socialist market economic system" for the first time on the basis of Comrade Deng Xiaoping’s southern talk.
Socialist market economy. If the government says it, that means it isn't an oxymoron.
Money quote:
> As Comrade Deng Xiaoping pointed out, "The essence of socialism is to liberate and develop productivity, to eliminate exploitation and polarization, and ultimately achieve common prosperity." The ultimate goal of the reform of socialist market economic system also points to "common prosperity". Therefore China should continue to shape its path for structural reform by this goal. Two aspects of China's economic reform are thus highlighted. The first is to further enhance the efficiency of the market by introducing market mechanisms, and the second is to provide better public service by reforming the means of planned economy, improving the capacity of macro-control and facilitating transformation of government functions since the capacity of public service provision is the primary ability in building a society of "common prosperity".
Market mechanisms in a planned economy. Macro-control (implying micro-invisible hand, I suppose). Common prosperity.
Eh, I snark, but it's an interesting experiment. I just wish it weren't being run in a context where there's no ethics review board.
The Soviet Union was, by definition, a "second world" country. First and third world do not mean "rich" and "poor". They refer to political alignment with the United States (first), USSR (second), or unaligned (third world).
> First and third world do not mean "rich" and "poor".
They do now, in this post-1991 world.
> They refer to political alignment with the United States (first), USSR (second), or unaligned (third world).
So China was Third World in 1990? That's not going to be very defensible, except in terms of the definition you just gave, which lost all relevance in 1991.
My point is, the meanings of the words have changed, and trying to use them in their original sense now is just perverse. The original sense was predicated on a political reality which is now gone.
If you mean rich, say rich. If you mean poor, say poor. There are already perfectly good words for those exact concepts, and they're not "first" and "third world". Popular ignorance of the actual meanings of those terms does not change anything.
What is perverse is the widespread abuse of long-established academic terms with precise and well known meanings as co-opted euphemisms because one is too embarassed to simply say "rich" or "poor" when that is what one in fact means.
Of course not, they evolve over time according to decentralized usage (not necessarily from ignorance.) However, this does not imply that anything anyone says is just as valid as any other, nor that any proposed meaning shift enacted by any small group ought to be immediately and unquestioningly accepted by everyone else. Others are also perfectly free to reject the proposal and continue to use the old meaning -- and to advocate for this, too. Only time will tell which group wins.
Just as words sometimes change meaning, there are many more cases where some people provisionally use a word with a new meaning, but this new meaning fails to take hold and vanishes. This happens when enough other people fail to adopt the proposed new meaning, and stick to the old meaning.
In this case, I am one of those people, and I am encouraging others to do the same. I believe I have very good reasons, and I am sharing them.
Redefining first and third world to mean "rich" and "poor" is unnecessary since we already have words for those meanings, and we have no other convenient words for what "first world" and "third world" conventionally mean in their original usage.
The desire to redefine them is in my opinion solely motivated by the desire for a euphemism to say something "nicer" sounding than "poor." Well, "poor" is not a nice thing; it's never going to sound nice. That desire is merely the euphemism treadmill at work. if you are going to call a group "poor," at least have the decency to say so directly rather than trying to hide behind a euphemism.
Besides, we have no other convenient words to say "aligned with capitalism during the Cold War" and "unaligned with either capitalism or Communism."
I agree there's a lot of missunderstanding about China in the Western press. To be fair though, the ruling party in China does still call itself Communits, and vigorously advertises itself as such.
In something like 50 years the Chinese went from a poor 3rd world country to 1st world,
China is regarded as 1st world now? My understanding is that the economic advances has been limited to a portion of the population and a big chunk of the population is still quite rural and poor.
I never understood the criticism over one child policy. Had it not been for that policy, the population of China could well be over 2 billion by now. Is this something the rest of the world wanted? Sure it's cruel and not fair to some of the families, but considering the alternative, I'd argue this is something that has to be done.
While I completely agree, the one child policy hasn't been without its problems.
For example, the number of boys Vs. girls in China is likely going to result in either a civil war or worse another international conflict 20 years from now. An extremely unhappy population is not constructive for world peace (or even inter-China peace).
I am extremely concerned about that powder keg and everyone else should be too. What does a society do with a bunch of unhappy 20 something males typically?
And three very prominent opponents of Malthus are Marx, Engels and Lenin.
The one child policy is not particularly communist.
edit - Also, China has an insanely long literary history, if I was going to place bets I'd start looking for the sources of the one-child policy somewhere in there before going to people like Malthus or Marx. That said, the policy is without a doubt far more Malthusian than it is Marxist.
There are cities in china you've never even heard of that have populations bigger than most major u.s. cities. In something like 50 years the Chinese went from a poor 3rd world country to 1st world, pulling over 500 million people out of poverty and into the middle class.
The u.s. view is stuck in the 1960s-80s view of China. Even the chinese food in the u.s. is old-fashioned and not modern compared to what's in China now.