
What China wants - Turukawa
http://www.economist.com/news/essays/21609649-china-becomes-again-worlds-largest-economy-it-wants-respect-it-enjoyed-centuries-past-it-does-not
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Htsthbjig
"The structural reasons for China’s subsequent decline and the empire’s demise
have been much discussed. Some point to what..."

To me it is very clear. It is the Invention of the Guttemberg mobile type
printing press and the sharing of knowledge it created. Latin has over 70
different writing symbols(Upper and lower case plus numbers), Chinese has
thousands.

Printing a book in Chinese was orders of magnitude more work(and expensive).
Remember that at the time it took years to copy a book. Chinese already knew
about printing presses, but Guttemberg discovered the way to make it in metal,
and making new Glyphs from molds is very inexpensive thanks to latin.

After Guttemberg it took years to copy a book, but once you have it you could
make thousands of copies. Chinese could not, because the plates deteriorated
fast and was very expensive to recreate them. The Japanese identified the
problem and created a vocalic language from Chinese, the kana. The reason
Japanese stated running circles around Chinese and humiliated them.(Chinese
and Japanese hate each other so much)

The fact that Chinese today consider Confucius the "greatest philosopher of
all time" is the evidence of Chinese lag.

Imagine Europeans considering only Aristotle or Plato, with no mention of
Descartes, Kant, Nietze, Ortega and dozens of other brilliant philosophers.

Renaissance and science were the result of the printing press. Everybody could
buy a Bible, and discuss it, without having intermediaries.

Before that a Bible or any other book was priced as years of the salary of a
worker.

~~~
Turukawa
A fantastic book to read on this topic is "A world lit only by fire" by
William Manchester. He also makes the case that Europe emerged from
superstition because the Pope declared the world to be flat just as Magellan
circumnavigated the globe, and the printing press permitted millions to learn
about it. The age of myth and superstition was rapidly replaced by the
Enlightenment.

Update: as has been pointed out below, Manchester overstated his case. It was
still an enjoyable read some 16 years ago, and I still agree with the idea
that the printing press - by disseminating news and knowledge at speed -
undermined the prevailing authority of the day.

~~~
V-2
If I remember correctly, according to Umberto Eco the flat Earth myth
(attributing this stance to catholic church) was made up by Darwinists in the
heat of the debate over evolution theory. It wasn't true, but they'd throw
everything in the kitchen sink at their opponent for propaganda purposes.

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tlear
It misses an elephant in the room, India. Current policy from Beijing is
driving Japan and India to become long term allies with a goal of containing
and defeating China no matter what US policy is.

~~~
latch
The Economist had a good (i think) piece on India's military [1] which makes
me think India's more like a mouse than an elephant. At least, militarily
speaking, which I acknowledge your comment wasn't explicitly about.
Economically speaking, I agree it seems like a significant oversight.

[1] [http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21574458-india-
poised...](http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21574458-india-poised-
become-one-four-largest-military-powers-world-end)

------
bainsfather
A well-written geopolitical overview of China's rise - it's well worth reading
the entire article if you have the time.

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RankingMember
I know this is a nitpick, but I think it's really silly when articles have
headlines like "What China Wants", as though everyone in China is thinking
what the government is thinking. It's that kind of lumping-together that makes
it easier for people to get wound up into "Us vs. Them" sentiments.

~~~
mabhatter
You comment hits the core of the "problem". Traditionally What "China" wants
has been 100% decided by its rulers.. While the people were TOLD what they
wanted. Even now China's rulers think about what's useful for their minions to
manufacture for outsiders with near contempt that their own people may want
something.

A good microcosm of this is iPhone. It took four years for the government to
bless iPhone for Chinese people to use... Even though it is nearly 100% made
by Chinese people in China. That rigid disparity between what people of a
country WANT and what they MAKE doesn't exist like it does in China anywhere
else. That's what makes China such a tough nut to crack.. The near absolute
control of what the people are "allowed" to like and buy.

~~~
hga
If you change the item from smartphones to firearms, the PRC is not at all
special, besides Mao's infamous revealing quote, " _Every Communist must grasp
the truth: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun._ "

A more useful illustration is the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) attitude
towards civil society (per Wikipedia, " _the aggregate of non-governmental
organizations and institutions that manifest interests and will of citizens_
"), it must be extremely limited and restrained, and there are no extremes
including mass murder to which the CCP is not willing to go to keep it that
way. See the Falun Gong for the most recent severe example, and I've noticed
recent headlines WRT to some Christian "sect" and 1,000 people arrested.

No doubt the CCP knows their history, see for example the
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Turban_Rebellion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Turban_Rebellion)
and the general history of the
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Lotus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Lotus)
, and that their control of their sprawling mainland empire is fragile, as it
also historically has been.

In that context, smartphones, which can communicate in ways less subject to
surveillance than say SMS, are an existential threat to the CCP, potentially
as dangerous as guns.

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adventured
The article makes a giant leap right from the get-go:

"As China becomes, again, the world's largest economy, it wants the respect it
enjoyed in centuries past. But it does not know how to achieve or deserve it"

In 1990 we would have been talking about Japan becoming the largest economy
instead.

Turns out there are a lot of problems between here and there. For example,
China is at a point where they're unable to grow their economy without taking
on ever increasing amounts of debt. That has resulted in one of the greatest
debt binges in world history in the last six years.

I'd argue it's far more likely China will see stagnation, and extremely
challenging growth, over the next 30 years as a consequence of what they're
doing to fake growth now, rather than see continual boom. Wherever China stops
in their vast debt accumulation, the bill that will go along with it is going
to be historical in scale. That will drag on their growth in a dramatic way
for decades.

The Chinese boom ended in 2007/08\. In the next few decades it will be very
difficult for them to achieve even 3% to 4% real GDP growth. What is basically
going to happen, is normalization. It seems to be a perpetual cycle of
analysts and economists making terribly poor extrapolations for future
outcomes based on temporary boom periods that originate from extreme lows.

~~~
hga
Another strong factor is the PRC's rapidly aging demographics thanks to the
CCP's One Child Policy. They're looking at a demographic collapse not entirely
unlike Japan's ... except it's happening before they get really wealthy, and
without the (unsustainable though they might be) outside the family safety
nets of "developed" countries. And all this in a regime of financial
repression
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_repression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_repression)).

Decline is at least as good a bet as postulating "extremely challenging"
growth ... and perhaps the PRC's current aggressive foreign and military
policies are in part in reflection of this. Certainly wouldn't be the first
time that happened, that motivated a lot of French policy before WWI.

~~~
adventured
Yes, that is indeed a huge issue. I've heard it referred to China getting old
before they get widely prosperous.

The robotics revolution interests me greatly as it pertains to China's aging
situation (and Japan's of course). Whether they'll fully embrace robotics, or
seek to limit that and instead focus on maximizing human labor (which is
currently vastly under-utilized, via their intentionally backwards farming
system that keeps hundreds of millions of people artificially busy).

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dangerlibrary
So, in typical Hacker News fashion, I'm going to ignore the article and just
say that this website is beautiful, and if I could read every news article
this way I'd be thrilled.

Sent from my desktop computer.

~~~
fidotron
I thought so too. The interactive graph was a superb touch.

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samspenc
This is fantastic, but IMHO missing one important point that I've learned from
my Chinese friends: the Chinese Communist Party is well ... essentially
communist, and differs in a few big ways from the European powers:

1\. The current leaders want to colonize the rest of the world 2\. They want
to do so in the same heavy-handed manner that they use to subjugate their own
people 3\. With overseas dominance, use that "soft power" to increasingly
assert themselves over their own people in China.

So the overseas expansion isn't for the sake of only resources, etc, they
apparently want to use their external international influence to assert more
control internally over the Chinese people as well.

~~~
latch
The article doesn't _miss_ this point, it explicitly and absolutely disagrees
with it:

"FOR all this ambition, China is not bent on global domination. It has little
interest in polities beyond Asia, except in as much as they provide it with
raw material and markets. "

"China is “neither a missionary culture nor a values superpower,” says Kerry
Brown of the University of Sydney. “It is not trying to make other people into
China.”

"Clan-focused Confucianism and the fear bred by communism have persuaded the
Chinese to mind their own business"

