

The Suicide of the East? - pg
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/65628/philip-d-zelikow/the-suicide-of-the-east?page=show

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tokenadult
"Yet divided after Mao's death among competing visions of national
development, the Chinese made a pivotal choice in 1978. They rejected the
Soviet model, opting instead for market-oriented economic reform, but without
political reform. (At about the same time, Hungary's Communist leader, János
Kádár, with his similar market-opening program of 'goulash communism,' showed
how such a model could work in Eastern Europe, too.)

"The Chinese were probably influenced less by the example of the United States
itself than by U.S.-backed examples closer to home, such as Japan, South
Korea, and--although they would not admit it--Taiwan."

Yes. The startling fact near the end of the 1970s is that the economic gap
between China and Taiwan had become so large (because Taiwan was prospering
while China was stagnating) that Taiwan's overall economic strength was
becoming almost as great as that of all of China, even though China has SIXTY
times the population. That much economic strength attracts the attention of a
dissatisfied population in a poorer nearby country. ("Democracy Wall" writers
in this transition period referred to the example of Taiwan as a basis for
criticizing the Communist Party regime in China.) And that much economic
strength provides more military options even to a country that is heavily
outnumbered. (Meanwhile, China's army was humiliated during its brief
incursion into Vietnam in 1979.)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War>

So China had no choice but to loosen economic regulation and tacitly reject
orthodox Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist doctrine to catch up to Taiwan.
And, yes, Korea's south prospering while the north stagnated was also a
cautionary example to the rulers of China.

~~~
pg
I bet Hong Kong was also an influence.

~~~
tc
Hong Kong is perhaps the best modern case study of relatively free capitalism
in action. In just a quarter of a century, a poor country with few natural
resources raised its standard of living above that of the UK, its colonial
parent.

There's an old story that once, in a meeting, Milton Friedman was chastising
Sir John Cowperthwaite, Hong Kong's Financial Secretary, for not collecting
the economic statistics that Milton and other economists wanted. Cowperthwaite
replied that the omission was intentional; he knew that if he collected the
data, the bureaucrats back in the UK would see the numbers and expect him to
_do something_ about them.

~~~
uygbuyb
Slight statistical effect though - it was a small place that had concentrated
banking/shipping etc. The average income of the city of London (the financial
centre) is higher than the average for the UK - that doesn't mean the solution
is for the rest of the country to build banks on all the farmland.

~~~
jimmybot
Right. What works for Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, the Isle of Man, and other
low tax city states just does not work for the rest of the world--it doesn't
scale.

~~~
pchristensen
Exactly. Regulatory arbitrage doesn't work if everyone shares the same regs.

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martythemaniak
Wonderful article, I have a bit to contribute:

"The words "Soviet" and "union" are worth a moment's reflection. They were
extremely meaningful, and they were originally devised to replace two other
words: "Russian" and "empire." If the republics were no longer bound together
by their supposed Marxist-Leninist ideological fraternity, what would happen
to a "Soviet Union"?"

This is not clear to non-slavic speakers, but Soviet is the anglicized form of
"suvetski", from the base "Suvet" meaning "committee". These Suveti/committees
were the secret gatherings of communists/bolsheviks dating back to the late
1800s/early 1900s.

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jacquesm
I remember the Pristina standoff between the Russians and Nato forces and
thinking oh oh... that was a very close call.

We'll never know how much we owe Mike Jackson.

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nmeyer
Paul -- as a fun aside, one of the books in that article (The Year That
Changed the World) is my father's latest book.

Let me know if you want to borrow my copy ;-)

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DanielBMarkham
_Wars are not just lost; they have to be won. Traditional accounts of the Cold
War understandably focus on the United States and the Soviet Union. But that
contest was a kind of global election, and the swing states were in Europe and
East Asia._

Ok. I'm done.

No, not at all.

If you think the cold war was a kind of global election, you need to go back
and study up some more. Somebody has convinced you that you know what you are
talking about, and that person has, unfortunately, defrauded you.

I guess the rewriting and oversimplification of history will continue as long
as there are writers. But it sure is a pain in the ass.

~~~
jacquesm
The cold war had many elements that you could attribute to an election, lots
of places had to choose which party to align with, and the dividing lines were
drawn in the 'not-sure' portions of the globe.

Western-Europe was in one camp pretty much by default, and lot of us feared
what would happen if world war III would break out. The peace movement had a
slogan which doesn't translate very well but which effectively was 'better red
than dead'.

States that didn't align themselves openly with either the Soviets or the
western block were bullied or bribed in to doing so, one way or the other
usually proximity determined the outcome there.

I don't think it was a global election either, but there were definitely
elements of an elective process in there, and to this day there are plenty of
people in former eastern bloc countries that would gladly return to the former
state of affairs simply because life was more certain for them then.

In a true elective process these people would vote for a re-alignment with
Moscow in a heartbeat (even today).

They're a minority, but they do exist.

So, even if the analogy is flawed it does have its valid points.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
The cold war was a very complex thing. To understand it completely you really
need to go back to mid-19th century ideology.

I can't summarize it in a few hundred words. If I could then my point would be
invalid! Suffice it to say that the voluntary parts of the non-aligned
countries were based just as much on the use of soft and hard powers,
ideologies, and internal political disputes as some overall narrative.

I don't mind simplification and the use of analogies. And I agree that in the
long run the natural democracy of the populace will win out, no matter what
the system. But to say that somehow these countries were acting in the same
sense as a person acts when they go to vote is really taking the broad brush a
little too much, I think.

Ideally you use analogy to illustrate a point or to carry an idea further.
When you just throw it out there, mid-essay, it shows that you're taking a lot
of shortcuts in your thinking. Shortcuts that may not be justified upon closer
inspection.

