I am reading an interesting book called “The Gate of Heavenly Peace.” It’s about about the two men (Sun Yetsen and Kong Kaigang i think it is) who were trying to overthrow the Qing dynasty at the beginning of this century. sun yetsen evertually did, he is known as “the father of the Communist party” although he didn’t set up communism, he set up china’s first replublic in 1911. But the other guy, Kong, is really an intersting guy! He wrote a book on what the ideal community should be, according to an old idea of Confusious, and the guy was completely off his rocker, it is sort of like a “Brave New World” type set up, well without the science. Basically he believes there should be no boundaraies and only one race (naturally the race would look like whites but think like yellows, as he writes) and all speak one langauge. Men and woman would dress exaclty the same, homosexuals can marry, marriage is a contract at the minimum from 3 months to 1 year, but it can be renewed. You give children to the state to bring up, there are different ministries, such as “the ministry of happiness” and anyway, the list goes on and on, and he really wanted this to happen. But he didn’t get to rule China so we will never know if this could have worked…
I also finished an interesting book called “China Wakes” written by two New York Times reporters in beijing form 1988-1993. They had some interesting stories to tell, mainly bad, about China’s totalitarian facist market-Lenin government, as they called it. The whole thesis to their book was that the Communist party mandate of heaven to rule was crumbling and there are all the classic signs of a decaying dynasty right now. However, you have to argue that the economy in china is looking more and up and i don’t see any signs of people protesting that…so some political dissidents get tortued once in a while…although they had some horrible story about a man with Downs Syndrome who was beaten to death because the police didn’t want the International Olympic Committee to see him when they were coming to Beijing to decide if China would qualify for the Olympics. i guess someone thought that olympic cities don’t have people with Downs. But they did bring up the point that democracies don’t work too well when trying to improve an ecomony. This is a good point, economies can’t grow strong during the infant stages of democracy. There is no precendent for this. So either China gets democracy and stays poor, or grows richer and stays autocratic, but if it groes richer and stays autocratic, this could be a problem for the rest of the world. Not very many countries understand and communicate with the Chinese government very well. Ah China, so many contradictions…
I’m interested by the comment that “democracies don’t work too well when trying to improve an ecomony”. Was that specifically about “early” development of the democracy? If so, did they give any markers for the point between “early” stages and a “mature” stage where democracy and economic growth can both happen?
What reasons did they give for economies requiring a “mature democracy”?
Oh, first of all I read this book 8 months ago. I just found it as an old email and so I put it on the site, so i’m not sure exactly of all the main points that I so briefly commented on. The book is by Nicholaus Kristof and his wife Sheryl DuWunn (i think that is her name) (he also wrote that article about me in the NY Times if you remember) so you should read it and find out!
Actually what is going on in Iraq right now is really pertinent to the democracy/economic development question… Much of the development going on there is being done through government contracts. The “democracy building” is focused on building civil society and local governance (based strongly on Putnam-esqu ideas of social capital… Bowling Alone, anyone?) and a separate set of organizations are working on restoring infrastructure (read: building economic oportunity). NGOs have traditionally found that development of civil society is difficult when there is little economic oportunity because people aren’t going to be happy or buy in to a solution when they don’t see it building a sustainable future for themselves and their families. In this case, the people in charge of the infrastructure are Bectel which I’m sure raises hairs on the arms of some of you. I don’t really have a point other than a second look at what American “democracy” and “economic development” are going to mean when imposed by for-profit corporations with the funding and instructions coming from the Bush Administration.
When I’ve looked at the source of the various economic statistics for the United States and heard how they are captured, it makes me doubt those numbers. When I think about getting those same numbers in China or Iraq - I feel like almost any conclusion on those areas needs to wait a while so that academics can more rigorously validate the statistics.
I think a lot of what we get out of Iraq right now is anecdotal and highly influenced by the reporter’s bias. One timely example, I was recently forwarded this email about an Iraqi statue maker and the email I got was about how he melted Saddam statues and made them into American Soldier statues because he appreciated the soldiers “liberating” his country. Well, he may have appreciated the new freedoms, but as one of Saddam’s statue maker his life was probably pretty good before and more than the “liberation” I’m sure he appreciates the ~$10,000 that he was paid for his work - compared to a few hundred bucks from Saddam.
All of that said…it seems like what you are saying is that Iraq is trying to have both Economic and Democratic growth at the same time. I think you could find evidence (again, mostly anecdotal) that both of these are progressing. Would Kristoff and Wudunn argue that more progress would be made if the Coalition and Iraqis focused on only one? I agree with your comment, Brook, that it logically seems difficult to get stakeholders interested in abstract ideas like the rule of law or private property when they are so poor that they have no private property. I’m not saying that’s the situation in Iraq, just an example of how economic development would be a necessary component to get citizen approval for government change. I guess it’s not exactly a new concept, seeing as how the Chinese were calling it a dynastic “mandate from heaven” a few thousand years ago.
Brook is not only hot and so much fun—but she is smart too. I would switch teams for this woman!
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