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Indian democracy loses to Chinese efficiency - by 160 votes

Dear Sir,

An interesting analogy. However, I was under the impression that we were discussing the possibility of a trade-off between efficiency and short-term results on the one hand and viability and long-term survival on the other.

As a former CEO (multiple occasions) and member of several boards, may I be allowed to point out that very few companies survive on nearly the same time-scale as countries?

Of course, this does not gainsay the arguments on either side. This may be considered as one more data point.

Regards,
'Joe S.'


Joe,

Well, I am afraid to let you know that your "impression" are false premises!

Quote "I am under the impression... " - By saying so, you were trying to establish two conclusions as the topic of the discussion, which are

1. " China has traded off long term prosperity for short term one by adopting efficiency", and

2. Vice versus, namely "india is giving up short-term gain in order to have better long-term prosperity than China".

Both of these are not true! Your dreary effort of dishonestly changing the topic of discussion into above "hidden" false premises can not hided away from trained eyes.

As for your statement of " very few companies survive on nearly the same time-scale as countries", I hardly see any relevence, if at all, to the main topic being discussed. This is the same as if I were to point out as an Animal Rights activist that " very few monkeys survives on nearly the same time-scale as Humans ". -- Yeah, right. So? What's the point? :cheesy:
 
@ CHAUISM

I read through this thread. Your knowledge scope and logical skill in this "debate" are both well beyond your supposed "opponents" here without any doubt. Bravo!
 
It is interesting to see, in China, some staunch supporters of democracy would unconditionally praise Indian system, in defiance of facts. Here is an exerpt:

China's efficiency beats India's democracy - upiasia.com

...

After all, economic performance correlates not to political systems, but to economic systems. Everyone is aware and basically in agreement that China’s rapid economic growth in the past 30 years was related to the establishment of a market economy.

However, China’s economic performance is also affected by both its political system and its ethnic characteristics. By comparison, most Latin American countries cannot build up a strong economy like China’s, whether or not they operate under a similar system, with a market economy and an authoritarian government. They cannot even be compared to democratic India.

Hence, one cannot conclude that China’s quicker economic development infers a lack of efficiency in India’s democracy. Comparisons of economic efficiency do not equal comparisons between democracy and authoritarianism.

In fact, a market economy mainly aims to solve the issue of efficiency, while democratic politics are designed to settle the issue of social equity. Therefore, if a given country attains better economic growth in the course of its development, before it transforms to a democracy, it is not strange. But this only holds true if the authoritarian leadership promotes economic development.

One of the major arguments of those who deprecate democracy is that democracy lacks efficiency. But this is actually a misunderstanding.

Certainly, democracy in itself will not yield economic or military efficiency. However, it generates desirable and expected efficiency in political and social affairs.

For instance, a recent segment on the official China Central Television program “Interview in Focus” disclosed that a factory in Hebei province, producing monosodium glutamate, polluted several thousand square kilometers of farmland with its toxic discharge. If this had occurred in a democracy, local people would merely telephone the local councilor, who would arrive at the spot immediately. If the councilor didn’t do his or her duty and investigate the matter, the media would publicize the fact. As a result, the voters might refuse to vote for that person in the next election.

Further, the councilor would question the local administration and request a solution. If the local authority failed to solve the problem in time, the councilor might move to impeach the responsible official or remove the head of the responsible agency.

But in China today, if rural villagers cannot gain the attention of the media, they will have to face the head of the local administration themselves. In the case broadcast by CCTV, the peasants went to the town head to explain that the farmland was being polluted. But the town head cut them short coldly, saying, “It’s not polluted by the town government anyway!” That was basically the end of the case.

Authoritarianism often reaches its highest efficiency in those areas that benefit the interests of the rulers. Take China’s Three Gorges Dam project, for example. If the project was discussed under a democratic system, the negotiations could take three to five years, or even longer. Possibly no agreement could be achieved. But as this project was undertaken within a totalitarian context, it only required one individual rapping the gavel.

Unfortunately, in other areas that require efficiency – like preventing officials from colluding with merchants and harming the interests of the people – 100 years would not be enough to resolve such issues.

In brief, efficiency is not an excuse for the denial of democracy.
--
(Wu Jiaxiang is a senior researcher at the China Research Center for Public Policy of the China Society of Economic Reform. He is a renowned economic and political scholar and a former visiting scholar at Harvard University's Fairbank Center for East Asian Research. His research areas include economics, domestic and international politics, business strategy and Chinese traditional strategy and thought. This article is translated and edited from the Chinese by UPI Asia.com; the original can be found at ??VS??=??VS???_???_???? ©Copyright Wu Jiaxiang.)

And I refuted as follows:

gpit @ May 22, 2009 10:28PM HKT
I’m afraid while the author may be quite familiar with China, he/she nonetheless hasn’t had a study of democracy in general and of India in particular, at least through some published data.

Take the pollution for example. According to Mr. Wu’s postulation, a democratic country will never have any problem of pollution, because as long as there is a serious issue of pollution, the hypothetical, presumably democratically elected councilor would question the administration and would strive for his constituents to solve it.

Unfortunately, that is only true in textbook theory. In fact, India is rampant in pollution, not much better that China. How would Mr. Xu explain that?

In practice, one must consider a key factor of the real world: social interests and the interplay between the interests.

The same can be said for many other indicators. For instance, India is more corruptive than China. Do Indian constituents love corruptions so as to elect corrupted officials? No, of course not!

Those corrupted officials might have interwoven with other local powers in their mutual interests such that only corrupted can be nominated as candidates. It could also be that an initially uncorrupting person mutated into a bad one after being bombarded with briberies and embezzlements when in the office, due to lack of effective judiciary or weak judiciary.

Political system will of course intimately affect economical performance. If Mr. Wu is truly a scholar in China, he/she wouldn’t have known that economy is the infrastructure of a social system and politics a superstructure. Backward or incompetent political system will only undoubtedly impede the development of economy.

I am disappointed to see a professional senior researcher from China lack such fundamental knowledge and basic research capabilities.

The funny thing is that when I put my Chinese version of the response in this democracy supporter's blog, he promptly deleted my post. :cheesy: :rofl:
 
It is interesting to see, in China, some staunch supporters of democracy would unconditionally praise Indian system, in defiance of facts. Here is an exerpt:



And I refuted as follows:



The funny thing is that when I put my Chinese version of the response in this democracy supporter's blog, he promptly deleted my post. :cheesy: :rofl:


Hei gpit, nice post!

It seems to me that the researcher WU was eager to make his main case that "efficiency can not ignore democracy" when talking about "side dishes" such as Latin Amercian cases compared with Indian one in a hurry, without paying too much attention of his logic loophole, which is correctely spotted by you in your debunking analysis.

Democracy to me, in a not too proper analagy, is a F-22 which looks good by default. However, not anyone, at any time, can use F-22 properly.
Mr. WU was just a loghead by one-sidedly looking at F-22 on paper. Be it superstructure or not, there are too many "it depends" here and there. Just try to send a F-22 to Ethiopia Air Force, the bros there guarantee to crash it in the first week of operation! If there are too many "it depends" prohibiting the efficient usage of F-22, why not try Chinese J-8 instead for the moment in a runup? More efficiency for sure! And India disgrees. :hitwall::cheesy:
 
It is disciplined, single-minded and dynamic in pursuit of its goal in a way that a democracy cannot be,” Powell said.

****, about multi-party or single-party system. The quote above is the essence of the article. Apply the above quote and you shall prosper more.
 
@ CHAUISM

I read through this thread. Your knowledge scope and logical skill in this "debate" are both well beyond your supposed "opponents" here without any doubt. Bravo!

Actually I realize this problem as well after reading many threads in this forum, a lot of the people here like to argue about things they have little knowledge of without solid facts to back them up. This is not only limited to the Indian posters(even though they are the majority here), but also to the others.

People who live in a democratic countries tend to think that they live in a world that are surrounded by unbiased truths. However in reality this is not true. Every media outlets are biased politically one way or another. That is why I never take any news for its face value, and like to dig out the stories behinds them myself. People who live in an authoritarian society normally ignore their censored mainstream media and look for alternative sources for their news. One might question that since the government is censoring everything, how can they find the alternative. Well, the answer is internet. Even though there is this great firewall guarding the contexts of the internet, but one should also know that most of the Chinese internet users are experts of proxies, and there is nothing the government can do to stop that. Chinese Internet Users Break Great Firewall By ProxyLord

It is such an irony that it is often those who live in a democratic countries believing that they have the freedom of information, and believe whatever they are fed from those uncensored news outlet appear to be more brainwashed.
 
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It is interesting to see, in China, some staunch supporters of democracy would unconditionally praise Indian system, in defiance of facts. Here is an exerpt:



And I refuted as follows:



The funny thing is that when I put my Chinese version of the response in this democracy supporter's blog, he promptly deleted my post. :cheesy: :rofl:

Hei gpit, nice post!

It seems to me that the researcher WU was eager to make his main case that "efficiency can not ignore democracy" when talking about "side dishes" such as Latin Amercian cases compared with Indian one in a hurry, without paying too much attention of his logic loophole, which is correctely spotted by you in your debunking analysis.

Democracy to me, in a not too proper analagy, is a F-22 which looks good by default. However, not anyone, at any time, can use F-22 properly.
Mr. WU was just a loghead by one-sidedly looking at F-22 on paper. Be it superstructure or not, there are too many "it depends" here and there. Just try to send a F-22 to Ethiopia Air Force, the bros there guarantee to crash it in the first week of operation! If there are too many "it depends" prohibiting the efficient usage of F-22, why not try Chinese J-8 instead for the moment in a runup? More efficiency for sure! And India disgrees. :hitwall::cheesy:

I think that main difference between two sides of the argument is that , for those people who defend democracy base their believes on ideology while people who defend authoritarian government especially China's base their believes on pragmatism. If you can see through this, then it is quite obvious why and where the logical loopholes come from. It is like an argument about evolution between religious people and others. If you have seem any of those debates, then you will realize that there are many similarities.
 
To Chauism and Speeder,

What bothers me is that Mr. Wu Jiaxiang was(is?) a think tank to CPC or the central government. If CPC hires too many of those retarded as "scholars", China is seriously in danger! No joking.

While recognizing that China has to be more open and democratic, and a lot of views needs to be discussed in public, I hope he, and many other silly or ill-intentioned "scholars" appearing on Chinese internet and praising democracy a panacea, is not paid by foreign agents such as RAW or CIA or whatever.

I'm not sure any of you familiar with matters in China can access to better source about him.

Meanwhile, I'm determined to find a time to have my stuff posted in Tianya unless the mods don't allow it.
 
To Chauism and Speeder,

What bothers me is that Mr. Wu Jiaxiang was(is?) a think tank to CPC or the central government. If CPC hires too many of those retarded as "scholars", China is seriously in danger! No joking.

While recognizing that China has to be more open and democratic, and a lot of views needs to be discussed in public, I hope he, and many other silly or ill-intentioned "scholars" appearing on Chinese internet and praising democracy a panacea, is not paid by foreign agents such as RAW or CIA or whatever.

I'm not sure any of you familiar with matters in China can access to better source about him.

Meanwhile, I'm determined to find a time to have my stuff posted in Tianya unless the mods don't allow it.

I don't think that you should be bothered by him at all. After all he is just a scholar and not a politician. Being a consultant, he does what other consultants do best, talk a lot of non-sense rubbish(not all the time though) without solid proves. He only writes what he can see and understand the best with his own idealogical prejudice. That is why no one would consider him as a social scientists, because as a scientist one has to base his or her findings on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.

As I said before, different opinions even if it is nonsense and opposes the government's policies still should be heard as long as there is no extreme action taken in China. Diversity is never a bad thing, but as everything else there is a limit.
 
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Oh, boy!!! Do you read any of my links at all? Democracy has nothing to do with capitalism as China has proven to the world. You think money is not important in China? Think again, and think hard!!!! Money is the only thing that matters for people in China, People in China embrace the idea too well, the only thing divide between people are money, not class or anything else. Money can get you anything in China, and sometimes money has more power in China than anywhere else in the world.

If you think China's economy is so closed, then can you explain to me why so many foreign companies are waiting in a line to do business in China? Don't tell me they are doing charity works here. I don't think I need to teach you the difference between FDI of China and India.

I do agree with you that democracy has got nothing to do with capitalism , But communism definitely against capitalism. For a communist money is not important , only people. Correct me if I am wrong. I am sure for a capitalist money gets more importance than people and it cannot be adopted by a communist . Communism is failed long back to USA. Thats why I am saying you have a fake communism.

China gets foreign companies because of cheap labor and labor laws , if your labors are costly they will not hesitate to move to another country. You don't have to teach me about FDI.

But seriously, its very funny and I feel pity about communism that it failed to an extent that a communist proudly says I am a capitalist.
 
I do agree with you that democracy has got nothing to do with capitalism , But communism definitely against capitalism. For a communist money is not important , only people. Correct me if I am wrong. I am sure for a capitalist money gets more importance than people and it cannot be adopted by a communist . Communism is failed long back to USA. Thats why I am saying you have a fake communism.
I don't even know where to start here for correcting your inconsistence with your own logic here. Someone else may take over from here, as I am officially giving up on teaching you about this.

China gets foreign companies because of cheap labor and labor laws , if your labors are costly they will not hesitate to move to another country. You don't have to teach me about FDI.
But here is the problem, what about those companies that are in China for its huge market potentials? You are the one saying that China's economy is closed, and the money one make there can not be taken out. Then explain to me about this, why GM is using the profits of its JV with SAIC in China to save its own a** because GM China is its most profitable subsidiary and sales climbed to a new height even when there is a global melt down. I can assure you that none of cars GM made in China is sold outside of China. All those service industries including retail as you asked, which only serve the people in China? What they do about their profits?
GM may use profits from China to float North American operations

But seriously, its very funny and I feel pity about communism that it failed to an extent that a communist proudly says I am a capitalist.
:rofl:It is time to teach you about communism in China right now. It is nothing more than just a name of its ruling party. I seriously doubt there is any true hardcore communist left in China. If there is a ideology in China, then it is money, it is to become rich. You really have proven my point of who are more brainwashed.
 
I do agree with you that democracy has got nothing to do with capitalism , But communism definitely against capitalism. For a communist money is not important , only people. Correct me if I am wrong. I am sure for a capitalist money gets more importance than people and it cannot be adopted by a communist . Communism is failed long back to USA. Thats why I am saying you have a fake communism.

Repeat that to a local CCP official in China, he probably will order a lethal injection for you, despite of an excuse of real evidences in eye of any psychological expert.

Washington DC would have done the same under Obama, except in a reserse order. In a sense that despite a death threat from the leftists, you'll most likely end up in a mental health facility following psychological advises.

So staying in India is the best thing you can do: you could be a congressman,with enough such supporters who only know how to print their thumbs on paper as signitures. No doubt about it. :azn:
 
Repeat that to a local CCP official in China, he probably will order a lethal injection for you, despite of an excuse of real evidences in eye of any psychological expert.

Washington DC would have done the same under Obama, except in a reserse order. In a sense that despite a death threat from the leftists, you'll most likely end up in a mental health facility following psychological advises.

So staying in India is the best thing you can do: you could be a congressman,with enough such supporters who only know how to print their thumbs on paper as signitures. No doubt about it. :azn:


Don't know what were you trying to say. But many of our great leaders of India were uneducated and education got nothing to do with intelligence, Back to topic death penalty may be very common in China but for we such a democratic country even the prime accused in the death of our Prime minister Rajiv Gandhi still in prison.We do not kill people and we are a peace loving country.
 
Don't know what were you trying to say. But many of our great leaders of India were uneducated and education got nothing to do with intelligence, Back to topic death penalty may be very common in China but for we such a democratic country even the prime accused in the death of our Prime minister Rajiv Gandhi still in prison.We do not kill people and we are a peace loving country.

I think what he was saying is not about the death penalty per se, it is about how many corrupted Indian politicians are brought to justice in India.
 
I think what he was saying is not about the death penalty per se, it is about how many corrupted Indian politicians are brought to justice in India.

Then he actually meant to say China is a corruption free country and our politicians are corrupted , Firstly my congratulations all our Chinese Friends to make a first place in earth to be a corruption free country , oh!Sorry then its not a country its a heaven :rofl: , I feel jealous man , because in one party system being corruption free heaven is a great achievement for your country!!!

Thanks for your good feed back that politicians brought to justice but that wrong, They always enjoy their life and very few of them will be facing charges and freed at last or die before the case gets over :) , Law is only for middle class and poor people in India.
 

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