Posted on the Big Picture today is a real interesting article written by Peter T Treadway, PhD, Historical Analytics LLC, titled China the Black Box. Inquiring minds will find more depth for their understanding of the thinking of China's leaders and it's growing consumer society. Here is a taste of his article...
At the same time they are groping with less than adequate statistics,
the global bears may be underrating the some things that cannot be
modeled: The singular desire of China’s citizens to work hard and their
obsession with improving their material lot. And, to use the terminology
of Martin Jacques in his marvelous book When China Rules the World, the
fact that China is a unique civilization state which in my opinion
gives it tremendous advantages at this stage of its economic
development.
Excepting the Tibetans and the Uyghurs, absent are the racial,
religious, regional, caste and language differences that complicate
economic decision making and upset public order in countries such as
India (although the Indians might argue their diversity is a source of
strength.) China, contrary to the views of some skeptics, is not about
to disintegrate. Han China, so its own mythology teaches, has a five
thousand year history as a civilization. Periods of order have been
punctuated by periods of disorder. China is just emerging from a two
hundred year period of disorder. A relapse to disorder will not be
tolerated by its populace or its rulers.
Confucianism, Legalism, Daoism, Buddhism and Communism have each
inserted themselves into the Chinese DNA over the centuries, each
building on its predecessors. The intellectual giants who shaped the
West, be they Aristotle, Adam Smith or Thomas Jefferson, don’t figure at
all in this process. No Chinese emperor, and there have been emperors
for thousands of years, would have sided with Google.