Sunday, February 21, 2021

Sitrep: How Democratic is China? — Godfree Roberts

Why China will win. They get both the systems approach and scientific method as the basis for good governance. This is a fascinating article about replacing "politics" with information, incentive, and innovation using grassroots surveys and trials. 

Venture capitalist Robin Daverman describes the process at the national level:
China is a giant trial portfolio with millions of trials going on everywhere. Today, innovations in everything from healthcare to poverty reduction, education, energy, trade and transportation are being trialled in different communities. Every one of China’s 662 cities is experimenting: Shanghai with free trade zones, Guizhou with poverty reduction, twenty-three cities with education reforms, Northeastern provinces with SOE reform: pilot schools, pilot cities, pilot hospitals, pilot markets, pilot everything. Mayors and governors, the Primary Investigators, share their ‘lab results’ at the Central Party School and publish them in their ‘scientific journals,’ the State-owned newspapers.

Beginning in small towns, major policies undergo ‘clinical trials’ that generate and analyze test data. If the stats look good, they’ll add test sites and do long-term follow-ups. They test and tweak for 10-30 years then ask the 3,000-member People’s Congress to review the data and authorize national trials in three major provinces. If a national trial is successful the State Council [the Brains Trust] polishes the plan and takes it back to Congress for a final vote. It’s very transparent and, if your data is better than mine, your bill gets passed and mine doesn’t.
Congress’ votes are nearly unanimous because the legislation is backed by reams of data. This allows China to accomplish a great deal in a short time, because your winning solution will be quickly propagated throughout the country, you’ll be a front page hero, invited to high-level meetings in Beijing and promoted. As you can imagine, the competition to solve problems is intense. Local government has a great deal of freedom to try their own things as long as they have the support of the local people. Everything from bare-knuckled liberalism to straight communism has been tried by various villages and small towns.…
Harvard’s Tony Saich, who conducts his own surveys, concludes that ninety per cent of people are satisfied with the government and surveys found that eighty-three percent think it runs the country for everyone’s benefit rather than for special groups.…
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5 comments:

Andrew Anderson said...

Why China will win. They get both the systems approach and scientific method as the basis for good governance. Tom Hickey

Hawthorne Effect

February 21, 2021 at 12:32 PM
Andrew Anderson said...

Why China will win. They get both the systems approach ... Tom Hickey

Except you apparently favor open loop systems, Tom, i.e. missing negative feedback, i.e. no inherent stability, because you favor a banking model with sham liabilities toward the non-bank private sector, i.e. sham accounting, i.e. inherently unjust.

February 21, 2021 at 12:39 PM
Peter Pan said...

This isn't about China.
This is about disillusioned westerners living vicariously.

February 21, 2021 at 3:06 PM
Andrew Anderson said...

Sounds right. A pity they can't see that the Chinese system is a kludge of the fundamentally flawed Gold Standard banking model and not a fundamental reform - though I would not bet against the Chinese putting the West to shame with an ethical money system.

February 21, 2021 at 4:31 PM
Peter Pan said...

There are elements on the "left" who may put China to shame in terms of censorship and authoritarianism. A few canaries have described it as US foreign policy coming home to roost.

February 22, 2021 at 9:13 AM

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