# China over rated as a power ? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 16, 2003, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/china-over-rated-as-a-power/207734 "2003-10-16T04:35:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2003, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/china-over-rated-as-a-power/207734/81 "2003-10-21T22:13:54Z")
[hijack] Posted by **adaher:** > [@](#): > > Fascism and communism are fruits from the same rotten tree. No they’re not, **adaher,** they are fruits from two entirely different, and usually antagonistic, trees. Fascism is romantic, communism is rationalist. From the article “Which Civilisation?” by Michael Lind, published in _Prospect,_ October 25, 2001 ([http://www.newamerica.net/index.cfm?pg=article&pubID=598](http://www.newamerica.net/index.cfm?pg=article&pubID=598)): > [@](#): > > [T]he most important civilisational divide-one that seems even more important after the events of 11th September-may be the one between supernatural civilisations and secular civilisations. The divide is roughly, but not completely, correlated with the divide between pre-modern agrarian societies and industrial societies. Of the supernatural civilisations, the most significant have been the Abrahamic (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) and the Indic (Hinduism and Buddhism). The two major Abrahamic religions, Christianity and Islam, conquered most of the world’s territory and people, including south Asia and the Americas. Only China and Japan, among the major non-western nations, escaped Muslim or Christian rule. Today Muslim theocracies like Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan and Saudi Arabia are the most extreme examples of societies based on supernatural religion. > > On the secular side of the civilisational divide, there have been three major traditions: humanism, rationalism and romanticism. These three traditions originated in Europe but now have adherents around the world. All three are essentially secular worldviews which do not need to invoke the authority of divine revelation or mystical gnosis (though some romantics are mystics or pantheists and some humanists have been religious believers). In respects other than their common secularism, the three traditions are fundamentally different from one another. > > Humanist civilisation crystallised in Renaissance Italy, before spreading to the Netherlands, Britain, and the US. This liberal, commercial, increasingly democratic civilisation has spread to other nations by emulation (Lafayette’s France, Atatork’s Turkey, Yeltsin’s Russia) and by conquest and conversion (post-1945 Germany and Japan). Humanists seek to ameliorate the problems of social life with the guidance of practical wisdom, derived chiefly from history, literature and custom, with little or no reference to supernatural religion or natural science, with the possible exception of the emergent sociobiology. Humanists tend to be modest as philosophers and cautious as reformers. Examples of great humanist thinkers and statesmen are Petrarch, Erasmus, Bacon, Montaigne, Voltaire, Franklin, Hume, Burke, Smith, Hamilton, Jefferson and Madison. > > Rationalism, a world view underlying a number of secular creeds, first crystallised in 17th and 18th-century France. Rationalists reject the humanist distinction between practical wisdom and natural science. The goal of rationalists of all kinds is to devise a science of society, modelled on natural science, which can serve as the basis for the construction of a “rational” social order. Stephen Toulmin makes a useful distinction between the “reasonableness” of Renaissance humanists and the “rationality” of Enlightenment philosophes. The rationalist pantheon includes social engineers like Condorcet, St Simon, Comte, Fourier, Bentham, Marx, Lenin and Ayn Rand. (The “secular humanists” who support world federalism and utopian social reform are really rationalists). > > Romanticism, the third major secular world view, has spread widely from its original homeland, late 18th and early 19th-century Germany. Romantics reject both reasonableness and rationality, they exalt the inspired unreason of the artistic genius, the child, the primitive uncorrupted by civilisation. Rousseau, Emerson, Wagner, Nietszche and Frantz Fanon should be on a list of romantic prophets, and idealist philosophers like Kant and Hegel arguably are closer to romanticism than to humanism or rationalism. > > The American revolution, and the French revolution in its constitutional phases, were humanist. The French terror and the Bolshevik terror were rationalist. The second world war was a struggle of three secular civilisations: humanism (Roosevelt and Churchill), rationalism (Stalin) and romanticism (Hitler). The war by Islamic radicals against the US, Europe and Israel is, among other things, a conflict between religious and humanist civilisation. [/hijack] ---
**Author:** ![Rashak\_Mani](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ea666f/32.png) [@Rashak\_Mani](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rashak_Mani)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2003, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/china-over-rated-as-a-power/207734/82 "2003-10-21T22:42:24Z")
I guess Adaher means the “same” tree as in its “not the American tree” ? If its not americans its the “outside” tree. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2003, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/china-over-rated-as-a-power/207734/83 "2003-10-21T23:53:51Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Rashak Mani \* > \*\*The chinese don’t make a fuss about democracy and the government gives them more jobs and opportunities. \*\* Well…except that a lot of chinese workers are currently laid off, something which didn’t happen in the past, and not all of them are really happy with this novelty. So, it might provide jobs and opportunities to a part of the population in some regions, but it definitely doesn’t result in an improvment of the situation for everybody everywhere. I doubt that all the chinese are happy with the current ultra communisto-capitalist system which is currently implemented. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/china-over-rated-as-a-power/207734/84 "2003-10-22T00:07:48Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Rashak Mani \* > \*\*. What happens when new elites from the new business groups demands a bigger share of the power ? \*\* They are welcomed in the central comitee of the communist party. At least a couple people who build their fortune in a totally capitalist way entered it. The situation is becoming ludicrous from this point of view. “Comrade billionaires, join the party!” ---
**Author:** ![Feistymongol](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@Feistymongol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Feistymongol)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/china-over-rated-as-a-power/207734/85 "2003-10-22T00:18:28Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by clairobscur \* > \*\*Well…except that a lot of chinese workers are currently laid off, something which didn’t happen in the past, and not all of them are really happy with this novelty. So, it might provide jobs and opportunities to a part of the population in some regions, but it definitely doesn’t result in an improvment of the situation for everybody everywhere. > > I doubt that all the chinese are happy with the current ultra communisto-capitalist system which is currently implemented. \*\* A lot of Russians weren’t happy after perestroika(sp) either and currently there’s a rather large disenfranchised poor population living in the new Russia. I’m just using them as a historical comparison to show that it’s possible for extreme capitalism and gross poverty to exist side by side. The poor peasants don’t have any say in this new government or any power to do anything about it. The fact is the PRC is working to improve the lot of those people. Planned infrastructure is being worked on to bring the rest of China up to date with thew “New” China. The layoffs happened after the Chinese govt started closing down state owned factories that weren’t doing anything except producing X widgets to keep people busy. It was a good thing to do in the long run but it will cause mass unemployment in the short run. ---
**Author:** ![Rashak\_Mani](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ea666f/32.png) [@Rashak\_Mani](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rashak_Mani)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/china-over-rated-as-a-power/207734/86 "2003-10-22T00:34:36Z")
The future of China depends on how central govt. manages to either keep dissent of those left out of the system or give them enough prosperity to keep 'em quiet. ---
**Author:** ![scotandrsn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a4c791/32.png) [@scotandrsn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scotandrsn)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/china-over-rated-as-a-power/207734/87 "2003-10-22T17:02:12Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Rashak Mani \* > \*\*Yep the Taikonaut went up and… thou it seems more PR than anything else. 🙂 > \*\* You forget the political message of Sputnik when it first went up: Fact: We can accelerate a rocket enough and with such precision we can place a satellite in low Earth orbit. Implication: We can send a rocket with anything mounted on it any-damn-where we please. Add to that Yuri Gagarin’s flight: Our rockets are so sophisticated and we have such control over them, we are not afraid to send up one of our own citizens. Or, alternately, depending on your faith in their technology: We are a ruthless people who will do just about anything we can with the technology we have. China’s political message with the current launch: Us too. So I ask again: On what grounds are they not to be considered a superpower today? ---
**Author:** ![dal\_timgar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a88e57/32.png) [@dal\_timgar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dal_timgar)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2003, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/china-over-rated-as-a-power/207734/88 "2003-10-22T17:10:07Z")
I don’t really care about who is and isn’t a superpower. What good is a suprpower run by morons? Just a source of problems. What if China’s social problems resulting from excess population causes the leaders to decide to go to war. They win just by reducing population even if they loose the war. Dal Timgar [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/china-over-rated-as-a-power/207734.md?page=4)