carey_jim

Does China Truly Offer an Alternate Economic Model?

First of all, China is a civilization and not just an economy. No other country can imitate it. Many other civilizations have been influenced by China, such as Japan, Korea and Vietnam but none have imitated it.

China has developed a unique way of life based on its three thousand year old literature, art, politics and philosophy which is a mixture of Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism. The family and the relationships within the family are uniquely important and different from any other country. They form the foundation of Chinese life.

Clearly, China is not monotheist in the Christian/Jewish/Musli... sense, although the peasants still worship various Buddhist and Taoist inspired gods and many are superstitious.

China is, fundamentally, atheistic in the sense that Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism are atheistic. In fact, China is alternately indifferent and hostile to the Western concept of God.

While communism is a force in China, Marx's (certainly outmoded by now) recipe for socialism was intended for already developed capitalist countries such as 19th century Britain, Germany and The United States and NOT for third world countries such as 19th century Russia and China. He actively discouraged socialist from trying to bring socialism to these basically agrarian economies without a sufficiently developed capitalist base.

Most scholars are agreed that both Russia and China simply used Marxism as a veil to place over totalitarian dictatorships which were state run capitalist economies and not socialism.

The Chinese and Russians themselves admitted that they needed FIRST to form the capitalist infrastructure similar to that of the West and a proletariat which would THEN form the basis for a later socialist society. They used Marx's idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat even though there was only a small proletariat (skilled factory workers.) This future socialist economy never appeared either in Russia or China.

Both China and Russia have a very, very long history of totalitarian governments and that has never changed. They both remain totalitarian and when strong government fails, they become anarchic.

Totalitarianism is not, obviously, a good model for the West. In fact, the history of the West since the Reformation has been a long evolution away from the totalitarian feudalism of Royalty and Church.

Our long struggle with our totalitarian past should be a model for both China and Russia and not the other way around.