China is run by what seems to me to be effectively a 'board of directors', these men are too old to have been affected by those policies.
When I say old, I'm talking OLD too. We think John McCain is old.
By Chinese standards he would be just getting to the point where they MIGHT let him have a say in who the next president is.
Seriously, these guys are so old it is RIDICULOUS.
Their presidential elections work something like this:
-Small number of, seriously old, think in the 90 year old range, guys get together and decide they've had it with the 70 year old president.
China's economy is only growing at 10% a year, or something ridiculous like that.
Their stock exchanges only offer up surges in the 40-50% range per year, and GOSH DARNIT!!
'How long can the shareholders be reasonably expected to tolerate such pitiful returns?' They lament.
'China's future is at stake!!!'
'That means our CHILDREN are at stake!!!'
'Why they may even have to clean their own toilets!!!'
'Won't someone think of the CHILDREN!!!'
-To address this crisis in the portfolios of the Chinese people . . .
er . . . I mean . . .
crisis in the leadership of the Chinese people.
They have found some spritely, dynamic, new young blood, by young I mean 60, and they say he is the new guy in charge.
-All the leaders of the communist party, being obedient mentees of these old guys, sing the new guy's praises, elect him president, and the old guy goes home.
(Only not really . . . see he'll BE one of those old guys now, so he'll ALWAYS have some influence)
Bit of an oversimplification, but not much.
When I first studied this I thought, 'man this sounds JUST like the process of a board of directors'.
But if the rest of the world wants to call it a political system, who am I to question?
Fine, it's a political system.
An interesting test might be to try to get China to do what we want another way.
Let's forget about armies, and navies, and Taiwan, and democracy, and demonstrations.
Let's try causing a blip in their quarterly results.
I'd imagine the speed with which change would come would make our heads spin.
That's just my theory though.
I think you're pretty much correct. It's more like the board of trustees of a "non-profit", since the board elects its own members, rather than having shareholders elect the board. The system works reasonably well. The president is selected for competence and there is a stable secession process.
I think it is foolish to argue that China should be more democratic. People today forget how dangerous democracies are that don't have systematic anti-jingoistic indoctrination. Read the history of how universal suffrage in Europe from 1880-1914 led to the rise of militarist-nationalist politicians ( Stephan Zweig's The World of Yesterday is a great book on this topic). Do we really want to see the Chinese equivalent of Bill O'Reilly and Ernst Lissauer? I'll take the 90 year old men, thank you very much ...
Oh yes. Understand me correctly, I am a believer in the appropriateness of the current system in China. I do agree with you, to pursue the establishment of a democratic system in China right now would be to follow a decidedly misguided course. The jingoists would take over in fairly short order.
Believe me, I feel more safe going to sleep every night knowing that China is run by boring, old, stodgy, conservative men who are anything but rash.
Also keep in mind that the President has multiple titles and roles that he slowly gains control of. I think Hu Jintao now has control of everything that he gets control of? Until he retires and picks the new president, of course.
China will reform eventually, as soon as a president decides that his successor will be democratically elected.
I don't know who are the 10 most powerful ones. But considering the policy was introduced in 1979. So for any politicians who were married before 1979 and started to have a family then, they may have more than 1.
At the same time. I read frequently from Chinese news that government officials under 60s charged with corruptions. Most of them have several mistresses and had a child with each of them. I don't think that will be counted officially since in China such non martial relationships are not legal.
