Author Archives: advocate

China’s Megatrends, The 8 Pillars of a New Society

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china-megatrendsThis book by John and Doris Naisbitt is a follow-up to his book “Megatrends.” The authors lived and travelled in China, did extensive interviewing, and developed an institute to analyze what had launched the country from the poverty and backwardness under Mao to becoming an economic power with many millionaires and a growing middle class. China is described as being created into an entirely new social and economic system and political model. The system is described as a “vertical democracy.”

Some of the reviewers on Amazon reflect the discomfort I felt when reading the gentle criticism of the control imposed by the Communist government. Late in the book the authors write about the “three T’s,” which are “Tibet, Taiwan, and Tiananmen.” They then give a scathing criticism of Tibet, saying that 90 percent of the people live as serfs in comparison to the millions of Chinese who have been pulled out of poverty by the economic growth engineered by the central government. Taiwan is described as having China as its largest trading partner. Tiananmen receives harsh although brief criticism. It is described as a tragedy that is still casting clouds over China. And, as much sympathy as we have for China, it has not yet done enough to sweep those clouds away.

The descriptions of how Deng Xiaoping began turning China into a free market powerhouse with government control after Mao’s death is a fascinating story. On the question of why the country decided to use capitalism under communist control is explained by Deng with the aphorism, “It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.” The current leader Hu Jintao is quoted as saying, “We will improve policies to encourage people to start businesses.”

There is a discussion of the primary conflict between socialism and capitalism over freedom and fairness. “Do we choose a system where all are equally treated so that no one gets too far ahead? Or do we choose freedom for individuals who through their talents and hard work gain levels of achievements far above others?” It seemed to me the author answers that in the book. The people in China who succeed through talent and hard work are allowed to have much more than others, and the system, according to the author, is working.

The Olympics is undoubtedly a good example of what strong government control can accomplish. The Olympics were considered a great success at the cost of $1.9 billion for venues and $42 billion for infrastructure improvements. The fact that 1.5 million people had to move out of their homes makes it obvious that the construction would have been difficult or impossible in a less authoritarian system.

China opened to foreign support and technology transfer to begin development, restricted foreign shareholdings, and strengthened Chinese corporations by encouraging fierce competition among them. Deng commented when touring a Ford plant in the U.S., “We want to learn from you.” However, the U.S. failed to understand the true meaning of that statement. There is a description of opposing Chinese warlords preparing for battle. One sent twenty boats packed with straw across the river separating them, and the other army unleashed a huge assault with arrows. The boats were pulled back and the 100,000 arrows that were collected to be used against those who had shot them. The Chinese who left to learn in other countries and return to build businesses are called “sea turtles.”

What has been accomplished required more than learning from successful foreign companies. The government had to emancipate the minds of the people to make them the engine to the economic successes. Education was emphasized, and people were taught they could succeed with work instead of coasting along and getting what everyone else was getting. The book mentions the eighteen impoverished famers on a collective that wasn’t growing enough food for survival who secretly agreed to divide the collective in Xiaogang village into private plots at risk of being prosecuted. The result was a marked increase in grain production. Their example became a model for converting State Owned Enterprises into successful free enterprise companies. The government frames the policies and priorities and the people create their own roles. Progress is made “while sustaining order and harmony.” This system is compared to the political system in the U.S. where frequent elections freezes the government into inaction while the politicians posture for reelection.  In China, “The constancy of the ruling political party allows long-term planning without the disruption and changing politics of thinking and acting that are focused on elections.”

The book does address problems created by corruption, and describes how the government is working with limited success to eliminate corruption from government. The terrible pollution problems are also discussed. One “sea turtle” commented that she knew she was home when she breathed the polluted air. The book discusses censorship, and mentions that the U.S. has a history of censoring books such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I didn’t see how that equates to, for example, the censorship of the Internet. The book mentions two things that surprised me about that. First, it blames companies such as Cisco for building the equipment that allows the censorship. Then it mentions, “Few in China complain about Internet control.” I felt myself wanting to use the crass, “Well duh! when I read that.

China has problems created by the one child policy. There is a large excess of young men. There also is the problem of “six-pocket little emperors,” or little boys with two parents and four grandparents who have no one else to spoil. Oddly, the censorship of the Internet is said to be necessary to keep children from becoming addicted to being on the computer all the time.

I’m guessing the authors would explain the surprisingly low average of three stars of Amazon reviews as being caused by what they call the continuing misunderstanding Americans have of the Chinese people. We impose our views of democracy and freedom when we consider China. The authors end their book with the observation, “To what degree it will match western perceptions troubles on the West. China has its own goals and dreams. How to get there, China and its people will decide.” The Chinese people are accustomed to and comfortable with government control. They don’t care whether the control is a capitalist country with a communist coat. “The Chinese believe in performance legitimacy. If the government governs well, it is perceived as legitimate.” China has achieved its transformation by “actually decentralizing power more than any country in the world.” China calls its market economy “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The United States is evolving toward socialism with American characteristics.

Southpaw

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The term is commonly used to describe left-handed pitchers. Yahoo Answers says there are reliable sources that the term was coined in Chicago where the stadium faced east and west with home plate on the west. Thus a left-handed pitcher threw from the south, and Finley Peter Dunne coined the term “Southpaw.”  Answerbag.com says it was common to build stadiums with home plate facing east so the late afternoon sun would not be in the hitter’s eyes.

The Elephant and the Dragon

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dragonThis book by Robyn Meredith, with has the subtitle, “The Rise of India and China and What it Means for All of Us,” is fascinating. I keep notes as I read a book I intend to review, and my list of interesting facts was too lengthy to be able to include many of them in this review. The description of how China has become the world’s factory and India has become the knowledge and call center and how that is affecting the U.S. is important reading. One flaw that is not the fault of the book is that it was published in 2007. Some companies have taken back call centers and computer development work. Quality of product produced in India suffered from communication problems, and sometimes the cost of workers making a fifth of what was paid to American workers came to a higher final cost because of continual requirements for corrections and rework. That is the subject of a blog post on that link of this web site.

The book begins with the description of the Prime Minister of India visiting China in 2003 and being astonished at the ultramodern Beijing airport, the new highways with new cars, and countless construction sites with hundreds of cranes looming over the city. China had opened its doors to the world in 1978 and India did not. The outcome was that foreign companies had poured $600 billion dollars into China by 2003, which eclipsed the amount the U.S. spent on the Marshall plan in Europe after World War II. India remained stranded in the past with crumbling infrastructure and oppressing poverty while China was marching toward being a world economic (and military) power.

The book has fascinating summaries of recent Chinese and Indian histories. Gandhi and latter Nehru had frozen development in India. Gandhi had been so committed to his policies that his wife died from an infection when he deemed that an injection with an antibiotic was a violation of his “non-violence policy.” The Socialist policies combined with refusal to join the global economy made Indian companies lazy and uncompetitive and locked millions of Indians into poverty. Oppressive bureaucracies controlled everything to the point of absurdity. Procter and Gamble was worried they would be punished for breaking antimonopoly rules if they made too much Vicks VapoRub during a flu epidemic.

Mao destroyed China’s capacity to produce enough food to prevent famine with the Communist Great Leap Forward. Collectivized farming imposed in1955 and caused a 40 percent reduction in food production. People resorted to trading children so that they did not have to cannibalize their own child. Everything steel was taken from the peasants. Even cooking pots and bicycle frames were melted down for the purpose of meeting Mao’s steel production goals. Grain rotted in the fields because the peasants were told to focus on operating backyard furnaces to produce steel. The universities were closed, and the only education allowed was study of Communist propaganda and Mao’s Little Red Book.

The recent changes in both China and India have lifted millions of people out of the poverty that Socialism and Communism had produced. “We got more done for the poor by pursuing the competitive agenda for a few years than we got done by pursuing a poverty agenda for decades.” “Capitalists from corporate America and elsewhere surely did not set out to help Asia’s downtrodden, but they did.” Highly “…paid U.S. and European workers now face long-distant completion for jobs: India and China each added more college graduates to their workforces annually than are produced by the United States and Europe combined.”

There is an interesting story that may or may not be factual that villagers of Xiaogang broke China’s collective farming rules to illegally divide the collective into individual plots and production increased by 35 percent. China now celebrates Xiaogang as the birthplace of rural reforms. Deng Xiaoping came to power when Mao died, and he immediately shifted from the planned economy to a market economy. That was the beginning of successful capitalism under authoritarian control. Deng visited Singapore in 1978 for three days and was impressed with the results of a free market. The People’s Daily stopped referring to Singapore’s leaders as lackeys of the west and touted the achievements in affordable housing. Deng sent four hundred delegations to Singapore in just the year 1992. Deng also had new roads built, a quadrupled electric power generation, and modernized the power grid. China is also committing to nuclear power, and intends to triple the amount of energy produced by 2020. State-owned enterprises have dropped significantly to be replaced by private companies.

Building China into the world’s factory did not come without challenges. Workers who were supposed to build billfolds had never needed one and no idea what they were supposed to look like. The workers also did not understand that they were expected to continue to work after the boss left the factory floor. However, China one billion people experienced rising prosperity without a shot being fired. Political stability is demanded by the State at a cost to individuals who protest or are caught in the rampant corruption that results in execution. The Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 and the young people who disappeared afterward remain fresh in the minds of the free world. There also continue to be coerced abortions and sterilizations to meet the population control requirements.

The recent history of India is just as fascinating as that of China. In 1991 after the Socialism of Gandhi and Nehru India was broke. Forty percent of Indians were below the poverty line. Planeloads of Indian gold were being delivered to the west to meet financial obligations. P.V. Narasimha Rao was the prime minister dealing with the crisis, and he turned to the “…utterly uncharismatic economist Manmohan Singh.” Singh began the economic transformation of India by lowering income taxes, cutting bureaucratic red tape and licensing, and allowing investors to buy shares in Indian companies. The economy began to grow.

There are several interesting stories of individuals who developed successful businesses in both India and China. Most of the American business powerhouses have large operations in both countries. China is currently more successful than India thanks to the authoritarian control maintained by the Communist central government. Indian businesses have to deal with less stability since the poor people in that country vote while the middle class doesn’t. The result is relatively frequent changes in government. Some but not all of the bureaucracies that had suppressed economic growth have been discarded. An example of how the country lurches forward a bit and then stops is the beginning of construction of new highways toward in Bangalore. “The new overpasses stop in midair, as if waiting for Infosys (the Indian version of Microsoft) to invent technology that allows cars to fly.” Indians recognize that the control by the Chinese government gives that country an advantage. They tell a joke that the Chinese premier is being driven and the driver stops at a sign that says turn left for communism or right for capitalism. When the driver inquires what to do he is told, “Just signal left and turn right.”

There are interesting discussions of outsourcing that are pertinent to the political dialogue still prevalent today. There have been U.S. jobs lost from outsourcing, but it is difficult to count because the rise of China and India has created jobs. The concern is that the jobs being outsourced are now including the white collar jobs instead of mostly factory jobs. There is a hidden warning to American politicians. It is mentioned that John Kerry’s frequent berating CEOs who had sent jobs overseas during his presidential campaign inspired more American companies to outsource.

Spitting Image

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Straight Dope says that some linguistic experts think that “spit” is derived from “spirit, “…noting that the southern pronunciation of the letter r is sometimes indistinct.” Thus the original expression could have been, “She’s the very spirit and image of her mother.” The intent is to say someone acts and looks like one of their parents.

The Crown Jewels: The British Secrets at the Heart of KGB Archives

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crown-jewelsThe Acknowledgments of this book by Nigel West and Oleg Tsarev states that much of the information has not been declassified. It also states that all the photographs shown of British and Soviet agents, with the exception of the one of Kim Philby, are from the KGB archives.

The book details the Soviet espionage efforts in England beginning in the 1920s. The large numbers of well educated, upper class English citizens in sensitive government positions willing to commit espionage against Britain for the Soviet Union is remarkably similar to the situation in the United States. The Soviets obtained literally thousands of documents describing secret British foreign policy, military strength, weapons technology including development of the atomic and hydrogen bombs, and details of counterintelligence (to mention a few categories). The book is not a spy thriller, but instead marches through over three hundred pages of history about how England lost the “Crown Jewels” of its secrets to the Soviets. I have picked a few items from the book that were of particular interest to me and recorded them. For example, Walter Kivitsky, was a Soviet “rezidentura” in England. Kivitsky later defected and was sent to the United States. He eventually befriended Whitaker Chambers, and advised him on how to protect himself from KGB assassins. Kivitsky later was officially ruled to have committed suicide, although those who knew him were certain he had been killed.

Anthony (Tony) Blunt was one of the key British spies in the “Cambridge-Ring-of-Five” that was immensely successful at providing the “Crown Jewels” of Britain to the Soviets. There are pictures of these five spies and Edith Hart, who recruited Philby. Blunt is described as “a typical English intellectual.” He also was the person who originally recruited Michael Straight, the son of an American millionaire close to President Roosevelt. Straight gave the Soviets a copy of the entire deception plan for Overlord, the D-Day invasion, nearly two weeks before the invasion . He provided 1771 documents to the Soviets between 1941 and 1945. Burgess provided 4605, Cairncross 5832, Philby 914, and MacClean 4593. The activities of the spy network were suspended in 1946 after a GRU cipher clerk, Igor Gouzenko, defected in Canada.

Another major asset for the Soviets in England and later while on loan to the Manhattan Project in the United States was Klaus Fuchs, the German refugee. Fuchs was exposed by the Venona project and later gave a full confession of his activities and contacts.

In an interesting twist, Captain Harry Crookshank, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, selected John Caincross, one of the “Cambridge Five, “to be his personal secretary based on his performance and the fact that he was an ardent vegetarian. Virtually all classified information eventually reached Crookshank’s desk, since his department funded all war efforts. In 1941 he provided the first information on Enormoz, the Soviet code word for the development of atomic weapons by Britain, the USA and Canada. Vladimir Barkovsky, “the best informed KGB officer on the history of the Soviet bomb”, said “In the USA we obtained information on how the bomb was made and in Britain of what it was made.” Klaus Fuchs participated in revealing both aspects, since he worked in both Britain and the US before British intelligence arrested him in 1950. As an example of the information Fuchs provided the Soviets, in 1946 he “…handed over a sketch of the hydrogen bomb’s mechanism and explained that the Americans had abandoned the electromagnetic method of separating the isotopes of Uranium-235 because it had proved ineffective. However, they had achieved considerable success with the diffusion method, and the process was continuing. He revealed that Canadian factories produced about a kilo of plutonium while American sources produces about 16-18 kilos a year and about 36 kilos of U-235. The Americans had exhausted their stock after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The current programme envisaged the production of fifty bombs a year, but the uranium installations in Henford (sic) occasionally broke down, slowing the work of the chemical facilities at Los Alamos, so Fuchs estimated the American stockpile of bombs at approximately 125 units.”

Soviet counterintelligence tried to convert the exposure of Fuchs to their advantage by planning to cast doubt on key scientists working on Enormoz. The book incorrectly states, “Ironically Hoover and Senator Joe McCarthy together accomplished much of what had been planned by the Soviets by dragging the most outstanding scientists before the UnAmerican Activities Committee.” (Evidently the English author did not realize this was a House Committee, and McCarthy was a Senator.)

One of the most interesting parts of the book is the Postscript, which details why Communism and espionage for the Soviet Union was attractive to young intellectuals in Britain. Soviet recruiters could choose between “150 in Oxford, 200 in Cambridge, 300 in London University…” One of the Soviet recruiters observed, “British intellectuals, especially the young among them, do not find satisfactory ideals in the decomposing capitalist society of Britain and are naturally drawn towards the USSR.” It is not explained how these “intellectuals” overlooked the tens of millions of people executed and imprisoned in Russia during the horrors of the Stalin dictatorship to be “drawn towards the USSR.”

Knock, Knock Jokes

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O.K., so this isn’t an expression, but I found it interesting. The English.stackexchange.com says that some claim the origin was “…in the Middle Ages as a call-and-answer password format.” The only rule for the jokes seem to be that they be nonsense or at least silly. The Pittsburgh Press published several jokes in August of 1936 saying that a “new mid-summer game is going the rounds in place of monopoly.” One example given was, “Knock, knock! Who’s there? Landon. Landon who? Landon bridge is falling down.” Wikipedia reports that Fred Allen included a segment in his December 30, 1936 radio broadcast about “…the year’s least important events, including a supposed interview…” with “Ramrod Dank,” the man who was said to be the first to coin a knock, knock joke on the first of April. That is, of course “April Fools Day.”