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So I'm taking this class in Peking University, and thanks to a fellow Singaporean student, I have the textbook in ENGLISH!!
Haha, my textbook's preface is very interesting.
"The standard of living of hundreds of millions of Chinese has gone up, particularly in coastal and eastern China. There are accomplishments, among others, that certainly warrant admiration. However, China also faces huge problems in the years ahead. One problem that the Chinese leadership is trying to face at the moment is the plight of state-owned enterprises, which still contribute nearly 40 percent of China's industrial productivity. That is the socialist part. Many of these state enterprises, probably 50 percent of them, are losing money, constituting a very great drain on China's banking and financial institutions, as well as the federal treasury. Why? The sources of difficulty vary--inadequate, old-fashioned management that is used to meeting quotas but is not concerned with quality or profits; inadequate, obsolescent machinery, and surplus labor. And here one of the ironies is that China does not have an adequante social security system at the state level, despite its socialist antecendents. Thus, the plant has been responsible for not just the wages, but the educational facilities for the children, housing--almost everything that goes into life."
"...the task of modernizing 1.3 billion people, of bringing them into some degree of convergence in developmental terms, is enormously difficult. No continental society can be expected to develop uniformly. The United States did not--the South was backward until after World War II in many economic senses. But the West-East gap in China is huge, and it produces problems, especially since the rural population is so large."
"Then there is the problem of corruption. Though broad cultural generalizations are very suspect, there is one that has some merit and ought to be looked at carefully. After centuries of travail, Western politics is essentially based on legalism Asian politics to a very considerable degree remains based on reciprocity. You do this for me, and I'll do that for you...Reciprocity is of course a way, an easy route, to what we call corruption--the interaction of politicians, business elements, prviledged children of highly-placed families (-->this is not just a China thing), or prncelings,as they are called in China. All of these factors that breed cynicism and indifference to politics, along with the decline in ideology that has taken place, are very powerful forces. The legal institutions to control corruption are still very, very weak in a country like China, and corruption goes on in a multiplying fashion."
"It seems that China's broad move will be freom Leninism to what I call authoritarian pluralism, a movement already underway. Politics will remain authoritarian; I do not see democracy as we define it on the horizon or in the foreseeable future for this vast, heterogeneous, complex society. Stability will be a cry whenever democracy threatens. But at the same time, there is a certain looseness--freedom to talk, if you know with whom you are talking, freedom to move about, more decentralization, now village elections--all controlled by the party, but nonetheless some degree of flexibility. And meanwhile the civil society apart from the state is emerging with varying degrees of autonomy. And the economy is becoming more mixed, with the private secotr increasingly mportant. In this respect, China is moving the way that South Korea and Taiwan moved in earlier time before these societies began their experimentation with democracy."
I am SO THANKFUL for the English textbook; I wouldn't have survived otherwise.
Haha, my textbook's preface is very interesting.
"The standard of living of hundreds of millions of Chinese has gone up, particularly in coastal and eastern China. There are accomplishments, among others, that certainly warrant admiration. However, China also faces huge problems in the years ahead. One problem that the Chinese leadership is trying to face at the moment is the plight of state-owned enterprises, which still contribute nearly 40 percent of China's industrial productivity. That is the socialist part. Many of these state enterprises, probably 50 percent of them, are losing money, constituting a very great drain on China's banking and financial institutions, as well as the federal treasury. Why? The sources of difficulty vary--inadequate, old-fashioned management that is used to meeting quotas but is not concerned with quality or profits; inadequate, obsolescent machinery, and surplus labor. And here one of the ironies is that China does not have an adequante social security system at the state level, despite its socialist antecendents. Thus, the plant has been responsible for not just the wages, but the educational facilities for the children, housing--almost everything that goes into life."
"...the task of modernizing 1.3 billion people, of bringing them into some degree of convergence in developmental terms, is enormously difficult. No continental society can be expected to develop uniformly. The United States did not--the South was backward until after World War II in many economic senses. But the West-East gap in China is huge, and it produces problems, especially since the rural population is so large."
"Then there is the problem of corruption. Though broad cultural generalizations are very suspect, there is one that has some merit and ought to be looked at carefully. After centuries of travail, Western politics is essentially based on legalism Asian politics to a very considerable degree remains based on reciprocity. You do this for me, and I'll do that for you...Reciprocity is of course a way, an easy route, to what we call corruption--the interaction of politicians, business elements, prviledged children of highly-placed families (-->this is not just a China thing), or prncelings,as they are called in China. All of these factors that breed cynicism and indifference to politics, along with the decline in ideology that has taken place, are very powerful forces. The legal institutions to control corruption are still very, very weak in a country like China, and corruption goes on in a multiplying fashion."
"It seems that China's broad move will be freom Leninism to what I call authoritarian pluralism, a movement already underway. Politics will remain authoritarian; I do not see democracy as we define it on the horizon or in the foreseeable future for this vast, heterogeneous, complex society. Stability will be a cry whenever democracy threatens. But at the same time, there is a certain looseness--freedom to talk, if you know with whom you are talking, freedom to move about, more decentralization, now village elections--all controlled by the party, but nonetheless some degree of flexibility. And meanwhile the civil society apart from the state is emerging with varying degrees of autonomy. And the economy is becoming more mixed, with the private secotr increasingly mportant. In this respect, China is moving the way that South Korea and Taiwan moved in earlier time before these societies began their experimentation with democracy."
I am SO THANKFUL for the English textbook; I wouldn't have survived otherwise.
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