Yasheng Huang on the Development of the Chinese State | Conversations with Tyler

[@marcwhite6267]

Watched in one breath; a truly enjoyable podcast.

[@leanmchungry4735]

A terrific interview with good questions and smart answers.I often stumble into a new book after a Tyler chat.

[@marcwhite6267]

Wei Li from BlackRock or Ray Dalio for round 2?

[@georgesiew6203]

This guy's analysis is very poor. Many explanations are very superficial and spurious. He comes from the very typical right wing neo liberal lens to look at everything, from politics, to economics, to anthropology to history. Going to this guy for analysis on China you might as well go to Steve Bannon. His understanding of Chinese history and culture is at about the same level of depth as Bannon. For a better understanding maybe consult someone like Martin Jacques, Jeffrey Sachs or Vijay Prashad. Also as someone who is also well versed in Chinese history and culture the way this guy describes them is extremely derogatory. Rather than enlighten he is just playing up racist tropes about China and the Chinese. I thought I just mention that for the well intentioned listeners who are listening to this and don't realize how biased and derogatory the analysis they are listening to is.

[@NicolasSilva-wb8qc]

could you be more specific about what you find derogatory in his opinions?

[@georgesiew6203]

@@NicolasSilva-wb8qc One good example if I recall is his depiction of the Chinese educational tradition as being primarily about route learning. This is a racist trope about Chinese culture that is simply not true. Chinese culture is very harsh and brutal so it expects people to be able to endure more pain when trying to accomplish something. This is evidenced by the exorbitant amount of practice work that teachers often assign. It doesn't mean that the teaching is focus on route learning but just that you are expected to do an exorbitant amount of work. Building on this often students are expected to develop intuitions for deeper ideas through very high volumes of practice hence you see the all the Kung Fu movies like "The Karate Kid" stressing the need to perfect fundamentals through high volumes of practice. This approach is not unique to Chinese culture but is widely used in all cultures in areas of study with very steep learning curves like learning Chess or learning to play the Piano. Another is his reference to Chinese society being endemically highly corrupt. This is just flat out not true. It shows both his lack of understanding of Chinese society and his lack of ability to develop a meaningful definition for corruption. That the meritocratic civil exam systems stood as a sole beacon in a sea of corruption is just plain non-sense. He even goes on to infer that that the examination system wasn't even very good because all it did was select for smart ppl and indoctrinate them. That isn't even close to the truth of how and why that system was used. It comes across as very obvious to someone well verse in Chinese culture that could actually critically examine all his claims that he simply deeply hates Chinese culture and traditions. He's trying to find the negative in everything he sees from the ancient history to the present history. To this end he is confusing people by appealing to the common biases of the uninformed have and by ignoring proper benchmarks to make comparisons against. It would take me many hours to explain the intricacies of the culture and history of China and why different social and political organizations came about, this is material that would cover a whole university degree. I can only give you a teaser of that here. One teaser I'll leave you with then is that claims that Chinese civil society doesn't exist, is underdeveloped or is highly repressed are completely idiotic. It is like saying a fish doesn't have a nose for breathing when we know full well that fish breath with gills. Civil society is everywhere in China. It is highly developed and very sophisticated. If it wasn't how do all the problems that people rely on civil society to get solved get solved? A society without civil society would be like a animal with no circulation system, it would just drop dead and die. The question is not does China have a civil society but rather how does civil society even look like in China? It clearly doesn't have a structure at all like those in western societies just like fish don't have noses like humans. Comments on how the Chinese don't have a civil society like the west and why that is wrong are just like saying that fish shouldn't have evolved gills and should have evolved noses instead. Analysis like that is obvious, pointless and stupid.

[@sneezewortyarrow5192]

Not all Chinese parents are pushy, but it's true in terms of proportion. It's best to go in-between by insisting good attitudes without insisting good performances.

[@georgesiew6203]

@@sneezewortyarrow5192 I'm not trying to say that Chinese parents are pushy. The entirety of Chinese society is pushy. Parents just adjust to that. The real insight for the East Asian social behavior is to realize that East Asian societies are more homogenous and have higher levels of symmetric competition than virtually all other societies. This very high level of homogenous competition has been there for probably over 10k years since the mass adoption of agriculture. This is what drives many features of the culture and society. Everything about the social structure and political history of the place will only make sense if one understand this context.

[@MrJREllman]

@@georgesiew6203 Thank you for sharing your knowledge and insight. I'd love to see you answering more of the questions that Mr Huang answered. However, I'd just like to ask what you think about one of his comments (and I hope you'll see this and share your ideas more). Huang said that he thinks the economic culture (of the South) will prove more popular than the political culture (of Xi'an and the North). Do you agree with this - and if so, how will this manifest itself given that it seems likely there would be a huge and potentially violent clash between the two if one were to overpower the other? And of course, if you disagree with this, what are your thoughts on it genearlly?