Analysis of Chinese Power: The Economic Base and Potential for Military and Political Power
Abstract : It is the purpose of this thesis to measure the economic base of China and to predict her economic potential over the next 10 years. In the next decade, Communist China cannot become a world power. Her economic base is just not adequate enough to take such a giant step in such a short period of time. The basic issues are a huge and expanding population, inability to feed the population, and the absence of the means to rapidly develop Chinese industry. This is not to say that China cannot become a world power -- for she can. She has adequate natural resources; she has human resources; she has an industrial base that is expanding slowly; she has leadership dedicated to making China a world power; she has space and land, even though productive land is scarce; she has an illiterate, but responsive, population; she has the advantage of centralized control and planning for all aspects of the economy; she has discovered the value of incentives to aid production; she shows signs of a willingness to take steps to control population growth; she has a well-supported "National Purpose" of making herself significant in the world; she has no neighbors that seek her territory; and she has a government that is in complete control and has the will and the means to direct China's destiny. In short, China's economic base is not adequate for world power now, but it has all the necessary attributes to become a world power over a period of 30 to 50 years. This time factor could be shortened considerably if China were to make herself respectable and trusted internationally. China could get much needed industrial imports much faster if she presented a less belligerent attitude toward other countries. Even now, countries like France, Canada, Australia, and others are interested in expanding trade with China.
The Chinese Model
CAN the Chinese Model be applied to other underdeveloped societies?1 The volume on China's experience in comparative perspective sets out to answer this question. It contains the main contributions made by China-watchers and developmenteconomists during a conference held in 1976 under the auspices of the American Social Science Research Council. Although some of the domestic changes which followed Mao Zedong's death were known before the editor, Robert Dernberger, got the conference papers through the press, these are hardly reflected in the volume under review. It might have been prudent to delay the publication of the conference proceedings until such time as the events of the last few years could be seen in their proper perspective. In that case, questions concerning the 'transferability' (p. 14) of the Chinese model might well have been answered differently. Claims such as that of full employment in the rural areas (p. 323) might have been toned down in the light of statements made by China's post-Mao leadership. Similar revisions might have been considered in other sections of the proceedings, as in the case of 'the smooth transition from individual household farming to collectivized agriculture' (p. 315). In comparing the experience of the People's Republic of China with that of other countries, the outside observer is likely to see the most significant difference in China's successful Communist revolution. It is thus bound to come as something of a surprise to find that the editor places this earth-shaking event merely in brackets (p. 15), and the index ignores it altogether. Elsewhere the revolution tends to be lumped together with 'noneconomic complementarities' (p. 261). It should be said-in fairness-that Albert Feuerwerker refers to the revolution as a prerequisite of successful economic development. More important, Dwight Perkins rightly bases his economic analysis on the recognition that 'China's revolution created political conditions that made possible major shifts in economic policy' (p. 148); and that the Chinese revolution, unlike the changes instigated by wealthy and educated middle classes elsewhere in developing nations, 'was fought in the name of and to a large extent by the poor' (p. 121). This dictum should indeed stand at the start of any enquiry into the 'transferability' of the Chinese Model, a subject which has been examined on previous occasions, as for instance in a special issue of World Development (May 1978). In the absence of an evaluation of the revolution as one of the most critical aspects of the Chinese Model, non-communist countries might easily be misled into believing that instead of the 'transfer of the complete package', selected programmes and policies could be transferred out of context. A good many years before, Victor Lippit had shown how decisive a role was played by the expropriation, without compensation, of China's landowners and by the abolition of their conspicuous consumption in favour of public investment. Stating this obvious fact does not exclude the possibility of other nations learning certain lessons from specific Chinese experiences and experiments. So as to guide those in search of solutions to seemingly insoluble problems, a
Strategy and Manipulation in Medieval Elections
There are many goals in developing electoral protocols, including a desire for a system which is transparent, in that it is clear what the rule or procedure to follow is; nonmanipulable, in that it is not in a person’s best interest to misrepresent their preferences; honest, in the sense that it elects the ‘right’ candidate; and not open to strategizing, i.e., bribery or collusion. However, these desiderata are in tension with each other: Often, transparent electoral procedures are the least strategy resistant, and many honest procedures encourage manipulation. Thus a balance between these different goals must be sought. In modern times, since the seminal result on vote manipulation, the Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem [5, 6], much attention has been devoted to developing voting rules where manipulation is never in the best interest of the voters [4] or which are computationally too complex for the average bounded agent to be able to manipulate [1]. This focus on computational aspects of electoral methods is one of the hallmarks of modern studies on voting. But pursuit of these goals is not restricted to modern times: Those participating in elections in the Middle Ages also sought transparency, non-manipulability, honesty, and strategyproofness in so far as these properties can be consistently expressed in a single procedure. However, given the lack of computational sophistication in the Middle Ages, alternate approaches were needed in order to promote honesty, discourage strategizing, etc. These approaches can be classified as either external (constraints introduced outside of the electoral procedure, such as incentives for coming to consensus quickly) or internal (constraints introduced within the electoral procedure, such as voting rules which cannot be manipulated without adverse effects, or which are too difficult for the average bounded agent to manipulate). Surveying examples of both approaches in the context of medieval ecclesiastical and secular elections provides an interesting comparison to modern electoral procedures. Elections in the Middle Ages were used for the same reasons that they are today: To select suitable candidate(s) for a particular office, duty, or obligation. However, it is important to note that the term electio was used in the Middle Ages in a broader sense than our modern ‘election’. Its primary sense was ‘selection’ or ‘choice’, and only secondarily ‘election’ in the modern sense. Thus, many records which purportedly discuss elections are not discussing elections of the type which interests us. We can identify four categories of medieval electoral processes: (1) Election by an external authority having no direct interest in the election; (2) Indirect election, where electors name other electors who then select or elect the officials; (3) Election by lot; and (4) Election by ballot. Elections of the first and third types are generally computationally uninteresting; the first type corresponds to dictatorial voting rules, and the third type collapses to probability theory. In general, interesting voting methods are found only in the fourth type, election by ballot, though they can also occur in indirect election.