The Man Who Loved China II

I listened to a CBC "Ideas" program this evening, in which Eleanor Wachtel interviewed a curator from Da Shan Zi, the 1 million sq. metre factory complex deeded to Mao by Stalin and now China's central galleries of contemporary Chinese art.

I looked it up on [url=http://www.longmarchspace.com.]www.longmarchspace.com.[/url]

I hope that someday works could be shown in our galleries here in Cambridge - the only way that those "public" works would ever be seen by me and the vast majority of folk here. Particularly with the prospect of travel in our restricted energy/environmental future now limited.

Canada's exhibit in this year's Venice Bieannale comes out of an architectural compilation (41 degrees - 66 degrees) here in Cambridge, pretending to contain real concern for energy use in architectural design. It does not, but I was the lone board member to vote against its presentation.

If I were younger and business oriented again, the idea of moving art works across political boundaries would be explored, for sure.

You might request a copy of the program from tonight (Wachtel on the Arts , Thursday Aug.7 from cbc.ca/ideas.

[ 08 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]

Yes, Jiajie, there will be a variety of expectations according to social group and geography.

I used the "middle" to suggest that there, there might not be so great a variation in adaptation required. And there are the people who will (or will not) opt for "rational" change.

I'm not sure that in the crunch of active change in weather patterns and disruption of life the poor of Cambodia will be given any more consideration by the middle than is given them now. And we are attempting to describe future events while the effects of climate change are already upon us, and in the case of the advanced industrial countries, there is not a single adaptative route.

I'm struggling to formulate the outlines of a political response by social democratic forces in the real world of Canada. I would welcome your thoughts on this bit of what the political right wing would call extreme social engineering, or what some economists herabouts would label simply delusional. I have to respond with something creative to what may, in fact, be an irremedial dead end created for itself by the species Homo sapiens.

I found it interesting that the people behind the founding of a public art venu in China chose The Long March for a name. Then, as I listened to the CBC interview, I realized that that not only was a key event in the struggle for change in China (two years and 6,000 miles), it has appeal to all. And it certainly worked on the general who was the first one appealed to for this new use of Stalin's gift to Mao. [img]wink.gif" border="0[/img]

[ 08 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]

A feature article on Confucius in The Globe and Mail, Aug.9, tells of Daniel Bell, a Montreal-born professor of philosophy at Tsing-hua University in Beijing, and his recently published China's New Confucianism: Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing Society.

Not yet published in China, his book suggests Beijing "create an elected system of government based on Confucian values."

Tong Lam, professsor of history at the University of Toronto "sees the new emphasis on Confucius as the Communist Party's attempt to attach itself to China's incredibly rich past."

This at a time when Mao is appearing again on T-shirts, watches and posters, and "even Mao temples, whhich the government raze as soon as they appear."

Prof. Lam calls it a quiet protest, coming from the fact that "Mao at least preached equality..."

And the ideas of Confucius from The Record of Rites, Book 9, The Commonwealth State look fine.
But wouldn't they be wasted among your average party officials?

The article points out that there has been revisionism at work over the 2500 years since his death, but Mao apparently got rid of more Confucian scholars than in the period of any previous regime.

[ 10 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]

[ 10 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]

Daniel Gilbert's explanation for the seeming blindness of our species, and his idea of the importance of "moral suasion", as some enlightenment "moral philosophers" would put it, agrees with Thomas Homer-Dixon's thoughts in his The Ingenuity Gap:

Quote
Our modern approach to solving our problems tends to be rational and analytic - and thus starkly impoverished. I believe that reason by itself is not - cannot be - our ultimate salvation, and that we must instead call on our uniquely human capacity to integrate emotion and reason: to mobilize our moral sensibilities, create within ourselves a sense of the ineffable, and achieve a measured awareness of our place in the universe. These moral abilities are also innate human strengths, and if we can use them to root out some of our arrogance about our capacity to understand and control the complex systems around us, maybe we'll be more inclined...to tread softly in their presence.
(end quote)

Homer-Dixon does not accept a lack of political will on the part of leadership as the explanation for our dilemma:
Quote
If only our leaders had the will, there would be a way: ingenuity would flow unimpeded, institutions could be reformed, debilitating political struggles managed, and most if not all of our problems overcome.
This explanation sounds good, but it means little. Almost any failure of social policy anywhere - in my terms, almost any gap between the need for and the supply of social ingenuity -can be attributed in a general way to lack of political will. Such explanations are specious: they obscure the complexity of the real world and amount to little more than finger-pointing...and they conveniently let the rest of us off the hook.
(end quote)

quote:
At this point in time, it seems the coercing has come mostly from individuals, lobby groups and political parties whose policies cannot reach beyond their state boundaries. Can the non-discriminatory nature of climate change and environmental degradation seriously place sovereignty under question? Climate change is an inhumane, authoritarian phenomenon. It can and will impose a martial law on our planet, ignoring our sovereignties and economies and laws.
(end quote)

Yes, that is exactly the thought of James Lovelock, scientist, who advises us that Gaia will not consider Homo sapiens or any other specific species as a new equilibrium is reached on a heating planet.

And I believe your prediction that we have 10-15 years before climate change is felt is far too optimistic. It is my understanding that, if we have not begun to turn things around before then, it will be too late. The melting ice of this world (and we've just set a new record for summer rainfall in this part of the province of Ontario - on top of previous records for heat in the past decade) and myriad atmospheric and biological "events" around the world all tell us we're far into change.

The major media and political parties have only come to accept this possibility in the past two years, here in NOrth America.

I cringe at the thought of the probable time required to bring home the message in those situations where thought is controlled by people vastly ignorant of science, or who,in their greed, run from the real world.

In my mind, Canada can REGAIN its sovereignty only by raising the consciousness of the body politic to this level of understanding. Otherwise we are in thrall to our material wants. I don't believe China can be independent of that conclusion. It just has to understand that sovereignty has taken on an additional, deeper meaning.

[ 11 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]

[ 11 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]

Tempting thought. But I cannot see the proverbial "benevolent dictator" showing up, or surviving for long if he/she were to appear. And I find Gilbert's human model too similar to that frog in water slowly brought to the boiling point.

I think we will need to mobilize as though preparing for war, and democracies have proved themselves capable of that. But weaponry would not be the main product. Creativity would be rewarded (Homer-Dixon).Many "liberties" will be set aside.

But I can't see emperor or dictator being helpful, finally - particularly as we consider the complexity of nations and the presence of atomic weaponry in several. A United Nations of dictators would not accomplish much, either.

No, all we can hope (and work) for is a speedup in consciousness raising - and in the creation of alternative lifestyles and human objectives outside of the current economic imperatives.

[ 12 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]

You wrote about liberties being put aside and that is the subject I hoped my broad question would bring out. For example, David Suzuki said SUVs should be banned but few took him seriously. How would Canadians and car manufacturers react if the government dictated the size of engines manufacturers could build and sell? Perhaps the reaction would be similar to that of smoking bans in Ontario: doing so was considered undemocratic because it infringed on a liberty. Or do you think the consumer and commodity markets will eventually direct the car manufacturers to offer green technology? I think the latter is already happening. What "liberties" (I guess you mean desires) will be put aside in such short time? I imagine many will be bothered by the change in lifestyle.

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In the command economy of wartime, there is no waiting around for "the market" to perform miracles.
The last automobile built in wartime in the U.S. was the 1942 Ford.
Roosevelt sent Canadian expatriate and brilliant economist John Kenneth Galbraith to act as "price czar" to limit the inflationary surge of prices that came on the eve of their military involvement in Dec.,1941.

Government must "dictate" the size and number of everything that produces greenhouse gases, sooner rather than later. We are talking about a revolutiion in production and consumption, under an umbrella command economy.

Yes, I was thinking "desires" rather than liberties such as speech. But the imperative, dictating all action, will be simple survival.

How many people in China, frustrated as they are by the oneo-child policy, would openly call for a return to the freedom to have as many children as could be afforded?

Not many, I think. And those few would have to be the most ignorant and greedy of all. Not to be followed.

The most important insight that I gained in conversation with my Mississauga friends, last month - and it only comes to me now, as I answer your question - is the totally rational explanation that he gave for the state's treatment of the malcontent, like the Falun Gong.

The group's treatment of others, like all cults, demands suppression. Period. No room for argument.

I cannot wait for that reasoning to be applied
in the interaction of people and environment in China.

Meanwhile, we have to develop a one-child policy here...among other things, like acceptance of a centrally-controlled economy, as in war.

But as you can see from the less-than-homogenous streams of thought rattling around babble, that, too, will take some doing. [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img]

Is your objective to reverse climate change or adapt to it? If the objective is to reverse it partly through an economic revolution, Canada's parliamentary process will take too much time. A change in conscience also seems too time-consuming for a revolution to begin within 10 years. I was also mindful of the war-time analogy but the threat of war with Germany was immediate and touched upon the moral sensibilities of Canadians much easier than climate change seems to be doing. And during war-time, the Canadian parliament can invoke martial law to quickly pass legislation to mobilize the economy, industry and population, but the mobilization was temporary and the pre-war pattern of consumption returned. The change envisioned here obviously needs to be permanent.
(end quote)

Yes, a "wartime" economy will not be an easy "sell", Jiajie, but it has been seen as the last hope of mobilizing society to act to preserve itself for some time now (President Carter, 1979)
The effects of climate change, even as we communicate, continue to build. Believers are being born. And by now we have to adapt, as well as work to slow and eventually reverse our effect on Earth's biosphere.(Again, see James Lovelock and George Monbiot for the most severe accountings).

Your Dr. Ma did the math, and late in the day, China's government made the only decision that it could to make possible a secure future for its people. One child.

Since the world's population continues to grow at the rate of one million people every 4 or 5 days, what is it about that math that does not suggest a like solution for the rest of humanity to you? I really did not expect that question at this point in our exchange.

Canada grows slowly, with a rate of immigration greater than any other, as I recall.

We have to do the math.

And now, I'm going to pack and go canoeing for a couple of days in what is left of the "wilderness" of southern Ontario, near Algonquin Park. Going with my daughter, who also needs a break from routine of work and family. We are taking a can of spray repellent in case a bear wanders into camp looking for food. Hope the wild blueberries have been good to the bears, this summer [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img] Until next week...

[ 15 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]

Parts of the world require population planning but I do not think countries such as Japan, South Korea, and Canada need such policies. The birth rates of South Korea and Japan are below the rate required to replace their graying populations which will need the support of younger generations to finance those countries' public retirement systems at affordable tax rates (among other things). Those systems will be crucial in the future because the two- and three-generation families, which provided for the retirement of their elders, are now almost non-existent in those countries. China is facing the same challenge because of the recent appearance of nuclear families and the inadequate public pension system.
(end of quote)

If any country has to return to large families to provide the labour that will be taxed and otherwise utilized to look after its senior citizens, Home sapiens is certainly doomed, Jiajie.

Here, only the economists with their Homo economicus - a creature apparently required to breed consumers and producers in infinite numbers - continue to announce that future retirees will require grater numbers of young people to support them. I'm working from a model of Earth as a finite entity, already called on to support more people than it can sustain for very long.

No, the current adult generations have to break free of that canard.

In Canada, only the Conservatives would use your argument (although other political persuasions can be vague on it), and only the Conservatives and the Green Party (unlike Greens elsewhere in the world) count on "The Market" to take care of everything.

Speaking of which, The Globe and Mail today tells of "staggering" losses on China's market - its main stock index down 62 per cent from last October when the news was that cab drivers, cleaning ladies and college students were opening brokerage accounts by the millions - down by 5.2 per cent yesterday alone.

In the U.S., only massive infusions by government keeps the market afloat. Just like in the 1930s.

Is anyone in China allowed to openly speculate that perhaps market speculation isn't the answer to China's future?

And, of course, placing concern for the future of our children first is the only ethical choice among the moral positions available out there.

On Oct. 2, 2006, I clipped from our local newspaper a political cartoon and the lead letter to the editor that day that happened to run side by side.

The letter states that "Better geriatric care could solve ER dilemma" (ER being emergency rooms), and the writer, a registered nurse, said it would also free up acute care beds in hospitals. All of which we know, but do nothing about because of Conservative Party appeals voters calling for lower taxes. We need tax money to build and staff Long Term Care homes. My wife is in one.

The cartoon adjoining that letter, shows a man who's been reading a "Hummer User's Manual", and he turns to his young son, who has just asked him a question about climate change, and says "Yes, the Earth is getting hotter than ever, and yes, it's probably due to human activity, but I'll let you in on a little secret no other adult will ever tell you. We actually don't care about our kids' future."

It hangs above my desk.

Other than news from the Olympics itself, there is news that the "Chinese-Canadian diaspora (is) fostering (a) new bond with the homeland". That's 1.2 million people.

The Chinese of Canadian descent were not known for strong attachments to the mother country in the past, but now challenge any criticism. "They see criticism of the regime as criticism of the people", according to one public figure,a member of the Chinese Canadian National Council, who used to be able to safely criticize China's leadership.

Suddenly, some accuse him of being "a traitor, a dissident and a rabble rouser...not being Chinese enough."

Now I understand my friend's new enthusiasm for his homeland...even though his wife is less than pleased with its new directions. And the children are quite satisfied with prospects for their future life in Canada.

I must say I fully understand Mengchun's position now.

[ 19 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]

[ 19 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]

quote:

I am not arguing that there should be a return to large families. I used the experiences of South Korea and Japan as a caution to extreme, sudden solutions and to point out that population control is not required in some regions of the world because their birth rates have already quickly declined. For South Korea and Japan, the decline has become a real problem because they were not prepared for it and it is changing their identities. If a decline in birth rates is required, contingencies should be ready to deal with the social changes created by population planning, something Chinese policy makers chose to ignore but had to deal with later which led to coercion. Since 2006, both governments have been meeting regularly to find solutions.

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I'm afraid that we all need "extreme, sudden solutions", Jiajie.

Obviously, not of the order of a Great Leap Forward, or of Cultural Revolution, but Mao did understand that unless the individual's values were reformed, there wouldn't be heaven on Earth.

Japan and South Korea are wrestling with the problem that Europe and Canada "solved" through immigration. But, obviously, only the problems of labour shortages on the low end of the wage scale and a growing need for a larger consumer base were "solved".

Japan and Korea will also not open their doors to immigrants - xenophobia comes to mind - but in this way they are fortunate in having to apply specific solutions within their cultural frameworks. They cannot take the "growth" way out, which only leaves the problem(s) for their descendants.

Our "senior citizens" are piling up in the hospitals, waiting for space to be created in the existing Long Term Care facilities by the death of their residents. My 84-year-old brother, suffering dementia brought on by a series of small strokes, will not be offered a LTC residence until next year, if he lives that long. His hospital care costs the state four times as much as residence in LTC.

In the age of the extended family, with three generations living under one roof (a pre-war situation for a majority, perhaps) one was looked after at home. It is still seen in the homes of immigrants from a few cultures here. But, of course, life expectancy was for far fewer years.

For most old-timers it's a hiving away, out-of-sight process now while the happy nuclear family, with no time for anything but work, struggles to keep up with the neighbours.

In my wife's LTC ward, I'm the only daily visitor to help out with one meal a day. I don't have to work, and am young enough to do the 20-25 minute drive.

After much thought, I've decided that the only way we are going to be able to pay for the care of the elderly while emptying hospital hallways is to build LTC facilities into residential areas and require attendance by family members at least for one meal a day. Perhaps trips for entertainment as well. Or they pay a premium.

Now, that elderly parent or spouse may be housed an hour or two away from their family.

We have to take back control of the planning process and gut the centre of existing subdivisions to create self-sufficient living modules where families can function more like their forbears, without complete reliance on the state for the physically or mentally disabled.

We'll go to the polls in a national election this fall. The Conservatives will again promise lower taxes. We of the Left need some creative proposals along such co-operative lines, aimed at doing more with what we have now.

[ 20 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]

(quote)
No, we do not all need extreme, sudden solutions. We now know that China did not need the one-child-per-family policy. The policy-planning was made in secrecy using a poor methodology with no toleration for alternative solutions.

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I would give (almost) anything, Jiajie, to hear what those alternative solutions could have been, either in historical context, or the present.
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(quote)
The traditional frameworks have already collapsed. Part of the solution is the initiation of new social values that accommodate new realities rather than demanding solely a scientific, inhumane solution. It seems that Canada, like South Korea and Japan, already has the social values in place to maintain a low birth rate. I suppose it now needs to improve its national health care and pension systems.

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The "social values in place to maintain a low birth rate" here are all about enjoyment of the "good life", not possible with too many children. And Quebec, for instance, went from largest families to smallest with the "Quiet Revolution" that threw off the church in the 1960s.

Improvement of health care and pensions will come about if that same hedonistic impulse can be set aside in the name of old mom and dad - and themselves, if the great taxpayer/citizen can summon altruism and foresight, use imagination.

[ 20 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]

Nationalist sentiments aside, Jiajie, this is what it all boils down to, the end consideration.

Growing footprints
Last updated: 10th August 2008

Two recent reports from the Global Footprint Network provide striking evidence of the global overshoot in both population and consumption, which threatens to overwhelm our planet by eating up its natural capital while frying what is left of habitable land in excessive atmospheric heat.

Total ecological footprint, top countries, 2003
The first, on China, shows that if that country were to follow the consumption patterns of the United States – to which increasing numbers of its 1.3 billion people clearly aspire – it would demand the available biocapacity of the entire planet. (See: China's ecological footprint could cover the planet).

Not that North Americans or Europeans have anything to feel indignant about, since each citizen of the United States has an ecological footprint over five times greater than the average Chinese, and the same Chinese citizen has an ecological footprint of only 1.5 global hectares, below the world average of 2.2. China, it seems, still has the potential to reduce its total ecological footprint, while helping secure a high quality of life for all its citizens. But it will take some doing, and will need to be mirrored by an even greater effort among today’s rich, high consuming, nations.

Fatima Lafatou with her two-year-old daughter, Ethiopia. Photo © Oxfam/Nick Danziger
The second report, on Africa, shows just how important it is for that continent to slow its runaway population growth. While the average African has an ecological footprint below the region’s natural biocapacity, its projected increase in population, from one billion to over two billion by 2050, means that it is on course to grossly exceed its biocapacity. (See: Africa's population is 'nearing biological limits').

But this, too, is a situation open to powerful win-win solutions, since the biggest benefit to many African countries will come from investing in the education and health of women and men, including their ability to space and limit their family size, while designing more resilient cities and leapfrogging to the most resource efficient technologies. As Global Footprint Network Director, Mathis Wackernagel, says “There are huge opportunities to improve well-being in lasting ways while staying within our ecological constraints.”

The urgency of all this is reinforced by our reports on drought and food shortages now wracking East Africa, and on the growing tragedy of child malnutrition which now affects nearly half all under-fives in sub-Saharan Africa. (See: 14 million in East Africa threatened by hunger and Nearly half sub-Saharan children malnourished).

John Rowley

PS You can see Mathis Wackernagel discussing the issues of Population and the Planet in a lively half-hour video, in a Canadian TV discussion, here.