STUPIDITY IN CHINA? Not So Much
Whenever you read about Stupidity in China, the Land of Invisible Atrocities. If the narrative involves their government doing something stupid–that you. Or I would not do–then it’s almost certain that they didn’t do it, either.
We usually believe it because we are inured to governments doing stupid things, squandering our blood and treasure, lying to us, killing people wantonly because. In our 2500-year-old political tradition, that’s what governments have always done, starting with Alcibiades. We bitch and moan about it (also a 2500 year tradition) but, like our forebears, we make the most of things.
That’s not the Chinese tradition. For two millennia they have hired only their most intelligent (minimum IQ 140), idealistic, competent youngsters and sent them into the wilderness. These days they spend 5-10 years living in and doubling the cash income of marginal villages. While begging, borrowing, or stealing funds to resettle them in low-income housing like this:
If they succeed (and many fail) they repeat the process at the county level, and so on up the ladder. Xi has been doing that for forty years and, by 2022, will have doubled the cash income of every Chinese since his election in 2012. His fellow cabinet members did the same. That’s how they got promoted and now they must vote unanimously before any policy can go to the legislature.
So, when I hear that they did something much stupider than you or I would do I wonder. Why a group of geniuses, who have enriched more people than anyone else in history (and taken so little for themselves).
Do something so counterproductive, destructive, mean-spirited, murderous and completely unnecessary?
Why would Mao, who fed million-man armies, on the march, under fire, for 22 years, allow anyone to starve? You or I would figure out a way to give everyone something to eat by sharing resources equitably. Of course, that’s exactly what he did. Hundreds of millions received exotic foods from distant provinces and–despite America’s grain embargo–nobody starved to death[1].
Ditto massacring your own sons and daughters and the nation’s brightest teenagers in the country’s main square in the presence of the world’s biggest media scrum. Even I find that incomprehensibly stupid. That’s why their government gave President Clinton an hour, live, on national TV to complain about the ‘massacre’. Everyone knew it didn’t happen, and that made Clinton look like the liar we know him to be.
The same goes for mistreating Muslims. We all know what happens when you do that and it’s certainly not what smart people do smart people like us would invite all fifty. Three Muslim countries to send inspectors to Xinjiang. Which they did–and guess what the Muslim Council inspectors said? They were envious. Like China, most Muslim governments have suffered terrorist attacks by unemployed, semi-literate, young Wahhabi men and know that America supports them worldwide. While bombing Muslims on a daily basis while protecting their thuggish nemesis, Israel.
- As with the Coronavirus epidemic, there were excess deaths, but almost all of the people older than 58, then the expected life span. ↑
