Just a minor note on dreams, American and Chinese
There is plenty written on the American Dream. We all have an idea of what that means. It is part of our civil religion, as Robert Bellah might have suggested in his 1967 Civil Religion in America.
China-US: Some Similarities
A bit long, but worth perusing .... use the red highlights to skip around ... note at 10-10, most figures loaded, although some with photographs of figures, so they look a little ... unkempt. Apologies.
An introduction
The US and China are two big countries and big countries with modern economies will necessarily have some similar problems. Middle class Chinese have concerns quite similar to those of middle class Americans.
We write all the time about differences between the US and China. Amid the anxiety and paranoia about ascendant China it might help to consider a few ways in which the US and China are similar. Just for some perspective. I'm not suggesting identical causation, only similarities in the way people experience the world. I ignore a lot of other similarities and all the differences in this short list. Some items might be interesting or fun or a bit of nourishment for you. No one should take this as an intimate analysis of those similarities that I do find. I am not making an argument here, just listing some elements of culture or economics that I find similar in China and the US.
Comments on the new Foreign Relations Law - why its called a one party-state
There are several good American lawyer blogs on Chinese law. Most prominent in my mind is Harris Bricken, which contains information on current and past cases dealing with businesses and law in China. The China collection features posts by several academic attorneys with China experience, including Donald Clarke, Ling Li, and Carl Minzner.
Don Clarke has some comments on the new Foreign Relations Law. I’m not a lawyer – I don’t even play one on tv – but three comments on Don Clarke’s comments.
You can check out anytime you like … but you can never leave
A short note on CCP fear of CCP members in Hubei Province –
From several sources comes information that Hubei Provincial CCP is demanding to hold passports from midlevel CCP members and above, even long after retirement. Current retirement age for men is 60; 55 for women. Lots of CCP members have family or kids in the US. If they cannot get approval to seek a visa, they can never see their families. That's a long time to be barred from direct family contact.
Made in China 2025 … and by GOP 2025
A brief note on choice of dates … and choice of policies. I don’t think CCP and GOP are directly coordinating policy, but they have constructed curiously sympatico … and apparently similarly timed … programs for major world restructuring. One economic and technological, one political and radically reactionary.
On passing the academic intellectual torch
William Kirby is a renowned China scholar at Harvard. He has written a dozen books on Chinese history and our relations with China. He has a long list of accomplishments at the highest levels of international academia and professional societies.
When he writes about superior universities in Germany and the US and China, I can only marvel at the scope of his erudition. So I feel a bit out of my element commenting on his latest book Empires of Ideas: Creating the Modern University from Germany to America to China.
