Today's Financial Times writes about the Central Organization Department of China:
To glean a sense of the dimensions of the organization department's job, conjure up a parallel body in Washington. The imaginary department would oversee the appointments of US state governors and their deputies; the mayors of big cities; heads of federal regulatory agencies; the chief executives of General Electric, Exxon-Mobil, Walmart and 50-odd of the remaining largest companies; justices on the Supreme Court; the editors of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post; the bosses of the television networks and cable stations; the presidents of Yale and Harvard and other big universities and the heads of think-tanks such as the Brookings Institution and the Heritage Foundation.
All equivalent positions in China are filled by people appointed by the party through the organization department.
I would not want to be on the bad side of the Central Organization Department. The full article, which is interesting throughout, is here. It's also related to why I don't see China just evolving into a normal democracy.
A normal democracy?
…”positions in China are filled by people appointed by the party through the organization department”..
And probably also has enough clout to influence the lighting up of Empire State Building.
This seems like the sort of thing that would eventually collapse under its own weight.
A collapse isn’t an evolution. I suspect what Tyler means is that you can’t get here from there in little, natural steps. But as holmegm points out we seem to be evolving down the reverse path, so that implies the opposite is also possible.
What happens when the Chinese and US systems pass eachother on this path?
“It’s also related to why I don’t see China just evolving into a normal democracy.”
Tyler, I am missing here a link to a MR post with your view on that matter.
“Well, give us time … today GM, tomorrow the rest …”
One of the challenges of having grown up under a dictatorship sporting police state powers is listening to westerners whine, it’s allot like listening to Paris Hilton complain of her problems, sure she has problems, but the scale!!!!
The devolution of power in the U.S. towards the masses, scary as it is on occasion, is as an irrepressible force as tectonics. This will eventually play itself out in China, where babies are born daily into a globally wired, tech focused, knowledge obsessed, hyper competitive, culture. There are radical generations of Chinese in the pipeline, for which the communist party will be but a speed bump.
What will be interesting for the rest of us, is the possible global repercussions of a period of major political upheaval in China circa 2037, in a rapidly integrating planet.
So, nyonggesa, dictatorships just fall out of the sky fully formed?
I see it exactly oppositely, it is usually the immigrants from such countries that see the trends here for what they are. Very few Americans see it as a spectrum. And the power isn’t really devolved to the masses, that’s only the illusion used by the bureaus to achieve stability. “First they came for the minority obsessing over individual rights” etc.
The scary version that everyone has intimated is that China IS a fully evolved democracy. But, it seems that most of the time people and systems don’t evolve like they should. They collapse and have to be rebuilt.
“The Dynasties changed; the bureaucracy did not.”
What do you mean by that? Are you suggesting that there was an actual continuity between bureaucrats across bureaucratic changes? Or is the fact that there was a bureaucracy what was consistent? You’re seriously suggesting that the current organizational structure is a continuity of the Qing?
Lets just leave the rise of Chinese nationalist identity, the fact that whereas the Qing Empire had multiple legitimating ideologies with the multiple groups they ruled (they presented their rule very differently to Tibetans than they did to Han or Manchus) the current state of China attempt to present itself as a coherent entity aside and not mention the difference between an Empire and a nation-state either.
During the Qing period the majority of China did not encounter the Imperial State – the power of bureaucracy didn’t extend into the village level but rather was negotiated between bureaucratic and local power structures. Under PRC the central government extended its power to the village level. That’s a pretty big organizational difference.
China is actually part of history, and has changed quite a bit over the past several thousand years.
This is exactly what the Office of Public Liaison does at the WH right now. Research it.
I second Diversity’s comments, mainly because I recently read Officialdom Unmasked, which is book written in the late years of the Qing about the corrupt patronage system within the Chinese bureaucracy. The whole system, from the positions to be had to the means of getting them, seems to have been replicated in the FT article’s narrative (I assume they use renminbi instead of silver taels, at least?).
It’s a long book in the format of a meandering serial. Each of the stories has some worth on its own, but if you read two or three random chapters out of the middle (they’re fairly short chapters), you’ve gotten the gist of the whole book. The English translation is a bit awkward in places.
It’s so similar to what’s going on today, I find it uncanny, considering China has had so much upheaval since then. Plus ça change…
http://www.amazon.com/Officialdom-Unmasked-Boyuan-Li/dp/9622095437/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254751025&sr=8-1
First of all, it would somewhat appear that President Obama may be trying to create his own Central Organization Department in Washington, D.C. withthe Democratic Party as evidenced by forced management changes at largecorporations since his inauguration. But, let’s not go there.
This article describes a system for placement and promotion of key individuals that seems very structured and objective. It may very well be as good or better than that or our own government and corporations in the United States. Even so, the system has short falls because people have a tremendous desire for greed and power. Corruption is live and well in the China system just as it is in the United States.
China will not evolve into a democratic society and at this point, the population may not want to. For most, their lives are better than ever. They have limited freedoms never thought possible just a couple of decades ago. Communism still rules and those in power are smart. They will not allow a true democratic society because of their own desire for greed and power. A revolution will be the driver behind a true change to democracy in China but that is likely many years away.
The rest of the world must tolerate China and their government systems because they have grown to be a tremendous economic power. Whether we like it or not, it’s a global economy and China had done a great job of working it to their benefit. Who would have thought the US government would be borrowing money from China to support its spending policies. For me, Iknow many of the products I buy come from China but since this tough economy kicked in, I spend a little more time looking to see where products come from. Where possible, I support products from the US even if the cost is a little higher.
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