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China's Influence Widens Nobel Peace Prize Boycott
c0lo writes "Not only did China decline to attend the upcoming Nobel peace prize ceremony, but urged diplomats in Oslo to stay away from the event warning of 'consequences' if they go. Possibly as a result of this (or on their own decisions), 18 other countries turned down the invitation: Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Philippines, Egypt, Ukraine, Cuba and Morocco. Reuters seems to think the 'consequences' are of an economic nature, pointing out that half of the countries with economies that gained global influence during recent times are boycotting the ceremony (with Brazil and India still attending)."
What about the USA?
Mr. Obama was elected and was immediately awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize before he had a chance to make any change. I wouldn't call him a warmonger, but we're still at odds with the Middle East, and he/we appear to have no plan in sight to change that.
Ignoring pleas of the people isn't exactly the kind of things he advocated.
Are you kidding me? Harmony of the state and living under a strict hierarchy are the linchpins of Confucious thought. The very idea that the "people" should be able to have a voice, let alone use it, would have been anathema to him and his contemporaries.
Confucius was a statist, pure and simple. Trying to paint him otherwise does a disservice to history and distorts the man's beliefs (however much I might disagree with them, I'm not going to deny he had them or that he was proud of them).
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
"There was an obligation for the bottom to respect the top, and also for the top to respect the bottom."
In practice - identical to the way class-society worked in Victorian (and earlier) England. The upper classes were meant to have a duty of protection, charity and upliftment toward the lower-classes who did all the work and got none of the benefits of education, wealth or power.
The difference is- the West actually learned that this doesn't work. It was in the context of a country not very long *out* of a full class system (the Victorian "democracy" was starting out at best with almost all the power at that stage in the House of Lords - which was decidedly undemocratic), that Churchill made his famous dictum about democracy being the worst form of government except for all the others.
But mind you - Britain didn't really shed the class system as a cornerstone of their society until the 70's. The great class war was fought to the music of the sex pistols !
It took a good hundred years to get to that far and even today British royalty and upper classes are still privileged (though their say in the day-to-day running of the country has been largely destroyed)...
China however, hasn't even made the slightest start.
The entire world has been the kind of complete statist that China is now. We all did it. All our ancestors tried it, practically every Western nation was once an absolute monarchy. The reality is- we changed it because it doesn't work. China hasn't learned that yet, but if history is anything to go by - they will.
The real question is - will China fall (like most of those monarchies) in bloody revolution ? Or will they have the sense (like a few of them) to recognize the inevitability of the fall of statism- and implement reforms themselves before it comes to that ? The current Chines politburo's approach and statements (especially the rather telling ones on this peace prize) suggest that we shouldn't bet on it...
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Please do not confuse Chinese and China. There are many democratic Chinese people living elsewhere in the world that want nothing to do with the corporo-fascist government of China. You can not even call it a Chinese government as the majority of Chinese living in China have little on no influence over the Government of China.
Personally this is a diplomatic mistake as it points out exactly which countries China has financial influence over, Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Philippines, Egypt, Ukraine, Cuba and Morocco. Russia is the interesting one, although it is likely they don't care one way or the other about China's opinion and stayed away for their own reasons. As for Iraq and Colombia, hmm, perhaps they are trying to get out from under the US and looking to build relations with China or more likely Russia. In fact quite a few more likely stayed away to align with Russia rather than China.
In fact it would be interesting to find out why Russia did not attend.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
The reality is- we changed it because it doesn't work.
The system worked well enough to make the British Empire the largest empire the world has ever seen, and to give a relatively small nation dominance and influence above it's weight for several centuries.
The system has worked so far in propelling China towards becoming the world's largest economy, and in urbanising and significantly raising the standard of living for hundreds of millions of people who previously lived as subsistence farmers.
This is not a question of being "statist" or "not statist", as the terms are too simple... some people would say that the legal authority of the Federal Reserve to print notes is statist. Using the military to enact social and political goals through both war and plain old "defense spending"? Statist. Building highways and railroads? Statist. Even the Wikipedia article fails to give some actual measurable attributes of what makes a thing "statist". All governments must plan growth by investing in infrastructure and technologies, but at what level does this get labelled "statist"?
The more interesting question is - what exactly is it that has given China this competitive advantage now? Does removing human rights protection (and hence democracy, as people would not vote for this) result in huge economic growth? Or is it just the natural result of having a billion-person common market with wages massively below the rest of the world? In response to the recession both the U.S. and China announced the creation of high-speed rail networks - the result being that China will have created the world's largest network in just over a decade, whilst Americans will have spent that decade arguing in the courts. China has flattened entire towns, to be paved over and replaced with newly built cities - this may be more efficient development, but would we be willing to give the government the right to do this in order to remain competitive in the global economy? If democracy and personal freedom (or greed) really is a less efficient way to manage a large national economy, then what do we choose - less democracy, less individual power, more government/corporate power, or stay the same? Which way do you think the powers that be are trying to drive our society in order to become more competitive in this new global age?