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8 of China's Top 9 Govt. Officials Are Engineers
kkleiner writes "Did you know that the president of China is a scientist? President Hu Jintao was trained as a hydraulic engineer. Likewise his Premier, Wen Jiabao, is a geomechanical engineer. In fact, 8 out of China's top 9 government officials are scientists or engineers."
and all of ours are scientists.
9 our of 9 Chinese top officials promote blatant economic slavery in an attempt to increase their power. These people aren't stupid, but they are very dangerous and exploitative of the population.
Ever think that the US might have gown down the WRONG road ?
Surely China is lacking in a lot of areas, but I do find this interesting.
I grow really weary of western leaders being almost completely lawyers, polsci majors, bankers, economists, and the like.
It would be nice to have some ministers that actually come from the field they are in charge of more often than now, at least. Lawyers and bankers make laws for bankers and lawyers, go figure.
Sent from my PDP-11
I do hope you all don't think this way.
Don't be fooled by the Faux News view of China.
One day you'll wake up and it'll be too late to do anything about their world markets domination.
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
From the article:
Thirty-four countries were assessed in all by the PISA test, considered to be the most comprehensive of its type. Out of those 34 the U.S. ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math.
China’s 15-year olds also took the test. They ranked 1st, 1st, and 1st.
Is your point that the PISA test is either a useless measure or intentionally slanted to favor China ?
Your signature seems to imply a view that anything that casts the US in an unfavorable light in comparison with the rest of the world, including self introspection as to how we could be better, is suspect.
Hey fellow geeks, tell me what you think about population control.. are you fundamentally opposed to involuntary sterilization or do you think it might sometimes be the right solution?
Some of the scariest social policies that I've ever heard have come out of the mouths of engineers. We're inherently heartless bastards who consider ourselves intellectually superior and so should have the right to sweep aside individual rights for what we consider to be the greater good.
For many of us, it has taken years of deprogramming to free ourselves from the "our kind know better" mindset.
How we know is more important than what we know.
> Did you know that the president of China is a scientist? President Hu Jintao was trained as a hydraulic engineer.
So, he's not a scientist, he's an engineer. That's not a slam against engineers (or scientists) but I believe that the two outlooks are very different.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
The slashdot headline says "8 of China's Top 9 Govt. Officials Are Engineers." The slashdot summary says, "8 out of China's top 9 government officials are scientists or engineers," in a link to singularityhub.com. Singularityhub says "In fact, 8 out of China's top 9 government officials are scientists," in a link to forbes.com. Forbes.com doesn't say anything about 8 out of 9 anything.
So we have some possibilities: (a) 8/9 are engineers (slashdot headline); (b) 8/9 are scientists (singularityhub); (c) 8/9 are scientists or engineers (slashdot summary); (d) none of the above (original source, forbes.com).
This stuff about comparing the US's science and engineering to China's is just plain dumb, and not only is it dumb, it's getting really, really old. Didn't we have enough of this in the Sputnik era?
Some reality checks: (1) Science is not a zero-sum game. If someone in China publishes a really good scientific paper, it makes the US better off, not worse off. (2) The US is a capitalist country, where labor is a market, and the value of a particular skill is set by supply and demand. If employers are having trouble hiring enough scientists, they'll offer higher pay for scientists. Ditto for engineers. (3) Chinese higher education sucks to high heaven. US higher education is the envy of the world. (How many US college graduates do you know who go to China for grad school?) (4) Science and engineering are two different things.
Find free books.
100 out of 100 are laywers in the US and not the attractive altruistic 22 year old laywers that you see on TV.
Then you'd have to include Japan in that. And England. And most other nations that realize that there's nothing wrong with vocational schools, and that some people are better off going to one of them instead of college.
That's a good one. Yes, let's forget all the people in that "golden age" that only made it into colleges due to their parent's wealth.
Firstly these are not scientists, they are politicians with engineering degrees.
Secondly, they are also all second and third generation Communist Party Members, their parents were all big CCP players, what makes you think they had to do any work to get their qualifications? Every one of them was virtually guaranteed to get a degree no matter what their ability.
Third, even if they did their work, have you even been to any Chinese universities? All but the very top two are shockingly terrible, and I teach at a Chinese university, the standard here is.....shocking, cheating is so rife that it makes nearly all tests worthless it doesnt even compare to the crappest community college back home.
Fourth, have any of these people actually worked as engineers or have they been politicians all their life?
Fifth, what makes you think an engineer would be better at running a country than anyone else?
This smells like something put out by the people daily.
This was definitely not Mao's game plan. China transitioned from communism to capitalism after Mao's death because Mao's plans weren't working.
Lawyers and bankers as leaders is great! ... until they deregulate the banking industry to allow them to cripple the financial system, then bail them out so that the richest of the rich can still get multi-million dollar bonuses.
>liberal democracy
But that's not what we have.
We have capitalist oligarchy neo-fascism instead.
Liberalism is a dirty word, don'tchaknow. It's been that way since 1980. Doing /anything/ that advances society overall and gets everyone a better standard of living instead of increasing the power of the ruling class is "bad." The oil companies /need/ that 20 billion dollar subsidy on top of their windfall profits. Because without it, the oil companies will stop delivering oil. Or something. Because the ruling class of the corporations knows better, for all of us.
We've even got an entire tv network spewing this garbage 24/7.
Fuck this country, for it is fucked.
The assholes at PNAC that got us into two wars should be swinging from nooses like the traitors they are.
--
BMO
Uhhh ok fair enough. There is always emigration to China when it gets intolerably oppressive in the US.
Chinas economy is growing without having to steal oil Americas economy is falling even after stealing oil.
To be fair, we didn't steal it nearly as cost-effectively as we could have, and the economic failings weren't directly related to religion, a lack of scientists in government, OR the stealing of oil.
Part of the problem though is this is viewed as a China vs US issue and creates arguments (see other posts here) about China's political flaws or the test's flaws. The US scored below the average of all countries, whether China was 1st, 4th or dead last is somewhat immaterial.
We can't improve as long as our gut reaction is to take any criticism, either internally or externally generated, as a personal affront.
Doing /anything/ that advances society overall
bias.. the argument being that not everything progressives push for is any good for anyone but their social and economic (yes economic) lobbies. Same as the right. There are some differences on those lobby lists, but as you go up in donations, you start to see the same corporate interests funding both sides...funny eh? I wonder why that is?
The oil companies /need/ that 20 billion dollar subsidy on top of their windfall profits. Because without it, the oil companies will stop delivering oil. Or something. Because the ruling class of the corporations knows better, for all of us.
as opposed to an all-'knowing' government knows better? a government that routinely flouts the rules it expects everyone else to follow (unless they have lots of cash to buy them off).. sound familiar? it doesn't matter which party you support, you're supporting the same thing. the differences are becoming less and less relevant as time goes on..at least as far as solving today's issues goes..
Anyway, since neither party is doing me any favors, I'd like my freedoms back please. I don't need a bogeyman to keep me in line, nor do i want billions spent to fight it.
It's not immediately clear why those things should have to go together. Maybe because analytical, honest people tell us things we don't want to hear? Carter was drummed out of office for telling us energy was finite, and that we needed to buckle down and tighten our belts a bit for a while. He got railroaded by an actor who told everybody whatever they wanted to hear and put us firmly on the path of financial irresponsibility.
I've seen this story before, and my response is the same now as then: this is because of different expectations of the nations' leaders.
The Chinese government has full control over everything in its borders: laws, people, economic output. It's leaders can direct the entire nation however they see fit. That means the best leaders have to be able to cope with the things they can't control: the immutable limits of physics and economics. The job of any engineer (which, I might add, is not the same as scientist) is to solve problems in the best way possible with available tools under the available constraints. The Chinese toolbox is wide open, so the constraints are all physical, and an engineer's knowledge is directly applicable.
In the U.S., the people have chosen a different route: the government does what we specifically tell them they can. The constraints are primarily legal, because the government (relatively speaking) is allowed to do very little. A lawyer's ability to navigate the mine field of who is likely to be affected, who is likely to sue, and what is likely to be shot down in court is more useful to the high-level bureaucrat. Actual problems of a sort an engineer or other knowledge worker would face are the responsibility of others. There jobs are derived from a very small part of the very small leeway we give the government. (This abundance of lawyers in government is also why the American people put a premium on military experience, since it's the government department most steeped in harsh, broad-focus, real-world logistics.)
Both of these can be compared to, say, France, where the government is the nexus of the economic, legal, and even social circles. It controls industry more directly at times than the U.S. government, so businessman represent a larger share of leadership (about a third). The legal issues are similar to the U.S., but with the government fundamentally allowed more direct intervention. Hence lawyers and former lower-level bureaucrats each take about another third of the leadership roles.
I wrote my previous post in haste, so I didn't get to explain why China's government has so many engineers.
Today's top leaders are in their mid to late 60s, some even in their 70s, which means they began their higher education in the 1960s and 1970s. That was a time before the Economic Reform era, and China was still a planned society with a planned economy, which meant that post-secondary education and later career were assigned centrally. You took your national college entrance exam in high school, and your score determined which university you went to and what piece of the workforce quota you would later fill. Engineering was a tough field then as it is now, and what do you know the higher you scored the more likely you were assigned to an engineering school. These bright kids joined the party, went into politics, and carried their degrees along with them. One should not make the mistake of assuming it was because of those degrees that they have succeeded in China's political environment, nor to assume that they are better leaders due to that engineering degree above some other had they had the freedom to choose.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Chinas economy is growing without having to steal oil
lol yeah, they arrest people to push down the price of iron ore. Then they steal technology for high speed trains. Then they sell poisoned baby food. But those are minor issues, you missed the most important points.
The main difference between China and the US, economically speaking, is that Chinese officials are trying a managed economy. They reward companies they like, and punish companies they don't like. They try to steer economic growth. Whereas the US has a more traditional approach of not interfering and letting the economy do its thing. In fact, the less they interfere, the better off the economy is (probably in part because they don't know what they are doing).
So, what China did worked quite well for the last decade, but will it work for the next decade? Who knows? They need to keep making the right decisions over and over. It's not easy, Stalin started out well but then the Russian economy went into snail mode. And even in China there have been some huge problems (Mao) in the not-very-distant past. So it will be interesting to watch and see how the Chinese leadership manages, or what kind of changes they have to make.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Go look at Africa to see what happens when there's no control.
Funny thing is, the problems in Africa have absolutely nothing to with the population. Hell, they have a low population for the amount of arable land on that continent. Their problems stem from the thugs and olgiarchs and kleptos running the various governments in Africa, If you could get good leadership, the population on that continent could greatly expand with out harming the land.
Try again with a better arguement
I think you missed your parent's point. The US doesn't need to be the world's paragon of liberal democracy in order for his point to be valid. The US is categorically more liberal and more democratic than China, and that makes the choice of under whom one would wish to be ruled a very clear one indeed.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
In authoritarian societies people are just cogs in the machine, serving those in power. It takes engineers keep the machine running.
Carter was drummed out of office for being sad. He was so depressing.
Reagan was happy. If you find people who really like Reagan, and get to the core of why they like him, it is usually something like this. They didn't like all his policies, but he was inspiring.
Surprisingly, similar in many ways to Obama.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I have a point to make, but first I'll give you sweet, sweet data. Here's the relevant Wikipedia page, you can backtrack the direct sources from there. These are the 2009 PISA results:
Math: China (#1), Finland (#6), United States (#30)
Reading: China (#1), Finland (#3), United States (#17)
Sciences: China #1), Finland (#2), United States (#23)
= = = = = =
And now, the average cost to teach a child (Primary/Grammar/Elementary School Source, Secondary/High School Source) For Primary School and High School:
Primary/Grammar/Elementary School: Switzerland (#2, $6,470.00 per student), U.S. (#4, $6,043.00 per student), China (No data)
Secondary/High School: Switzerland (#1, $9,348.00 per student), U.S. (#3, $7,764.00 per student), China (No data)
= = = = = =
Next, the average salary per teacher for Elementary and High School (U.S. source, Finland source, China source). All are converted to dollars using XE.com.
Elementary School: Finland (~$46,000), United States (~$40,000, China (~$18,000)
High School: Finland (~$46,000 - ~$71,000), United States (~$42,000.00 - ~$44,000), China ($24,000 - ~$28,000)
= = = = = =
On this last bit, I've done some digging but haven't been able to find concrete data on all three countries from one source, so I'm going with estimates. Peek into sources if you want.
The average U.S. School day is 9-3, or about 6 hours. Finland is about 5 hours. China is about 8 hours (roughly 9-5, with a two hour lunch, so still around 7 hours).
= = = = = =
Okay, so. China pays their teachers way less than the U.S. but get far better results. Finland pays their teachers about the same and gets way better results, but not as good as China. The U.S. pays the same amount of money (roughly) that Finland does for much, much worse results.
So what the hell are we doing wrong?
China is all drill, drill, drill. A lot of the East Asian countries (South Korea, China, Japan, Indonesia, etc.) have long school days which are often supplemented by private schooling (a.k.a. "Cram courses") after the fact. Most kids are home anywhere between 8:00-10:00 PM, 2-4 hours of homework, and then wake up at 6:00 or 7:00AM the next day.
Americans, we're 9-3, plus maybe an hour or two of homework (at most). Often there's an after school program, but these are more glorified daycare and less practical education.
Finland actually ends up using *less* hours per day than us, but they use innovative teaching methods that the U.S. is sorely lacking.
I see Finland and China as two extremes. China is like grinding in an MMO. If you simply just do something a lot, you're going to get better by rote and practice. That's the general Asian method, I've found. Drill, test, drill, test, drill, test. Finland seems to be the opposite extreme - less drilling, more trying to find methods that work without having an insanely look school day. The U.S. has the worst parts of both and the benefits of neither.
If we lengthened the school days in America and really put the kids asses to work, we could edge up closer to China - maybe eve beat it out. They do way better than us for 1/3 - 1/2 the cost on teacher salary. However, if we maintained the same salary but looked at where our methodology is wrong and tried new things, we could achieve similar resu
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
I come from a country that has been under totalitarian rule for over 45 years until 1989. Our president and his wife had multiple Doctor and Doctor Honoris Causa titles from different universities, including for example the one in Nice, despite being renown for their stupidity and lack of education (I am not talking about manners, but years spent in school). The president's wife, Elena Ceausescu, was called by the newspapers and TV savant de renume mondial” (internationally renowned high scientist). She was supposed to be a chemist. Everybody was laughing at her speeches that were touching on the subject. Although they were probably written by real scientists and PR, she was not able to even read them out (they never spoke freely, always read the speeches). So, in a totalitarian regime, the top leaders can be anything they fancy. But it doesn't mean much. At most, it means they appreciate science as something worthy. And about the top positions in PISA tests, try to imagine the life of a child growing in a totalitarian regime, if you can. There is not much to do for a smart child, no other "distractions", no real childhood. They are treated more like sport athletes. In our country performance in international science contests has declined since 1989, but that is only a sign that we are returning to normality, giving children a chance at a real childhood, and a bit more happiness maybe, not torturing them so maybe they will have a good position in society that will make it easier for them to get FOOD (I'm not exaggerating, my guess is that in parts of China there is a greater food problem than what we had in Roumania, and we had a fair share).
Go look at Africa to see what happens when there's no control.
Funny thing is, the problems in Africa have absolutely nothing to with the population. Hell, they have a low population for the amount of arable land on that continent. Their problems stem from the thugs and olgiarchs and kleptos running the various governments in Africa, If you could get good leadership, the population on that continent could greatly expand with out harming the land.
Try again with a better arguement
In other words the problems in Africa have everything to do with too weak governments or with no government at all (think Somalia).
A thug running a diamond business, monopolizing a country's institutions is not 'government', it's a thug running a diamond business who managed to kill or control all other thugs and thus managed to monopolize. Dictatorship is the ultimate end game of free-for-all archeo-capitalism: the big fish has eaten all the small fish.
Is that the model of society you envision for America as well?
There is a huge difference between what China is doing, and what USSR did.
There were no companies in USSR - not independent, not even semi-independent. It was truly a planned economy, where all movement of money and of goods was fully planned ahead from up above to form one grandiose scheme. This broke down because the complexity was beyond anything manageable, and because the incentive become corrupt in such a system is very high.
Chinese tried that and it worked no better for them. Now, they've transitioned to a pet capitalist economy. The companies run themselves, and they actually compete (even more so as you go down to medium & small business levels). The state collects the cash in form of high taxes, and steers the companies whenever they do something that threatens either that revenue stream, or some other state interests (military production, long-term development plans etc). This isn't planned economy, really; it's harnessing the benefits of market economy while keeping the potentially harmful (to the state) effects at bay. And that is much easier than full-scale planned economy like the USSR - there, there had to actively make the right decisions on what things to do, but the Chinese only need to make the right decisions on where to not intervene too much.
One day you'll wake up and it'll be too late to do anything about their world markets domination.
China's got a buttload of problems coming up fast, like:
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I can't speak for what it was like during the Carter or reagan admins, as I Wasn't born for the former and was too young for the latter; however, I am interested enough to ask those whom were around during that time why Carter was such a bad president and why Reagan is idolized. To sum it up, Carter was too scientific while Reagan was a charismatic leader. But there are only a few people in the world who can be both a scientist and a great leader.
Americans in general tend to ignore science because only a few understand the concepts. While those that do understand it outshine the rest of the world, the rest of the country are too confused by scientific discussion and, unfortunately, fall prey to skepticism of scientific results. What is really daunting is that scientific understanding is lacking at all levels of society. /. Frequenters are in a minority and a lot of our discussions are often logical and methodical. Slip an average American in these forums and their heads will start hurting in about thirty minutes, slip several /.'s in an American Idol discussion and we would probably have the same headaches. Carter simply fell in the wrong time to be a president. Methodical thinking takes too long to be effective in a political environment that wants instant gratification. Reagan seemed more of a shoot from the hip and ask questions later kind of person, and average Americans could cling more easily to someone they think is like them. It's one of the reasons Clinton, Bush, and even Obama are adored by the American public.
Having an expectation that one day we will have scientist at the highest level of authority is wishful thinking. Science isn't the American way. Profit is the American way, science is just a means to obtain it. Once you realize that people don't care that your scientific discoveries have saved lives, time, and made their lives more bearable, then you'll understand that the only thing people care about is the amount of money in your pocket at the end of the day. It's a sad but unfortunate truth.
you go into the lab, you follow the instructions in the book. if it doesn't work like it's supposed to, you do it over again until you get it "right".
google it.
that kind of thing doesn't happen in any 'free' country.