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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."
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.
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.
Political scientists study politics, they don't BECOME politicians. It's the same as in biology: biologists don't become rats, they study them. Lawyers are far more likely than political science majors to become politicians.
>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
That's right - living the Libertarian dream!
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.
Actually I'm getting ready to accept a three year assignment in China. My tax rate rate (due to my income) will be 50%. Fortunately for me my company equalizes all of my taxes (a burdensome process in itself, described below), so I won't see the effects, but that's versus a net rate of only 26% (federal only) after my itemized deductions.
Tax equalization (I've been through this before when on assignment in Mexico): I owe 50% to the host country, and (say) 26% to my home country (only over about 90,000 when not in the USA). But because my company pays my foreign taxes, the USA regards that as income to me. So the company pays that back, which both China and the USA recognize as income to me. So that tax that, too. So the company pays that back, too, which is taxed by both countries.
In effect, I come out okay, the Chinese take well, well over 50% of my true, earned income, and the fact that the United States gets anything is just stealing from my company (every other modern country in the world doesn't tax overseas personal income).
Of course we all know the Chinese are communist in name, and in order to continue professing such they're socially obligated to tax us rich (compared to their workers) bastards at exploitative rates.
--Jim (me)
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.
And here I thought you were about to say that Lawyers are far more likely than biologists to become rats. Actually, that's about right too.
Cheers, Chris
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
My main point is, whenever the name "China" comes up, people scream "Human rights abuse", "slavery", etc. Yes, they have a point. China needs to improve its attitude towards human rights. I would say the same to Burma, Russia, Pakistan, etc. But people single out China for such strong criticism, ignoring any progress they have made. I also wish people were so critical of their own government as well and its human rights abuses, like Guantanamo Bay.
Politics has nothing to do with science. Else they'd have to appeal to an ethical board or try it on mice before fucking with us.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.