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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 ?
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.
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.
>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
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