What We Can Learn from China

How paradoxical is it that we can learn some interesting things about governance from of all places China? For example, China has recently admitted one of its famous state policies, one child, has failed miserably. In order to now swing the pendulum back, they are advocating larger families and instituting policies to promote them. One of them is securing lower costs of raising a child including their education. Sound familiar?

Part of China’s effort is to shepherd people away from seeking places to live where there are good private sector schools. Private sector schools are proliferating and the party is none too happy about it.  How dare these schools satisfy the thirst for knowledge that may or may not be true to the communist manifesto? Thus, the party is instituting draconian requirements on these schools which will ultimately tow the party line or become extinct. Will efforts to shift education here from the stranglehold of the teachers’ unions to private sector schools sustain itself under the onslaught of regulations and restrictions being put on them?

China is soon enough finding that even in a totalitarian state, human nature supersedes indoctrination. The divide in China, absent the effort to homogenize the population, is economic. Millions have migrated to the cities where enormous growth in private wealth has produced a huge gap between the haves and the have-nots. Party apparatchiks have always held the wealth of the country but now it is spreading to the citizens but not nearly enough of them. The clashes between the two groups of citizens will eventually boil as are the divides between the Democrat party defined tribal lines here.

In China of course, force can be used willy-nilly to tamp down any insurrection. It happened in Tiananmen Square and more recently in Hong Kong. This is not lost on our Democrat leaders. Partisan calls for addressing January 6^th events are coming dangerously close to learning how to use a cudgel to get your way. Rigging the election process, Reconciliation and killing the filibuster are blatant attempts to emulate China. Indeed, there is a lot to learn from China and the Democrats are quick studies.