Comments on: China III http://cultureby.com/2004/12/china_iii.html This Blog Sits At the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics Thu, 17 May 2012 21:10:32 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: steve http://cultureby.com/2004/12/china_iii.html/comment-page-1#comment-6862 steve Mon, 03 Jan 2005 17:08:20 +0000 http://localhost/wp_culture/?p=1046#comment-6862 China is a good example of what it means to be dealing with really complex systems. Even if you had a technology that could scan the minds of every Chinese person simultaneously and describe their intentions, values, and beliefs, you would be unable to predict how things are going to turn out because you have no way to understand how all those minds will interact. We have some heuristics about envy, rising expectations, material progress, ambition, nationalism, etc., but no way to combine them into anything very satisfying. Personally, i worry that the Chinese government at some future time will fear its loss of legitimacy and play the nationalism/Taiwan card to rally the public. There is a certain fraction of the Chinese military that sees the conquest of Taiwan as a lifetime calling. The irony here is that actually conquering Taiwan would be a mistake--once it is accomplished, there is no other plausible unifying nationalist grievance to take its place. China is a good example of what it means to be dealing with really complex systems. Even if you had a technology that could scan the minds of every Chinese person simultaneously and describe their intentions, values, and beliefs, you would be unable to predict how things are going to turn out because you have no way to understand how all those minds will interact. We have some heuristics about envy, rising expectations, material progress, ambition, nationalism, etc., but no way to combine them into anything very satisfying.

Personally, i worry that the Chinese government at some future time will fear its loss of legitimacy and play the nationalism/Taiwan card to rally the public. There is a certain fraction of the Chinese military that sees the conquest of Taiwan as a lifetime calling. The irony here is that actually conquering Taiwan would be a mistake–once it is accomplished, there is no other plausible unifying nationalist grievance to take its place.

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