{"id":147555,"date":"2012-12-03T13:22:14","date_gmt":"2012-12-03T21:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=147555"},"modified":"2014-03-11T17:26:01","modified_gmt":"2014-03-12T00:26:01","slug":"top-ten-myths-about-china-in-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2012\/12\/top-ten-myths-about-china-in-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Ten Myths About China in 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

At The New Yorker, Evan Osnos suggests that 2012 may have marked a turning point in the erosion of accepted myths about China<\/strong><\/a>. Ten, he says, have collapsed over the past year: myths about government efficiency<\/a>, a hard landing<\/a>, benign corruption<\/a>, human rights diplomacy<\/a>, leftover women<\/a>, Xi Jinping<\/a>, risk aversion, online controls<\/a>, cyberutopianism<\/a> and the purity of political elites. The bookends to Osnos’ list:<\/p>\n

1. China\u2019s political system has the efficiency and consensus to produce far-sighted decisions that Washington can only envy.<\/strong> Faced with our own gridlock and polarization, Americans are understandably eager to find a rhetorical cudgel, and we entered 2012 repeating the line that Chinese leaders had become all that ours were not: ambitious, visionary, willing to pull for a larger purpose. In last year\u2019s State of the Union, President Obama invoked China as the \u201chome to the world\u2019s largest private solar research facility, and the world\u2019s fastest computer. \u201cSo, yes,\u201d Obama said, \u201cthe world has changed.\u201d And he was not wrong. But this year added some sobering facts about the haste, waste, and corruption associated with China\u2019s Great Leap. When a bridge collapsed in August, killing three people and injuring five, it was the sixth bridge collapse in a little over a year. The authorities blamed overloaded trucks, but it turned out that the concrete had been adulterated with sticks and plastic bags, the kind of corner-cutting that Chinese regulators have found in the nation\u2019s enormous railway construction project. For this and other reasons that follow, the myth of China\u2019s political efficiency can be retired.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

10. Local bureaucrats might be corrupt, but decision-makers at the top are carefully selected and have deep public approval.<\/strong> \u201cIf we speak candidly,\u201d wrote Deng Yuwen, a deputy editor of the Party-run newspaper called Study Times, \u201cthis decade has seeded or created massive problems, and the problems are even more numerous than the achievements.\u201d The Bo Xilai debacle exposed a gangland element to Party politics that reaches to the top, and the revelations about Wen Jiabao\u2019s family wealth leaves no doubt about the extent of self-dealing. Inside and outside the Party, reformists are calling not only for economic liberalization but also for credible efforts to end the two-tiered society, to resume political reform, and to narrow the widening wealth gap. China faces more urgent threats to growth and social stability than any time since the uprising at Tiananmen Square, in 1989. Between 2006 and 2010, the number of strikes and riots and what Chinese officials call \u201cmass incidents,\u201d doubled to a hundred eighty thousand a year\u2014and that will continue to grow until the political culture improves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At The New Yorker, Evan Osnos suggests that 2012 may have marked a turning point in the erosion of accepted myths about China. Ten, he says, have collapsed over the past year: myths about government efficiency, a hard landing, benign corruption, human rights diplomacy, leftover women, Xi Jinping, risk aversion, online controls, cyberutopianism and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":962,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[116,2,34,7,14744,14745,14746,100,6,5],"tags":[15015,5884,8165,203,6868,14775,4600,6300,15651,5151,5936,4674,15801],"class_list":["post-147555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world","category-economy","category-human-rights","category-information-revolution","category-level-2-article","category-level-3-article","category-level-4-article","category-politics","category-sci-tech","category-society","tag-15015","tag-bo-xilai","tag-bridge-collapse","tag-corruption","tag-evan-osnos","tag-hard-landing","tag-human-rights-policy","tag-internet-censorship","tag-leftover-women","tag-mass-incidents","tag-wen-jiabao","tag-xi-jinping","tag-year-end-lists-2012","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\nTop Ten Myths About China in 2012<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2012\/12\/top-ten-myths-about-china-in-2012\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Top Ten Myths About China in 2012\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"At The New Yorker, Evan Osnos suggests that 2012 may have marked a turning point in the erosion of accepted myths about China. Ten, he says, have collapsed over the past year: myths about government efficiency, a hard landing, benign corruption, human rights diplomacy, leftover women, Xi Jinping, risk aversion, online controls, cyberutopianism and the […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2012\/12\/top-ten-myths-about-china-in-2012\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"China Digital Times (CDT)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ChinaDigitalTimes\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-12-03T21:22:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-03-12T00:26:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/CDT-logo.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"186\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"177\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" 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