You guys are generally happy when I bash Japan, when as you can see, I'm happy to bash EVERYONE. I'm a cynic and critic by nature; nothing is ever good enough, and this is not a statement of defeatism, but of drive: things can always be better, things can always be improved.
I would prefer to avoid Japan as an example of "bad" courtesy lying, but it's also the most blatant:
Mao, and post-Mao China, I see as a divergence from traditional Chinese patterns. If you look at Chinese history, the periods of foreign domination have become longer and longer, and China was at risk of becoming another Egypt, a long and glorious civilization submerged fully by alien culture.
For other aspects of the willingness of modern Chinese to be reflective and self-critical, I can point to Lenovo's Fu Pan tactic (AAR applied to both routine and non-routine business processes), Xi Jinping's revival of Maoist self-criticism, and Syndey Rittenberg's admiration of Mao's empiricism.
If you ask what I am most critical about regarding Japan, it is its response to the 90s. I've made a few visits, and my opinion of Japan is, that after having reached modernization, and a higher GDP per capita than the United States, Japan opted not to do anything about its economic malaise. The social security net was there, the level of civilizational development (courtesy, social protocols, etc) were there, but the country was greying and the economy was increasingly moribund. That could have been fixed through reforms; the Euthanasia of the Rentier, i.e, allowing zombie companies to collapse, a return to social strife, as well as the possibility of transformation into something new, something better.
What I am most afraid of in China is pride; if you point out to the Japanese what's wrong with their society, you get something similar to SamuraiBlue's responses--no reform please, we're Japanese. China's repeated state collapses have a similar cause: when reform was possible, when continuous improvement was possible, government officials focused on looting the state until you hit something like the Tumu Crisis or the fall of Kaifeng. The notion of China as being superior, instead of yet being another civilization / culture / people in infinite transition (a Taoist notion, if you'd like), impedes China's capability for improving itself, and this type of conservatism threatens to bring yet another polite decadence into the world.
I would prefer to avoid Japan as an example of "bad" courtesy lying, but it's also the most blatant:
Mao, and post-Mao China, I see as a divergence from traditional Chinese patterns. If you look at Chinese history, the periods of foreign domination have become longer and longer, and China was at risk of becoming another Egypt, a long and glorious civilization submerged fully by alien culture.
For other aspects of the willingness of modern Chinese to be reflective and self-critical, I can point to Lenovo's Fu Pan tactic (AAR applied to both routine and non-routine business processes), Xi Jinping's revival of Maoist self-criticism, and Syndey Rittenberg's admiration of Mao's empiricism.
If you ask what I am most critical about regarding Japan, it is its response to the 90s. I've made a few visits, and my opinion of Japan is, that after having reached modernization, and a higher GDP per capita than the United States, Japan opted not to do anything about its economic malaise. The social security net was there, the level of civilizational development (courtesy, social protocols, etc) were there, but the country was greying and the economy was increasingly moribund. That could have been fixed through reforms; the Euthanasia of the Rentier, i.e, allowing zombie companies to collapse, a return to social strife, as well as the possibility of transformation into something new, something better.
What I am most afraid of in China is pride; if you point out to the Japanese what's wrong with their society, you get something similar to SamuraiBlue's responses--no reform please, we're Japanese. China's repeated state collapses have a similar cause: when reform was possible, when continuous improvement was possible, government officials focused on looting the state until you hit something like the Tumu Crisis or the fall of Kaifeng. The notion of China as being superior, instead of yet being another civilization / culture / people in infinite transition (a Taoist notion, if you'd like), impedes China's capability for improving itself, and this type of conservatism threatens to bring yet another polite decadence into the world.
