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jasonmcdowell comments on Link: If you don't already read Bad Science - Less Wrong
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I've been seeing this meme a lot lately, that the PRC leadership are engineers. It seems to be used in an implicit sense of 'they are practically scientists, and will be cool & rational & open to broader application of the scientific method (whatever their other failings), and we can generally expect rational actions of them'.
This bothers me.
I don't look at Chinese politics and immediately think rational. I don't see or expect much rationality from Chinese leaders with respect to Taiwan for instance. But why are so many of China's top leaders educated as engineers? I don't know what process they go through to gain political power in China, but it sure seems to lead to different demographics than for US politicians.
One piece of Chinese policy that seems pretty smart/rational is their long term infrastructure projects. Even if keeping the Chinese Communist Party in power is their first priority, long term thinking is a high priority for them. From the news of big infrastructure projects I've read about, China has much clearer thinking on infrastructure than the US.
For the types of policy that aren't tabooed, China is more likely to be able to experiment than the US - if for no other reason than that they don't care about hurting people for the 'greater good' (not necessarily a good thing). Also, they are less accountable to local people for their actions, so "Not in my backyard" is much less of a constraint.
Smart from one point of view, perhaps.
I see a great deal of criticism of it - that the investments are terrible, the market is over-saturated, things like high-speed rail are leading to perverse consequences like migrants overloading the bus system to avoid the necessarily high-priced tickets, and the whole shebang is basically welfare to keep the house of cards going until someone finally eats all the bad debt from the railroads (http://chovanec.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/beijings-bad-debt-bailout-problem-solved/) and other big projects you laud.