The Martial Economist
Our Martian friend scratches its heads. “When my economics professor last visited earth in 1945 he told me that the Europeans had just experienced a terrible civil war in which 36m people had been killed, including many of their most brilliant minds. Now you tell me that 60m French people produce almost as much economic output each year as 1.3bn Chinese, who have been the dominant economic power for most of your planet’s history. What is more, the French can do this while working 35-hour weeks and producing 246 different types of cheese. How did this economic miracle come about?"Interesting perspective.
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Graaaa! "Martian" to "martial"? Come on, Matt! I know you blog too quickly for lowly spellchecks, but right in the title?
June 11, 2006 9:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting perspective.
On what? French productivity as compared to the Chinese or a country that produces 246 different types of cheese, lol.
But has China really been "the dominant economic power" in the history of our planet? Maybe from a broad recorded history pov. But since the end of WWII, where our curious Martian compares French vs. Chinese productivity based on population, until very recently China wasn't powerful economic force. Though they have become one in the last decade or so...
June 11, 2006 9:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Martians, you see, have very nasty wars.
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Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
June 11, 2006 10:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Noting that I am sufficiently coffee-deficient for utter seriousness, I immediately wondered about the quality of Chinese Camembert. Now, every business trip I've ever taken to Paris contains a road warrior horror story, but the local Camembert was sufficiently superior to the sort I buy here was enough to make me forget some of the annoyances (as a side question, is the American Legion what Frenchmen join when they want to be forgotten?).
Seriously, it will be interesting to see how Chinese industry develops. Much as the Japanese steel industry, destroyed by WWII bombing, jumped immediately to newer and more efficient processes that plants operating in the US, will the Chinese build with incremental or quantum jumps in manufacturing technology? I've seen some copies of proprietary electronics come from China with poor quality control, but I can't generalize from my limited sample.
I was involved in the first abortive attempt to bring Internet connectivity to the PRC, which largely failed from bureaucratic interference. On the other hand, I know some very competent network engineering researchers there, and (I wasn't consulted by the publisher) the only one of my network engineering books that has been translated was in Beijing.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
June 11, 2006 10:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
For most of history it makes no sense to talk about "the" dominant economic power because the world was not sufficiently integrated for a single nation to dominate, either politically or economically. Rather there were economic regions which had some trade with each other in luxuries (e.g., silk, spcies, gem) but were largely self-contained as far as daily goods went. China certainly was the dominant nation in East Asia until the 19th century, but its influence never spread beyond that area.
June 11, 2006 10:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
If I understand all of the comments above, they have very nasty wars about cheese. Cheese Gromit, Cheeese!
All, in all, I say we need to enlist the French and the Chinese to help us protect the moon from the Martial invaders!
June 11, 2006 10:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
I guess this only shows that China, for all its size and strength, is undeveloped relative to France. Also, most Chinese people are lactose-intolerant. It's interesting to speculate, but I really don't know which country will end up with the world's dominant cuisine. France in many ways represents the synthesis of the best of western cooking, while China is and always has been the center of the eastern style. India I think is a long shot, because it is smaller than China but lacks the ferment and chaotic recombination of the unplanned cuisines of the west. Only China is big enough to have a centrally planned cuisine that could really take over the world. The wild cards are the cuisines of the Chinese edge cultures, such as Thailand, Vietnam and California, that blend Chinese techniques with those of other cultures. As a Californian, I like to think that my state has a chance, even though it is only half the size of France.
Visualize impeachment
June 11, 2006 12:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Martials v. Marshalls?
Neoboho
June 11, 2006 1:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
A subject dear to my heart, hopefully not with cholesterol plaques. There are at least seven major regional styles of Chinese cooking, with significant local variants. Yes, I'm reasonably proficient in the formal style of Escoffier, and even the consensus of Bocuse in nouvelle cuisine. I'm less sure how many regional styles I'd ascribe to France. Some distinguish between Norman and Breton, but I don't find them that different. There are certainly southern styles that draw on the Mediterranean.
I don't think China will ever centrally plan cuisine. Cooking has always been considered an art, and quite a few social historians consider cooking the only art not attacked during the Cultural Revolution.
The edge cuisines indeed offer much promise, but I'd also add the emerging fusion cuisines. I very much like the blending, introduced by Ken Lo, of American Southwest cuisine with mostly but not exclusively Western Chinese. Vietnamese cuisine, especially in their wonderful baking, has a French foundation but distinct Asian twists, such as using durian puree (reasonably deodorized) rather than traditional custards.
Mind you, there is Californian, and there is excessively trendy Californian. Among my favorite forms of mental judo is to greet my server, in a restaurant with far too many ferns, with "Hello. I'm Howard, and I will be your customer tonight."
This results either in panic flight (or at least total incoherence on the evening's specials), or utterly superb service.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
June 11, 2006 1:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
nevermind
June 11, 2006 2:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
I understand that the Martian cheese comes in only one variety, and it's green. Or maybe that's lunar cheese. Either way, easier to decide than to figure out what's so novel and exciting in noting the recovery of Europe after WWII or that China's centuries described in the post are long past. Or figuring out why the post is helpful in dealing with China's increasing role in the global economy (or in the global ecosystem) today.
Oh, just in case the Martians and Matt do need help, the Englightenment, the Industrial Revolution, their 20th-century counterparts in Europe of democratic governance and a form of capitalism with major concessions to labor, the utter devastation Mao inflicted on his own country, the Marshall Plan, and the drying up of the Martian canals all played a role, I think. Or something like that. Matt can let us know if and when he returns to Earth.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
June 11, 2006 2:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good point. Exactly what Michel Foucault hammered on in his The Order of Things. Never take modern concepts along with you in your time machine and expect them to make any sense in the past.
Neoboho
June 11, 2006 5:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Howard, you brought back memories of the Richmond Cafe, on Clement St. in San Francisco (in the 60s). A Chinese-ran Mexican Restaurant. I swear the tortillas tasted they were made from rice flour.
Incidentally, the Chinese restaurants in Saigon were excellent, and the menu and style was unique to my experience. Especially the seafood.
Neoboho
June 11, 2006 5:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is another Asian country with superb cuisine - Japan. And, of course Thailand has some good food too. What is really happening, and inevitably so, is that as the world shrinks all cuisines adopt good parts of the others, so eventually world cuisine will be pretty much the same everywhere.
I'm still awaiting the experience of eating cow's blood stirred into the cow's milk. Now, that's cuisine. Now, that's cuisine?
Hoppy in Sacramento
June 11, 2006 5:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good post Howard...
China is poised to be the global economic superpower of the 21st century. They have the raw material resources and manpower to do it. And your point about manufacturing technology is a good one. They historically haven't operated in the global marketplace so there is no way to be sure if they can be the ones to drive the global marketplace in the future. Imo I don't think they will until the "bureaucratic intereference" issues are resolved.
June 11, 2006 7:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
For most of history it makes no sense to talk about "the" dominant economic power because the world was not sufficiently integrated for a single nation to dominate, either politically or economically.
I agree. I didn't seem to make sense, that is why I brought it up. The Martians seem to think otherwise though...
June 11, 2006 7:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Even more vicious are the marital wars.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
June 11, 2006 7:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
As their market system grows, it appears there may be unique domestic business responses. When I was working with a medical software company, I thought it was somebody's idea of a joke when we were approached about building a fertility clinic in Shanghai.
While we didn't get involved, the business case was that the young entepreneurs often deferred having the child, and, when they were successful and older, it was harder to conceive -- yet there was an enormous cultural imperative for children. One of our contacts also mentioned that this group of people were far less fixated on having sons than did a more traditional population.
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Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
June 11, 2006 7:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Chinese fertility clinics? In a sense I find that ironic, lol. In the past they tried to limit how many children couples could have. But it makes sense in the way you describe it...
But how much flexibility does their domestic businesses really have. So much of the resources go to the government and therefore the businesses are beholden to the government. The more the Chinese government relaxes it's grip on Chinese business the more it will tell me they are ready for the world stage.
From what you say you have been there...what is your take on the economic reforms in the PRC? Are they making real progress or is it one step forward and two steps back?
June 11, 2006 8:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree totally on the irony of the fertility clinic. Yet being able to overcome preconceptions about the Chinese market economy being like other markets may very well be the key to peaceful cooperation.
While the PRC was a command economy for decades, there is a Chinese merchant tradition that goes back for centuries. We can look to the mixed culture of Hong Kong, before and after it became part of China, as an example of how close capitalism lies to the surface -- and how the Chinese government simultaneously wants the benefits but fears the loss of control.
I haven't been there myself - Japan, but not China. I do get a lot of reports. Never forget that the government can be ruthless, and this has shown in the bird flu problem.
At the world health level, the Chinese have been quite cooperative. It did come out, however, in professional public health forums, that middle-level farm levels tried to cover up outbreaks, and also fed antiviral drugs to chickens, creating viruses resistant to one of the two relevant drug families.
When the top-level authorities found out about these lies, their feedback to the managers in question was a bullet to the back of the neck.
Balancing intellectual property rights, but also tapping into the intellectual resources of China, often resources that show Western firms the way to success there, remains a big problem. For a time, Huawei was essentially copying Cisco routers and software. There seems to be some resolution, and it's an enormous market for network engineers.
Quite some years ago, I worked on the first, abortive effort to connect China to the Internet. Before working on that project, I thought long and hard about the ethics, and finally decided that Internet technology tends to treat censorship as a network problem and dynamically avoid it. I don't immediately condemn Google for submitting to censorship, as it's been my general observation that once an information resource becomes available in China, it tends to wear down government barriers. In dealing with the barriers of officialdom, perfection can be the enemy of excellence, and even of adequacy.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
June 11, 2006 8:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Investment.
Which country is allowing its industrial infrastructure to disintegrate through refusal of its citizens to pay for investment?
See, investment has consequences.
Lack of investment also has consequences.
June 12, 2006 6:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Martial = military - as in "martial law" means military law.
Mars is the god of war, but c'mon.
June 12, 2006 12:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
China certainly was the dominant nation in East Asia until the 19th century, but its influence never spread beyond that area.
China may not have been economically dominant in a global sense, but it surely had a wider sphere of influence (in some non-political sense) for much of recorded history. Think of all the technological innovations that began in China, and of the importance of the Silk Road in spreading ideas both east and westward. Trade across the Indian Ocean was common over a millenia ago (generally coming to China, in the beginning), and reputedly, the Chinese navy roamed quite widely (see here).
More to the point, though, I think the argument isn't that China was globally dominant, in the way that the U.S. now is, but that no other economy could match it for size, influence and reach.
June 12, 2006 1:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re: China may not have been economically dominant in a global sense, but it surely had a wider sphere of influence (in some non-political sense) for much of recorded history.
I would disagree. China was largely isolated by its geography: Siberia to the north, deserts to the northwest, oceans to the east, mountains to the southwest. China influenced Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Tibet, and Indochina (and in the case of the last two the influence of India was also present). The most influential civilization was long the civilization of the Middle East from the days of Sumer and the Pharaohs down to the great age of Islam. From its cultivars and domesticates in Neolithic times down to the wheel and its writing systems in antiquity, and then its religions (Christianity and Islam) the Middle East exported culture for millennia like a prodigious volcano.
June 12, 2006 3:39 PM | Reply | Permalink