Question: Would you rather live in a "democracy" that takes over 40% of everything you earn, then half of what's left when you die, while making your life miserable with a morass of laws and regulations? Or a "dictatorship" that steals very little of your income, leaves your estate intact, and basically leaves you alone as long as you don't try to change the status quo? Of course it's a Hobson's Choice, but I would definitely choose the latter. In the hypothetical democracy you're more-or-less a slave except that you have the right to cast a totally meaningless vote for a government that pays lip service to the concept of freedom. In the hypothetical dictatorship you're more-or-less free, while the government, though paying lip service to its right to control everything, leaves you pretty much alone. I'm not saying that's an accurate description of the way things are in the United States and China today but, in fact, China is in many ways freer and lower taxed than the United States. And it's heading rapidly in the right direction, unlike the U.S.

But freedom in China is quite compartmentalized. As a practical matter the Chinese are very free in the economic and social spheres. Almost everyone has a TV and the government can't (nor does it try) keep them from putting up dishes. Buying computers is encouraged and China is becoming one of the most "wired" countries on the planet. What you don't have freedom to do is challenge the rule of the Party.

State and Party

The ruling cadres in China, eminently practical, have reduced government there to its essence: A vehicle to enrich and aggrandize those in power. In China the government doesn't actually control things; it's just a vehicle for the convenience of the Party.

The Party made a clever trade-off in free-marketizing the economy. In the days of Mao, the State owned everything- but "everything" was a worthless pile of junk overrun by ignorant peasants. Now, however, the State only acts as an increasingly small parasite on a rapidly growing enterprise; 10% of a gigantic pie is much bigger than 100% of a tiny pie. Everything in China is being privatized, including about 20,000 enterprises owned by the Army alone.

That's not to say the influence of the State has been entirely negative. There is, for instance, the famous example of how the rats of Beijing were nearly eradicated by requiring everyone to present a rat tail to the local officials. But people fail to consider that you never see rats on private property, only on "unowned" (State) property. It never occurs to them that the problem is the presence of State ownership, not the lack of State mandates.

Another alleged triumph of State planning is the reduction of population growth by limiting each family to one child, forcing abortions for those who disobey. But this triumph of State planning is only "necessary" in order to undo the last triumph of State planning, when Mao urged Chinese to multiply as quickly as possible during the 50's and 60's, to overwhelm the West through sheer force of numbers. It will be interesting to see the unintended consequences of the current campaign, because people only abort the relatively undesirable female babies. Twenty years from now they'll have 100 million spare males, equipped with raging hormones; and young unmarried male humans are the most dangerous creatures, including the T-Rex, ever to walk the face of the planet. Well, I suppose you should look at the bright side; perhaps it will create a bull market in young European and American females, however uncomely.

The fascination with the theoretical power of the State to conduct experiments in social engineering knows no limits. It could conceivably require the 1.2 billion to each catch ten flies a day and rid the country of flies. That kind of thinking leads to all kinds of cockamamie possibilities. Maybe just 10% of the country should be commanded to march across the border to overwhelm the Vietnamese. Maybe it doesn't matter if a nuclear war with America is provoked, because even 50% casualties leaves 600 millionŠ The possibilities for megalomania and idiocy are unlimited.

But, fortunately, they're increasingly unlikely. Like people everywhere, as the Chinese gain scope for making money personally, they're less concerned with the cadre's grand schemes. It's become possible for them, over the last 20 years, to "get a life." I'm not going to say that Beijing and Shanghai have yet acquired the vibrancy of New York, but unlike even 10 years ago, there are now good restaurants on almost any street. And a world-class Peking duck for two, with all the drinks and extras, is only $30.

Falun Gong

China's brief experiment with Maoism was just another blip on the 5,000-year screen of Chinese history. And Mao will be viewed in the future as just the founder of another dynasty, even though you can find taxi drivers with little icons of him hanging from their rearview mirrors, a form of dashboard Jesus. But dynasties don't last long in today's world, and the one Mao founded in 1949 is getting long in the tooth. The 1989 Tianamen affair and now the Falun Gong phenomenon are straws in the wind.

Falun Gong, like most religions, deals with existential angst through an admixture of common sense advice, cockama-mie fabrications, sensible practices, and atavistic superstitions. Nothing Tony Robbins couldn't cobble together on a spare weekend, but it's garnered millions of followers. There are some yuppies in it but, like most similar movements, most of its adherents are discontented folks with time on their hands. People who are vaguely unhappy with things, on at least a cosmic if not temporal level, can get into real trouble if they reach a critical mass. It was predictable that the Falun Gong sect would be put down and the fact it has religious overtones is irrelevant. The Party no longer really cares what individuals do or think; it just can't tolerate loyalty to any other group. It's just good Realpolitick to squash them before things take on a life of their own.

Falun Gong has some parallels to the Fists of Righteousness and Harmony, better known as the Boxers, whose rise at the turn of the last century was a harbinger to the end of the Qing dynasty. And to the mid-nineteenth century Taiping Heavenly  Kingdom, whose leader claimed to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ and led a nationwide revolt that nearly overthrewth e Qings. Or the Yellow Turbans, the White  Lotus and other colorfully named quasi-religious sects that sowed widespread dissent during earlier dynasties.

Rulers are overthrown for basically two reasons: 1) they lose their moral right to rule in the popular view, and 2) they are seen as too weak to maintain their position. The Party still has an aura of legitimacy because it can claim to have defeated the Japanese and other foreign imperialists, made education available to all classes, made China a world power, and led the huge economic boom of the last 20 years.

But memories are short, and the Party's widely viewed as what it actually is by street-smart Chinese: A sophisticated scam run for the benefit of the Nomenklatura. The Party still has real power, which it demonstrated at Tiananmen in 1989. But as the free-market leads to free minds, the handwriting is on the wall. The Party is on its way to the dustbin of history, purely as a matter of historical imperative; Marx would be amused in spite of himself. But how can we guess how China will evolve as the old hacks die off? One way to get a grip on it might be to compare the Chinese with the Japanese.

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