Brexit and the failures of democracy

After the Brexit debacle, it was only to be expected that China's most nationalistic newspaper wouldn't miss the chance to jump on the bandwagon.

The Global Times has attracted international attention with an editorial in its English edition which gloats that Europe and Britain are in decline and are unable to solve their problems through their democratic systems. But less attention has been given to an editorial published by the paper's Chinese edition, according to which the EU referendum shows that "Western-style democracy" is no longer working.

The editorial is entitled "Western-style democracy's willfulness raises doubts". The term I translate as "wilfulness", 任性, could also be rendered as unruliness or doing things on a whim.

The article starts off with some pretty reasonable statements about how a European Union without Britain will be "more inward-looking, conservative and focused around the continent", and this will be "bad for Europe and bad for the world" (although this comes from the most inveterate supporters of policies which continue to make China inward-looking and conservative).

It then turns into an attack on democracy, or rather, "Western democracy". Why is it that this year's EU referendum and last year's Scottish referendum could take place, and what seemed unthinkable could become so possible, alarming everyone? According to the piece, the answer is the "wilfulness of democracy" (the word used in Chinese is 任性, same as in the headline).

The author of the editorial then relates a parliamentary sitting which he witnessed in Norway, in which there were only 13 MPs in attendance in a parliament with 169 seats, and uses this as an example of the flaws of democracies, where even members of parliament take their duties so light-heartedly. I have no idea whether the author realizes that Norway was held up as an ideal by the Leave camp during the Brexit debate.

The article then goes on to claim that democracy is "a conquest of human political civilization", but it is a pity that it has now become a game that anyone can tamper with. Europe's constant referendums show that democracy is also being kidnapped by nationalism and populism, and that the system is losing its resilience as it has to deal with the negative effects of globalization. After quoting from Han Feizi, in order to predictably cloack itself in the mantel of China's "5000 years of history", the editorial concludes that "in terms of productivity, China has already won. In terms of resilience, China will yet win."

It would be easy to dismiss the paper's nationalistic ramblings, or to think up possible counter-arguments and point out all the problems of Chinese authoritarianism. It is true, on the other hand, that in a country like China where the desirability of democracy is still a matter of serious doubt and debate, the EU referendum might seem to some like an excellent example of democracy's inherent flaws.

Those who voted for Britain to leave the EU were overwhelmingly the elderly, the less educated and the less well-off in England and Wales. A momentous decision, which will have consequences most of these people cannot even conceive of, was taken because of marginalized and frustrated people emotionally blaming the EU for complex phenomena they don't really understand, and using the referendum as an occasion to show their distaste of the metropolitan elite.

Frustration with immigration and the increasing multiculturalism of British society were also a clear motivation behind the leave vote, even though stepping out of the EU is going to do little to nothing to reduce immigration to Britain.

In the meantime, these people have quite possibly condemned their country to eventual break up, since a second referendum on Scotland's independence is now looming on the horizon. Even Northern Ireland's peace agreement is threatened. As a historian said the other day, Britain, the country which colonized half the world, has committed national suicide because of the fantasy that it is being colonized by others. And all this because of a 4% difference in the vote.

When you look at this scenario, it is easy to see how the Chinese elite's professed ideal of a group of wise, enlightened, forward-looking leaders governing their country according to a long-term plan, without having to constantly bend to the will of the ignorant, easily misled masses, might seem like a better alternative.

The concept of voting is indeed problematic on a theoretical level, and the concept of referendums even more so: giving every single person the same power to decide on an issue on which most people simply don't have similar levels of expertise and understanding may not lead to the best outcomes.

But in the end of the day, the problem with diatribes against democracy like the one in the Global Times is that they always stop at the issue of general elections, without looking at all of the other institutions and values that underpin democracy: separation of powers, the rule of law, independent institutions supervising each other, freedom of speech. Only focusing on elections and the unpatable results they can throw up due to the ignorance of the average voter is missing the point.

If China could find a way to implement a system which didn't include giving every last fool the possibility to vote and make decisions on crucial issues, but which protected all of the other rights which people in democratic countries take for granted, then I am sure most of the world would be ready to accept its system as legitimate. Unfortunately however, this is just not the case at the moment.

In any case, I do hope that Britain doesn't seriously decide to hold the referendum on the EU again, and that the British parliament doesn't refuse to implement the referendum's results (amazingly, according to British law they have the right to do this). If similar courses of action were followed, then Britain really would become the world's laughing stock, and its democracy would rightly be derided as a joke.

Martin Jacques is at it again

Martin Jacques is at it again.

The ex-Marxist intellectual has jumped on the occasion of the Chinese president's controversial visit to Britain to pen an article for the Guardian, in which he lauds David Cameron's cosying up to China as "the boldest change in British foreign policy since the Second World War". Apparently it shows that "Britain can prosper in the Asian-oriented and Sino-centric world rapidly unfolding before us".

For the record, I have no problem with the British government cultivating a good relationship with China. Engagement with other countries will only change China for the best. Still it's funny to see a leftist intellectual congratulating a conservative prime minister for his courage in grovelling for money and investment at the feet of a government whose prime ideological mover is basically raw nationalism, but China does strange things to people.

I have already claimed on this blog that if you want to gain a real understanding of China, the last person you should turn to is Martin Jacques. To anyone who has lived in China long-term and/or knows the country properly, his views appear superficial and uninformed. Jacques speaks no Chinese, and the only time he actually lived in Mainland China was when he spent a term teaching in Renmin University, Beijing. If someone who had only spent a few months living in San Paulo and spoke no Portuguese claimed to be an expert on Brazil, most would be skeptical. When it comes to China though, people are a little more gullible.

Judging from Jacques' bestselling book, "When China Rules the World", he seems to be entirely unaware of China's massive problems, and in any case has never offered any explanation of how they could be solved within the country's current system. His arguments are based on pseudo-Confucian mythologizing and the simple fact, known to all, that China's GDP is very large and getting larger. He claims that the world of the future is going to be a "Sino-centric" one, even though China's cultural and ideological influence on the rest of the world remains close to nil, something that fawning Sinophiles like him are quite unable to explain. He seems to be entirely oblivious to the increasingly strident nationalism in China, and its tensions with its neighbours.

In his new article Jacques makes the claim, which is always trotted out in any pro-Beijing polemic, that over the last three decades China has lifted 600 million people out of poverty, which has been "the single biggest contribution to human rights over the last three decades". Although China's economic growth has indeed been impressive, I think that calling the creation of wealth by any means necessary a contribution to human rights is a very debatable proposition. Let's also remember that other countries in Asia have seen huge economic growth as well, and it's only because of their smaller populations that the total number of people lifted out of poverty looks less impressive.

He also claims that China has become a much freer society over the same period. This is true if you compare the situation today with 1980, but it ignores the fact that China has not been getting any freer over the last ten to fifteen years, and in fact over the last three years it has actually got decidedly less free. Inevitably, Jacques claims that we have to resign ourselves to the fact that China will never be like the West, and understand it on its own terms. I think everyone agrees that China, just like Japan, Korea or India, will always be very different from the West. The problem with understanding China "on its own terms" is when this comes to mean blindly accepting the self-serving narrative of its ruling class.

Of course, the article doesn't make any reference to the obvious slowdown in China's economic growth, or to the recent stock market crash, instead just repeating the prediction that China's economy will be twice the size of the US economy by 2030, and that the whole world depends on China for growth and capital. Be it as it may, it is clear that Beijing's huge reserves of cash just waiting to be spent are still appetizing enough for the Chinese president to get the red-carpet treatment on his state-visit to London. It is hardly surprising that Martin Jacques should be pleased.

Are our kids tough enough? Hopefully not.

I have just finished watching the first episode of "Are our kids tough enough?", the BBC program in which a team of Chinese teachers take over a British school and conduct classes using Chinese methods and curricula.

The program is certainly entertaining and well made, as you would expect from the BBC. At the same time, it can hardly be taken as a serious comparison of the two educational systems. You can't just take a bunch of students out of the system they were brought up in, and expect them to adjust. It is also not surprising that faced with unfamiliar teachers who mostly speak their language less than perfectly, teenagers begin to act up (although the disrespectful behaviour of some British teens is a real problem).

As the BBC has made clear, the inspiration for the program came from the idea that Chinese schools are positioned at the top of world rankings, and that they outperform British ones. This notion was widely peddled by the British media as a result of the 2013 edition of the influential PISA report, which compares the educational achievements of students in different OECD countries. The result was that high school students in Shanghai ranked first for mathematics, reading and science, coming just above China's Asian neighbours, and way above Britain and all Western countries. The only problem is that the report's methodology was deeply flawed.

While all the other countries included were surveyed in their entirety, in the case of China only Shanghai was included in the report. PISA did survey some other Chinese provinces (all of them relatively rich and prosperous ones), but the authorities only allowed the results for Shanghai to be released, supposedly because they were the best ones.

The problem with this is obvious: comparing a single city to entire countries make little sense. Shanghai, the richest and most developed city in China, which contends with Beijing in attracting the nation's elite, is clearly unrepresentative of China as a whole. What's more, I have serious doubts that the survey even included the children of Shanghai's poor migrant workers. These children usually lack a Shanghai hukou, which means that they are effectively excluded from Shanghai's public schooling system, especially when it comes to high school. 

This didn't stop international and British news outlets churning out articles with headlines claiming that Shanghai's educational system was ranked "the best in the world", or that Shanghai's (or even China's) students are the "brightest in the world" (For examples, see here, here and here). 

Soon afterwards, British education minister Elizabeth Truss went on a visit to some Shanghai schools, and wrote an almost impossibly fawning and naive piece of flattery about the Chinese educational system and how great it is, especially at teaching maths. Apparently it is a myth that Chinese children are in school at all hours: "actually, their teaching time is similar to ours. But they use it much more efficiently". This is the country where some high schools have classes on saturdays and sundays as well, something I have personally witnessed.

The article concludes with the minister, clearly awe-struck by Shanghai's skyscrapers the way many first-time visitors are, claiming that the respect for maths and the belief in every single child on display in Shanghai should inspire us all. This was followed by a taxpayer-funded program to bring maths teachers from some of Shanghai's best schools to come to Britain and train local teachers in the Chinese ways. Suddenly, everyone is falling over themselves to praise a system they know nothing about.

It is true that Shanghai's results in the PISA test were impressive. It even outperformed Singapore. Clearly Shanghai's schools must be doing something right. I also don't find it hard to believe that the average Chinese student is three years ahead of the average British one in maths. It is a simple fact that Chinese schools (like other Asian ones) have a more demanding maths curriculum than what is normal in Western countries.

The jury is still open, though, on whether Chinese and other Asian students' superior achievements in maths and science are due to a different approach to teaching, or simply to much longer hours spent studying, whether at school, at home or in special after-school classes. It isn't hard to get better results, when you spend three times longer on your books. It is also the simple truth that Chinese education does not encourage critical thinking to the extent that the British one does. Nor does it seem to foster a real love of learning and of reading for reading's sake. It is more about working yourself stupid to get into a good university and have your future set. 

All in all, I don't think that China's educational system is geared to produce especially creative, enlightened or well-informed citizens. And what's more, many Chinese are well aware of this themselves and want reform. As long as China's universities remain average, claims to its educational superiority are going to sound pretty hollow. There may be a thing or two the British could learn from China about how to teach maths effectively, but it probably stops there. The discipline and dedication of Chinese students is the result of values and pressures which the British couldn't hope to replicate if they wanted to.

And by the way, when one of the Chinese teachers in the program claims that British kids aren't motivated to work hard because they know that in Britain "you are given money even if you can't find a job", she is wrong-headed. If British students don't spend all day doing homework it has nothing to do with the existence of a welfare state, which is something to be proud of. 

Maths teacher Zou Hailian patrolling his students in Bohunt comprehensive, Hampshire.

On the British elections

If there's one thing which this week's British elections have highlighted, it's the complete inadequacy of Britain's electoral system.

Just take a look at the results below: the Scottish National Party, with a million and a half votes, has got 56 MPs, while UKIP and the Greens, with almost four million and over one million votes respectively, have only got one MP each (not that I'm unhappy about UKIP getting a bad deal). Meanwhile Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party has got 8 MPs, with less than 200.000 votes.

The "first past the post" system makes sense when there are just two parties competing for power. Any more then that, and it becomes completely unfair. It makes it almost impossible for smaller parties with a nationwide appeal to get into parliament, while unduly favouring regional parties whose votes are concentrated in a single area.

Yes, it is nice for every constituency to have its own MP to represent it, but this cannot justify the system's basic unfairness. The truth is that in this and other areas, Britain would benefit from reforming the antiquated system which it has developed over the centuries, and becoming more like a normal European country.

Apart from all that, the one good thing to have come out of this election is that divisive provocateur George Galloway losing his seat in Bradford West. After his nasty campaign against Naz Shah, he really deserved it.

							2015 UK elections results Party Seats Gain Loss Net Votes Vote share (%) Change (points) Conservative 331 38 10 28 11,334,726 36.9% 0.5 Labour 232 23 48 -25 9,347,324 30.4% 1.5 Scottish National Party 56 50 0 50 1,454,436 4.7% 3.1 Liberal Democrat 8 0 49 -49 2,415,862 7.9% -15.2 Democratic Unionist Party 8 1 1 0 184,260 0.6% 0.0 Sinn Fein 4 0 1 -1 176,232 0.6% -0.0 Plaid Cymru 3 0 0 0 181,704 0.6% 0.0 Social Democratic and Labour Party 3 0 0 0 99,809 0.3% -0.1 Ulster Unionist Party 2 2 0 2 114,935 0.4% N/A UK Independence Party 1 0 1 -1 3,881,099 12.6% 9.6 Green 1 0 0 0 1,156,149 3.8% 2.8 Independent 1 0 2 -2 98,711 0.3% -0.2