zerohedge
tyler durden 10/19/2018
[excerpt]
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-19/chinas-next-revolution-horizon
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
The Mandate of Heaven will be withdrawn, and the autocratic regime overthrown.
The absolute confidence that China's political structure is permanent and forever is reminiscent of the absolute confidence in the 1980s that the USSR's political structure was permanent and forever. But the social contract that undergirds the Communist Party's absolute power in China is fast-eroding, and those who understand Chinese history sense the winds of change have shifted and the next revolution in China is already darkening the horizon.
The story starts in the Song Dynasty, which reached its zenith in the mid-1200s.
I've been pondering the excellent 1964 history of the Southern Song Dynasty's capital of Hangzhou, Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion, 1250-1276 by Jacques Gernet, in light of the Chinese government's unprecedented "Social Credit Score" system, which I wrote about in May 2018: Kafka's Nightmare Emerges: China's "Social Credit Score".
The scope of this surveillance is so broad and pervasive that it borders on science fiction: Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams (NY Times)
@Absalom
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Smith is entitled to his opinion yet history hardly supports it
China, Dynastic from the Shang in 1480 BC to the Ching (Manchu) in 1912 AD;
some 34 centuries; has been continuously ruled by divine right authoritarians;
followed by 100 years of dictators and strong men, from Sun Yat-sen to
Chiang Kai-sheik to Mao Tze-tung to Jao En-lie to the present.
As a consequence, their culture is massively introverted, never inhibiting the
creative and innovative impulses necessary for a nation/state to thrive.
This is the core reason they cheat, lie and steal and are an insignificant threat to the world.
