
Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists - kkleiner
http://singularityhub.com/2011/05/17/eight-out-of-chinas-top-nine-government-officials-are-scientists/
======
lionhearted
But, but, but... they're not democratic! If only they'd put more power in the
hands of the common man, they too could enjoy such luminous choices for
statesmen as McCain vs. Obama, Bush II vs. Kerry, Bush II vs Gore, Dole vs.
Clinton, Bush I vs. Clinton...

...we gotta keep saber rattling that our way is better than theirs. Boo China,
boo.

Edit: To the downvoter - okay, I'm joking around. But which of these premises
do you disagree with?

1\. The United States has more electoral politics in choosing its leaders than
China.

2\. The last 20 years of leadership in China show a much more nuanced
understanding of policy and statesmanship than American leadership, where
charisma and mass appeal tends to be more important than "hard credentials."

3\. There might be a cause-and-effect relationship between point 1 and point
2.

Disagree with any of those? Yeah I'm joking around, but it's worth thinking
about, no? Or maybe it's upsetting to think about... that I sympathize with...

~~~
Duff
Communist governments have usually attracted intellectuals to higher levels of
power -- the results so far haven't been uplifting.

I don't think that a comparison of the US system vs. China is going to produce
a clear "winner", only a list of pros/cons whose weighting will be shaped by
your perceptions and bias.

The explosive growth of China hides most of the warts of the system. When you
have economic growth so fast that new, uninhabited cities get built, there's
obviously some excess and policy issues at play.

The US is an imperial power, and the conduct of policy and statesmanship
changes in that role. While the President is the front-man and sets the
agenda, the work is done and policy is made by anonymous officials in the
sprawling bureaucracy. And I betcha if you analyzed a Chinese and American
bureaucrat, you would find that they look, act and think alike.

~~~
lionhearted
Nuanced comment here, good analysis. I agree with a lot, but two nitpicks
about the first point -

1\. I'd say Communist _movements_ attract intellectuals. Communist governments
usually do not employ those intellectuals for very long after taking power.

2\. Despite the name and symbols, I don't think China is actually Communist
any more. I don't know what to call them. If they remain a world power and
continue to thrive, I'd bet quite a lot that a new word will be coined for
their precise political/economic/geographical/military mix - there's quite
literally no comps in history for what they're doing right now.

~~~
dtegart
For number 2. you could argue that they are mercantilist. Most of the
enterprises are state backed, much like the Dutch or British East India
companies. So the state takes a pretty big role in determining which companies
will succeed.

~~~
electromagnetic
You could argue that the Chinese state as a whole is in fact a large
corporation.

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need(s)."

A leaders best ability is to lead. Hence, you would end up with intellectuals,
scientists, economists and others who have a strong grasp of complex theories
and systems. Opposed to having actors and political pretty boys leading.

Marx's saying goes even further with the corporate metaphor. The lower the
'worker' in the 'corporation' the less they get 'paid'/'need'. How is there
any real difference with how Walmart views its minimum wage workers to how
China views its farmers or sweatshop workers? From the top they're all just
pawns to make a profit.

------
run4yourlives
While this is no doubt going to be unpopular here on HackerNews, I'm going to
posit the following: This is almost as bad as have 8 of 9 people being
Creationists.

Better than 90% of a council making decisions for the whole country being of
the same persuasion is prone to severe group think. Scientists (or rather,
engineers, if you RTFA) aren't immune to this any more than any of us are.

If you look at the best run businesses, they are often composed of people with
variable backgrounds - people that approach problems from different
perspectives. This has two major benefits: First, it allows you to gain from
solutions that come from as many types of thought processes as possible and
more importantly, it prevents you from blindly following dogma - if you can't
convince somebody that doesn't follow your thought patterns of the viability
or necessity of a particular idea, it probably shouldn't be perused.

One child policies that have resulted in a generation of males without females
is pretty much exactly the type of policy I'd expect from a group of
engineers.

~~~
maxklein
The one child policy was not created by this cadre of leadership. The
male/female imbalance also happens in India, which does not have such a
policy.

~~~
run4yourlives
While India does in fact have a similar imbalance, I invite you to look at the
problem in the context of this image:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sex_ratio_below_15_per_cou...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sex_ratio_below_15_per_country_smooth.png)

Also: (order the chart descending by either at birth or <15)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio>

The numbers are actually much stronger than I thought they would be.

~~~
maxklein
Why are you picking out the data that best supports your thesis? 15–64 shows
India and China at exactly the same ratio, even though India has no 1 child
policy at all. The gender imbalance problem does not come from the 1 child
policy. Don't pick and choose data to fit what you think, look at all of it.

~~~
run4yourlives
The one child policy was only enacted in 1978. It stands to reason then that
the 15-64 bracket isn't fully representing the effects of the policy.

The only brackets that properly account for impact of the policy are the more
recent ones.

~~~
maxklein
Just look at it backwards. Even before the 1 child policy, both china and
india have had a gender imbalance favouring males. After the 1 child policy in
china alone, both india and china had a strong growth in gender imbalance,
with china being only somewhat stronger. Your "control" without the 1 child
policy also exhibited the same strong growth. A scientist would reasonably
conclude that the 1 child policy seems to have little relevance to the issue,
considering that another comparable country behaved in exactly the same manner
without have such a policy in place.

~~~
run4yourlives
Both China and India share pretty much exactly the same imbalance until the
last two age-cohorts as you suggest, but while both increase, China's does so
substantially more. This can't be ignored as being "exactly the same manner".
To do so is being scientifically irresponsible.

My take is that both cultures have very prominent views on the preference for
male children. You can see this even in the large Chinese and Indian
communities here in North America. What has most likely happened is that the
one child policy has simply enabled those cultural preferences in China much
more than the exist in India.

It's also interesting that India itself has at several times flirted with
restrictive population polices, including forced sterilization at right around
the same time as China introduced their family planning program.

While that doesn't suggest that the one child policies are the _only_ cause, I
think there is enough evidence there to suggest they are a factor.

Nonetheless, all of this wasn't actually a real focus of my original point at
all.

------
geebee
This is a good article, but it does miss one incredibly important piece of the
puzzle - the possibility that US citizens have an economically rational
aversion to PhDs in science and engineering. A recent RAND study supports this
point of view:

<http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html>

I think it's critical to make science and engineering a desirable career path
for young americans, but simply "making it cool" isn't the way to go - and
could (as the article points out) actually be destructive in that it would
cause harm to students who responded to the pr campaign only to find long
training times and poor career prospects relative to their friends who did
law, dentistry, medicine, mba, etc.

~~~
baguasquirrel
That's funny... Americans don't have an economically rational aversion to
becoming movie stars in much the same way.

~~~
geebee
yeah, that is an amusing observation. of course, President Obama and various
talking heads don't fret about the shortage of Americans in film school.

The serious question is whether we should launch a PR campaign to encourage
young people to make decisions that may lead (at least according to RAND) to
long training times with poor pay and career prospects _relative_ to other
paths typically available to the "best and brightest".

~~~
xiaoma
If the issue is public policy, then the goal should be public good, not
individual good.

It's very possible that the best and brightest could live in greater comfort
as criminals than scientists, but even if that were the case, any rational
government would encourage them to be scientists since that would be better
for the country.

Edit: Seriously? Care to explain your reasoning, downmodders? Why would a
government encourage decisions that are destructive to society?

~~~
geebee
That's not at all a bad point. There are some activities that economists view
aS rent collecting (or even wealth destroying) that are lucrative for the
individual. Scientists and engineers are generally seen as the opposite of
this (unless it's financial engineering). Almost every government actively
tries to poach engineers from abroad...

Still, I recommend you read the rand study. They discuss ways to make sci/eng
more appealing rather than launching a pr campaign to merely make it appear
more appealing. The second could end up creating an even greater aversion to
this career path.

------
igorlev
If you were educated in a communist country at any time from 50s to 80s you
would pretty much by default be either a scientist, an engineer, an architect
or a doctor. Most likely an engineer.

It's like trying to predict the behavior of a Model-T buyer based on their
color preference.

------
cjoh
I'll point out its a rookie mistake to compare what is basically the executive
branch of China's government to America's representative branch. It's apples
to oranges.

Looking at the executive branch, the United States has:

State, Hillary Clinton, Lawyer

Treasury, Timothy Geithner, International Economics

Defense, Robert Gates, PhD History

Justice, Eric Holder, Lawyer

Interior, Ken Salazar, Lawyer

Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, Lawyer

Commerce, Gary Locke, Lawyer

Labor, Hilda Solis, MPA

Health Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, MPA

Housing and Urban Development, Shaun Donovan, MPA, Masters in Architecture

Transportation, Ray Lahood, B.S. Education and Sociology.

Department of Energy, Stephen Chu, Ph.D. Physics

Veterans Affairs, Eric Shinseki, Masters in English

Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, Lawyer

Vice President, Joe Biden, Lawyer

Chief of Staff, William Daley, Lawyer

Director OMB, Jacob Lew, Lawyer

Administrator EPA, Lisa Jackson, Chemical Engineering

Trade Rep, Ron Kirk, Lawyer

UN Ambassador, Susan Rice, Doctorate in Philosophy

Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, Austan Goolsbee, Ph. D Economics

Better to draw your comparisons with this, than with congress.

------
bendmorris
Not to nitpick, but they're engineers. The previous President, Jiang Zemin,
was also an electrical engineer - before that generation, most leaders were
educated by their experiences (i.e. the Long March) and not formally schooled.

It is interesting that not only are there cultural differences in the ways
Chinese and western leaders approach problems, but also there's the
"engineering" approach vs. the "legal" or "social sciences" approach more
often seen in western nations.

~~~
moomin
The distinction between a scientist and an engineer is important here. In the
dark days of modern China, mathematicians and scientists were regarded with as
much suspicion as poets and philosophers. Engineering was one of the most
intellectual professions you could have without being regarded as the enemy.
(As for lawyers: there's not a lot of point in being a legal expert anywhere
rule by fiat is common.)

The problem with the "engineering" approach is that it treats stability as an
axiomatic good. It's quite hard to incorporate the rights of weird religious
groups, troublesome journalists and out-and-out revolutionaries into such a
world-view.

~~~
Unseelie
A lot of that stability approach can be traced back through much of the
history of the Han, to the point that I'd argue the engineering background
isn't the source of the stabilizing pressure, but rather a facet of the Han
culture.

------
Eliezer
Eight Out Of Nine American Bloggers Cannot Distinguish Between The Concept of
A "Scientist" (As In Someone Who Devises Reproducible Experiments To Test
Ideas To Determine Whether They Are Right Or Wrong, And Rejects The Wrong
Ones) And Anyone In A Technical Profession.

~~~
mahrain
...and did you know that 78% of all statistics are made up on the spot?

------
DanielN
Chinese government is dominated by engineers for the same reason that US
government is dominated by lawyers, Japanese government is dominated by
businessmen and French government is dominated by doctors and teachers. These
are the most easily accessible prestige positions in the given country.

------
Apocryphon
A relevant article from 2009 contrasting prevalence of American lawyer
politicians vs. Chinese engineer politicians vs. French civil servants and so
on.

<http://www.economist.com/node/13496638?story_id=13496638>

------
przemelek
One thing ;-) Author of this text wrote: "You have to be pretty popular to get
elected, so should we conclude that Chinese people in general look up to and
admire their scientists?" But those in China's government wasn't elected in
popular vote and for sure not in election like those in US or other western
countries. So it isn't in this way that Chines people in general look up to
and admire scientists, but Communists Party of China look up to and admire
scientists.

But in general I agree, it looks that China and Korea are much more in science
than in humanities.

~~~
huherto
interesting observation. It seems to me that the previous generation of
leaders had an aspiration that the new leaders were better prepared than them.
I imagine the old leaders had an admiration for science and engineering even
though they were not really knowledgeable about it; they probably selected and
groomed the new leaders with this in mind.

------
westiseast
There's an emphasis on science, but it's not an Enlightenment style love of
the scientific method that drives this phenomenon.

Why not come at it from a different angle - what good would it be to be a
philosopher in China? How far would you get? Or what about lawyers, in a
country that has a pretty unhealthy disregard for legal process?

No, the reason scientists and engineers form that majority is because it's how
you get ahead in Chinese society. China doesn't want (or tolerate) artistic
and liberal sensitivities - it wants economic development and industry.

------
gaius
Also Yulia Tymoshenko, rightful heir to the throne of Ukraine, is a
cyberneticist. It seems to be a regular trend in former Communist countries,
that political leaders have a technical background.

~~~
llcoolv
Not really. For one, China is still a totalitarian (communist is really
wrongly used here) country. And also my impression is that Tymoshenko is more
of an isolated case - my guess would be that most of the current post-
totalitarian leaders are either former officers (Putin, Borissov, Basescu),
humanitarian/law majors (Komorowski, Parvanov, Orban, Gasparovic) or
economists (Havel).

Unfortunately most of them come from the first category :/

~~~
Wuzzy
I don't know much about the other ones, but Havel most assuredly is not an
economist. He has a cultural background and is an author of a number of
theater pieces. His successor at the post of Czech president (Klaus) is an
economist, so maybe that's where the confusion comes from.

Just as a matter of interest - the current Czech prime minister, who, at least
in theory, has more power than the president, has graduated in physics, and
has actually worked in research for some time. Angela Merkel (coming from
Eastern Germany) has also a scientific background (in physics and chemistry).

But otherwise, it seems you are right about the fact that there is no such
rule about post-totalitarian leaders being educated in engineering or sciences
in general.

~~~
llcoolv
I stand corrected - just read that Havel has studied economcs for only two
years before dropping out and that's probably the reason I have remembered him
(wrongly) as an economist - I must have read it somewhere and it has probably
stuck in my mind.

Btw, the rest of the Eastern European countries can learn a lot of things from
the Czechs.

------
shmulkey18
Perhaps this should cause some reflection on the following question: why do
scientists seem to be disproportionately inclined to serve authoritarian
regimes?

My guess is that scientists believe that people like themselves -- people
whose ability in one field they imagine transfers to many others -- should
control the world, and those that they consider their intellectual inferiors
should shut up and surrender control to cognitive ubermenschen.

Unfortunately, that idea hasn't worked out too well in the past.

------
stcredzero
_Oh, we forgot about our head of the class: China. Astonishingly, since 1980
China has not won a single scientific Nobel Prize. Keep in mind, this is a
country of 1.3 billion people._

If China is ruled by engineers, then it is ruled by groups that understand the
economic implications of the rocket equation and how this can be overcome
using existing technology. Moving off-world is going to be the next huge
watershed in human history and economic growth, much as the age of exploration
and colonization of North America by Europeans was the last one.

Making the leap past Type I on the Kardashev scale won't necessarily involve
Nobel Prize winning breakthroughs in science.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale>

Instead, it will involve massive brute engineering and the political will to
devote the resources to bootstrap it. The Chinese "Civilization State", ruled
by engineers, is in a unique position to marshall those resources and be in
the vanguard of what will be an economic and historic explosion of
development.

[http://today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/u-s-needs-to-deepen-its-
unde...](http://today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/u-s-needs-to-deepen-its-
understanding-149449.aspx)

I've seen this coming for almost a decade. If trends continue, China will not
only be the next dominant power, but Chinese Civilization in the inner solar
system will be to the last half of the 21st century what North America was to
the 20th.

------
adamc
Having trained as a hydraulic engineer doesn't make Hu Jintao a scientist, it
makes him an engineer. There's a difference.

------
varjag
They are not scientists, they are administrators with science and engineering
degrees.

------
giardini
The linked article is titled "Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government
Officials Are _Scientists_" but...

The article it references states "...eight of the top nine political posts are
held by _engineers_." but unfortunately does not name them.

------
tokenadult
About a decade ago, when I was studying the history of mathematics, I noticed
that in 1776, the world's greatest mathematician (Leonhard Euler) was in St.
Petersburg, Russia, just when many of the world's greatest political
scientists were either in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (the signers of the
Declaration of Independence) or in various parts of Britain (e.g, Edmund Burke
and Adam Smith). To this day, the Russian-speaking world exceeds the English-
speaking world in the quality of its primary and secondary mathematics
instruction, and it is perhaps no accident that the first of the Clay
Millennium Prize problems

<http://www.claymath.org/millennium/>

was solved by a mathematician who was educated in Russia. But also to this
day, the United States and Britain enjoy an astonishing degree of political
and economic freedom and rule of law

<http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=594>

and gain many of their best mathematicians and mathematics educators as
immigrants from non-English-speaking countries. It is too early to say whether
a lot of engineering-trained persons in government is mostly a feature or
mostly a bug. I wish China well in going the direction of Taiwan (another
place long ruled by technocrats) in developing the rule of law and an open
political system with many guarantees of personal liberty. But it is by no
means an invariant characteristic of human societies that those with the best
math and science minds thrive best over the long term.

P.S. You did see below the fold on the submitted article, didn't you, what the
blog author thinks China can count on just from the fact of the educational
background of its leaders? Not much, just from that fact.

P.P.S. to respond to first reply: It's my understanding that the government of
the Federal Republic of Germany consciously DE-emphasized technical education
after World War II in favor of more emphasis on humanities and social science
in the primary and secondary school curriculum. I thought it would trigger a
mention of Godwin's Law

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law>

if I brought this up at first, but I've read that many observers of prewar
Germany under the Third Reich looked at the quality of the scientists there
(very high indeed) and thought that Germany would be hard to beat in the war.
It is well known to people who read interesting histories of World War II,
such as mathematician T.W. Körner's book The Pleasures of Counting,

[http://www.amazon.com/Pleasures-Counting-T-
W-K%C3%B6rner/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Pleasures-Counting-T-
W-K%C3%B6rner/dp/0521568234)

that there was a battle of scientists versus scientists in the war to find
smart methods for fighting the other side. Ultimately, despite the great
advantage that German's prewar primary and secondary schools and universities
and civil service system gave Germany in building up a supply of smart
technocrats, the Nazis' disregard of personal liberty drove away many of
Germany's best scientists (notably, many Jewish scientists) and added talent
to the Allied side.

~~~
Maro
Interesting. Where do you put Germans in all this?

~~~
sedachv
It's not often mentioned today, but in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries the
Germanic states were a massive source of high-skilled emigrants. In the 18th
and somewhat the 19th centuries as professors and colonists to Russia and the
USA, after WWI a large number of German engineers were employed in the USSR
(most of them were expelled in 1937), and many more emigrated to the USA. The
next large wave took place after WWII.

~~~
stcredzero
Just as Werner Von Braun's character in "The Right Stuff" said: "NO, our
Germans are Better!"

------
est
there is a difference between a scientist and someone with an engineering
degree

------
Apocryphon
And for some reason, many high-profile, that is, thwarted or captured,
terrorists are engineers: [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/magazine/12FOB-
IdeaLab-t.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/magazine/12FOB-
IdeaLab-t.html?scp=1&amp;sq=Berreby&amp;st=cse)

------
rdixit
The author first points out that science and engineering Ph.D.'s are
disproportionately Asian, and that many return to their mother nations after
education. That's true. He then points out that national success is built on
the back of technology and science. Also true. But by ending with a back-
patting, reassuring comparison with Japan and the claim that Americans have
that truly essential quality, "entrepreneurial spirit" and innovation, and
Asian nations don't, he makes a claim that reeks of hubris and will likely be
quickly proved untrue. Science is the gas pedal, innovation is the fuel-- but
without the pedal your full tank of gas isn't going to take your car anywhere.
Confidence without substance is empty. My 2 cents

------
dreamdu5t
So politicians in China aren't bozos, but the politicians in the US are? Oh
please. The top 9 government officials are no more intellectual than many of
those in Obama's cabinet.

Economic growth is not the only measure of success. In fact, it is one of
many.

------
calpaterson
Bear in mind that a strong part of this is the fact that these guys are trying
to use economic planning. In between all these Americans complaining (fairly)
about their country's legal power culture, this is an important distinction.
Most Western governments aren't economic planners, so technocracy is less
interesting/appealing.

------
speleding
The article dances around the main reason the PISA scores don't say much about
innovation, but doesn't say it: For innovation it's the top 5-10% that counts
not the average.

I wouldn't be surprised if a study that compared the best 5% of students
worldwide showed the US in a very different place, much higher in the
rankings.

------
sudhirc
They may be because when they were growing up studying science was their
ticket to wealth,respect, and power. Arguments, disagreements, and self
correction are pillars of scientific minds. Autocratic society in which a
small disagreement can result is you vanishing, cannot possible nurture
scientific minds.

------
patfla
My reading of the Chinese classics - or rather their authors - is that,
historically, the single greatest ambition of China's intellectuals was to
advise rulers on better governance. Which didn't seem to me a particularly
productive or healthy relationship between the intellectual and political
classes.

~~~
forensic
everybody just wants power, nerds and jocks alike

------
dimmuborgir
Countries should be led by economists, not scientists/engineers.

The Chinese economy is one giant mess. Too many imbalances, over-investments
and bubbles. The spectacular 10% GDP growth rate was possible mainly because
of bullying i.e., artificial depreciation of yuan giving unfair advantage to
Chinese exporters.

------
braindead_in
Are they scientists or engineers? As far as I know scientists do research,
write papers, file for patents etc. etc. and Engineers build stuff. How many
papers have the published?

Also, being a scientist does not mean that you will be a good administrator or
politician. Politics is better left to politicians.

------
orenmazor
well that's just great.

how many layers do you have to unpeel from our government before you find
anybody that isn't a lawyer.

~~~
Apocryphon
Different national political cultures, apparently.

<http://www.economist.com/node/13496638?story_id=13496638>

~~~
stcredzero
_WHEN Barack Obama met Hu Jintao, his Chinese counterpart, at the G20 summit
in London, it was an encounter not just between two presidents, but also
between two professions and mindsets. A lawyer, trained to argue from first
principles and haggle over words, was speaking to an engineer, who knew how to
build physical structures and keep them intact._

The Chinese should build a Space Pier, in the form of a massive ramp with a
huge accelerator on it.

------
teyc
This is a direct result of elections. People chose those who are more like
themselves.

In China, the political elite also choose those who are similar in outlook. If
the original ones were engineers, so to will the new rising stars be
engineers.

------
trustfundbaby
I wonder how many people actually read the article before commenting

------
comex
"Remember him from Black Mesa? Your old administrator?"

------
adamc
Having

------
omouse
Scientists in the mold of capitalists and totalitarians? Disgusting.

