The Differences Between American And Chinese Political Leaders

Why do Chinese political leaders have engineering degrees whereas their American counterparts have law degrees?
Eric Verhulst

Having visited China often (when doing business), my understanding is that China has actually never been really communist. If one looks over a period of the last 2000 to 3000 years, the communist decades were a blip on the history line, more like a correction mechanism after the Imperial system had lost its grip and power.

The underlying philosophy is that China has always been and still is a Confucian system, i.e. a technocracy. It might not be a democracy as in the West (where democracy often doesn't work because it has turned into system of greed) but they carefully replace the leaders every few years. They have a very long term planning, actually 60 years (12 plans of 5 years). These plans are not like the detailed Soviet central planning but more like a business plan whereby the execution is left to a highly competitive free market. The Chinese are also very good organizers.

Look at how quickly they built their high speed train network. I have seen cases whereby a 30 km highway was refurbished over a WE. The same would have taken 1 or 2 years in Europe.
I think that in general, running a country should be more a management/engineering job than a political one. Lawyers should only help to create an ethical/moral framework. Beware if they write laws that benefit political interest groups.

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