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Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

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Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#51

Post by Wuzzy »

llcoolv wrote: post #9
gaius wrote: post #3

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.

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 fro…

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.

Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#52

Post by run4yourlives »

maxklein wrote: post #39
run4yourlives wrote: post #25

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 bu…

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.

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...

Also: (order the chart descending by either at birth or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio

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

Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#53

Post by 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.

Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#54

Post by maxklein »

run4yourlives wrote: post #52
maxklein wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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... Also: (order the chart descending by either at birth or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio The numbers are actually much stronger than I thought they would be.

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.

Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#55

Post by cabalamat »

Duff wrote: post #43
lionhearted wrote: post #6

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 d…

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…

> the results so far haven't been uplifting

10% growth every year for a quarter of a century? I regard that as very impressive.

> I don't think that a comparison of the US system vs. China is going to produce a clear "winner"

It's likely that one of these two countries is going to end up dominating the world. Of course, it's not so much about countries as social systems: both have their strengths and weaknesses.

> And I betcha if you analyzed a Chinese and American bureaucrat, you would find that they look, act and think alike.

I'm sure you're right.

Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#56

Post by run4yourlives »

maxklein wrote: post #54
run4yourlives wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... Also: (order the chart descending by either at birth or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio The numbers are actually much stronger than I thought they would be.

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.

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.

Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#57

Post by gritzko »

tokenadult wrote: post #14

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-sp…

Heh. During WWII, SU made 100,000 tanks, US made 100,000, Germany made 50,000. Guess who won. Germans did not even had their own iron; they pulled their supplies from Sweden.

When entering a room, look for elephants first :)

Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#58

Post by maxklein »

run4yourlives wrote: post #56
maxklein wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#59

Post by 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.

Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#60

Post by huherto »

przemelek wrote: post #8

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 Communist…

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.
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