SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: The Parochialism of “Taking everyone Down” “In poverty, perfect yourself alone; in prosperity, bring benefit to all under heaven.”

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The Parochialism of “Taking  everyone Down”

“In poverty, perfect yourself alone; in prosperity, bring benefit to all under heaven.” - Mencius

The title of Michael Schuman’s piece in The Atlantic is not analysis. It is an anxiety dressed up as argument, a reflex masquerading as insight. Before engaging its claims, it is worth asking the question it refuses to pose: taking everyone down from what, exactly, and compared to when?

The historical record is unambiguous. For roughly eighteen of the past twenty centuries, the land constituting present-day China was among the top one or two economies on earth…

…But what followed was a development strategy of remarkable discipline. China invested in education, health, and infrastructure, creating the foundations on which its later transformation would rest. The results are beyond serious dispute. China has lifted more people from extreme poverty in less time than any economy in human history. Its rate of extreme poverty now rivals that of the United States.

Its cities contain some of the world’s most educated young workforces, with sixteen years of schooling common in major urban hubs. Its universities, ranked by methodology with no stake in Chinese prestige, appear regularly among the world’s best in STEM fields. China is not merely manufacturing cheap goods. It is producing scientists, engineers, and innovators at a scale that reflects the aspirations of 1.4 billion people who have every historical reason to reclaim their place…

…. The honest question for The Atlantic’s readers is not why China is rising, but why that rise produces such reflexive alarm among those who benefited most from the century of its humiliation.

Mencius offered the appropriate counsel: perfect yourself before presuming to instruct others. The United States, with its fracturing institutions, hollowed industrial base, stagnant wages, and recurring crises of democratic legitimacy, has ample work of its own to do. Envy is not a strategy. And history, when consulted honestly, tends to deflate it.”

Read full article: https://open.substack.com/pub/creativelydestruct/p/the-parochialism-of-taking-everyone?r=3pwkhp&utm_medium=ios