.VDARE.COM
August 07, 2008
Why Do
Chinese, Russians, Like Their Governments So
Much?
By Patrick J.
Buchanan
In his 1937 "Great
Contemporaries, Winston Churchill wrote,
"Whatever else may be thought about (Hitler's)
exploits, they are among the most remarkable in the whole history of the world."
Churchill was referring not only to Hitler's political triumphs—the return
of the Saar and reoccupation
of the Rhineland—but his economic achievements. By his fourth year in power,
Hitler had pulled Germany out of the Depression, cut unemployment from 6 million
to 1 million, grown the GNP 37 percent and increased auto production from 45,000
vehicles a year to 250,000. City and provincial deficits had vanished.
In
material terms, Nazi Germany was a startling success.
And not only Churchill
and Lloyd George but others in Europe and America were marveling at the exploits
of the Third Reich, its fascist ally Italy and Joseph Stalin's rapidly
industrializing Soviet state. "I have seen the future, and it works," Lincoln Steffens had
burbled. Many Western men, seeing the democracies mired in Depression and
moral malaise, were also seeing the future in Berlin, Moscow, Rome.
In Germany, Hitler was winning plebiscites with more than 90 percent of the
vote in what outside observers said were free elections.
What calls to mind
the popularity of the Third Reich and the awe it inspired abroad—even after the
bloody Roehm purge and the
Nazi
murder of Austrian
Chancellor Dollfuss in 1934, and the anti-Semitic Nuremberg laws—is a poll
buried in The New York Times.
In a survey of 24 countries by Pew
Research Center, the nation that emerged as far and away first on earth in the
satisfaction of its people was China. No other nation even
came close.
"Eighty-six percent of Chinese people surveyed said they were
content with the country's direction, up from 48 percent in 2002. ... And 82
percent of Chinese were satisfied with their national economy, up from 52
percent," said the Times. [Economy
Helps Make Chinese The Leaders In Optimism, Survey Finds, By Brian
Knowlton, July 23, 2008]
Yet, China has a regime that punishes dissent,
severely restricts freedom, persecutes
Christians and all faiths that call for worship of a God higher than the
state, brutally represses Tibetans
and Uighurs, swamps their native lands with
Han Chinese to bury their cultures and threatens Taiwan.
China is also a
country where Maoist ideology
has been replaced by a racial chauvinism and raw
nationalism reminiscent of Italy and Germany in the 1930s. Yet, again, over
80 percent of all Chinese are content or even happy with the direction of the
country. Two-thirds say the government is doing a good job in dealing with the
issues of greatest concern to them.
And what nation is it whose people rank
as third most satisfied?
Vladimir Putin's Russia.
Moscow is today more
nationalistic, less democratic and more confrontational toward the West than it
has been since before the fall of communism. Power is being consolidated, former
Soviet republics are hearing dictatorial growls from Moscow and a chill
reminiscent of the Cold War is in the air.
Yet, wrote the NYT,
"Russians were the third most satisfied people with their country's
direction, at 54 percent, despite Western concerns about authoritarian trends."
Of the largest nations on earth, the two that today most satisfy the
desires of their peoples are the most authoritarian.
High among the reasons,
of course, are the annual 10 percent to 12 percent growth China has experienced
over the last decade, and the wealth pouring into Russia for the oil and natural
gas in which that immense country abounds.
Still, is this not disturbing? In
China and Russia, the greatest of world powers after the United States, people
seem to value freedom of speech, religion or the press far less than they do a
rising prosperity and national pride and power. And they seem to have little
moral concern about crushing national minorities.
Contrast, if you will, the
contentment of Chinese and Russians with the dissatisfaction of Americans, only
23 percent of whom told the Pew poll they approved of the nation's direction.
Only one in five Americans said they were satisfied with the U.S.
economy.
Other polls have found 82 percent of Americans saying the country is
headed in the wrong direction, only 28 percent approving of President Bush's
performance and only half that saying they approve of the Congress. In Britain,
France and Germany, only three in 10 expressed satisfaction with the direction
of the nation.
Liberal democracy is in a bear market. Is it a systemic
crisis, as well?
In his 1992 The End of History, Francis Fukuyama wrote
of the ultimate world triumph of democratic capitalism. All other systems
had fallen, or would fall by the wayside. The future belonged to us.
Democratic capitalism, it would appear, now has a great new rival—autocratic
capitalism. In Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, nations are
beginning to imitate the autocrats of China and Russia, even as some in the
1930s sought to ape fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
The game is not over
yet. We are going into extra innings.
Patrick J.
Buchanan
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