chinese history in 2 paragraphs.

last week I made a mental note to brush up on some chinese history.

it is very long and complex, but like everywhere the country has changed more in the past 60 years than in the period from the qin dynasty up till the inglorious abdication of pu yi in 1912. its long it but follows a pattern and a model that is straightforward.

it goes like this:-

there was a mythological age of sovereigns who lived a very long life..yellow emperor.. followed by the three kingdoms -- xia, shang and zhao of antiquity..somewhere around 2^nd millennium bc. shang is very real.. from the archaeology. even the writing is basically recognisable as chinese.

by the middle of the 5^th century bc there were 7 warring states. these were united by the qin. (from which the name china is said to derive.) use of iron and military advances set the qin up as dynasts for 200 years and the basic model of chinese civilization was established..(admin. and feudal order.

the qin were ruthless totalitarians ..the movie ‘hero’ graphically portrays it. (great movie incidentally with jet lee.)

it was however an unpopular dynasty and overthrown by the han.. led by a pleb. by the end of the second century ad there were some 60 million people.. huge by the standards of the day. economic weakness and some subprime emperors led to an overthrow of the han. (chinese today call themselves 'han')

there was a series of several short dynasties . then the tang period kicked off in the early 7^th century.. which is something of a classical formulation ..the tao enjoyed favor at court... it lasted till 906.. followed by several short dynasties. in 960 the song --a watered down version of the tang by the looks—stepped up.... there were mongols in 1234 brought by non other then gengis khan..a bloody disaster..but within a few years kubilai ruled as a son of heaven according to the chinese model. later on in the same century marco polo was amazed at the level of china’s civilization even under foreign domination.

1368 the mongols were toppled by the ming.. a chinese vote of no confidence.. 1421 their capital became Beijing.

under the manchus who established the qing in 1644, china flourished till 1795.. then there seems to have been a turning point in its fortunes.

it was hidebound.. bureaucracy by conformity to an ideological system of confucious that the master himself would’nt have recognised in a fit.. with some kind of buddhist subtext.. it couldn’t grow. it was fake. population too big.. it had reached its limits. and began to decline..

decline was accelerated by western incursions. leading to ‘the taiping rebellion’.. when chinese asserted self determination.

finally early 20^th centry they reject the manchus and even the age-old system that the latter tired to rule by. .. there was a feeble attempt to reinstate the empire 1915 ..but the model had outlived its usefulness. dr. sun yat sen gave the nationalist republic his best shot but with no agreement reached between nationalists and proletariat party.. the communist republic --in another hardwon act of self determination --was formed in 1949..

wow. that’s it. chinese history in two paragraphs..and they said it couldn’t be done.. heheh

so china is no longer the centre of the universe..nor is its top job occupied by the son of heaven… in 1949 it was time for it to soberly take its place as a republic and member of the community of nations as it were.. despite some catastrophic decisions along the way, its record has been extraordinary and has granted a new lease of life to a quarter of humanity... and shows every sign of improving.

lagos ..mega-city .. mega-future.

mega projections. future projections.

lagos is huge and getting huger… it is a megacity balooning out of the oil wealth of Nigeria drawing millions.

second most populous city in Africa was the capital of Nigeria till 1991 when it was transferred to the purpose built Abuja.

Nigeria is the eighth most populous country in the world. over 150 million. it is a regional power. with a growing economy.

lagos was a Yoruba settlement who seem to have been the traditional custodians of the area for quite a few millennia actually... lagos is the portugese name.

history is like this.

it was a centre for the slave trade from 1404-about 1900 when local people sought help from the british who had banned slave trading in 1807. it became a british colony in 1861. the rest of Nigeria was claimed in 1887 when Britain claimed a sphere of influence in west Africa. . lagos became the capital of the british colony that they had (up)started in 1914..

independence came in 1960. (ahem)

several back-to-back military coups-d' état s and civil wars later, Nigeria joined opec in the 1970s the income immensely benefiting the military clique.

sani abacha was the most brutal of the several military dictators they had to have. many harrowing stories.. but nigeria is ultimately not an unhappy story.

ethnic violence, corruption, militarism religious sectarianism.... same as, same as. post-colonial military dictatorship.. but.. it contrasts to others...

nigeria is rich in mineral resources in addition to oil there are serious agricultural resources and a developing manufacturing base. ( they send out a lot of really annoying scam emails but lets not gripe.. hehehe)

as for lagos, theyre calling it a ‘conurbation’. its population has ballooned to around 8 million but is only guessed at.

you’d think it would be an unhappy story.. but it apparently isn’t.. people flock there from the poverty-stricken, rigidly conservative countryside. they come with energy and ambition…. men, women and children.

a lot of the city is not serviced with anything like water or drainage… there is supposed to be something like one ‘police man’ per 1000 people

much of it is a huge shanty town…but.. for the people it is a city of opportunity. the fast growing megacity is where the booming real-economy is…..

while it has few formal jobs, it has a thriving underground economy. hustling.. bartering.. odd jobs.. the people are said to be either business-savvy or not there at all.

there is a breakdown of traditional order and infrastructure but there is a transformation of it into a productive urban form. trafficjams become markets.. defunct infrastructure finds some transformed use..

innovation combines with new models like microfinance to yield dramatic improvement in peoples’ lives.

lagos maybe a vision of the future for many places. maybe even some that now enjoy a much higher standard of living. i get the feeling its a place where water soon finds its true level.

change, the buddha reminds us, is the only constant.. it is coming to a place near you.. it maybe that mega cities are the modus it is gonna take.

tf

homo economicus vrs homocidal economists.

homo economicus and homicidal economists.

could the real economists please stand ..!!!

as the pillars of the guilded bastion continue to go down.. lol.. and the silk suited backsides of the establishment begin furtively looking around for a place to run, (bernie madoff was small beer) …. the question is starting to arise… what form will the new economics take?

it’s a serious question. the last faculty of economics I visited was full of yes-men and uber intelligent liars so blinded by Chicago (economics school) that it takes little imagination to vision the drab sandstone building that once housed them as a burnt out shell (given a year or two.).. haunt of owls and vermin. in a crumbling concrete jungle. like the burnt-out cat-house of a former generation.

all the experts and all the billions of dollars and still children starve… to death. day by day .. by the thousands while the 'economists' flick channels on sky.

well here at tejas fu’s political economy... its benevolence towards children and the vulnerable that is the ultimate criterion in business. ,,,…shove your greenback up your bottom line.

but what of the real economics?

real economics fits into the sustainability framework..(this is the point i want to make.)

it is hinted at by people like professor mohammad yunus of the grameen bank.. it is about social capital..

professor yunus’s story goes like this:-

was deeply affected by a famine in Bangladesh in 1974 and set about trying to find a way out of poverty for the vulnerable. he finally came up with microcredit (against the background of the massive failures of the above mentioned pseudo-economist and w/bankers.)

professor yunus worked tirelessly.. not to maximize his profit.. but to minimize the poverty of his people. that is what a real economist does in case anyone didn’t know.

so there is cause for huge optimism.. once that the bloodsucking incubus of global neo-conservatism’s bottomline is outed, there is a chance for a huge leap forward for the economy/ecology of the planet. because yunus isn’t the only one. there are other real people.

just imagine what the world would be like if economists devoted their time to maximising a society’s real capital.. its people and their talent of gold..(not the metal).

the opportunity will have to be seized and held on to by the real economists. now is the start of a power vacuum.

so begins the interregnum.

t.f.