Good Example Of Critical Thinking On Critique On China's Modernization

The main problem of the modernization in China is considered to be the cadres, who are too many and too poorly prepared for driving the change, because, according to the reading, they rest comfortable in obsolete working processes while rejecting everything that is new (Liu, 1982). At the time when Liu’s article was published, the modernization in China was mostly based on internal policies and little on copying modernization behavior from the occident or any external culture or civilization. Because China is a communist country, the working methods were deeply entrenched in the socialist bureaucracy, which makes the writer of this article justifiably argue that there was an ineffective state apparatus, with far more many employees as cadres than required. Liu (1982) also associates the improper modernization of China to the fact that many of the cadres were recruited from the poor and uneducated people or from the peasants, who possessed a traditionalist culture, close to primitivism, hampering the alignment to international modernization. Again, the explanation seems logical, but an understanding of the context of the époque is required for better comprehending their fear of novelty. Copying civilization and modernization forms from other cultures without knowing their signification and their outcomes applied to their realities could be a reasonable justification of their actions.
However, this lack of wish to understand the benefits of modernization kept the Chinese population for longer than it was necessary in a traditional world, wherein many Chines provinces still reside today. Liu (1982) exemplifies that in 1978 peasants in Henan preferred carrying water with their buckets rather than implementing water pumps.
Within the article, the author also mentions that the cadres have experienced severe punishments from the Chinese authorities, who distrusted the cadres and considered them unreliable in their reports. As a result, the authorities have imposed a strict centralization of their actions, which increased the bureaucracy and made the cadres fear taking any liberties outside the imposed bureaucratic behavior.
Throughout the article, the author incessantly mentions the lack of education, improper preparation and specialization of the cadres, charging the text with a powerful attitude of denigration for the individuals who perform the cadre role. They are called peasants, uneducated, extremist, ‘petty producers” in advanced illiteracy, all negative connotations for a group of people meant to drive the modernization. Through these adjectives, it seems that Liu (1982) expresses personal opinions, and although they are sustained by formal documentation, existent literature and historical evidence, they bear the attitude of the author in relation to the cadres. The author has charged the meaning of the Chinese cadre with negative connotations for indicating that their roles in the modernization of the country was useless if not hampering. However, although Liu (1982) mentions that there were “few” cadres who were actually working, doing their job, there is nothing about them in the article. Moreover, the low educational levels of the cadres do not receive proper justification, such as the general poverty of the country and the fact that the educated Chinese were not interested in such roles. Implicitly, this negative appreciation represents a critic also to the Chinese Communist Party and the lack of interest in providing better education for its people. In fact, the article critics primarily the poor Governmental policies, entrenched in a communist bureaucracy, who solely considered the peasants as instruments of work, not worthy of education or science.
Liu (1982) also mentions that the People’s Republic of China did not invest in the education of the cadres because it did not actually intended to attain the country’s modernization based on capitalist models, banning everything considered capitalist. The author implies, although it does not openly states, that the interest of rulers such as Mao Zedong was to maintain the country outside modernization.
The lack of education of the cadres in China, kept the country in a lack of modernization, but the country’s authorities maintained the cadres in ignorance is what the article “Problems in Communications in China’s Modernization” suggests. Although the author severely critics the cadres as unqualified for bringing the change towards modernization, the facts are relevant and the information provided is consistent with the reality. A more direct critique towards China’s political regime would have been desired instead of the severe criticism addressed to the cadres who were only acting as executants.

References

Liu, A.P.L. (1982) “Problems in communications in China’s modernization” Asian Survey. Vol. 22, no. 5, pp. 481 – 499.