Frank A. Meyer – Category: China

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Perhaps three sentences from the Neue Zürcher Zeitung will finally give a clear picture of the Chinese deception. They are as laconic as they are logical:

“In addition to a large number of cheap goods, China has long been involved in high-tech production. These are mainly Western developments. The country itself almost never invents anything innovative.”

Until recently, Western economic methods were welcomed and praised at every opportunity:

ChinaChinaChina!

In delight they sang hallelujah to capitalism without democracy. Their mouths watered as they extolled the blessings of the Chinese system: decisions without discussion, willing workers, huge profits! What could global managers want?

Until yesterday.

Today it sounds more critical: “Xi Jinping threatens China’s innovation power,” headlined NZZ.

What’s really going on? Wasn’t the People’s Republic still moving at a fast pace when it came to chip technology? Wasn’t the Huawei brand internationally considered the magic formula for this triumph? The conquest of Western markets has now slowed down sharply. The US is denying China the high technology it needs.

But it is true: the aggressiveness of communist-controlled capitalism depends on the ingenuity of the West. China’s economy is only unbeatable when it comes to meticulous copying and manufacturing of consumer goods. Political scientist Zheng Yongnian, from the booming Shenzhen Special Economic Zone in the southeast of the giant empire, states dryly: “If a country defends itself, it will definitely fall behind.”

Looking at his country, Zheng comes to the conclusion that China lacks original technologies: it does not invent anything fundamentally new, but continues to develop Western technologies, and not even at the highest level.

Indeed, China is defending itself—to put it mildly and politely. In other words, rude and impolite:

China is a dictatorship.

But where thinking is subject to dictate, a creative citizen cannot be creative in a company, at a university, in a laboratory – he cannot think freely, cannot invent freely, because free research in an unfree life does not work, because restricting the freedom of research is exactly what you need. this study prevented.

Freedom is indivisible – it cannot be manipulated and it cannot be disciplined. It doesn’t stop when the citizen researcher closes the laboratory door behind him or leaves the lecture hall or his company’s development center. Professional counter-thinking as a prerequisite for technical progress inevitably transforms into civil counter-thinking – and becomes the driving force of social progress.

But before him is the Communist Party! All-powerful President Xi Jinping only needs to snap his fingers to turn thought into silence.

Free economy, unfree citizens? No, the desired formula for a global caste of managers simply does not work.

In the free West, people do their best to please the dictatorship that is the economic champion of the world. It all starts with the fact that the term “dictatorship” is transformed into “autocracy”, which should sound flattering – and not like the evil counter-model of democracy: autocrat Xi, democrat Biden – what distinguishes them except the first syllable? While dictator Xi and democrat Biden sound sharply opposed.

No, the West is by no means giving up as a workshop of creativity and progress. He doesn’t even think about it.

Because he thinks.

Source: Blick