Years of Poems and Spirits

NYT article: Chinese Official Sees Private Role on Environment

According to Zhu Guangyao, deputy chief of the State Environmental Protection Agency:

“China’s pollution problems cost the country more than $200 billion a year, a top official said Monday, as he called for better legal protection for grass-roots groups so they could help clean up the environment.”

“Despite the efforts of half a million environmental officials in his agency and other organizations, China’s environmental picture is worsening and ‘allows for no optimism,’ Mr. Zhu said, as he released a report that described China’s environmental situation as ‘grave.’”

–According to Christine Wong’s OECD paper, there is only 500 working for Ministry of Finance. In other words, for every state accountant, there are 100 environment police. But there is still $200B loss every year. Does another 500,000 cadre make a difference?
–The key is environmental cost is not factored into commodity price yet. Therefore, any measure to reduce environmental hazzard is an increase of cost.
–If the environmental cost if factored in, however, any environmental improvement will be a decrease of cost.
–The only way I can think of fairly factor in environmental cost is to allow popular participation and rule of law.
–Popular participation in enacting laws that will balance consumers and producers’ interests.
–Rule of law of course is to set a plain field.

Ethnonationalism by Walker Connor.

Chapter Two: critiques against American nationalism scholarship
Ethnicity as “merely one of a number of minor impediments”. Will give way to a common identity through “nation-building”

Only 9.1% out of 132 can be said as homgeneous. 23.5% (23 states) the largest ethnic element represents only 50%-74% of the population.

Karl Deutsch: social mobilzation. The rate of assimilation higher among uprooted and mobilized population than that of secluded populations close to soil.

A decisive factor in national assimilation was found to be the proces sof social mobilization… (again Deutsch)

To the contrary (of Deutsch’s assimilation or nation-building theory), a global survey illustrates that ethbic consciousness is definitely in the ascendancy as a politcal force. (p35) See West European examples.

Social mobilization need not lead to a transfer of primary allegiance from the ethnic group to the state is therefore clear. Material increases … tend to increase cultural awareness and to exacerbate interethnic conflict. Cultural self-preservation. P36

It is not the media, but the message: self-determination of nations and its brief history: self-evident truth.
In its pristine form, the doctrine makes ethnicity the ultimate measure of political legitimacy. p38

Nation-state: nationalism as loyalty to state, regionalism parochialism , etc. affinity to “nation”. delink state-nation p40, 41

The study of nationalism in the 20th century has been heavily influenced by the experiences o fGermany and Japan… (but they are exceptions!) p41

Nation as a self-differentiating ethnic group. p42 A nation is a group of people characerized by a myth of common descent. p75

Language as symbol (but not part of ethnicity p46) … As a result of the tendency … to describe ethnopsychological phenomena in terms of tangilbe considretaions, the true nature and power of ethnic feelings are not probed. P44

Economic factors are likely to come in a poor second when competing with emotionalism of ethnic nationalism… there are even cases in which separatist movements exist despite the fact that the group … is more advanced economically. p47

Discussion of black nationalism as to debunk American nationalism tradition/myth. The American experience: people left voluntarily to seek common goal. P49-50

The prime cause of political disunity is the absence of a single psychological focus shared by all segments of the population. p56

Tangilble symptoms vs. essence. Seems to advocate a profound reagard for the psychological and emotional dimensions of ethnonational identity (including Anthony D Smith) p73-4

On unwarranted exaggeration of the influence of materialism upon human affairs P74

Implies nationalistic psychology roots in the mass (what the masses have felt …) p75

Horowitz: experimental psychology; Pierre van den Berghe: literature on socibiology has much in common with ethnic identity. p75

The nature of nationalism … Kohn’s quote: what they have in common and what is peculiar to each … p76
But readers are “often disappointed” because the dissimilarities among teh societies … too-facile analogies have resulted in highly questionable conclusions. The absence of perfect analogies… p77

Break down of different types of nation-state for study/comparison. p77-80

In studying minority’s attitude toward majority: demographically, under 35 and high % of professional people. p82

Ethnonationalism is a mass phenomenon, and keeping this in mind should counteract the tendency to overempahsize the role of elites as its impresarios. p85

Uncle Lin told me about this event: TAIWAN: Peking University gags Taiwanese graft-buster

A Taiwanese legislator who played an important role in exposing the scandals now afflicting the island’s president, Chen Shiu-bian, has been forced to cancel a speech in Beijing on fighting corruption.

“They said I could do it at any school, but not Peking University. They proposed that I deliver the speech at Fudan University [in Shanghai] or Zhongshan University [in Guangzhou]. I couldn’t accept that. If I did, I would not be Chiu Yi.” (邱毅）

“This is what makes Taiwan different from the mainland,” he said, adding that regardless of how angry Taiwanese authorities were, he would still be free to expose any future scandals and the Taiwanese media would still be able to report on them.

–Unified Front (统一战线） no more this time. CCP successfully opened a wedge b/w the factions in Taiwan, but it doesn’t look at having CCP representing China would endear the opposition. Can CCP outlast any remaining political goodwill on the island?
–Just another case where CCP wants to move forward but finds itself being the stopper: so is economy, public governance, cultural modernization, etc. The curve is flattening out.