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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32495 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

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In addition to what @No_one said, China also has to be graded on a curve because before their recent rise the last hundred years or so had been absolutely awful:

*Great Leap Forward: tens of millions starved

*Korean War intervention: ~180,000 Chinese military casualties

*WWII (chinese theater): tens of millions killed, plus huge swathes of the country's vital agricultural instrastructure purposefully destroyed as a military tactic.

*"Boxer" Rebellion: hundreds of thousands killed/displaced

*Taiping Rebellion: tens of millions killed, tens of millions displaced, major portions of southern China depopulated - literally the worst civil war in human history that we know of.

Plus all the internecine fighting between factions, attempted/successful revolutions, several minor wars fought on Chinese soil (Russo-Japanese war, first Sino-Japanese war), and a normal dose of the floodings, droughts, and other natural disasters that have punctuated Chinese history.

China had one of the worst stretches any civilization has ever had, to my reckoning. Getting conquered by the Mongols again probably would have been significantly preferable. Honestly, I'm kindof amazed that there still is a china after all that. A lot of ruin in a nation, indeed.

So there's been a lot of instability, wars, and bad policies in China?

If these are sufficiently retarding to hold back China until the 1980s, then why aren't the instability, wars, and bad policies in Sub-Saharan sufficient to explain more or less all of its backwardness? When Sub-Saharan Africa has had stability, peace, and relatively good policies, it's prospered more than China: see Botswana. And I don't accept Botswana's diamonds as an explanation: if there's one thing that we know about economics, it's that tremendous natural resources are not sufficient for development, and in much of Africa they seem to be a curse (see the DRC or Zimbabwe).

Certain sections of Africa have had some conflict thats comparable - the postrevolutionary Congo comes to mind - but frankly I'm not aware of anything on the horrific, mind-breaking scale of what China consisfently went through from 1850-1970 (often self-inflicted). Other countries tend to get it once or maybe twice if they're really stupid (Russia's period 1905-1955 ranks up there, I'd imagine, as would Paraguay from the War of the Triple Alliance to the Chaco war). Not for a 100+ years.

That certainly could be a failure of my knowledge. Definitely African wars are a bit more difficult to find major sources on in English. Certainly open to learning more if you have suggestions.

The answer is that none of this is true, China was literally never (in historical record) as backward as Africa, despite value judgements of some racist whites who pooh-poohed remarkable Chinese traits as «mere» industriousness and servility or some such. China was in a very bad place very recently; but it has not been barbaric for millenia.

It's disingenuous to compare, say, modern North Korea (73 years life expectancy, universal literacy, zero AIDS, regimented functional society, nukes, ≈$1300 GDP per capita) and Mozambique (61 years life expectancy, 63.42% literacy, 13% AIDS, anarcho-tyranny, no industry, $1300 GDP per capita), and claim this is an argument against HBD. This is an argument against GDP, if anything. Likewise disingenuous, only for more complex reasons, to compare China and Africa as a whole.

When Sub-Saharan Africa has had stability, peace, and relatively good policies, it's prospered more than China: see Botswana. And I don't accept Botswana's diamonds as an explanation

See what?

65 years life expectancy, 86.82% literacy, 20.8% AIDS, all economy runs on a De Beers mining contract. Botswana is maybe a big success by African standards, but that success belies the hypothesis that Africans with unusually good policies would just converge with non-Africans in all other things that matter – matter for maintaining stability, peace and good policies, too. So it will not be a huge surprise if Botswana one day just fails.

Why are you pointing out AIDS? Like, yeah, it's a problem, but I'm not sure it's in the top 10 priorities for nations to worry about. And I'm skeptical that North Korea is at 0% anyways.

China was literally never (in historical record) as backward as Africa

I never said that it was.

It's disingenuous to compare, say, modern North Korea (73 years life expectancy, universal literacy, zero AIDS, regimented functional society, nukes, ≈$1300 GDP per capita) and Mozambique (61 years life expectancy, 63.42% literacy, 13% AIDS, anarcho-tyranny, no industry, $1300 GDP per capita),

Good thing I didn't make that comparison.

claim this is an argument against HBD

Who is arguing against HBD? I never questioned it. The point is that, with respect to economic success or failure, there just isn't a lot or anything for HBD to explain once you account for bad policies and history. Bizzarely, many responses have been "Ah, but those facts you cite are due to bad policies and history."

See what?

My figures were out of date: in terms of GDP per capita, China has caught up with Botswana in the past 10 years. However, at Botswana's independence in the late 1960s, they were the same, and until recently, China was behind:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=10gui

China is ranked 31st for "Ease of Doing Business", Botswana is ranked 87th. So, even in China's catch-up, there just doesn't seem to be much if anything for HBD to explain. That doesn't mean that HBD is false, and AFAIK the evidence for HBD is psychometric rather than macroeconomic (and much the better for that fact). What doesn't do well is trying to explain differences in the wealth of nations in terms of IQ rather than cultural and historical explanations.

*Korean War intervention: ~180,000 Chinese military casualties

Rating the Korean war as a Chinese defeat is just wrong.

They managed to save their North Korean buffer state despite a serious inferiority in heavy weapons. The amounts of Americans killed was also substantial.

I think it's being grouped not as a defeat, but just as a mass Chinese death event.

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