Grow your own China

China is an interesting thing to watch.

There is a building pile available money, and more economic freedoms for the increasingly fat middle class.

But without freedom of expression of the individual, to what will it amount?

It is easy enough to find dissent against a authoritarian regime; no matter how submissive a population you breed, there will always be idealists.

But enough of that, I do want to go back someday and more importantly, I doubt I will change any minds based solely on flawless logic and biting wit.

I am more interested in what a lack of freedom of expression does to creativity.

Ask anyone where a cheap forgery of a famous brand name comes from, they will say China. Ask them where the real thing comes from, it is China again. The same people make the same items in the same factories in near identical conditions. The branding is markup, well that and the intellectual property.

Here is the crux, the mistaken believe that ideas can be possessed, this hideous concept sees children being bullied by Liar Cohen.

The EFF makes more articulate arguments on the subject, so I will not dwell here, but merely pause to remark that information wants to be free and charging for ideas slows, not facilitates their transmission.

In a world where knowledge is fast reclaiming its place as the only true capital, it is vastly important that people interact. Vocal and overly vocal idiots from all over the globe can get together to mock every topic of thought. This is a fantastic thing.

Back to China, music, the arts and especially writing have taken damage from the lack of freedom of expression. Unable to safely express themselves, potential artists have taken to coping western classics to sell as cheap forgeries rather than creating their own work.

The latest pop hits in China last years, being rehashed and remixed slightly while reeking of vanilla. There are no surprises here, with active repression of creative tendencies endemic in the culture, children grow up learning that to be unique is a bad thing.

Am I asking too much of a civilization that is over nine thousand years old? Surely all the good ideas like umbrellas, gunpowder and the Dao have dried out the cultural creativity and left little more with which to innovate.

No! If America can reinvent the toaster for over a hundred years, China can continue to innovate and create new works of art long into the twenty third century and beyond.

How? Well turning around a culture of ridicule of difference, isolation and fear of an authoritarian regime is not an easy task. Luckily the government needs to do absolutely nothing to allow a renaissance of free expression and exchange of ideas. Unfortunately no government has ever willingly conceded power, censorship or control.

Where does that leave the people?

Well, I would say that is up to them.

China has been looking West since Nixon dropped by for a chat and some tea.


West China is where the next change will start.