I’d been invited by Guangdong TV station to visit some People’s Congress Deputies and see how democracy works in China. So, the last things I expected to be doing this week was hiking in a mountain range alongside a river in the Guangdong mountains, about 200 kilometres Northeast of Guangzhou.
Nor did I expect to be wading through a march looking at 40,000 year old rice, still growing in a secret location.
Let’s talk about democracy for a moment: The West, led by the USA have little of it, but accuse China of having none. I’ve found the opposite to be true and the hike was part of my evidence gathering process.
People in the West are told every four years that this is the most important day of their lives and they go to vote for a person they’ve never met, have not seen any record of success from and are faced with a choice of that whoever is the lesser of two evils. What’s even worse is the obscene amount of money it costs to get elected. It’s not voters who get represented, donors, and organisations providing the means get most of the benefits. Princeton University proved this over 10 years ago and nothing has changed since then.
It’s even worse in the UK, the supposed home of modern democracy and the Westminster system. Because in the UK, there’s an upper house of parliament, which has the power to change and send back legislation. Most of the members are appointed because they made huge donations, some were actually born into to the job, some have qualified for the role because they became high court judges or bishops, but not one of them is elected and, if we’re honest, it would be hard to find one of them who understands what the common person in the street really wants because they don’t go there; they live in mansions and palaces and, according to a 2018 audit of democracy, they “essentially reflected the feelings of UK elites”.
I’m willing to bet, that unless they were out on a grouse hunt or off with the hounds chasing a fox, they’ve never been to the kinds of places Mr Ye Qinliang, the NPC Deputy that I was meeting, has been to.
I prefer the wording “consultative”, or even “collaborative governance” when talking about China’s method of democracy because there are some obvious and important points to consider when looking at the best forms of governance.
One is that not all forms work the same way for different people – even if the US system was wonderful, which we all know it isn’t, it might not work so well in a communal society like China.
Another important thing we often forget is that voting for a popular person, no matter how popular they are, doesn’t necessarily mean they can do the job – if we go to war, our military should be commanded by the most suitable and experienced officers available, When we invest in corporations, we look for an experienced CEO who understands the market, the company and the goods or services they offer but for some reasons, we entrust the running of the most powerful country in the world to mediocre lawyers or TV personalities.
Not all people can be experts on all things, so when a president is elected, he/she needs experts to guide policy, the US seems to have many expert lawyers, Blinken, for example, is a Lawyer not a diplomat but he heads the world’s largest diplomatic staff.
China, on the other hand, has real experts who understand science, technology, societal issues and the economy, some of them work in government departments where, like Wang Yi, they’ve been all their adult lives, and others, like Mr. Ye, work in the field and are elected to advise and offer different areas of expertise to supplement the knowledge the government holds.
Mr Ye is a botanist, he studies plants and is quite famous in China, he’s discovered several new species of plants and the process of discovery, as he explained, is not simple, after identifying a new plant samples of the stalk, the flower, the petals, the leaves, in fact all of them need to be DNA tested, reports need to be written, published and peer reviewed before a plant is recognised as a new discovery – by the time this has happened, it’s several years old.
For this visit, rather than meet an NPC Deputy in an office, I was in the field, well, not exactly a field, halfway up a mountain looking at something quite unique a tree with the Chinese name Da Bao Shan Cha (大苞山茶), literally meaning Big Bud Mountain Tea, it’s a camellia plant, most of the tea we drink comes from camellia, so that much didn’t surprise me, but what did surprise me was that 10 years ago, no one had ever recognised this tree, there are only about 300 of them in the world and most of them are on the mountain we were standing on.
Why is this important to the governance of China though?
China was, we have to admit, horribly polluted, just a few years ago. China’s growth, since the era of Hu Jintao China has needed to focus on science, technology and the environment. Advancements must be not only economically sustainable but environmentally so. Mr. Ye conducts research to ensure the survival and propagation of rare plants as well as protecting the ecology where they’re grown. Without people like him, we’d have corporations tearing down forests for profit, or modifying these rare plants to make something more profitable. Does that sound familiar? If it does, that’s because it’s the big difference between China’s democracy, where people and environment come first, and the West where profit (and political donations) are deemed more important.
On that topic, another thing Mr Ye has done was to re-discover something incredibly important. In a marsh, which was once part of an agricultural area, but now rezoned due to the construction of a dam, he has discovered the re-emergence of rice predating human habitation, this rice plant is ancient, he believes more than 40,000 years. It’s likely to have been the seed of life in China and it’s growing in this small marshy corner of Lan Tang town, part of Zixi County in Guangdong.
As a result of a suggestion that Mr Ye put forward to the Provincial People’s Congress, not only is this marsh protected, teams were sent to other parts of Guangdong to look for and preserve areas where this rice might also be growing. The seeds have been harvested and stored for some future use we may find for them and a new museum was opened to showcase the rare plants of Guangdong. The museum is open every day and completely free to visit.
I don’t know if others will agree that this is democracy at work but when representatives from towns and villages across the country are involved in such things as the discovery of new species then the government promotes the preservation of ancient plants, the construction of museums to highlight their importance and the people involved are both selected and elected to represent the region in the people’s congress, these are all good indicators of good governance to me.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
I searched for Lantang cun, there are several, and found one in north west Guangdong. I guess you might have come up the valley through Shixing after leaving the fast train at Shaoguan? That's my wife's home town, we visit round there from time to time.
Anyway I just wanted to mention a place we went to last year, along that valley, Nanxiong, a fascinating little town that was set up in Mao days to manage the newly planted forest. It contains the biggest collection of Gingko trees in the world, about 8,000. A beautiful sight in autumn! I think it was last October were there. We were a bit late. My wife thinks mid-October the best.
Thought you might be interested. Your botanist pal must have known about it.
https://prehistoric-planet.fandom.com/wiki/Nanxiong_Formation
Video of it here starts at 7.57
https://disk.yandex.com/i/0A0MBjtxBD88LQ
cheers
Walt King
First of all Jerry let me thank you from the most gracious of minds. Your videos and crticisms I came across on Tik Tok amongst many Chinese and non Chinese creators that have revealed the truth about China. More inportantly you have done so by using a set of research available to anyone connected to the internet but your insights from your very experience of living in China is perhaps, as you are well aware of, an important perspective, a valuable one for those too lazy to do due diligent research about geo-politics or for that matter world history.
However, there is one small issue that I would like to point out about whom has a track record and what neither you or even any of the writers on substack or any other platform seem to be discussing is that for 16 years there have been other names on the presidential ballot that are never discussed on mainstream networks either in the US nor in Euroupe which has angered me greatly because even running several websites and many more groups to discuss this publically seems to go altogeather unnoticed or simply ignored by anyone whom I write or speak to about it. It does not help to use ignorance of this truth. Jill Stein is a third choice on the presidential ballot for the green party but no one even brings it up, neither independent journalists nor independent writers. She and her party gave a track record as do most of the clowns from the bad cop bad cop, parallax view that ignorant American citizens are used to and clearly the rest of the world. I don't know if it is by design or just ignorance that does not allow anyone to discuss the alternatives that since WW1 have presented themselves every four years as the dogmatic approach to a colonial mind state or if is a cyniscism meant to bring the system of supression and oppresion onslaught my western imperialism. Whatever it might be I suggest you dwelve into this matter as you do indeed have quite the following. As an intellectual exile of the US I enjoy very much your break down of the very psychopathant manner that is the state of American politics but urge you to look into the Green party and give it some due attention as only I can expect from a critical and objective mind like yourself. Thank you for your very crucial input including your recent link to the Chinese political infrastructure. Hopefully one day I will have the honour to visit China and experience it first hand.