Meritocracy, Chinese-style

Wednesday, 5th December 2007

"Imagine the Ivy League taking over the shell of the Communist Party and deciding not to change the name. Imagine the Harvard Alumni Association with an army..." David Brooks, on a visit to Shanghai, gets to grips with China's system for training the best and the brightest. His piece is a typically stylish attempt to get into the mind of the country's new elite:

This is a government of talents, you tell your American friends. It rules society the way a wise father rules the family... Most of all, you believe, educated paternalism has delivered the goods. China is booming. Hundreds of millions rise out of poverty. There are malls in Shanghai richer than any American counterpart. Office towers shoot up, and the Audis clog the roads.
You feel pride in what the corpocracy has achieved and now expect it to lead China’s next stage of modernization â” the transition from a manufacturing economy to a service economy. But in the back of your mind you wonder: Perhaps it’s simply impossible for a top-down memorization-based elite to organize a flexible, innovative information economy, no matter how brilliant its members are. That’s a thought you don’t like to dwell on in the middle of the night.