To space engineers: is there real hope for China in space or economic growth in general?

At one point, one of you said that China, having a top-down government, can naturally take leadership in space, because of the advantages of their system. Likewise, Narayan wrote:

And in that, sorry to point out, The People Republic of China is very much the leader, if they follow up their recent success with a systematic progression of infrastructure development on the Moon, not just the "Flags Footprints and Ticker Tape Parade" model.  Given their record, which now includes serious geo-engineering in the Tibetan Plateau and maybe Xinjiang to bring water - and wet weather, and their construction of facilities on ocean islands, I am fairly confident that they didn't go there just to Show The Flag, nor to Explore Our Origins and Our Destiny. 

Thanks for ur patience if u got this far... 

 Having been to China many times, and visited many places which few Westerners get to see, I regret to say that I do not agree.

Ultimately, my top loyalty here is to the human species. Will we survive the coming century or two of extreme challenge, and will we grasp the window of opportunity to truly settle the rest of our solar system in a long-term sustainable way? That is one of the few very big values at the very top of my chain of goals and subgoals. 

Based on those values, I have asked myself: which would I choose, a solar system with NO humans, or a solar system in which the only humans happen to be descendants of people now living in core Han China?

For me, it is no choice. I would choose a Chinese galaxy over a galaxy with no humans, if that were the choice. And so, when the US seems hellbent on destroying itself, by redirecting space and science funds to nonproductive corrupt activities (many inspired by makework or a simple desire for more PAC money), I have often hoped that China would reduce the risks to humanity, by taking a positive role itself.

Many look at the great economic growth of the last couple of decades and the headlines you mention, and conclude that there is real hope there. Also, when the Marshall Institute tried to get real attention to realistic reduction in launch costs (something Charles Miller and I both supported and even helped make happen, though the bad guys then shut down Marshall's security operations), I really wanted to be able to say "The Chinese are coming! If you don't do this, there will be new sputnik crisis, after they can orbit 100 times the mass per dollar as we can for any purpose whatsoever." But in all honesty, I could not say that. For awhile, I said "there is a 30% risk of a sputnik in space from China," but the hope has steadily declined since then.

There are THREE main reasons why prospects for space progress and economic progress in general look much worse in China than they did a few years ago:

(1) The details of the transition from Jiang Zemin and his followers to the collection of people whom Xi Jinping depends on

      (see https://drpauljohn.blogspot.com/2018/12/report-to-watch-on-xi-jinping-and-three.html and more below);

(2) The global reaction against globalization, for which China was the biggest beneficiary;

(3) No change in the lingering problems with China space policy, VERY similar in nature to the problems in the US.

The biggest fluctuations in the world stock market in recent months have resonated more with uncertainty about growth in China than any other issue; for the moment, the zig is a bit back up, due to hopes of a new treaty between US and China, but it seems somewhat unlikely that Trump (or Elizabeth Warren) would sign a treaty as one-sided in its benefits as those of the past. 

I have had very intense debates over the past few years, in which I tended to argue in favor of Xi Jinping while others argiued against. Well, I must concede that some of my smart friends are right, in practice, at the end of the day. Before Xi was selected, he put out a position paper in QuiShu, the Journal of thr Communist Party of China, which argued for a kind of unification of the subjective and objective frameworks for policy analysis (a bit like yin and yang, but actually like a talk I gave to the main Confucius Institute in Shandong province, reflective of my paper published in Russia www.werbos.com/Mind_in_Time.pdf.) Jiang Zemin and his followers were great supporters of science and objectivity as the foundation for everything. They packed the Politburo with engineers who graduated from Tsinghua ("the MIT of China," a school founded as a place for Chinese students to learn English and prepare for graduate school in the English speaking world). Anyone who wants to understand what happened to cause such great growth in China (unlike Russia after less intelligent reforms, based more on DC politician types than MIT engineers), really should study Paulson's book cited in my blog post. (Really. Don't just trust twitter feeds from friends who are loyal but uninformed. Paulson was there, as his book explains.) A main part of why I was able to visit China so much was that Chinese scientists had a mandate to  bring scientists and engineers from the US to come talk, and to learn about China.

But Jiang went to far in some ways. Yes, his follower Hu put forward a "one world" philosophy which was sincere and constructive and pushed hard for better partnership (even alliance) with the US.

But he also slavishly imitated our kind of space program, with an outer program  designed to recruit NASA groupies and enhance world PR with lots of glorious moon talk  but no real economic or military impact, and a hidden program, in Sichuan province (where China has traditionally put things they did not want Russia to see or to threaten), slavishly copying the NASP RLV approach which never worked. 

(Too much reliance on copying is an old problem...) He took a  violently anti-spirit position, attacking not only Western religions but also homegrown Chinese culture. I still remember visiting Shenyang, where Bo Xilia (a top Jiang lieutenant) once ruled, and I was stunned to see that the usual crowds of people in the park were almost all doing western dance or yoga, not qigong or Tai chi as in the past; "No, they explained, we do not even do that in our undergraduate program any more. We are forced to do yoga instead, because that is all that the authorities in this area now allow, since Bo." (I doubt that their yoga included vedanta either...). That was the number one reason I had hopes for Xi, who declared that he was serious about his courses  both in Buddhism and in Marxism (which is quite different from Maoism!), and fought Bo Xilai. But even what Paulson described went too far; it called for some kind of balance, just as"ethical investing" and such has its place in the West.

Sadly, Xi or the folks manipulating him went too far.  The news of the latest Party Congress was quite clear and quite graphic. My blog post summarizes a few points which you can see more graphically and completely in the coverage by the Financial Times, which is biased in a way  but reliable on these points.  I am not sure what to believe about the driving elements here,  but much of it reminds me of 

the policies of an ancient guy named Zhu Xi, who ironically was like the Jiang Zemin of his time. Anyone who wants to understand should google on Zhu Xi. He believed in a form of family values more like Sicily than like Idaho, and that biased, oversimplified belief is what has given us criminal tongs and warlords and famines in the past in China. How long can economic growth continue under regression to that kind of ultra-yin, as devoid of soul as Jiang was? 

I do hope the story will not remain so bad. being more of Gderman culture than Chinese, I keep hoping that thesis and antithesis will give way to synthesis, and more serious objective strategy,

including competence in space and cooperation on earth. But as I observe the rise and fall of civilizations ov er the centuries, I would not take that for granted. Hope, but do not assume. of source, I say the same about Trtump and GND in space as well. 

Best of luck,

   Paul