From Mandarin to Cadre

Abstract

Since 1949 the quality of Chinese life has been shaped in the countries of the economic miracle principally by market forces and by the unplanned, at times random, action of all the individuals comprising a more or less ‘free’ society that embraces, save in Taiwan, alien races and ‘pluralistic’ cultures. In the People’s Republic, the style of government has been opposite in nearly every respect; the quality of the body of men set apart to exercise ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’ (by force and unrestrained by laws), the Party cadres, have been the key factor in the changing, or the stagnant, quality of the people’s life. There are in any case eighteen million of them, outnumbering on one hand the population of Taiwan and on the other the Chinese inhabitants of Southeast Asia; in themselves, therefore, the cadres are one segment — one dare not say class — in the total quality of life; the major part of the stormy political drama since 1965 has been acted out on their smaller stage, with the masses onlookers or at most struggle-fodder.

‘A gentleman is not a tool’

(Analects of Confucius)