they have seen the future and it works for them

So the Health Secretary wants us to work like the Chinese. You could write a pretty long historical monologue on the idea of work as embodied in perceptions of the Chinese people, but it would probably come down to the two essential features of docility and endurance.

 My word, those Chinese can work. They're not quite as far up the value chain as the Germans, but they're basically reliable, it's possible to manufacture them in much larger quantities and they need less fuel to keep going. And of course, when they're not simply beavering away the Chinese are starting businesses without the need to erect an enterprise culture to encourage them. Chinese business just spreads naturally over the landscape, like a kind of fungus.

 It's the sort of thing that spreads a warm glow in the Tory heart and it maybe answers a question that's been puzzling a number of people, namely why is government policy towards China so openly and frankly obsequious. It may not come down to policy at all. The Tories look at China and they simply like what they see, or think they see.

 Consider: everyone knows who is in charge in China. Yet while there are strict and well regulated heirarchies, there is always room at the top – and much more room for people who were born closer to the top. There are endless appeals to tradition, much of it invented, combined with an unashamed admiration for money and those who have it. Entrepreneurs enjoy a huge amount of latitude in their treatment of the human material they endow with the chance to gain self-respect and human stature through labour. At the same time the labouring classes can enjoy seemingly endless patriotic festivities that bring together rulers and ruled in shared love of country. Education is traditional. The armed forces are valorised. Charity is encouraged, while charities themselves 'stick to their knitting' as the saying goes. There is order, or there appears to be. Yes, the British government wants some of that, and wants it for the rest of us too. Lucky us.

Comments

[dsquared]

Quite. I was also less mystified than most about the motivation behind Osborne's visit to Urumqi. It wasn't despite the fact that it was one of the most polluting areas of China with the worst human rights, it was because it was etc etc. The principle being that if you want to kiss someone's arse, it is their arse that you have to kiss, not some more attractive part of their body.

[Alex]

Isn't it simpler? Going on and on about how hardworking Americans or x where x is South Korea, Japan, Germany, China etc is a longstanding Tory cliché. Thatcher did it. anyway we're in a global race through the turnaround decade with our long-term economic plan for security. puke.

[Alex]

Meanwhile, here is a disturbing image from the front of China Telecom's website: https://twitter.com/yorksranter/status/651788626561486853

[Phil]

One of my son's comments after his first trip to China was "they are really nationalistic". His group went to a Chinese school, where he got the impression that quite a lot of lesson time was devoted to questions like "has China always been the greatest nation in the world, or has it only become the greatest nation in the world under the enlightened leadership of the Communist Party?". (Think carefully.) Mind you, the first thing he wanted to do when he got home was plan his next trip. Maybe Gideon's just China-struck - he walked on the Great Wall last time, and if he keeps saying the right things he's hoping they'll take him to see the terracotta army.

[Metatone]

As Alex notes, it's a long time trope.
Tories since Thatcher have a basic mercantilist / competition between nations instinct.
Naturally, it's always the workers that fail Britain, never the management, or the bankers or the Tory politicians...

Of course, they do love the idea that they are destined to be the perpetual government...

[Jakob]

Older than Thatcher, mind - comparisons with the Americans in particular are a constant feature of postwar productivity concerns, and worries about the superiority of some idealised other (Germany, US, &c.) go back to the latter part of the 19th-c. at least. Although those worries aren't always about the pampered British working man as such; better production management and technology are also popular tunes.

[ajay]

worries about the superiority of some idealised other (Germany, US, &c.) go back to the latter part of the 19th-c. at least. Although those worries aren't always about the pampered British working man as such; better production management and technology are also popular tunes

But it's more than just that, isn't it? It's declinism - this other country is outstripping us because we are not what we once were. And that can be a left or a right point of view.