“We must certainly protect the voting rights of farmers, and be unwavering in properly carrying out village self-governance and direct election of village committees,” said Premier Wen.

Currently land is managed by local governments, and they often auction off the land to developers at a very high price. It’s seen as a measure for the local governments to compensate for the fiscal deficits. The local governments are increasingly detached from the farmers’ interests. Farmers’ ”collective ownership” of the land is vaguely defined and is indeed empty. When farmers do not even possess their most important means of production, they are bound to fight for it.

The rising number of “mass incidents” caused by land rights problems are a warning to the Communist Party as it claims to represent the interests of the Poletarian. If the government has become too much of a rent-seeker, the public are likely to take collective action to correct it, sometimes in violent ways.

Because a dictator must depend on a launching group to help him seize power, he is faced with the threat that these people might take over his place after he becomes the autocrat. Therefore he must find a way to either compromise with the launching group or to curb their power. There are three methods:

1. Terrorize leadership to curb the launching organization. Although this seems to be secure for the autocrat by creating an atmosphere of distrust between bureaucrats, it also poses other threats such as secret police and deficient governance. Ultimately the dictator will be unconstrained. Property rights will by no means be protected, and the economy is unlikely to grow fast.

2. Co-optation between the dictator and the launching organization. This is more stable since the dictator creates an equilibrium between bureaucracy, private investors (often included in the 3-party arrangement), and himself by allocating rents.

It is worth noting that the Chinese history has examples for the two methods above. Emperors among the Ming dynasty intensively used the secret police to tighten their control over the bureaucrats and thus created a terror. In the Tang dynasty, however, some emperors cooperated closely with the different administration departments and made for high economic growth.

3. Organizational proliferation. The logic is to raise the costs of collective action between the different layers of the launching group.

Tang Can was the pioneer in this innovative trend. In 2000, she promoted her song A Million Years of Happiness (幸福万年长) composed by a famous pop-song writer. Her natural singing gave people a refreshing view of Chinese folk songs. The delicate design of the MTV was also appealing to young audience. This song absorbs the essence of folk songs — the subtle “Chinese” feel — but is not restricted to the conventional composition of folk songs.

Zhang Yan adopts a different interpretation of folk songs. Her voice is sweet and adorable. She has songs that emphasizes the folk features in them, among them the most famous example is Daughter of the Moon (月亮女儿). On the other hand, she also perform songs in a jazz-like way. Ye Lai Xiang , for example, is an 1930s song refurnished by Zhang. The song replicates the unique feeling of the 1930s Shanghai women but also caters to modern audience’s tastes.

Tan Jing is a bit of a rebel from folk singing, in that she sings more like a pop singer than folk song singer. Her song Sky (天空), shown in the opening ceremony of 2008 Beijing Olympics, is a perfect example. Another song, Distant Love (远情), is an incident in a popular Chinese TV series. Rich in content, this song incorporates Chinese traditional musical instruments and carries a heavy feeling of time changes.

I believe in the eternal beauty of the Chinese way of singing. Hopefully people (especially the youth) will be able to appreciate our precious cultural heritage better through novel performance and publicity methods.

Many Chinese would perceive the Tang dynasty as the most prosperous period in the Chinese history. If measured in cultural diversity and openness to foreign countries, the Tang dynasty might be unrivalled. But a couple of important technological inventions and political innovations in the Song dynasty exerted long-lasting influence on the Chinese economy.

The invention of gunpowder provided the Song emperor with a greater capacity for invasion. Indeed, the dynasty was remarkably aggressive in conquering neighboring countries and regions. To fund the skyrocketing military expenses, some of the Song emperors printed so much money that inflation hurt people’s living standards. Woodblock printing, on the other hand, facilitated cultural exchange. In the Song dynasty, agriculture production was boosted because of improved grain seeds, advanced immigration techniques, and innovative farming arrangements (e.g. intercropping). Local officials as well as literati wrote about agriculture practices and the knowledge was promoted nationwide.

The improvement in transportation system (inland and ocean) during the Sui and Tang dynasties paved the development of interregional trade in the Song dynasty. The strong economic ties called for a united nation with uniform rules and regulations.

1. Even if the individuals’ preferences are consistent, the amalgamation of their interests might lead to conflicting results. This can be due to strategic voting, i.e. people deliberately vote for their less favored candidate to facilitate the winning of their favorite choice. It can also result from particular voting methods. The sequence that people need to choose and the pool they’re choosing from are key to the results of voting.

2. Different rules of aggregating individual preferences (majoritarian, utilitarian, positional, etc) are efficient in different ways; they address varied ethical principles. Furthermore, we cannot implement two methods at the same time, so comparison is not possible and therefore we are unable to conclude whether a particular method is superior to others.

3. Populism fails because the “general will” is not clear, and therefore voting results are best interpreted as the winning of one choice over an array of choices rather than the winning of a better claim of the democracy ideal. We cannot say X is better than Y simply because X beats Y in a series of elections. There might be another option Z which is restrained by Constitution or oppressed by X. In other words, some relevant alternatives might not even be addressed. X can be self-enforcing in terms of enacting the laws and rules according to their beliefs of the “common will”.

4. Liberalism democracy survives because it is a random popular veto and does not require voting results to be fair and just. It regards the voting as a potential means to get rid of the bad leader but not necessarily retain the good one. Individuals as well as the candidates are merely in the dynamic development of the society. The veto generates freedom because a tyranny faces a threat that it will be thrown out of office if it violates the interests of enough voters.

The theory of social choice states why people form organizations. The theory of democracy, on the other hand, tells a story of how ordinary politics can realize the ideals of self-control and self-dignity (suggested by Plato).

The three elements of democracy – participation, liberty, and equality — are realized through the means of voting. Popular participation in decision-making process is needed to realize the benefits of the mass but not a limited number of individuals. Liberty and equality guarantees that popular participation yields the best choice for the society.

The liberal view and the populist view of democracy differs in their perceptions of the effect of voting. From the liberal view, voting is just a decision process and does not necessarily mean the officials elected will perform well to maximize the welfare of the society. Therefore, limited tenure and the shift in majority prevents tyranny. From the populist view, however, voting selects the government which represents the “general will” (by Rousseau) of the people and thus cannot oppress. The officials should carry out the rules made by the people and should be respected.

The populist view is true in emphasizing the importance of the common interest of the people. However, it is essentially taking the majority decision as morally correct and indisputable. This argument can be quite powerful, as is demonstrated by Adolf Hitler. The liberal view also has flaws: it attaches little importance to the voting decisions and weakens the government’s role as a representative of people’s will.

I will contemplate on related political and social issues to gain further understanding on this deep topic.

Tonight’s forum is basically about different parties justifying their perspectives. Their arguments reflect the classes they represent. However, there are some points worth noticing:

1. It is widely criticized that the new budget benefits mainly the middle class (tax credits, public housing, education, etc) and fails to address the need of the ultra poor. The housing system doesn’t provide enough assistance to the extremely poor. Education wise, the rising costs of tutoring makes it unlikely for kids from a poor family to get admitted to a good school, and therefore potentially enhances the vicious circle of generational poverty.

2. The Hong Kong government seems to be stocking up too big a share of GDP. Last year’s distribution program applies to all citizens including overseas Hong Kong people who haven’t been back for years. It is more like a relief against rising costs of living than an effective redistribution of wealth.

3. Monopoly and the boundary of government’s intervention (which interests me the most). Mr. Tien, a famous businessman in Hong Kong, said on tonight’s forum that a free economy means that the strong become stronger and the weak become weaker. Hong Kong has long advocated “small government, big market”, but has recently been criticized for enhancing the monopoly of property market. To what extent and in what way should the government intervene in the economy?

4. The retirement scheme. It has been mentioned in several parties’ proposals and is relevant to the aging population in Hong Kong. But this will be a major policy change and will have long-term impacts on savings, investments, and future living standards as well.

In the first three chapters of the book Collective Action by Hardin, he synthesized existing literature on two questions: First, what are the preconditions of forming an interest group? Second, once an interest group is formed, how to ensure that members do contribute to promote the wellbeing of the organization?

Regarding the first question, the answer is short and long. The short answer is: we form groups to achieve something that cannot be done by individuals out of their own interests. In a classical Prisoner’s dilemma situation, the pursuit of self-interest leads to an inferior outcome for both players. The same logic applies for a larger group of players. An organization is set up to promote a certain extent of cooperation for players to improve their payoffs. Also, there might be a subgroup (privileged group) which can still benefit if they were to provide the full costs to accomplish group benefits. A good example is big companies lobbying for tariffs out of their own interests while creating benefits for smaller companies in the same industry.

Another example is China’s household responsibility system reform in the late 1970s. The farmers who initiated the reform (locally) had to endure high political risks, but they were also eager to improve their own wellbeing and abandon the inefficient commune system. The close-knit nature of the local community means that if anyone betrayed, the rest of the village would never forgive him and he would for sure live a miserable life afterwards. Therefore the bystanders didn’t create any troubles.

I have found Hardin’s explanation on the second question enlightening. Apart from the fact that organizations can help improve individuals’ welfare, other factors also contribute to the organization once it is created. Mancur Olson put forward the by-product theory and suggests that sometimes organizations succeed in realizing certain goals simply by stimulating group-oriented behaviors. For instance, women’s liberation movements benefited a lot from the women’s leagues which were originally created for social life. The existence of an organization provides the convenience to coordinate and to gather power to fight for members’ rights.

Another intriguing question is about whether group size affects the formation of an organization (or, whether a group is latent or not). There’s dispute on this issue. Some suggest that as the number of individual increases, an individual is more reluctant to pay for the common good. But if there is increasing returns to scale, a coalition can still be formed and led by some “big” players (those who will gain significantly from collective action).

I once talked with a friend who did her internship in Grameen Foundation in China last summer. The Grameen Bank founded by Mohammed Yunus in Bangladesh has been viewed as the successful prototype for small-scale credit, and has been duplicated and promoted in Africa, China. Here is a description of China’s microfinance industry by Wharton Business School at UPenn.

However, the status-quo of microfinance in China is not that optimistic. Sarah Tsien, a consultant with IPC, an affiliate of ProCredit in Germany, puts it more strongly: “Microfinance has been quite a disaster in China. Overall, it never achieved a scale of sustainability.”

According to UNDP, China’s microfinance project is faced with three major problems: legal and regulatory arrangements, capacity, and funds. China’s banking sector is closely related to the government, and interest rates have been kept at an artificially low level, allowing banks to reap great profits from lending. According to Wang Jun, senior research fellow at the China Center of Economic Research, Tsinghua University, it remains politically problematic for banks to place commercial objectives ahead of supporting poverty-relief policy objectives.

I’ll elaborate on this topic in my future articles.

Symphony No. 5 (youtube) was composed by Wang in 2001. It was written for 22 strings instruments and was dedicated  to the great Chinese author Lu Xun to commemorate the 120th anniversary of his birth and the 65th anniversary of his death.

I can recognize three parts of the symphony. The first was slow and complexly weaved by string instruments. I hear the deep sorrows in the complicated background. The music contains elements of Chinese folk music, especially that from Northwest China. The melody reminds me of my childhood where I lived in a friendly and close-knit neighborhood. Warm feeling in a Chinese way. There are some typhoon-like sounds which are probably symbols of disasters, say, the cultural chaos in China in the 1960s and 1970s. The plain voice of the string instruments lets us imagine the deep conflicts between the hope and the reality.

The second part, a duet, is relatively light. This is like a warrior marching towards some pre-set goal, determined and hopeful. More folk elements appear in this part. I would interpret the on-and-off plain sound of the strings as the inner conflicts of the Chinese people in that special era where Lu Xun lived. The sound gets thicker and thicker, and eventually returns to a similar style as the first part.

The last part is a repercussion of the first. The author presents what seems to me a tribute to Mr. Lu Xun. The plain string sound reappears, with clearer beats. The downward spiral of melody sounds firmer and richer, and finally ends in peace. Unlike the tenseness of the first part, this part is more like finding one’s way in the dark, directionless on the one hand and hopeful on the other.

The ending is a complicated mix of strings. It’s like a sword pointing into the sky, leaving us with a remote memory and a silver lining, just like Mr. Lu Xun leaves us with his fighter’s spirit and sympathy towards all Chinese people.