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Comment by DenisM | Hacker News Reader

The Chinese Governemnt does. They had a plan to industrialize a country of a billion people, and they are half way through as the plan continues apace.

They didn't have a choice - population growth in an agrarian country was a disaster for the country. They had to do something or see their country plunge into famine and chaos. And therein may be your answer - they did it because they had to. Western societies can coast a long way on the momentum they have picked up earlier.

Necessity is the mother of innovation.

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> Necessity is the mother of innovation.

It is, but it is not the driver of it. China was an agrarian country with insane population growth before Deng Xiaoping took office and yet the remedy of the government at that time was to increase population growth even further and spur on the youth in some sort of whack job ideological frenzy.

At some point, some people took some responsibility and turned the ship around. To my mind this is the most important thing to keep in mind about the current Chinese government: it may be staggeringly corrupt and have an absolutely frightening human rights record, but for the past thirty years it has done a surprisingly good job in reducing poverty for hundreds of millions of people. This does not mean they should be forgiven their abuses, but their successes definitely deserve credit.

> Deng Xiaoping took office and yet the remedy of the government at that time was to increase population growth even further and spur on the youth in some sort of whack job ideological frenzy.

Can you clarify? Wikipedia does not seem to support your statement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_Xiaoping#Re-emergence_post...

Thanks.

Wack job ideological frenzy: the cultural revolution

Increase population growth: One of Mao's slogans was "The more people we are, the stronger we are". Some graphs here: http://www.slideshare.net/isc/china-population-policies

But wait, this happened before Deng came to power. Deng oversaw dismantling of he cultural revolution, per above Wikipedia link.

The mode degree of Central Party members is in Engineering. The mode degree of Congress is Law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_(statistics)

That would probably be related to the fact that Congress is s purely legislative body.

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