Xi's team to lead a 21st Century China They want for their grandchildren a prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious, and beautiful life

The Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the 19th CPC Central Committee from left, Han Zheng, 63, the Communist Party Secretary of Shanghai; Wang Huning, 62, Director of the Central Policy Research Office; Li Zhanshu, 67, Director of the General Office of the Communist Party of China; President Xi Jinping, 64, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China ; Premier Li Keqiang, 62, Premier of the People's Republic of China; Wang Yang, 62, Vice Premier of the People's Republic of China; and Zhao Leji, 60, Secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

For the first time at the end of a National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), all seven Standing Committee members of the Political Bureau were born after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

All were born and raised in the People's Republic of China. That means that none of them were WWII veterans and none were part of the Revolution. Instead, all were impacted as children from 1958 to 1962 by Chairman Mao's Great Leap Forward and as teens by Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution from 1966 until 1976.

The Great Leap Forward was intended through the use of persuasion and force to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a socialist society through rapid industrialization and collectivization but instead caused economic regression, the Great Chinese Famine, and tens of millions of deaths. Welcome to childhood.

The goal of the Cultural Revolution was to preserve 'true' Communist ideology in the country by purging remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society, and to re-impose Maoist thought as the dominant ideology within the Party. Millions of people were persecuted in the violent struggles that ensued across the country, and suffered a wide range of abuses including public humiliation, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, hard labor, sustained harassment, seizure of property and sometimes execution. A large segment of the population was forcibly displaced, most notably the transfer of urban youth to rural regions during the Down to the Countryside Movement. Historical relics and artifacts were destroyed. Cultural and religious sites were ransacked.

To understand the meaning of this history to these seven men, one only need to look at the experience of President Xi Jinping.

After the founding of the Communist state in 1949, Xi's father held a series of posts, including propaganda chief, vice-premier, and vice-chairman of the National People's Congress. Xi was born June 15, 1953. Based on normal expectations, Xi's future looked bright.

But when Xi was age 10, his father was purged from the Party and sent to work in a factory in Luoyang, Henan. In May 1966, Xi's "high school years" were cut short by the Cultural Revolution, when all secondary classes were halted for students to criticise and fight their teachers. Xi was age 15 when his father was jailed in 1968.

In 1969, lacking the protection of his father, Xi was sent to work in Yanchuan County, Shaanxi, in Mao Zedong's Down to the Countryside Movement. After a few months, unable to stand rural life, he ran away to Beijing. He was arrested during a crackdown on deserters from the countryside and sent to a work camp to dig ditches.

In 1981, the Party declared that the Cultural Revolution was "responsible for the most severe setback and the heaviest losses suffered by the Party, the country, and the people since the founding of the People's Republic" Welcome to adolescence.

Read the Wikipedia entry on Xi for more details (and the Wikipedia entry on Peng Liyuan his folksinger wife who until 2007 was more well-known). Also, in 2007 when it became evident that Xi was being groomed to assume the duties of his current job, an article appeared in The Guardian which helps provide some perspective from a British point of view: Most corrupt officials are from poor families but Chinese royals have a spirit that is not dominated by money.

The following graphic indicates the Party organization.

The seven-member Political Bureau Standing Committee is the center of political power in China. While certainly this year the generational factor is important, it is also important to know that five of the seven are new to the Standing Committee.

It is also true that none are in their fifties, a fact troubling to some American pundits. In more recent times being in that 50's age group would have indicated a Standing Committee member was being prepared to replace President Xi five years from now in 2022.

Of course, in 2022 only one of the Standing Committee members will be as old as Donald Trump was when he became U.S. President this year. In fact, in 2022 President Xi will be 69, two years younger than Trump is right now!

For more about these seven men, Hong Kong's South China Morning Post offers this: China's Leadership Reshuffle: Profiles.

More troubling to many is that none of these guys are women. In fact, at the next level down, in the 25 member Political Bureau (aka Politburo), the number of from two women members to one after the 19th National Congress.

Of the delegates to the Party Congress, only 24.1% were women. When comparing ruling parties, that is about the same ratio as the delegates to the 2016 Republican Party National Convention. (The 2016 National Convention of the losing Democratic Party had about 60% women.)

China's two most senior female politicians a month ago were vice premier Liu Yandong, 71, a scion of a political dynasty -- her father was a close ally of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin -- and Sun Chunlan, a rising Party chief.

In this week's leadership reshuffle, Liu retired from the Politburo, leaving Sun as the only female member. Sun Chunlan, 67, is head of the party’s United Front Work Department, the agency that serves as the Party's interface with individuals and organizations that are not Party members that have social, commercial, or academic influence, or who represent important interest groups, both inside and outside China.

Another woman politician better known to the West, Fu Ying, 64, an ethnic Mongol born in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China, is not a member of the Politburo, although she has held Ambassador posts to Australia and the Philippines and currently holds the position of vice foreign minister after a long career in the Chinese diplomatic service. In 2010 the Financial Times offered an extensive article Lunch with the FT: Madam Fu Ying which included this giving us an insight into her formative years:

    Fu Ying was born in 1953 in Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia, an “autonomous region” of China. Her parents were bilingual, speaking Mandarin and Mongolian. Her father wrote poetry. She can, she tells me, still remember the day that a tall, ethnically Chinese man arrived at the family home to take her father away. It was 1967 and the height of the Cultural Revolution, the bloody chaos unleashed by Mao to purge the party and consolidate power.
    “The [tall] man looked into my eyes and said, ‘Democracy is great. Do you know what is democracy?’ I shook my head; I didn’t know. And he said, ‘That’s the change of history. You will be swept away by the change of history.’” (Democracy, during the Cultural Revolution, was equivalent to anarchy. No wonder, I muse to myself, it does not carry the same positive connotations in China as in the west.)
    A tear appears in Madam Fu’s eye. She recounts how school was shut down and she was taken away, aged 17, to a remote town in the mountains, Wulashan, five hours distant by train. There she worked in the fields – “very, very physical, really stressful and extreme for a young girl” – before helping to build a new factory where she was employed as an announcer, broadcasting information to her co-workers about the weather and the like through a loudspeaker.
    But then, in 1973, she had her first break. The Cultural Revolution was in its last throes and previously frowned-upon practices such as examinations to test pupil ability were revived. Fu Ying excelled, having squirrelled away first Russian and then French classics from a library in Wulashan. She also excelled in English, having picked up the basics on Chinese radio. She gained a place to study for four years at Beijing Foreign Studies University.
    After the death of Chairman Mao in 1976, China started to open to the rest of the world. Suddenly, interpreters were in heavy demand. Madam Fu joined the elite translation department of the diplomatic service.

It is clear that the generation now leading China had a less than enchanting experience with Mao's brand of authoritarianism under the name communism. On the other hand, for these and most Chinese people, China has a 7,000 year history, most of which has been as a moderately successful single autocratic state under an emperor. [To learn more about China, its history and culture, watch the six episode Story of China at PBS.org.]

While most of us who live in the Progressive Pacific states have some awareness of China, it is important to understand how the current Chinese leadership generation sees the world. Among others, Fu Ying has been tasked with assisting us. In 2016 in Foreign Affairs her article How China Sees Russia she provides clear insight into information we should understand:

    ...China has no interest in a formal alliance with Russia, nor in forming an anti-U.S. or anti-Western bloc of any kind. Rather, Beijing hopes that China and Russia can maintain their relationship in a way that will provide a safe environment for the two big neighbors to achieve their development goals and to support each other through mutually beneficial cooperation, offering a model for how major countries can manage their differences and cooperate in ways that strengthen the international system.
    On several occasions between the end of the nineteenth century and the middle of the twentieth century, China entered into an alliance with the Russian empire and its successor, the Soviet Union. But every time, the arrangement proved short-lived, as each amounted to nothing more than an expediency between countries of unequal strength. In the decades that followed, the two powerful communist-led countries muddled through, occasionally cooperating but often riven by rivalry and mistrust. In 1989, in the waning years of Soviet rule, they finally restored normalcy to their relations. They jointly declared that they would develop bilateral relations based on “mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual nonaggression, noninterference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.” Two years later, the Soviet Union disintegrated, but Chinese-Russian relations carried on with the principle of “no alliance, no conflict, and no targeting any third country.”
    Soon thereafter, the newborn Russian Federation embraced the so-called Atlanticist approach. To win the trust and help of the West, Russia not only followed Western prescriptions for economic reform but also made concessions on major security issues, including reducing its stockpile of strategic nuclear weapons. However, things didn’t turn out the way the Russians had hoped, as the country’s economy tanked and its regional influence waned. In 1992, disappointed with what they saw as unfulfilled pledges of American and European assistance and irritated by talk of NATO’s eastward expansion, the Russians began to pay more attention to Asia. That year, China and Russia announced that each would regard the other as a “friendly country” and issued a joint political statement stipulating that “the freedom of people to choose their own development paths should be respected, while differences in social systems and ideologies should not hamper the normal progress of relations.”
    Ever since, Chinese-Russian relations have gradually improved and deepened. During the past 20 years or so, bilateral trade and investment have expanded on a massive scale. In 2011, China became Russia’s largest trading partner. In 2014 alone, China’s investment in Russia grew by 80 percent—and the trend toward more investment remains strong. To get a sense of the growth in economic ties, consider that in the early 1990s, annual bilateral trade between China and Russia amounted to around $5 billion; by 2014, it came close to $100 billion. That year, Beijing and Moscow signed a landmark agreement to construct a pipeline that, by 2018, will bring as much as 38 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas to China every year. The two countries are also planning significant deals involving nuclear power generation, aerospace manufacturing, high-speed rail, and infrastructure development. Furthermore, they are cooperating on new multinational financial institutions, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the New Development Bank BRICS, and the BRICS foreign exchange reserve pool.

In the middle of the 2008 financial crisis Xi said: "First, China doesn't export revolution; second, China doesn't export hunger and poverty; third, China doesn't come and cause you headaches. What more is there to be said?"

This past week Xi reaffirmed that Beijing will never seek hegemony or engage in expansion "no matter what stage of development it reaches" and that "China will never pursue development at the expense of others' interests and its development does not pose a threat to any other country."

In her 2010 article Fu Ying noted:

    In remarks during [his visit to the United States in 2009], Xi directly addressed the idea that China’s development presents a challenge to the United States’ global leadership. “The path China follows is one of peaceful development, and China does not pose a threat to other countries,” Xi said. Later, he added, “People should give up the old concepts of ‘you lose, I win,’ or zero-sum game, and establish a new concept of peaceful development and win-win cooperation. If China develops well, it will benefit the whole world and benefit the United States. If the United States develops well, it will also benefit the world and China.”

If one pays attention to what this new generation of Chinese leadership communicates, we can create a consistent set of China-centered goals that evolve from this 2008 statement:

In 2012 Xi's goal for 2020 was made clear:

And now, in 2017, Xi set forth for 2049 the goal of achieving "a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious, and beautiful."

We need to know and understand these people.

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This post is the third one of four on the 21st Century political and cultural objectives that have been set by China. Click on the images below to read the other three.

Xi Jinping's strategy for a 21st Century China With thoughtful Chinese characteristics a President tends his plan for 1.4 billion people for 2020 ...and 2035 ...and 2049

The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) was began last week, a once-every-five-years gathering.

Speaking for three hours and 23 minutes, China's President and Party General Secretary Xi Jinping delivered the opening report to the nearly 2,300 party delegates who represent China's

• 22 provinces; 
• five autonomous regions, each with a designated minority group; 
• four municipalities; 
• two Special Administrative Regions;
• plus the central financial system, state-run institutions, the military and the police.

The People's Republic of China is the world's most populous country, with a population of around 1.404 billion, and at 9.3 million square kilometres (3.6 million square miles), is the world's second-largest state by land area. For comparison, the United States of America has 23% of the population at 0.324 billion people, but at 9.1 million square kilometres (3.5 million square miles) is almost as big geographically.

As usual, the American press struggled with its coverage of the 19th National Congress (however limited it was, which means very limited). Of course many American "journalists" couldn't even tell you how the government works that is responsible for the contents of their own toilet after its flushed, much less explain how government really works in China. And many bring to the subject of China's government a nationalistic bias of their own heavily colored by mid-20th Century views on communism and socialism.

Yes, the Communist Party of China provides the leadership of the state. However, to understand government in China one must understand this explanation from Wikipedia:

Due to China's large population and area, the administrative divisions of China have consisted of several levels since ancient times. The constitution of China provides for three de jure levels of government. Currently, however, there are five practical (de facto) levels of local government: the provincial (province, autonomous region, municipality, and special administrative region), prefecture, county, township, and village.

Since the 17th century, provincial boundaries in China have remained largely static. Major changes since then have been the reorganization of provinces in the northeast after the establishment of the People's Republic of China and the formation of autonomous regions, based on Soviet ethnic policies. The provinces serve an important cultural role in China, as people tend to identify with their native province.

As with President Donald Trump, China's President Xi has no direct role overseeing local sewage systems. But unlike an American President, Xi is the General Secretary of the Communist Party in a de facto one-party state and holds ultimate, albeit indirect, authority over almost all government officials through the Communist Party.

Nonetheless, it is important to note that the governmental electoral system is pyramidal. Local People's Congresses are directly elected, and higher levels of People's Congresses up to the National People's Congress (NPC) are indirectly elected by the People's Congress of the level immediately below. The political system is decentralized, and provincial and sub-provincial leaders have a significant amount of autonomy.

The most recent post here in this blog - in May - was about President Xi, the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, and the California-China Business Summit during ChinaWeek.

The Belt and Road Forum was President Xi's opportunity to lay out a broad foreign policy with an emphasis on creating a 21st Century China that could replace the United States as the world's preeminent economic power - much like the United States replaced a floundering Europe in the 20th Century.

This past week's 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China sets the agenda for the future of China beginning with that all-important three-hour “work report” speech by Xi.

To provide insight into President Xi's zeal to assure a strong future for his country, it is important to remember that on February 11, 2009, while visiting Mexico, then Vice-President Xi spoke in front of a group of overseas Chinese noting that China's task was to keep "its 1.3 billion people from hunger."

And regarding the 2008 financial crisis affecting the Atlantic oriented world filled with complaints about Chinese foreign trade: "There are some bored foreigners, with full stomachs, who have nothing better to do than point fingers at us. First, China doesn't export revolution; second, China doesn't export hunger and poverty; third, China doesn't come and cause you headaches. What more is there to be said?"

This week President Xi Jinping reaffirmed that Beijing will never seek hegemony or engage in expansion "no matter what stage of development it reaches" and that "China will never pursue development at the expense of others' interests and its development does not pose a threat to any other country."

Since the 18th CPC Congress in 2012, in which Xi assumed his current position, China's "two centenary goals" were to

1. build a moderately prosperous society by 2020, one year before the Party's 100th anniversary in 2021, and 
2. develop China into a "fully modernized, socialist nation" by the 100th anniversary of the People's Republic of China in 2049.

To accomplish the goals, the "Four Comprehensives" came into being:

1. comprehensively build a moderately prosperous society (put forward at the November 2012 18th Party Congress),
2. comprehensively deepen reform (put forward at the November 2013 3rd Central Committee Plenum),
3. comprehensively and strictly govern the Party (put forward at the early October 2014 summary meeting of the Mass Line Campaign), and
4. comprehensively advance the rule of law (put forward during the late October 2014 4th Central Committee Plenum).

Additionally,  the "Five Development Concepts" from the 13th Five Year Plan (2016-2020) of innovation, coordination, green, openness and shared development were to be implemented.

This week Xi offered in his report a plan to "build on the foundation created by the moderately prosperous society" by implementing "a further 15 years of hard work to see that socialist modernization is basically realized" from 2020 to 2035, and then from 2035 to the middle of the 21st century "work hard for a further 15 years and develop China into a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious, and beautiful."

But Xi warned that it would be "no walk in the park. It will take more than drum beating and gong clanging to get there." He noted how China had "taken a driving seat in international cooperation to respond to climate change," additionally noting: "Only by observing the laws of nature can mankind avoid costly blunders in its exploitation. Any harm we inflict on nature will eventually return to haunt us. This is a reality we have to face!"

And thus in three hours and 23 minutes President Xi Jinping under the title Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era laid out his vision for the Chinese people. “The Chinese nation … has stood up, grown rich, and become strong – and it now embraces the brilliant prospects of rejuvenation … It will be an era that sees China moving closer to centre stage and making greater contributions to mankind.”

Fortunately, the Xinhua News Agency, the official press agency of the People's Republic of China, a ministry-level institution subordinate to the Chinese central government, provided this post-speech summary infographic:

It would be interesting to compare the Chinese President's hopes for his country for the next 30 years, plus the plans for his country to be implemented over the next five years, to those of the U.S. President.

It would be interesting if it weren't for the fact that the U.S. President's thinking is limited to 140 character tweets. It would be interesting if it weren't for the fact that the Trump Administration thinks in those deplorable American time frames described in the last post as "much of our business activity is controlled by a 5 to 10 week time frame and generally Americans struggle with a planning attention span of 5 to 10 days."

Even more troubling is the fact that key members of the Trump Administration are simply uninformed or misinformed about China.

Which brings us again to author and Forbes Contributor Wade Shepard. As noted in the previous post, Shepard is one of those rare American's who, in addition to being able to read and write well above a 6th grade level, is a China expert based upon his travels and study in China. In a post this past Thursday, Shepard wrote:

    On October 3rd, US Defense Secretary James Mattis proclaimed at a congressional hearing, "In a globalized world, there are many belts and many roads, and no one nation should put itself into a position of dictating 'One Belt, One Road.'"
     While the defense secretary was ultimately correct -- there are many different countries who are driving trans-Eurasian integration and China’s international infrastructural, economic, and political engagements do often overlap with other initiatives -- the style, scope, financial backing, strategy, and underlaying purpose behind China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) puts it in a category all its own, and should not be underestimated. We have perhaps never seen a program of geo-economic positioning quite like this before, and skeptically framing it in with known practices or established models is a mistake that political analysts, government officials, and even investors have been making -- even as they are encircled by the very initiative they write off or deny.
     If you’re looking for an official, correct map of where China’s Belt and Road actually goes, good luck. If you’re looking for an official explanation of what it really is, a list of approved projects, the amount of actual funding, where this funding is really coming from, what entities have the authority to engage projects under its name (and what entities don't), or even a run down of what countries are officially a part of it, you’ve just jumped down into a very deep hole of misinformation, no information, and all out propaganda.
     This is an initiative for which there are no publicly-stated KPI [Key Performance Indicator], no overarching institutionalization, no formal membership protocols, no founding charters, and a timeline for development that is not measured in mere years, but decades.

In a post the previous week The Real Reason Behind What's Driving China's Ambitions For A New Silk Road Shepard which describes a natural gas pipeline constructed at a cost of cost $7.5 billion under a 2007 contract negotiated by Xi's predecessor President Hu Jintao which this month will begin shipping natural gas to China.

    ...China’s appetite for this energy source is growing at an impressive clip, and is expected to rise 8.1% annually until 2030, which is far above the 2.1% global annual growth rate.
    If we looked at the entire BRI in terms of China increasing, bolstering, and securing their energy supply lines alone — without any of the rhetoric about global prosperity and “win-win” partnerships — it would still make sense. The economic powerhouse that is China requires energy to run, and this is something the country has not been able to handle on its own since at least 1993.
    Diversifying the sources of foreign oil and gas has been of tantamount importance to Beijing for well over a decade. In 2006, the Brookings Institute pointed this out in no uncertain terms:

    "The Chinese government recognizes that the diversification of China’s oil suppliers and import routes can enhance the security of the country’s oil supply. In terms of oil suppliers, China has sought not only to expand the number of countries and regions from which it imports oil but also to limit its dependence on the Persian Gulf, which in 2005 provided China with almost half of its crude oil imports… In terms of import routes, China wants to reduce its dependence on the sea lines of communication through which almost 90% of the country’s crude oil imports travel because of their vulnerability to disruption on the high seas by various modern navies."

    At this time, the focus of this diversification was mainly on the array of new China-bound oil and gas pipelines that were being dug across Russia and Central Asia. What could not be foreseen then was the attempt to create no less than three multimodal transport corridors that China would spearhead under the premise of the BRI to enable energy shipments from the Middle East and to enter the country while bypassing the heavily US Navy-fortified Straight of Malacca. These three prospective corridors extend overland from the ports of Bandar Abbas in Iran, Gwadar in Pakistan, and Kyauk Pyu in Myanmar up to China, enabling energy shipments to go partway by sea and then the rest of the way by pipeline or potentially even rail.

It is obvious that Xi sincerely hopes for a moderately prosperous China by 2020, a fully modernized China by 2035, and a prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious, and beautiful China by 2049. It is also obvious that he is proud of what China is achieving in the 21st Century.

Orville Schell, head of the Asia Society’s Center on US-China Relations and a veteran China expert who has been studying Chinese politics since the late 1950s, noted that Xi's "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics is a viable counter-model to the presumption of western liberal democracy and capitalism. In a sense, what Xi is setting up here is not only a clash of civilization and values, but one of political and economic systems."

Xi could comfortably note how China had "taken a driving seat in international cooperation to respond to climate change." He added: "Only by observing the laws of nature can mankind avoid costly blunders in its exploitation. Any harm we inflict on nature will eventually return to haunt us. This is a reality we have to face!"

Xi could also note: “No one political system should be regarded as the only choice and we should not just mechanically copy the political systems of other countries. The political system of socialism with Chinese characteristics is a great creation.”

He could say this because he and those in his administration know that with the election of Donald Trump the United States has...

• a Republican President who by a large margin lost the popular vote (for the second time since the year 2000);
• a Senate in which 60 of the 100 Senators with 60% of the vote in the Senate represent less than 25% of the population, while 18 of the 100 Senators with only 18% of the vote in the Senate represent the majority of Americans, and despite the fact that more votes were cast for Democratic candidates than Republican candidates in the last three Senate elections, Republicans control the Senate;
• a House of Representatives in which Democratic candidates received a nationwide plurality but the Republican candidates won a majority of the House seats; and
• a nationwide justice system that randomly injures, kills, or imprisons large numbers of non-white American citizens without a trial, creating the highest incarceration rate in the world with about 22 percent of the world's prisoners in a nation that has about 4.4 percent of the world's population.

...leaving Americans with no ability at all to respond to Xi's "political system" challenge by claiming their government is a democracy - assuming democracy in any sense means majority rule based on the popular vote.

China is facing challenges which if covered by balanced reporting in the U.S. would seem familiar to Americans. Today, nearing the end of the 19th Congress, the Minister of Education Chen Baosheng, Minister of Civil Affairs Huang Shuxian, Minister of Human Resources and Social Security Yin Weimin, Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development Wang Menghui, and Minister of National Health and Family Planning Commission Li Bin held a joint news briefing.

Minister of Human Resources and Social Security Yin Weimin noted that despite the 3.95% registered unemployment rate in China's urban areas at the end of September "raising the capacity to employ workers overall still faces large pressures."

"We need to create 15 million jobs per year," Yin said, singling out China’s more than 8 million new university graduates that enter the job market each year as one group in need of additional employment.

Yin also said the low unemployment rate in the face of an overall slowdown in the economy was largely due to the new internet economy and entrepreneurship, adding that the ministry would actively support startups to help them “thrive”.

He reported "We've helped 8.8 million people in strained circumstances find jobs," adding that the total number of rural migrant workers increased from 263 million in 2012 to 282 million in 2016.

At the two-hour briefing held partly to address what President Xi called China’s “principle contradiction” between the country’s unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing need for a better life, the ministers outlined some of what they consider to be the biggest achievements of the last five years. Among those achievements is the expansion of basic medical insurance to cover 1.3 billion people and educational opportunities for 90 percent of disabled children.

With 230 million people over the age of 60, making up nearly 1/5 of the population, the challenges grow. Minister Huang Shuxian said they are making progress in providing better facilities for those senior citizens noting “28,000 elderly care homes with nearly seven million beds have been registered across the country. Elderly care service facilities are available in all urban communities and in over half of China’s rural communities.”

Minister Chen Baosheng noted the continuing unbalance of educational resources between urban and rural areas, and even among different districts of individual cities. “The basic focus of our policies is to provide benefits to rural areas, to poor performing schools, to less privileged areas, and to people with economic difficulties,” Chen Baosheng said laying out goals for 2020: an 85 percent gross enrollment rate in three-year kindergarten, and 90 percent in high-schools.

While this was a press briefing, not a new conference, the following CGTN America coverage on YouTube provides a video context though it does have to be pointed out that CGTN is the collection of international language news channels run by the China's government-owned broadcaster China Central Television:

In terms of the goals of China's government, this week provided a good opportunity to learn so long as one recognizes in this context that "short-term" means five years while the year 2049 looms on the Chinese culture's visible horizon.

The year 2049 looms on the California culture's visible horizon also. We might want to give some thought to how China's goals might impact us as we cope with economic and environmental issues.

To learn more about China, its history and culture, watch the six episode Story of China at PBS.org.

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This post is the second one of four on the 21st Century political and cultural objectives that have been set by China. Click on the images below to read the other three.

Xi Jinping's 21st Century Silk Economic Belt and Road About California's future if China becomes the world's 21st Century economic center

At the beginning of this month, for two weeks an event took place for which I can find no news coverage in the United States - not even California news sources. Here is how the China Daily described it:

    An annual event dedicated to promoting business and cultural exchanges between China and California, ChinaWeek draws industry and government representatives from Guangdong, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Jiangsu, Shandong, Shanghai and Chongqing to expand and deepen bilateral trade and investment, said Peter Shiao, chairman of ChinaWeek and its organizer.
    California Governor Jerry Brown, as usual, was upbeat on the state's relationship with China during his keynote speech at Tuesday's California-China Business Summit, an important component of ChinaWeek.
    Brown anticipates closer and deeper collaborations within a wide spectrum of industries and fields between China and California, especially high tech, clean tech, real estate, agriculture, infrastructure and education. "Let's roll up our sleeves to have the work done," said the governor.
    China in the past 16 years has invested $16 billion in more than 370 businesses in California and accounted for 60 percent of international trade activities in the "gateway state", said Shiao, adding that China remains Los Angeles County's biggest trader partner.

Not one American news website story on this gathering can be found if you do a Google news search.

On the other hand, this past week's Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation was given some, albeit mostly dismissive, coverage by the American press, from both mainstream and alt right.

Click on images to see larger versions!

What may have been the most significant political speech of 2017 was a toast at a banquet at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. China's President Xi Jinping in calling for renewing the Silk Road spirit said:

    More than 2,000 years ago, our ancestors, driven by a desire for friendship, opened the overland and maritime Silk Roads and thus started a great era of exchanges among civilizations. Today, we gather here to renew the Silk Road spirit and discuss the Belt and Road development for international cooperation. This is both a continuation of our shared legacy and a right choice for the future.

He also noted that the Belt and Road Initiative embodies the aspiration for inter-civilization exchanges, the yearning for peace and stability, the pursuit of common development and the shared dream for a better life.

Silk Road? Belt and Road Initiative?? 2000 years??? Where is the all important "me" in that????

In considering such a span of human history, it is wise to keep in mind these words from the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz:

Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills—
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Despite the fact that "selfies" and self-important tweets are all the rage among the consumers of the world, there is no "me" in considering 2000 years, even in or particularly in the World Wide Web. Individual fruit flies and individual humans are equally unimportant over time periods measured in centuries.

Yes there have been individual humans who made a significant continuing impact on humans in time spans measured in thousands of years. It would be fair to say that of the 100,000,000,000± billion folks who have ever lived and are not alive today, 100± individuals made a significant impact that reverberates through history to today. That's 1 out of every 1 billion.

So it's likely that, out of the 7 billion now alive, there are seven individuals out there who will be recognized as someone who still impacts significantly on human life 2,000 years from now.

And not that most of us don't contribute to the cumulative gross mess that is human history. But it is likely that when it comes to altering the course of that history in a meaningful way, this guy is probably one of the seven....

You probably recognize he is not Donald Trump nor any other American. Nor for that matter is he from any European culture. If you are among 95%+ of Americans, just from the picture below you will not be able to place a name...

...with the face of the man in the middle with is wife, China's President Xi Jinping.

On February 11, 2009, while visiting Mexico, then Vice-President Xi spoke in front of a group of overseas Chinese noting that China's task was to keep "its 1.3 billion people from hunger" and regarding the financial crisis affecting the Atlantic oriented world: "There are some bored foreigners, with full stomachs, who have nothing better to do than point fingers at us. First, China doesn't export revolution; second, China doesn't export hunger and poverty; third, China doesn't come and cause you headaches. What more is there to be said?"

That helps put a bit of perspective on his visit to Central Asia and Southeast Asia in September and October 2013, when as China's President he raised the initiative of jointly building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road.

Additional perspective (for those who live in a country that is less than 400 years old) comes from China's history where writing began around 7000 BCE,  the first empire dynasty emerged around 2100 BCE, and the Shang Dynasty from the 17th to the 11th century BCE created oracle bone script which is a direct ancestor of modern Chinese characters. To make a long story short, around 220 BCE the state of Qin established the first unified Chinese state. Its King Zheng enacted legalist reforms throughout China, notably the forced standardization of Chinese characters, measurements, road widths (i.e., cart axles' length), and currency. His dynasty also conquered the Yue tribes in Guangxi, Guangdong, and Vietnam. The Han dynasty emerged to rule China between 206 BCE and CE 220, creating a cultural identity among its populace still remembered in the ethnonym of the Han Chinese. The Han expanded the empire's territory considerably, with military campaigns reaching Central Asia, Mongolia, South Korea, and Yunnan, and the recovery of Guangdong and northern Vietnam from Nanyue. Han involvement in Central Asia and Sogdia helped establish the land route of the Silk Road, replacing the earlier path over the Himalayas to India. Han China gradually became the largest economy of the ancient world. For more historical detail on the Silk Road click on this image:

Historical extent of Silk Route/Silk Road. Red is land route and the blue is the sea/water route.

Xi's Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road - also known as the Belt and Road Initiative, the Belt and Road (abbreviated B&R), or One Belt, One Road (abbreviated OBOR) - is a broad international economic development strategy that focuses on connectivity and cooperation among countries.

The plan covers 65 nations, about 60 per cent of the world’s population and a third of global GDP. China has budgeted $40 billion for the project. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which began operations last year with $100 billion in capital, is also expected to fund Belt and Road projects.

The Belt and Road initiative is geographically structured along six corridors, and the maritime silk road:

• New Eurasian Land Bridge, running from Western China to Western Russia
• China–Mongolia–Russia Corridor, running from Northern China to Eastern Russia
• China–Central Asia–West Asia Corridor, running from Western China to Turkey
• China–Indochina Peninsula Corridor, running from Southern China to Singapore
• China–Pakistan Corridor, running from South-Western China to Pakistan
• Bangladesh–China–India–Myanmar Corridor, running from Southern China to India
• Maritime Silk Road, running from the Chinese Coast over Singapore and India to the Mediterranean.

The initiative calls for the integration of the region into a cohesive economic area through building infrastructure, increasing cultural exchanges, and broadening trade. Apart from this zone, which is largely analogous to the historical Silk Road, another area that is said to be included in the extension of this 'belt' is South Asia and Southeast Asia.

Many of the countries that are part of this belt are also members of the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). North, central and south belts are proposed. goes through Central Asia, Russia to Europe. The Central belt goes through Central Asia, West Asia to the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean. The South belt starts from China to Southeast Asia, South Asia, to the Indian Ocean through Pakistan. The Chinese One Belt strategy will integrate with Central Asia through Kazakhstan's Nurly Zhol infrastructure program. (Much of this information is from the Wikipedia entry which offers more.)

From a movement point of view the B&R historical ties looks something like this:

But in terms of world impact it could also be viewed this way...

...or this way:

Click on image to access links to each country.

Attending the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation this past week were the following representatives of non-member nations:

Heads of State:

• Argentina: President Mauricio Macri Chile: President Michelle Bachelet
• Fiji: Prime Minister Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama
• Greece: Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras
• Italy: Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni
• Kenya: President Uhuru Kenyatta
• Philippines: President Rodrigo Duterte
• Poland: Prime Minister Beata Szydło
• Spain: Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy
• Switzerland: President Doris Leuthard

Minister Level:

• Australia: Trade Minister Steve Ciobo
• Brazil: Secretary for Strategic Affairs Hussein Ali Kalout
• Finland:  Minister of Transport and Communications of Finland Anne Berner
• Germany: Minister of Economic Affairs Brigitte Zypries
• North Korea: Kim Yong-jae, Minister of External Economic Relations

Other:

• France: Jean-Pierre Raffarin, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, Defense and Armed Forces in the French Senate
• Japan: LDP Secretary General Toshihiro Nikai
• South Korea: Ambassador to China Kim Jang-soo; Park Byeong-seug, National Assembly member for the Democratic Party
• United States: Matt Pottinger, National Security Council senior director for Asia (Who???)

There is a lot of recent history and current activity involved, not all of which has been successful as explained in Wade Shepard's I Spent Two Years On China's Belt And Road, And This Is What I Found. Shepard also provides a proper perspective:

    China takes a long-term view of these investments, and have show that they are willing to exercise the requisite patience. By long-term view, I mean 30, 40, 50 years down the line, not the 5 to 10 years that is roughly where the west’s nearsightedness kicks in.
    China has shown that it is both willing and able to weather the storms of domestic and international politics in order to get what they want in the end.

Shepard is one of those rare American's who, in addition to being able to read and write well above a 6th grade level, is a China expert based upon his travels and study in China. He is currently traveling the New Silk Road doing research for a new book. You can follow his writings through this feed.

Which brings us back to that 2000 year window. As Shepard commented about Americans, we are limited by "the 5 to 10 years that is roughly where the west’s nearsightedness kicks in." That is really generous as much of our business activity is controlled by a 5 to 10 week time frame and generally Americans struggle with a planning attention span of 5 to 10 days.

So it's probably ok that those selfies and tweets are on some electronic device and/or cloud that will certainly and inevitably disappear over the next hundred years. They don't matter, not even Donald Trumps tweets, nor all the self-important news reporters following them.

As explained in an Atlantic article while most post-election analysis cited economic anxiety as the main concern when people chose to vote for Donald Trump, a newer survey paints a different picture - it was cultural anxiety that drove white, working-class voters to Trump.  Sixty-eight percent of white working-class voters said the American way of life needs to be protected from foreign influence and nearly half agreed with the statement, “things have changed so much that I often feel like a stranger in my own country.”

So, the American way of life needs to be protected from foreign influence. Members of the alt-right and Trump tweet about it on their smart phones manufactured in Asia by Asians. But then again so do the members of what is now being called "the Alt-Left" led by Bernie Sanders which is working to take over the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, The Sydney Morning Herald reported Sunday that Eleven Asia-Pacific nations agree to salvage Trans-Pacific Partnership:

    Eleven Asia-Pacific nations, including Australia, agreed on Sunday to salvage a massive free trade deal that US President Donald Trump pulled out of days after taking office in January.
    Australia's Trade Minister Steve Ciobo pushed for the agreement at a meeting in Vietnam to "launch a process to assess options" to bring the Trans-Pacific Partnership into force.
    New Zealand Trade Minister Todd McClay, who chaired the meeting, left open the possibility of the US rejoining the TPP despite Mr Trump saying he prefers bilateral free trade deals.
    Mr McClay said each country had to consider both economic values and the strategic importance of the agreement "but in the end there is a lot of unity among all of the countries and a great desire to work together to come up with an agreement."

As I explained almost one year ago Sanders and Trump to destroy Pacific Rim states of California, Oregon, and Washington by forcing the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Because the Alt-Left and -Right led American voters (I consider them both among "The Deplorables") wanted their grandchildren to have income and eat, before voting they examined major economic shifts, studying them as much as they possibly could, ignoring their own self-indulgent feelings of stress. So they knew the TPP was a plan to reduce the impact of China on the economies of the Pacific Rim nations and the World over the next 50-100 years - the lifespans of their children and grandchildren.

Except, of course, that isn't what they did because the ignoramuses leading them, Trump and Sanders, still don't know what's happening. As Bill Maher regularly notes, the American voters mostly are stupid, failing to vote their own self-interest mostly because they don't know what that is.

At this point we are facing what I call The Deplorables Map of the Future of World Economics because they at election time assured it (click on it for a larger version):

This economic China-centric world is the future. As the intent of the B&R is explained by The New York Times:

    [China's President] Xi is aiming to use China’s wealth and industrial know-how to create a new kind of globalization that will dispense with the rules of the aging Western dominated institutions. The goal is to refashion the global economic order, drawing countries and companies more tightly into China’s orbit.
    “President Xi believes this is a long-term plan that will involve the current and future generations to propel Chinese and global economic growth,” said Cao Wenlian, director general of the International Cooperation Center of the National Development and Reform Commission, a group dedicated to the initiative. “The plan is to lead the new globalization 2.0.”
    Mr. Xi is rolling out a more audacious version of the Marshall Plan, America’s postwar reconstruction effort. Back then, the United States extended vast amounts of aid to secure alliances in Europe. China is deploying hundreds of billions of dollars of state-backed loans in the hope of winning new friends around the world, this time without requiring military obligations.
    Mr. Xi’s plan stands in stark contrast to President Trump and his “America First” mantra. The Trump administration walked away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the American-led trade pact that was envisioned as a buttress against China’s growing influence.
    “Pursuing protectionism is just like locking oneself in a dark room,” Mr. Xi told business leaders at the World Economic Forum in January.

As of 2017, China (including Hong Kong) holds $1.324 trillion in U.S. debt derived from our deficit balance of trade. The average American can pretty much figure out where that came from by looking at the stuff around his or her house, cupboards, and closests (as well as staring at that phone in his or her hand). Much of it contains components, or is entirely, made in China. After all it is where the Trump family has their clothing lines made. So President Xi is pretty comfortable loaning a few billion here and there around the world.

But wait. Didn't I say that while the B&R includes about 60 per cent of the world’s population, it only includes a third of global GDP?  And my "Deplorables Map" above doesn't correctly reflect the World as it does not include Europe, particularly the European Union members. After all, the EU is the second largest economy in the world and the world's largest trading block. Of course, Brexit likely will change all that. However, what were talking about here is the area in the square...

...which geographically isn't perhaps the largest block. But nonetheless, it the following map initially would seem to indicate a meaningful portion of the World's economy...

...except... notice the round purple dots on all the countries that are members of China's Belt and Road Initiative and remember as mentioned above that the heads of state of Greece, Italy, Poland, and Spain, plus cabinet ministers from Finland and the United Kingdom attended the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation.

It might not be unreasonable to assume that China's economic policy influence in Europe would increase substantially in the next 50-100 years as the United States abandons its allies like it did in the Pacific Rim.

When contemplating Europe, we have to remember that it is the same distance between Berlin and Beijing as it is between Berlin and the State Capitol of Illinois, Springfield. Far more Chinese citizens live closer to Berlin than Americans. Denver is closer to Beijing than Berlin.

The problem is, our history is Atlantic-centered (except for California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska). That made sense when the sailing ship was the primary source of transportation between continents. But since the mid-20th Century aircraft altered the reality for everyone except Americans East of the Mississippi and Europeans who still live in the 18th Century.

I get it. Sure the Deplorables of the left and right and the Brexiters feel things have changed so much that they often feel like a stranger in their own countries. But it's long past the time that sailing ships were lobbing cannon balls while Francis Scott Key wrote those sterling versus in the defense of owning slaves. Get over it. There are new problems now. Americans are going to have to adjust or lose out completely by the beginning of the 22nd Century.

Back in January, California Governor Jerry Brown went to the Chinese consulate in San Francisco to speak at a Lunar New Year celebration to reaffirm what he called the state's "great interest" in working with China. As explained in the LA Times:

    "There will be a few side arguments in Washington," Brown said. "Don't worry. When it comes to California and China, we're on the right track, and we're going to stay there."
    California has collaborated closely on climate change with Chinese officials, who have studied the state's programs as they formulate their own. Brown said the state also has benefited from China's production of solar panels, helping to drive down the cost of renewable energy.
    "We are working together with China," he said. "Whatever little differences we have, or whatever big differences, the fact is, we have one world. We have one space we're all connected by."
    Brown's brief comments at the consulate weren't all rosy. Often preoccupied with existential threats , he told the audience that he wanted to make sure they "walk out of here with at least three things to worry about."
    First, he said, "you will suffer" if climate change isn't addressed. Second, nuclear bombs could "get used by somebody," which would be "very bad." Third, the global financial system "might collapse again."
    "That's a lot to worry about," Brown said.

Next month Brown will be in China to attend a climate change conference. Brown previously visited China in 2013 on a trade policy trip. He makes these trips because he knows that China and the U.S. have to take the lead on climate change. He also knows the most serious threat of nuclear war comes from North Korea. He understands that as was true in 2008 the potential collapse of the global financial system will result from U.S. economic policy, the impact of which China is trying to avert.

Finally, he understands that while California's economy ranks, depending on year, between #5-#8 in the world, it couldn't without strong foreign trade as represented by this data:

At the end of the 19th Century, bilateral trade relationships between countries dominated which led to the most murderous century in history. At the end of the 20th Century during which 100+ million people died in wars, multilateral trade relationships between countries became the norm to avoid conflict.

China's leadership understands this world reality and intends to take the leadership role which will be facilitated by the absence of U.S. influence. California's leadership understands this world reality and intends to continue its active role in order to protect the interests of its people, particularly necessary in the vacuum left by the U.S. government.

And if you don't think there is a potential threat, consider this article that appeared in Asian news sources but not American news sources in March 2017 Moscow and Beijing join forces to bypass US dollar in world money market and perhaps you'll begin to understand that isolating the U.S. as Trump touts bilateral trade negotiations could become a disaster for the grandchildren of The Deplorables.

---

This post is the first one of four on the 21st Century political and cultural objectives that have been set by China. Click on the images below to read the other three.

California and Kentucky - A tale of two states From Sen. Henry Clay's Compromise of 1850 to Obama's Affordable Care Act

Californians and Kentuckians have one truth in common - neither State shares a cultural identity with another state based on political history. But Californians and Kentuckians have common interests that were in the spotlight in the last seven days.

One is the close relationship between some folks in Cupertino, California, and folks in Harrodsburg, Kentucky - specifically at Apple's headquarters in Silicon Valley and at Corning's glass plant in Kentucky.

Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer, explained to a group of Corning employees on the plant floor Friday that the iPhone originally had plastic on the surface, but when Steve Jobs showed a prototype on the stage in 2007, he kept it in his pocket and by the end of the day the surface was covered with scratches.

Jobs decided that the phone, which was to be released in six months, had to have a glass surface. Every time Apple had tested the iPhone with glass, the glass broke when they dropped it. Shatter resistant glass existed only in Corning's lab. But Corning scrambled and the Harrodsburg plant has been making the Gorilla Glass for iPhones ever since.

Apple announced Friday that it plans to invest $200 million in the Corning Gorilla Glass plant in Harrodsburg. The money will come from Apple’s new Advanced Manufacturing Fund, which the company says will invest $1 billion with U.S.-based companies to develop innovative production and skilled jobs.

The previous Saturday was the 143rd running of the Kentucky Derby as noted in newspapers here in the Northern California Redwoods where we celebrate Seabiscuit. This tie to Kentucky goes much further back than 10 years ago. Seabiscuit was foaled in Lexington, Kentucky, on May 23, 1933 and grew up on Claiborne Farm in Paris, Kentucky, where he was trained.

This links a Wikipedia series about Henry Clay
Early life Legal career Speaker of the House War of 1812 American System Missouri Compromise Second Bank of the United States Bid for the Presidency (1824) Secretary of State Corrupt Bargain Charlotte Dupuy U.S. Senator from Kentucky Nullification Crisis Bid for the Presidency (1832) Whig Party Bid for the Presidency (1844) Compromise of 1850 Death Lying in State

California and Kentucky share some history that goes beyond horse racing. California became a state in 1850 because of Kentuckian Henry Clay.

Tensions between the North and South over the issue of slavery were high in the 1840's. By 1850, after the Mexican-American War, how to handle the former Mexican territory occupied by the United States placed a critical strain.

The Compromise of 1850 was formally proposed by Clay, then a Senator from Kentucky, and guided to passage by Senator Stephen A. Douglas, Democrat of Illinois, over Northern Whig and Southern Democrat opposition. It was enacted September 1850:

1. California was admitted as a free state;
2. Utah Territory and New Mexico Territory were organized with slavery to be decided by popular sovereignty;
3. Texas dropped its claim to land north of the 32nd parallel north and west of the 103rd meridian west in favor of New Mexico Territory, and north of the 36°30' parallel north and east of the 103rd meridian west which became unorganized territory. Texas's boundaries were set at their present form. Senator James Pearce of Maryland drafted the final proposal where Texas ceded its claims to land which later became half of present-day New Mexico, a third of Colorado, and small portions of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming to the federal government, in return for the assumption of $10 million of the old republic's debt. El Paso, where Texas had established county government, was left in Texas;
4. Slave trade was abolished in Washington, D.C. (but not slavery itself);
5. The Fugitive Slave Act was strengthened.

Of particular concern was California and its gold.

I would guess that fewer than one-in-a-hundred-thousand of persons raised in California know about Henry Clay and the Compromise of 1850. Unfortunately, the in-depth teaching of American History in public schools has not been a priority in California where creating student self-involvement was once prioritized under the euphemism "self-esteem."

A failure to understand each other because of a lack of awareness of how historical context alters culture is significant in the United States.  The history is reflected in the differences in the populations. Compare California's racial/ethnic makeup...


to Kentucky's....
Kentucky's population is 85% non-Hispanic White and 8% non-Hispanic Black, which totals to 93% of the population. California is 39% Hispanic and 14% Asian which total to 53% of the population, while 38% of the population is non-Hispanic White and 6% non-Hispanic Black which total to 44% of the population.

It is almost as if the two states have no history in common. And except for Henry Clay having an important role in their histories, they don't have any important cultural history in common.

As I've explained elsewhere, California was a Spanish colony/Mexican territory from the late 1500's to 1849. On the other hand, Kentucky was part of the British colony/U.S. State of Virginia during that 300 year period. Kentucky has no sea coastline but has the most navigable miles of water in the lower 48 states and is the only U.S. state to have a continuous border of rivers running along three of its sides. California is on the Pacific Rim with 3,427 miles of measured coastline.

These different States embraced he Affordable Care Act  ("ObamaCare") but are now responding to the very knotty public policy problem that (1) it requires additional subsidies by the state government and (2) Congress may replace it.

Both the State of California and the State of Kentucky jumped into program enthusiastically. Despite that fact that in 2013 Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell from Kentucky railed against the Affordable Care Act, calling it a “catastrophic failure” for people everywhere, Kentucky's then Democratic Governor Steve Beshear responded: “I have a U.S. senator who keeps saying Kentuckians don’t want this. Well, the facts don’t prove that out."

In Kentucky, more than 400,000 people gained health insurance through the program, with the highest growth rate of Medicaid coverage of any state.

In late 2013, as McConnell pointed out, it was learned that about 280,000 Kentuckians would have to give up their existing insurance policies and enroll in alternatives that comply with the federal Affordable Care Act. Kentucky Department of Insurance spokeswoman Ronda Sloan said individual policies for about 130,000 people would be discontinued, as would small group policies for about 150,000 more.

Beshear’s successor, Republican Governor Bevin, was elected in 2015 on a promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law on the view that thousands of Kentuckians had unaffordable premiums and only one health insurer to choose from.

Bevin explained: “We want this to be a helping hand for people at a time when they need it, but then be able to return to the commercial marketplace.” Last year, Bevin submitted the waiver to restrict Medicaid eligibility by requiring enrollees to work or volunteer at least 20 hours per week and to pay monthly premiums based on income.

In an ideologically Neoliberal proposal Bevin's plan would take away from Medicaid recipients most eye care and dental benefits but then allow recipients to earn them back based on this chart:

Californians, on the other hand, now have Socialist Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders telling us "Please make my life easier. The great state of California can send a message that will be heard all over this country and all over the world if you pass single-payer here.” (He doesn't tell anyone that in Vermont the Governor and the Legislature are locked in battle because under the Affordable Care Act, virtually all teacher health insurance plans must be re-done to start a new plan on January 1, 2018. But hey, nobody cares that Bernie is politically useless in his home state when it comes to solving problems.)

Indeed the "great state of California" is looking at Senate Bill 562, the Healthy California Act, which for all Californians would cover all medical care, including inpatient, outpatient, emergency care, dental, vision, mental health, nursing home care, eliminate co-pays, insurance deductibles and allow Californians to choose their doctor plus referrals would not be required. (It's tempting to say that also for anyone who loses a tooth, regardless of age a State tooth fairy will leave $1,000 under your pillow....)

A nine-member unpaid board appointed by the governor and Legislature would oversee the health system. An advisory committee, consisting of doctors, nurses, consumers and other health care providers, also would guide public policy.

The state would seek waivers from the federal government for Medi-Cal (Medicaid), the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Medicare, and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to offset the cost of the program. But how to pay the substantive balance of the cost has yet to be proposed.

The last California single-payer proposal was introduced in 2007. Estimates indicated it would have cost the state $209.8 billion rising to as much as $252 billion in 2015, according a fiscal analysis by the Legislative Analyst’s Office. The plan included an 8% wage tax on employers and 4% on employees. Based on now known medical care cost increases since 2007, the tax for that plan would have to have been raised substantially, probably some number like 12% on both employers and employees. And the plan was not as comprehensive as the new proposal. It was vetoed by then Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Democratic Governor Jerry Brown when in Washington lobbying about the billions his state could lose on the eve of the House Republican vote to repeal and replace Obamacare said regarding SB562: “Where do you get the extra money? This is the whole question. I don’t even get ... how do you do that? This is called ‘the unknown by means of the more unknown.' In other words, you take a problem, and say ‘I am going to solve it by something that’s ... a bigger problem,’ which makes no sense.”

The reality is that Social Security and Medicare are mostly funded by taxes on wages, partly paid by employers and by employees. Make no mistake about it, any single-payer plan in California will require additional such taxes. And no it won't come from "the rich" as California already has a billionaire-income-tax supporting its deficit budget in a significant amount.

It is a deficit budget, worse than expected as Brown’s administration miscalculated costs for Medi-Cal by $1.9 billion in the 2016-17 budget. The Democratic governor called for more than $3 billion in budget cuts in 2017-18 because of a projected deficit he pegged at $1.6 billion for that year. The massive hole in the Medi-Cal budget surprised state lawmakers.

Since it is likely that California will see reductions in federal support for Medi-Cal within the next few years, it's going to be interesting to watch "liberal" Californian's deal with taxes. Because in 2017 the Democrats controlled ⅔'s of the votes in both houses of the Legislature, a very large gasoline tax increase was approved to do badly needed road maintenance. Now a ballot measure has been proposed to have the voters repeal the gas tax increase.

Without a ⅔'s vote in each house of the Legislature any health care taxes, like all California tax proposals, must be approved  by the voters.

Assuming a tax on wages is proposed, because the State has fumbled a lot of programs over the past two decades, it will be interesting to see if the over-65, most of whom wouldn't be taxed, would consider supporting the measure. Or would the Legislature run into a wall old protestors with signs saying "Keep the STATE GOVERNMENT out of my Medicare." My guess is that would happen if the bill continues to propose to interfere with Medicare.

And of course they would have to get it past voters who have good employer-sponsored health plans. What's the slogan going to be - "Trust Us State Officials to Get Healthcare Right!...even though we risked too much with the Affordable Care Act and now can't even pay that bill."

Consider this problem. In order to pay for health care for a child in a poor family whose Facebook page you don't follow, it might prevent you from buying the next iPhone, as you do each year. That could negatively impact workers in Kentucky.

Which interestingly brings us back to Kentucky's Senator, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who according to a newspaper report noted he had nothing to do with Apple’s investment but came to the plant for the announcement to congratulate the company.

“The last thing I look at at night and the first thing I look at in the morning is my iPhone,” McConnell said. “And unlike most people, I think of Harrodsburg, Kentucky.”

So do some people in Cupertino, Senator.  But why do I doubt you ever think of them?