Russia and China

This is just about the worst essay I've ever written, but "America - A Patriotic Primer" has received good reviews, and Trieschmann will care more about my eloquence. As always, I've given her everything. Anyway, I can turn this in, and now I can go to bed, even though I still have like 3 essays I would have liked to do tonight. Ah, well... there's always tomorrow... After all, I actually am one day ahead of schedule with the poem... :D Tired!

And God Damn Ben, he made me chat with him for almost 3 hours.

Although they are viewed as being similar nations due to their communist histories, China and Russia have diverged significantly in recent years. While both have taken a gradually more moderate approach towards the economy, Russia has also made great strides towards a functioning democracy, while China’s people are still under tremendous political oppression. Arguably, this has helped Russia to push ahead of China in development, as is demonstrated by the much higher literacy of the Russian people; 97-98% literacy in Russia compared to 72-81% literacy in China, and by Russia’s GDP, nearly twice that of China.

Although many of Russia’s policies have been controversial, especially within Russia itself, it’s recent push for democracy has garnered international support. At the end of the cold water fifteen years ago, the United States rushed to Russia’s aid with billions of US dollars. Other European countries, eager to see the iron curtain fall, similarily supported Russia’s departure from autocratic communism. The G-7 union of highly developed nations welcomed Russia as an eighth member, and it is currently applying to organizations such as WTO which are helping it dig itself out of it’s economic hole. The impact of this international support is proving to be substantial as Russia is increasingly leaving China behind in the common measures of development, despite China’s more supportive land and higher population.

All the international forces acting on Russia, however, would have had minimal impact if there had not been significant power shifts occurring there since the fall of the Soviet Union. After the departure of Stalin, Krushchev immediately began to put destalination policies into place. Gorbachev whole-heartedly continued this sort of policy, gradually implementing elements of a market economy and a democratic government into Russia’s policies. When the Soviet Union fell, Yeltsin and Putin were actually elected as presidents in a more or less democractic way. There is now a supreme court, a constitutional court, and a bicameral legislature in Russia, and on paper there exists a series of checks and balances between the departments. In actuality, however, it is unclear how effective these checks and balances are, and how democratic the elections are. Still, Russia seems to be making an effort to liberate it’s people, whereas the situation in China is stagnant, with the only notable challenge against the regime being the student protests in Tianenmen square.

Ultimately, the change of leadership and international support and pressure in Russia has led it to adopt a series of reform policies that are slowly transforming Russia into a more modern and developed state. China, on the other hand, has made some economic reforms, but is still extremely oppressive politically, and therefore is lagging behind Russia in overall development.