Chapter 2 The Trajectory of Chinese Developmentalist Action and Its Contemporary Challenges

Abstract

Introduction: Machiavelli in Beijing? 1 I compare luck to one of these impetuous rivers which, when irritated, flood the nearby plains, uproot the trees and the houses, drag lands from one point to the other: everyone flees away from them, yet eventually yield to their undertow, being powerless to stop them at any given point. Even so, nothing stops men from, after calmness having resumed, taking measures, building dams and dykes so that when the flood comes again the river flows through a canal, or its might become less free and harmful. Such is the case with Fortune, which shows its strength where it cannot find orderly Virtù ready to restrain it, and turns its might towards the points where it knows dams and dykes have not been erected to contain it. Niccolò Machiavelli Even if it hasn’t been written from its direct example, the excerpt above speaks directly to the millenary Chinese civilization. Its long-term Geo- History is trespassed by the repeated construction and destruction of restraints and dams to contain the overwhelming might of its waters, especially the great Huang He and Yangatsè rivers, which flow through large portions of its territory. The metaphor mobilized in The Prince to illustrate the duo virtù and fortuna – synonym of the meeting of the cleverness of human endeavor and the inescapable unpredictability of chance – could not, therefore, be more adequate for the purposes of our present reflection.