| | Right, Steve. If this were the mandate of a publisher seeking a marketplace, then those who sell to them would create what they want to buy and re-sell. The others would find different outlets. However, this is the government speaking. To disobey is to become a criminal. They behead criminals there and take the organs for transplants for their gerontocratic rulers.
This mandate is against many of the same things we dislike. But there is a deeper and wider issue here. We accept pluralism. China has never known it, not for maybe 4000 years. Even if they have over 50 or 80 ethnic minorities, 90% of the people are Han. They always had autocratic rulers. The best philosophers - Confucius, Mencius - never discovered individualism. We Objectivists dislike Immanuel Kant's version of individualism and reason and Nietzche's individualism without reason; but that is a different dialogue entirely from the one in China - traditionally - where you either submit to the rulers, or as a scribe yourself you seek to do the best for everyone else. Formalist "Legalism" was the only alternative to submission.
Right now, their best and brightest are engaged in hacking into American computers. They are not creating new and wonderful products.
Finding America taking second place to second-handers is embarrassing. We should stop copying the copiers.
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