Ruled by engineers

The article focuses on increasing role of professionals particularly engineers in the politics of China. The has led a rapid progress of Chinese economy in the last few decades. However, with all the progress, spiritual development has lagged behind somewhere. The leadership tend to see politics as an engineering problem with a clear path to a solution, and regard interference by democratic input as unnecessary and destructive. The elite also have a fondness for enormous engineering projects to show off their expertise. The article cites the example of erstwhile USSR which has see its own moment of fast pace development till 1970s. In the 1970s, the USSR produced more tractors and more combines than any other country in the world, yet all this equipment could not solve the motivational problem that continued to cause low productivity in agriculture and poor distribution of its products.