VOLUME V, CHAPTER 11, SECTION 2
Present-Day China, Four Tools in the Struggle over Scarce Resources
The last section set out four tools in present-day America. This section sets out four tools in present-day China, and does the same work with the same discipline. It does not smear China any more than the last smeared America. It sets down the tools and shows that they do the same thing the four American tools do, hold the scarce thing along old advantage, in an entirely different shape. Two great civilizations, two wholly different sets of tools, one identical root. That sameness under the difference is the whole point of setting the two sections side by side.
The first tool is the household registration. This is the system that ties a person's standing, and much of what he may claim, to the place he is registered, so that where a person is registered shapes what schooling, what services, what seats are open to him. Its face is order, the managing of a vast population, the keeping of records a large society needs, and that face is real. But look with the eyes this volume trained. The household registration is an instrument that sorts people by where they are registered, and moves the scarce thing, the good schooling, the good services, the good seats, along lines set largely at birth. It is positional and material scarcity held through the fixing of a person to a place. Different in every mechanical detail from the American credential, and doing the same deep thing, sorting who may reach the good seats along an advantage most people are simply born into.
The second tool is the school district. This is the tie between where a family can afford to live and the schooling its children may receive, so that the scarce thing of good education is reached through the scarce thing of desirable ground. Its face is the natural wish to attach schooling to neighborhoods, a plain administrative arrangement, and that face is real. But under it, the school district is an instrument that sorts children into futures by their parents' ground, moving the scarce thing of good schooling along the lines of who already holds the good ground. Note how this echoes the American real estate tool, and note too how it differs in shape, and see that the echo is the point, the same holding of a scarce future along the line of land and money, wearing a different administrative robe.
The third tool is the establishment post. This is the secure position inside the recognized system, the seat that carries standing, stability, and the flow of goods that comes with being inside rather than outside. There are only so many such posts, far fewer than those who want them, so the establishment post is scarce, and reaching it is governed by rules that sort, examinations, qualifications, connections, that favor, as such ladders always do, those who already had enough to prepare. Its face is the ordering of a workforce, the marking of who holds a recognized position, and that face is real. Under it, the establishment post is positional scarcity's instrument, the good seat reached by a ladder that looks open and sorts along old advantage, the same body as the American credential in altogether different clothes.
The fourth tool is the inside of the system. This is the most abstract of the four and the one that ties the others together, the difference between being inside the recognized order and outside it, the web of standing and access that being inside confers. Its face is simply how a large organized society is arranged, an inside and an outside, and that face is real. But under it, the inside of the system is the instrument by which those who hold standing translate that standing into further access, so that the scarce thing keeps flowing to those already inside, and the line between inside and outside is itself a holding. This is the counterpart to the American political contribution, the tool that closes the loop, by which the holding reaches the pen and keeps the rules answering to those who already hold. Entirely different in mechanism, identical in what it does, keeping the scarce thing circling among those already within.
Now set the two sets of four side by side, and the layer this whole chapter has built comes clear. America holds the scarce thing through the patent, the credential, real estate, and the political contribution. China holds it through the household registration, the school district, the establishment post, and the inside of the system. Eight tools, two civilizations, and not one tool shared between them. And yet the two sets do one and the same thing, hold the scarce thing along old advantage and keep it circling among those who already hold it, each wearing robes of order, fairness, market, or participation, each with a real and defensible face, and under all eight the one root this volume has traced from the well-field and the Twelve Tables, the strong write law to hold the scarce thing alone. The tools are as different as two civilizations can make them. The root is exactly the same. That is the thing to see, and it is why neither section smears its subject, because the point was never that one nation is grasping and the other pure. The point is that the pattern is human, not national, and appears wherever output falls short, dressed in whatever tools that place happens to have.
This is the deepest reason the volume sets the two side by side rather than choosing between them. A reader inside either nation is tempted to see his own set of tools as simply the natural order and the other nation's as the visible machinery of control. The American looks at the household registration and sees a system of control, and looks at his own credential and sees fair achievement. The reader in China looks at the political contribution and sees money buying law, and looks at his own establishment post and sees earned position. Each sees the other's robe as a robe and his own as truth. Setting the eight tools in two rows breaks that spell, because once a person sees that his own four are robes too, worn over the same body the other four cover, he stops mistaking his own arrangement for the natural order and starts seeing the root under both. That is the whole gain of the comparison, and it is available only to a reader willing to lift the robe on his own side, not just the other's.
So this section sets a thirty-third layer, and it gathers the whole long line of scarcity from the well-field to here. In present-day China the scarce thing is held through four tools, the household registration, the school district, the establishment post, and the inside of the system, wholly different in shape from the four American tools and doing the same deep thing, holding the scarce thing along old advantage under robes of order and fairness. Two civilizations, eight different tools, one identical root, the strong write law to hold the scarce thing alone, appearing wherever output falls short. This smears neither nation. It shows the pattern is human, not national. The reader who lifts the robe on his own side, not only the other's, sees the one body under all eight tools. The next section lifts the lens off the inside of any single nation and carries the whole line up to the space between nations, where the root runs on but one crucial thing is missing. Let the reader carry these two rows of four tools into the section that follows.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.