Since the Great Recession, the Fed has transformed itself into an entity more and more responsible for asset prices. This was the stated goal since 2009 as the Fed adopted a new philosophy called the "Wealth Effect." The thinking behind it was simple: growth in asset prices would translate to an increase in consumer spending and hence demand itself. It was a 'trickle down' economic philosophy an increasingly financialized economy.
This backdrop has defined our post-2009 era which stirred certain pathologies that were reflected in the greater culture and politics. It was the time when 'finance became a culture' and actual-productivity plummeted across most developed economies, especially the United States. But somehow in spite of the accumulating dysfunction across most key areas, everything kept trudging along, partly thanks to investors being satiated with record returns.
While the near-zero interest rate regime may now be ending, it is worth considering how much of the water we were all swimming in excused poor state capacity, distorted economic fundamentals, and how it even kept a lid on the dysfunction potentially blowing up in our faces. Now that we have to reckon with these realities, it may be wise to ask how many worldviews were simply products of the the cheap money regime - which is now, in a shock to many, coming to a close. Whether or not it will easily be let go, however, is another matter.
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Your source says:
I think that contradicts your 4/7 having engineering background figure.
And, that's ignoring that fact that if you went to school in the 70s (like Xi) and studied engineering, you spent 20% of your time studying ideology and making sure you think and say the right things.
Also, the idea that all 7 members of the 1997 standing committee had science and engineering degrees is wrong as Li Lanqing graduated from Fudan University's business management major (resume from CCTV (Chinese): http://2008.cctv.com/special/989/-1/81682.html)
To be honest, I dont think China's ability to do large scale infra is because of bureaucrats majoring in engineer and science, but because of the experience they've built up over the last ~50 years of non-stop building. Shanghai isn't able to create new subway lines in 3 years because its mayor has a STEM degree (he doesn't, though the Shanghai party secretary does), but because of all the subway building experience they've garnered since building the first Shanghai metro line in 1990.
I doubt there were more STEM grads in Aus Parliament when Australia was good at building infrastructure. And I'm pretty confident it's the same story in the US government when they were building new highways and dams and whatever.
I only checked their wikipedia pages, probably just miscounted. 3/7 including Xi is still a lot compared to Western countries, especially Anglo ones.
But why do they have all this experience building? Why did they build so much? India didn't build like China did despite being similarly populous. Now you could say that they decided to make engineering a national priority but why did they decide to do that? It's a chicken and egg problem.
My belief is that if politics is dominated by lawyers, it will tend to overproduce laws, treaties and so on to the detriment of everything else. If there's a problem it will be met with a law. Australia has always been dominated by lawyers and has never been a major industrial power (though that's mostly down to geography and low population IMO). China on the other hand has a rather engineering-based slant to its strategies, neglecting other aspects. They built a whole lot of housing stock as their stimulus measure (we pumped money into tech/finance), they built 2/3 of the world's high speed rail, they built artificial islands to use as strategic bases. The Three Body Problem is basically a eulogy to Chinese engineers who save the world from pinko environmentalist alien sympathizers, about heroic shape rotators struggling against evil-incompetent wordcels. You wouldn't see that in the West.
Now you don't have to have a lot of engineers in government to become a major industrial power. But it does help if you do, in my view. At the very least the government will tend to see things in a more engineering-focused way, they'll tend to incline in that direction.
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