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Comment by fullsend | Hacker News Reader

This reminds of how the politburo of China is often made up of engineers, chemists, and people with similar backgrounds. Whereas American politicians are all lawyers.

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This used to be true only in the most technical sense, partly because sciences/engineering degrees were still permitted during the cultural revolution —- it was the only option.

The newer generation of leaders is mostly lawyers and economics degrees.

Source: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/07/04/chinas-overrated-techno...

I'm assuming people become members of the politburo after a substantial career in the political party apparatus, maybe even longer than it takes to become a member of congress. Of course, there will be differences between coming up in the one system or the other, but essentially I'd say they are career politicians just the same.

Presumably, there's also a very strong selection process to make it into the top ranks of this political system, that will have a very strong effect on who gets there and how they get shaped on the way - not mentioning the forces within, once you're in place.

So while it would be wrong to say the initial background makes no difference, I wonder how much influence it still holds once you make it into the politburo.

this reminds me of how the politburo of china is 99.9% male, the sons of the party elite get favorable positions, and you keep your position by telling the dictator what they want to hear instead of what is actually going on.

That used to be true, but the cultural revolution put a dent in that. While it is still likely they’ll have a degree in engineering, the leadership is now a lot like Xi Jinping in being career politicians (he has a 2 year correspondence chemical engineering degree from qinghua, but never worked as an engineer).

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