that people should be allowed to take care of their own affairs because they are closer to them. He then extends his analysis beyond this to include the social benefits of strong local government. “Local liberties . . . bring men constantly into contact, . . . and force them to help one another.” Huang, through observation also realized the value of helping one another economically, socially, and politically: “Beneath the surface of tense economic competition and a desire for self-aggrandizement, people in Lin Village also engaged in gracious mutual assistance that seemed to be handed down by custom. It appears that the fundamental contradiction is not between development and liberty but between big government and little government.Roger Kaplan makes a very good point that lies contrary to the former. He argues that material possessions are one’s life alters their value of community assistance. Kaplan believes “The growing piles of our material possessions make personal life more complex and leave less time for communal matters. And as communities become liberated from geography, as well as more specialized culturally and electronically, they will increasingly fall outside the realm of traditional governance.” People cannot be constrained in anyway, as defined by freedom, in order to be prosperous. Kaplan sees material possessions as a constraint. In comparison between China and Russia in terms of economic development, we see different patterns. Mao’s China embraced order and equality at the expense of freedom. Mao’s and Deng’s China “has opened its economy to private entrepreneurs and foreign investors but defiantly opposed internal or external pressures to open its politics to all free expansion of dissent” (Wilson 187). Wilson also states: “China illustrated the advantage of a centralized, monolithic, and authoritarian regime in organizing for economic tr...
