Yay For Me

As the title suggests, this is more of a "shiok sendiri" post. Last week, I posted a comment on Scott Sumner's post about the role of culture in economics. Here is my comment in full:

As a Malaysian Chinese, I can strongly relate to the culture argument. For those who are not aware, Malaysia practices “pro-Bumiputra (pro-indigineous/Malay)” policies, resulting in the vast majority of opportunities (education placement in top schools, business deals, cheap housing, etc) being channeled towards the Malay community. On the surface, it appears to be a form of affirmative action, but bear in mind that the Malaysian population comprises around 70% Malays. So, the so-called affirmative action policies actually favor the majority. And the Malay politicians in Malaysia insist on maintaining rights of Malays in obtaining these excessive privileges, which is often perceived as “racial supremacy” in Malaysia. 

Despite the oppressive policies that have been implemented since 1970, the Chinese community has continued to thrive and are responsible for the vast majority of business activity in Malaysia. They have still managed to succeed given the “handicap”, which demonstrates a cultural resilience and determination to overcome the overwhelming odds. I am not saying that Chinese are superior to other races in Malaysia, but there is a certain cultural element to it that is possibly unmeasurable as we do not see the same kind of success for other races in Malaysia. But I can attribute part of this to the kind of upbringing in Chinese families. Since I was young the message that was drummed into my head was to keep working hard in order to overcome the overwhelming odds. Despite 40 years of oppressive policies, Malaysia has remained rather peaceful and the Chinese community seemed to have accepted it as a way of life, simply working harder (among other things) to overcome the handicap. This is very much in line with the peaceful/passive approach taught by Confucius. 

Now, back to China. I think what a lot of analysts miss and what is written by Professor Zhang Weiwei in his book, “The China Wave – Rise of a Civilizational State”: 

“Good governance matters more than democratization. China rejects the stereotypical dichotomy of democracy vs. autocracy and holds that the nature of a state, including its legitimacy, has to be defined by its substance, i.e. by good governance, and tested by what it can deliver.”

… 

“China is still faced with serious challenges such as fighting corruption and reducing regional gaps. But China is likely to continue to evolve on the basis of these ideas, rather than by embracing Western liberal democracy, because these ideas have apparently worked and have blended reasonably well with common sense and China’s unique political culture, the product of several millennia — including 20 or so dynasties, seven of which lasted longer than the whole of U.S. history ……… While China will continue to learn from the West for its own benefit, it may be time now for the West, to use Deng’s famous phrase, to “emancipate the mind” and learn a bit more about or even from China’s big ideas, however extraneous they may appear, for its own benefit. This is not only to avoid further ideology-driven misreading of this hugely important nation, a civilization in itself, but also to enrich the world’s collective wisdom in tackling challenges ranging from poverty eradication to climate change and the clash of civilizations.” 

These are just excerpts from his marvelous book, which I think gives some very insightful thoughts from a true Chinese perspective.

 I managed to get a response from Scott, albeit a short one:

Yay for me!

Breaching 10,000

Just a few hours ago, the number of page views of this newsletter had just breached 10,000. This is by no means a great achievement, but it is a milestone nonetheless. For over two and a half years of writing, on and off initially, 10,000 views seems like a really small number. The first post was published on 26 July 2009 and now, 863 days or 72 months later, the Main Streeter (the current name of this newsletter) has garnered slightly over 10,000 page views. This meant that on average, there were about 11.6 views per day or 139.0 views per month. On the surface, this kind of average seems appalling and would be in most circumstances a sure sign of telling me that this is the best time to quit. 

Being the optimist that I am, I try to look on the bright side. Here is a better picture of what the statistics look like:

I like to see that as an upward trend. The dip you see in December is only because it is only the 6th of the month, so the cumulative volume is still rather low for the month. What I am trying to take away from this is that the trend is an increasing one. It appears to have flattened out somewhat, but this means that I have to work harder to provide articles of better quality. I will make that my primary goal in 2012 as the Main Streeter looks set to make another major change.

While major changes can seem startling at times, but the Main Streeter is an ever-evolving entity. What this means is that it will never stop growing and changing. I recently changed the layout of the page and I am currently working on improving the quality of the content, among several other major projects, for the Main Streeter. Stay tuned for a great year ahead!

Breaking 5,000

For many blogs, hitting 5,000 views is easy. For the Main Streeter, its humble beginnings began in July 2009 as Economics @ Home. The postings were irregular in Volume 1 but was maintained at a constant pace of one post per fortnight in Volume 2. This year, we began to increase the frequency of the posts to at least two posts per week, which is more than quadruple the frequency in the past year.

As you can see, as the frequency increased, the number of vists also rose exponentially, which can be said as some sort of an achievement. However, the stats counter began only in July 2010, and in the short period of about one year, the Main Streeter has amassed 5,000 page views. Again, this does not seem like a lot for a newsletter, but for people who have to juggle between work and writing for this non-profit newsletter, 5,000 hits in a year is decent.

The figure below shows the most popular posts so far. It is no surprise that my post on the 100-storey fiasco has the greatest number of views as it was posted during the peak of the controversy. I am pleased to see that the "Love is a Fallacy" post is catching up fast.

Again, no surprises that most of the visitors to the Main Streeter are from Malaysia. What is surprising though, is that we get a pretty diverse crowd. We get people from all over the world and people with all kinds of browsers and operating systems.

In short, the Main Streeter seems to have had a great run and the results appear to be satisfactory and will encourage us here to continue our diligence in making the Main Streeter a better newsletter.