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China is actually much more "raw capitalist" in the economic sense than the US. There is no national health care, school funding is often left up to local officials, there is no national old-age pension plan, very few workplace regulations, and so on. One of the reasons why doing business is so attractive there for foreign companies.
I wonder how many will starve and/or freeze to death in the workers' paradise? Gotta love that planned economy.
I wonder what the flag says? I'm guessing "This Is Way Worse Than Katrina!"
Many in China to greet new year without power - Weather - MSNBC.com (broken link)
Yeledaf
China has had a tremendous amount of catching up to do. Its land mass is huge as well as its population. It was stripped of its riches by the Opium trade and paying reparations to the Japanese prior to the Japanese then coming in to slaughter them during their occupation. top that off with the Nationalists ripping off the remaining treasury and there you have it.
In the next few decades China will catch up to first world status. I think that is pretty good.
I think China won't live up to all the hype. Several reasons.
1) Several economists, including Lester Thurow and the IMF have begun to seriously doubt these incredible growth rates the Chinese keep throwing out. First, electrical capacity has not grown at nearly the rate of China's purported economic growth. This is an impossibility, especially in an economy where industrialization is the engine of growth. Second, Hong Kong is not seeing anywhere close to the growth rates as China, even though it's economy is now inextricably linked to mainland China. In other words, the Chinese government is cooking the books (A function of the Chinese government being deeply enmeshed in Chinese industry), and people are beginning to take notice.
2) China's One Couple/One Child Policy was instituted in the early 70s, and it is now making its effect felt. This is a demographic time bomb that will make our Social Security shortfall feel like a short-term cash flow problem. In China, there are no pensions of any kind to speak of and no real institutional way to cope with the enormous burgeoning of the elderly population, either in terms of healthcare or simple living facilities. If you don't think this will eviscerate economic growth and productivity, you're kidding yourself.
3) While everybody talks about China's gleaming coastal cities, nobody's talking about the budding agrarian crisis in the interior, where wages and technology are still mired in the status quo of decades ago. There are already whispers of small scale peasant revolts in the interior. I think it's only a matter of time before large-scale disruptions begin to present themselves, and Chinese leadership is ill-suited to make the foundational societal changes to achieve large-scale social welfare throughout the country.
China is making great progress in terms of energy generation, and is willing to do massive public work projects to stage their next level of growth, no crowing at their problems from me:
It certainly has run into some problems, but for the magnitude of the undertaking, it has gone fairly well. One thing that really impresses me, is their willingness to publicize their problems and to evaluate alternative solutions (as opposed to pretending the problems don't exist).
China isn't a "worker's paradise" so much as it is a weird, authoritarian forced meritocracy that deliberately keeps its labor and environmental standards low in order to attract foreign investment. In some ways they're closer to Alabama than to Sweden, so I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to get at, other than apparently attempting to take another swipe at the "secretly commie sympathizing left."
China is making great progress in terms of energy generation, and is willing to do massive public work projects to stage their next level of growth, no crowing at their problems from me:
It certainly has run into some problems, but for the magnitude of the undertaking, it has gone fairly well. One thing that really impresses me, is their willingness to publicize their problems and to evaluate alternative solutions (as opposed to pretending the problems don't exist).
Not pretending problems don't exist? What do you call the massive pollution? Or the endemic corruption that keeps getting covered up. What about the vicious suppression of free speech and protest? The only reason the Chinese fessed up on the Three Gorges Dam was that it was simply too enormous to be swept under the rug.
Not pretending problems don't exist? What do you call the massive pollution? Or the endemic corruption that keeps getting covered up. What about the vicious suppression of free speech and protest? The only reason the Chinese fessed up on the Three Gorges Dam was that it was simply too enormous to be swept under the rug.
When you compare where they are in terms of disclosure of problems, vs where they were ten and twenty years ago, they have made significant progress. I'm not claiming they are an open society, but they have definitely made progress in being more forthright in admitting to problems and trying to address them.
As with anything, you need to measure where they are vs where they were.
When you compare where they are in terms of disclosure of problems, vs where they were ten and twenty years ago, they have made significant progress. I'm not claiming they are an open society, but they have definitely made progress in being more forthright in admitting to problems and trying to address them.
As with anything, you need to measure where they are vs where they were.
Well, first you actually have to have a government that's presenting accurate numbers, not just ginning up statistics that have no grounding in fact. Evidently, China's stated economic numbers are not bearing up under scrutiny. Rather than turn in a respectable 5-6% growth rate (which is the suspicion of economists such as Nobel-winner Lester Thurow), bureaucrats in China are under pressure to manufacture numbers of 9-11% that fit the five-year plan.
There's a lot at stake on this, by the way. You don't like today's housing bubble? With today's colossal influx of investment dollars, this fraudulent representation of its performance will create a terrible confidence problem in the capital markets. The economic and social dislocation will be massive. I shudder to think how bad it could possibly get.
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