Posted on 11/23/2006 1:02:44 AM PST by BlackJack
I guess that's why there are so many Americans busting to get over there and start a new life in China and why there are no Chinese coming to the USA to live.
I wondered why that was.
This article clears that all up.
(It's amusing that this idiocy was written shortly after Milton Friedman died. He used to say, "what are all those other countries going to do with all those dollars they're accumulating? Eat them?")
There have been Americans going to China to do business and set up short term shop there since the 80s. I was one of them, in the 90s. But the quota of new citizens (non-ethnic-Chinese-new-citizens) is six per year. I was told that by a US State Dept employee. The actual number might not be exactly six but I bet the actual number of people actually applying for citizenship (again, not counting ethnic Chinese), is probably less than six. If the quota really is six, I bet they never met it.
So yeah, people go there to make money. But then they come back here to live. Including a whole hell of a lot of ethnic Chinese. With and without legal visas.
and how much of it is just paper? how much is backed by hard currency such as gold?
Thank you.
If China's growth can be sustained, there will be more and more foreigners living in China permanently (as permanent residents). It's a pretty natural course. The Taiwanese are already settling in Shanghai en masse (millions there). Many Taiwanese still have families in Taiwan, but many also are starting families in China and buying property with intention to stay. Taiwan of course has much higher cultural affinity with China, but the point remains, if you are successful in China and your success appears to be sustainable, then you will likely stay. If China's growth can be sustained to 2050, I can assure there will be a lot more foreigners living in China permanently than today.
I guess that's why there are so many Americans busting to get over there and start a new life in China and why there are no Chinese coming to the USA to live.
The big trend among high end parents now in NYC is teaching their kids Mandarin. It's also not uncommmon to see lawyers, accountants, and all manner of professionals taking Chinese.
<< .... not uncommmon to see lawyers, accountants, and all manner of (other non-productive parasites) taking Chinese. >>
While, meanwhile the entire creative, innovative, industrious and productive world is learning the world's Universal Language: American English!
China adding dollars to its reserves at such a high rate is why we are not feeling the effects of high inflation here. Our government has been inflating-printing excess money- at a prodigious rate since 2000. Normally that would be reflected in skyrocketing prices for just about everything as the production of money available to purchase goods exceeds the production of goods to be bought for money and prices get bid up across the board. But all those excess dollars are, instead, going into the Chinese and European central banks as reserves suggesting the nightmare scenario that China could Bring Down the American Economy just by switching its reserves to Eurinals or Sesterces or something. But if China did that the value of the dollars it holds would plummet and the value of its reserves would likewise plummet before it could get mucht of its reserves exchanged, i.e. instant national pauperization. Much as pundits discuss the possibility and China and France threaten it, it won't happen unless the countries are truly declaring bankruptcy and dropping out of the world economy altogether. In China that would bring rapid political upheaval and extreme disorder. They ain't gonna do it.
Chinese are coming over. If they can't get here legally they will pay up to $75,000 to be smuggled in.
<< Taiwanese are already settling in Shanghai en mass ... >>
Fewer than 300,000. Plus around another 200,000 at any given time.
And every one of them must be counted as a hostage.
That's changing. I talk to young professional people all the time who only expect to spend a small portion of their career in the U.S. What's more, they don't see overseas work as anything particularly exotic -- just a fact of their careers. They'll go where the work is.
There seems to be "nodes" of commerce developing -- NY, LA, London, Milan, Paris, Tokyo Shanghai, etc. -- where people with the right skill sets will rotate through.
Obviously Americans or Brits etc. won't give up their citizenships, but they will have little loyalty in regards to employer. Makes no difference to them if they work for a German bank or a Japanese electronics firm.
No. The Chinese will own the world's largest hoard of dollars but I believe China has reached the point that China cannot spend those dollars and they are a net liability. China's economy is based on the value of those dollars and the stash is so large that if China does spend them their value to China will decrease in a breathtaking fall. Likewise I think China is in a position of having to continue to add to its dollar reserves because the US is inflating its currency rapidly. If China does not add to its holdings the value of those holdings declines as the exchange value of the dollar declines due to the rapidly increasing number of those dollars in the market.China has to suck up those excess dollars to keep its economy afloat. China appears to be in a financial trap which if it allows the trap to spring will immediately suffer tremendous economic dislocations and an end to its own economic expansion. Incidentally it will also Carterize the US economy.
If my family keeps up with it's assimilation of other cultures, I expect to have Chinese "kin" shortly. That being said our languages emphasis for our children will include Mandarin. Just the same thinking that my father made me learn Spanish when I was a kid.
"Why, Dad? I want to learn French!"
"French is dead, son. You're going to learn Spanish. You'll actually use it some day".
I miss him, he was simply brilliant. Not because of the above exchange, but the man had a simply genius to him. On holidays we used to make a list of questions to ask him and listen to him answer them for hours.
I will miss him today especially. Sorry to go OT.
Today, as Americans go to the polls, the money supply is soaring, Saddam has been condemned to death and the Dow rallied more than 100 points. Still, “middle class cash woes cause election angst,” reads a Houston newspaper
<< I talk to young professional people all the time who only expect to spend a small portion of their career in the U.S. >>
You're presently 'talking' to one who is literate and fluent in Mandarin and speaks three Chinese Dialects and Arabic and several other languages; who is, today, sitting less than two hundred and fifty miles from China -- and who has spent three quarters of his adult life in Asia, Africa, North Africa and Arabia.
And who still stands by what I wrote.
English in 2006 is what Esperanto long ago strived and failed to be!
Best ones - B A
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