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To: Zhang Fei
LOL. As Seinfeld would say "alrighty then".

Seems to me, Zhang Fei, that the Chinese have been eagerly hopping onto the Western bandwagon, as it sure as hell beats anything they've been able to conjure up in the last few centuries.
22 posted on 01/26/2007 9:45:35 PM PST by khnyny
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To: khnyny
Seems to me, Zhang Fei, that the Chinese have been eagerly hopping onto the Western bandwagon, as it sure as hell beats anything they've been able to conjure up in the last few centuries.

In much the same way the West hopped on the Chinese bandwagon before Chinese power and creativity went into eclipse a few centuries ago. You think the civil service that replaced aristocracies in the West is a Western invention? You think paper money is a Western invention? And yet I would say that the average Westerner wouldn't consider himself sinified, would he?

The Chinese are borrowing Western technologies in the same way that Westerners who were running around in animal skins a couple of thousand years ago borrowed Asian* technologies. But look at it this way - a few centuries ago, the Chinese were saying "alrighty then" to the Western upstarts who were starting to show up in their neck of the woods**. They're not saying that any more. And in time, you won't be saying "alrighty then", as the Chinese and the Indians begin to regain their former importance in the world (perhaps coming to blows in a contest for pre-eminence), and Europe fades into irrelevance. Besides, it's not just China that is right in rejecting welfare statism - if we follow the European example and descend further into welfare statism, we, too, will follow the EUropeans into the dustbin of history.

* I use "Asian" not in a coherent geographic, cultural or ethnic sense, but in the sense the Greeks used it - not Europe and not Africa.

** Note also that Western pre-eminence isn't what it used to be. At their zenith, the Chinese thought they had reached the end of history - from then on, every development of consequence was pre-ordained to happen in China. They paid for it dearly in the succeeding centuries. If you think that we are somehow at the end of history with the West on top, you need to re-evaluate your premises. EUrope is destined to become an open-air museum, as it descends deeper and deeper into a welfare statism that simultaneously subsidizes the high fertility rates of its non-productive and seditious Islamic hordes and drives its economy into the ground. Whether we follow in their footsteps depends on whether the American voter, in his wisdom, ultimately rejects welfare statism and open borders.

26 posted on 01/26/2007 10:14:49 PM PST by Zhang Fei
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