Ping!
I tell ya this If you eat Chinese food and your hungry again in an hour They had us against the ropes along time ago
I guess I just can't even stomach a paragraph of bulls--t anymore.
interesting error on the caption of the car picture. I guess the author was mesmerized by his fears.
Usually essays expose a problem then proffer a solution. This is nothing but a “sky-is-falling” rant. I’ll look forward to the conclusion in this series.
Excellent, thoughtful, perceptive post.
Thanks.
Well, that was a class A hand wringer. We might as well just go out and shoot ourselves.
The simple minded are always impressed by authoritarian regimes. They confuse a large group of people, all performing the same or similar tasks as “efficiency”. However, the truth of the matter is that such regimes are the furthest thing from efficient, and what efficiency there is, is likely either a holdover from a previous regime, or outside of governmental control to some extent.
If you objectively look at China, you get a very different picture. Expressions like “penny wise-pound foolish” and “mortgaging their future” come to mind. Their illusion of central control is betrayed by the reality of a confederacy of provinces, each who ignore the regime with relative impunity.
Perhaps the greatest irony is how much the typical Chinese *wants* the central government to succeed, and even more, to enforce its dictates over the provinces. The vast majority of the tens of thousands of protests that happen every year are in hopes that their national government will enforce its laws against the illegal activities of provincial and local governments.
Yet these protests are bizarrely seen as “anti-state”, and the central government brutally suppresses its most ardent supporters, while allowing provincial and local governments to run amok.
So what is going to happen? The Chinese economy is unsustainable, and most likely will have a major collapse in the near future. What happens from that point is critical. An efficient government would have a massive restructuring, but this will most likely not happen. What will happen is bizarre.
Throughout Chinese history, a reoccurring theme is the cyclic nature of China. Emperors were seen like the seasons of the year, and were trained from birth to carry out whatever their seasonal assignment was to be. The first of the four cycles was the “builder” emperor, who would recreate China from scratch. All new buildings, lots of new and untested ideas.
His successor was the “maintenance” emperor, who would get everything newly built running smoothly as a system. China would be harmonious. He was followed by the “degenerate” emperor, who would pull his government back to Beijing, and let the country fall apart, everything decaying and in disrepair.
Finally, the fourth emperor, the “water” emperor, would destroy everything and probably slaughter millions of people, using chaos to cleanse the country and eliminate the detritus. Then the cycle would begin anew with a “builder” emperor.
Everyone in China followed this system, and would carry out whatever would forward the current emperor. But they would ignore orders contrary to the purpose of the emperor. So there really was no choice in the matter.
Ironically enough, Mao Tse Tung, had he been emperor, would have been a “water”, destroying emperor. And he behaved like one, because even though he was a communist and supposedly above all that, everyone expected it of him.
Well, right now, China is moving from a “maintenance” cycle into a “decadence” cycle, or is possibly further along and nearing a “water” cycle. But that is not a good place for China to be, if their economy is about to collapse.
It will either mean that China will have either an extended depression, the country in chaos and collapse, or they are going to have an incredibly bloody civil war, destroying most of the country. Or another tyrant like Mao who will slaughter people like there is no tomorrow.
In any event, it doesn’t look good.
Then get some training and quit whining! As long as you just have a high school diploma, G.E.D. or less, you'll be at the mercy of the labor market! Start an apprenticeship, get an associates degree or some other professional training that will make you more marketable!
One day, the leftists and the hate America crowd would be nostalgic for "American hegemony".
An extremely alarmist article. When I was in the service I went through a 47 week course in Chinese Mandarin. That was in 1960. I decided to take a trip last year and so took a night course in conversational Mandarin to brush up a bit. I went to China in May of last year, spending time in Beijing, out west in HsiAn and down south to Gui Lin and finally up to Shang Hai. I spoke to many regular folks over there and observed conditions in all those areas. My impressions were very reminiscent of when I first went to Viet Nam in 1964. The living standards were on a par with pre-conflict Hue or Saigon. I saw little evidence of monolithic communism outside of Beijing. In fact, other than his face on the currency. the only picture I saw during the entire time of Mao was in Tian An Min square. The air quality in Shang Hai reminded me of Los Angeles in the 1950’s, very bad. I was received very well at every stop and at no time felt threat or danger (probably due to speaking the language). The government is looked on by most people I spoke to as a nuisance factor in their lives. They definitley are not happy with the one child restriction and most people there feel that it is producing a generation of overly self-centered and spoiled, entitled individuals. They said that getting someone under 30 to work hard is almost impossible. Anyway, I probably will not make any return trips because I really didn’t see anything to go back for. My next trip will be to the Meditteranean, much more civilized y’know.
So a bunch of unimaginative Chinese sheep who haven’t had a single innovative thought in more than a thousand years are about to take over the world.
Okay.
Chinese become creative and are able to exercise their native intelligent only after they escape the influence of their putrid Mandarin masters.
The may very well be the world’s new superpower relatively soon. That said, I dare say the world will miss the days when the UK and the US were the leaders of the world. The hand of China will not rest lightly on the world.
Although Asians may have the highest IQs, the type of society makes a difference. Perhaps rights-respecting “open societies” can survive a major conflict with China, due to their higher cultural “intelligence”.
btt
Too many Americans will find this article too easy to wholly dismiss.
The US Economy grew, from 2000 to 2005...as much as the total GDP of China.
The British have nuclear subs with ICBMs...the Chinese don't.
Actually, the writer isn't ignorant, the writer is silly.