- China has 1.4 billion people. Nearly five times the size of the USA.
- The USA has nine cities with a population of over 1 million. China has 163 of them.
- Go to a coastal Chinese city and you feel like you are on a giant college campus. These places are young. Just about everybody you meet is under thirty, including many company executives. Demographic bomb, my foot - Young China is rising very, very quickly.
- Contrary to popular belief, the big cities are absolutely full of girls. It's the rural areas that experience the big one-child-policy shortages. And who can blame the girls? They do everything they can to avoid ending up as a poor farm wife, just like Americans do.
- The pollution is ridiculous - but it's actually worse outside the cities. Why? Because much of it actually comes not from industry, but from the burning of China's cheap, dirty coal by peasants for heat and cooking fires. China is still lacking in bringing electricity to rural areas - they'll get it done, but it may take two more decades.
- Communism? That's a laugh. Though difficult for foreigners, it's incredibly easy for Chinese citizens to start businesses and make money. As long as they pay their taxes, the government leaves commerce almost entirely unregulated. Because the CCP is actually hanging on by its fingernails - they don't have the time nor luxury of implementing things like the ADA and the EPA.
- Much of what we attribute to Party oppression (which certainly still exists) is actually a result of Chinese culture. Chinese were smashing down internal dissidents long before Mao Zedong ever picked up a rifle. They are much harder on political dissent in their own communities than any government ever could be. Communist rule - as it always does - injected a large streak of amorality into the culture, but traditional values are making something of a comeback. The growing popularity of Christianity has something to do with that.
- No more platitudes about "cheap Chinese crap". That might have been true in the 80's, just like it was for Japan in the 50's. Now, the most sophisticated and modern factories in the world can be found in China, producing some of the highest quality goods in the world. Is there garbage, too? Of course. China is huge. Pointing to a shoddy bath mat or tainted dog food as a "typical Chinese product" makes just as much sense as pointing to a t-shirt made in a sweatshop in Los Angeles by illegal aliens as a "typical American product" (and these exact items do command a significant "Made in the USA" price premium at your local stores...caveat emptor.)
In short, China is still a more repressive place to live than the USA, but they are getting better and we are getting worse...
Attacks on China by FReepers who ought to know better really happen to mask an ugly truth none of us want to admit: The USA sucks right now. We suck because we let Fabian Socialists take over our public education system and turn it into a twelve year political indoctrination process. And we will continue to suck until we throw the Fabians out - all of them - from education and government and media, like. Economic nationalism can't save us from internal idiocy. There is a relevant quote:
"No Communist, Fascist, or any other totalitarian committed to the destruction . . . of the principles and practices of democracy should be permitted to teach in a democracy. Freedom does not imply freedom to destroy freedom." -- Dr. Clarence R. Decker, President of the University of Kansas City, 1949
Had we left the schools alone, we would be running rings around China and nobody would care what they are exporting. We've done this to ourselves.
great post. goosebumps.