“In recent years both the Chinese and American economies have been fundamentally transformed.”
In fourteen years, America went from three times the size of the Chinese economy to slightly smaller, and the rate of relative decline shows every sign of quite rapidly accelerating.
Chinese GPD per capita is still substantially lower than American GDP per capita, but the number of Chinese with middle class lifestyles is arguably larger than the number of Americans with middle class lifestyles, and will soon become a great deal larger.
Yup. After we waste their inheritance on financial speculation and political patronage, our grandchildren will be sucking Chinese dick for Chinese dollar.
As good a time as any to post this video of a train ride across a part of China that corresponds roughly to a drive along the bos-wash corridor or the sf to la corridor in the is
U.S. It’s the single best gestalt I’ve seen of what China looks and feels like, good and bad: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VwGSBfujtAA
Seems to indicate that China leads the world in the routine, efficient, and very large scale application of high technology.
Compare to the 2nd Avenue Subway in NYC, which runs at below 30 mph, and is still uncompleted
Further, there was actually a 3rd avenue railway once upon a time… in the 1850s and 70s, but was gradually shut down leading to its final termination in 1955. But it was destroyed after the city seized the private rail systems.
This line looks to be going as fast or faster than the Acela (vid says 186 mph, Acela is less at peak and even less for most of the journey), and the territory is obviously less dilapidated than most of what you’ll see in the Tristate area.
I rode the Amtrak between two Midwestern cities and it was reminiscent of an Eastern European train, including the moronic, badly dressed, obese, disorganized, and rude staff — to say nothing of the mutant fellow passengers, most of whom looked to have some kind of physical deformity.
SF-LA corridor is so barren and pathetic that it’s barely worth the comparison.
He-he, they still have these old green Soviet railway cars around (1:15, 3:35, and especially the moment at 12:50 is very instructive and revealing). They also don’t let the passengers onto the platform until the train is there, so they have to cool their heels in a room somewhere and then quick-march to board. That sucks. Then those infinite rows of identical high-rise (and low-rise) housing… brr. Sure, they applied what they saw and learned in Japan on a large scale, I commend them on it and even envy a little, but they don’t have the flair. Come ride the Tokyo loop line: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mQIJwVg87O0
The country with the third longest high-speed rail network in the world (after China and Japan) is, weirdly, Spain.
There are some contingent reasons for this (which would require long, tedious explanations of the history of rail) but it certainly shows that building infrastructure (Spain also has really nice airports, an excellent road network, subways in cities, good mobile and fixed-line internet, etc) doesn’t necessarily achieve all that much.
More “virtual tourism”: A feel good Pepsi ad showing roughly what high end popular fare looks like, lots of generic human feel good stuff but some noticeably and interestingly different tropes and concerns.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EsOnvhN8vno
A society not yet comfortable with capitalism, nor yet comfortable with being middle class. It is all new to them, and they do not do it very well.
This is all being done on purpose of course.
Destroy the economy so that normal Whites have an extremely difficult time starting and maintaining families while using the tax dollars from the remaining middle class Whites to subsidize the hordes of non-whites.
Skin in the game, Jim. Given your choice of lifestyle and housing, you would really not like China.
Least you could do is go for an extended trip, a couple of weeks at least.
I don’t contest China may be a more pleasant place than the US, given all the filth you’re subjecting yourselves to. . But life in China is infinitely worse than in Japan, Australia or Germany. Which is why all Chinese who can choose to leave.
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And by the way, China is going progressive big time:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/12/china-to-stop-harvesting-organs-from-prisoners.html
One of their most sensible policies; out for progressive reasons. If they can’t follow through with this, in 10 years you’ll have open elections for transexual candidates.
It seems China had made such noises before and just quietly went on about its business. http://www.dafoh.org/pr120514/
Unless this is a clever PR maneuver to get normal people to donate (“we really need your help, we can’t use prisoners anymore!”) I’m still saying this is a move left.
Chinese judges have been going left for years; the death penalty frequency is dropping, sentences in general more lenient, and judges are using explicit human rights rhetoric these days.
Not saying China is Sweden, but the trends are certainly not moving right.
Yes, Cathedral is applying soft power effectively, communist party is losing to soft power.
Needs to resist the Cathedral, Putin style. With the Hong Kong agitation, conspicuously failed to do so.
Is abuse of prisoners a right-wing thing? Were the Gulags across Siberia and the camps in China a right-wing thing? To me, decidedly not.
To me, Statism is nearer to the left and Swiss-style localism nearer to the right. A program where the government harvests organs, including political prisoners’ organs, seems like a leftist’s wet dream. It combines social engineering with extreme state interventionism at the Federal level.
We can blame the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
They’re just doing the same thing we did to the British. Practicing Mercantilism. The upper class wealthy made more money in America so they didn’t care that their own country was being hollowed out. Same with America.
I doubt it will happen but with a whopping big tariff on the Mercantilist countries we could turn it around in fifteen or twenty years. We have a big enough market to go it alone.
Our stupid trade policy negotiators have always seemed idiotic. They always ask for others not to block our trade. They say they won’t then do. Why not say our country has been open for years. You open yours up for fifteen years, then we’ll open ours. That would clarify everyone’s position immediately.
Everyone is following the Hong Kong model, not the mercantilist model, and there is compelling evidence that the Hong Kong model is correct.