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China: the New Global High-Tech Power
Andy Tai writes "This three-part news.com special report shows how mainland China has become the focus of high tech business opportunities during the global recession. The article compares today's China to 19th Century America as "a booming nation starved for products and driven by a new generation of entrepreneurs", points out China's "sheer numbers and ambitious work ethic are producing thousands of engineers--and U.S. companies are recruiting the best of them," and concludes "that this may eventually be known as China's high-tech century. " Another good article looking at China's rise as a global power can be found here."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't their culture spend several thousands of years as the most advanced on Earth?
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
Hello CHINA:
How about getting the following the foundation for a high-tech economy?
1)-access to energy
2)-fair judicial system
3)-clean water
4)-enough food for its people
5)-uncorrupt governance
6)-educated people
7)-freedom of expression
No amount of friendliness towards business or incentives for technology will overcome these more basic barriers.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
I thought they would beat Mozilla 1.0 out the door - who would've thought the Lizard would have whipped it out first?
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
China has all of that, but misses one BIG part. A clear fair legal system where outcomes can be reasonably assured. Simple game theory will lead to the result that the lack of this will lead to a GREATLY diminished amount of wealth being generated. The oligarcy that runs the country and the lack of an independant judicary means that the generationof wealth will be forever hampered.
China is 10-20 years away from being a great power ... and always will be.
How many CENTURIES has this been predicted? Yes, China has a lot of people -- and always have had. Yes, China has a huge amount of wealth -- and always have had.
I think this has literally been predicted for a thousand freaking years. I'm not an expert on China, but obviously there are deep-rooted cultural attributes keeping them from expanding their influence in the world.
Wake me up next century when we make the same prediction that won't come true.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
America has always been behind in technology compared to Japan.
There's a difference between being behind in gadgets and being behind in technology. Japan leads in gadgets and cheap manufacturing; they do not lead at the cutting edge of engineering.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
a better market means more desposible income
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
"America has always been behind in technology compared to Japan."
Just because Japan can make more impressive little electronic doo-dads (and even that is debatable) doesn't mean they're ahead of us on everything.
When was the last time you rode on a Japanese jumbo jet? No, a 767 operated by JAL doesn't count.
Your TV may be Japanese, but what about the rest of your home appliances? Where are all the new Japanese designs for microwave ovens? Hot water heaters? New Japanese technology in refrigerator compressors? What country makes half the world's appliances again?
On the subject of compressors, I haven't heard about any new developments in air conditioning from Japan. Or is Carrier secretly a Japanese company?
All those synthetic fabrics in your clothing, were they developed in Japan or Delaware?
There was a recent article on Slashdot about some new developments in metallurgy. What country was that from again?
And these are only the examples I could think of most noticable to consumers. Of course, if Japan is so much more advanced than the US, why do they rely so much on the US economy?
Anyway, back to persecution, so why they these people run to a country that was controlled by the British until 1901? The legacy of this is still apparent, see flag, see head of state.
Problem is... not being anti-British involves not being anti-English/Scottish/Irish/Welsh, you can't pick and choose.
China will have a strong economy if they have a successful business sector, jobs isnt what matters its how many small businesses and big businesses you have that matters.
The USA has alot of businesses, if you talk about jobs you are talking mc donalds, and yes mc donalds is in mexico.
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Indeed, I think Alex Chiu's insight can help shed some light on this topic. This is somewhat-lucid prose from his year-old /. interview:
"I think the Chinese government is doing a great job right now. I support population control. I think USA should do the same. If you want to have more than 1 kid, you should pay more tax. The enemies of China always use "human rights issues" to attack China. But if USA has 1.3 billion people, USA would have the same human rights problem just like China. You cannot expect so much freedom in a land of 1.3 billion people. Chinese government is doing such a great job that China not only feeds its own people, it also feeds most of the Russians. Most of the food imported to Russia came from China. You guys always talk about human rights. But why can't you guys mention about "government rights"? Chinese government has the right to do whatever it must do to protect China. That includes population control and the liberation of Tibet. Do you know that before Tibet was liberated, you can buy and sell slaves in Tibet? In the old Tibet, you can have slaves, you can marry 4 wives, but you cannot take a bath for 1 whole year, and you cannot meet a foreigner. You can skin your slave alive, and you can kill your slave when ever you desire. The entire Tibet is ruled by a bunch of religious idiots. You can't take a bath for the entire year, and you can't trade with foreigners. Cummunists don't allow that! Liberated Tibet and kick out that stupid Dalai Lama, whatever that moron's name is. You guys don't know how much Tibet has changed. Most families in Tibet now has electricity. TV, VCR, stereo, micro-wave, you name it. Everything's made in China! They have shopping malls and super markets there. There's stock market brokers there. In fact, Tibet is one of the most popular European tourist attraction of asia. If Dalai idiot is still around, you be buying and selling slaves there right now! Everywhere would stink like hell because nobody teaches you the importance of taking a bath. If you say Tibetans are not Chinese because they have their own language and culture, let me ask you this: Is Hawaii part of USA? Is Okinawa part of Japan? Okinawa people have different language and culture than the Japanese. So should Okinawa gain independence from Japan?"
There's a difference between being behind in gadgets and being behind in technology. Japan leads in gadgets and cheap manufacturing; they do not lead at the cutting edge of engineering.
Gadgets? You must mean things like automobiles, consumer electronics, robotics, semiconductors, fuzzy logic, AI, embedded systems, and other such gadgets. We have the lead in aerospace, though the aging space shuttle is not exactly cutting edge.
[Insert pithy quote here]
If cheap labor were the only factor in determining the relative economic strength of a nation-state, the Romans would never have built and sustained their empire. Ditto for the Venicians, French, English, and Americans.
China is not *the* place to be. Just ask the Falung Gong. Just ask anyone who gives a fuck about freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, due process, or basic fucking human rights of any kind in China.
And from a business perspective, lack of these things, particularly in a world economy dominated by post-industrial persuits that require human creativity and unfettered access to information, is the kiss of death.
Sure, China is booming. But recall the USSR. Right up to 1989/90, many experienced Sovietologists were still predicting that the Soviet Union would allow only moderate reforms, and would certainly be around for another 50 years. That's the problem with a government with limited transparency - you never really know with any certainty what's really going on with the economy (or anything else for that matter).
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
All it took was a few new ICBM's aimed in our general direction to convince me.
I cannot believe that the parent to this post was modded up. Some of the above points are valid concerns, but others are problems of the past.
Of course, every time there is talk about China, someone has to bring up something about Human Rights. But give me a break, clean water? food? China has gotten past that stage a long time ago. Right now overnutrition and obesity troubles much of the population. As for the judicial system, fairness is a matter of opinion. In China, criminals are punished more severely than in the US. Corruption in the governance is a problem in China, but the same problem exists in every country. The USA, for example, is a prime source of governmental scandals. China is working on a more efficient education system as we speak. The problem with education lies in overpopulation. Think about it, China has more than four times the population of America, andd merely building more schools will not be able to solve the problem overnight. The curriculum in Chinese primary and secondary schools includes a much more in depth understanding of subjects such as math and science than that of American schools.
I guess my point is that although China's fundations are not yet perfect, it is getting better at a faster rate than any other country.
The same reason hi-tech went to South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia. A minimum of infrastructure, enough education and cheap wages enforced by a repressive state. Boeing and Motorola love it.
. This sig unintentionally left blank. I meant to put something here, but I'm busy.
there's a reason for all these low scoring posts, it's because you guys don't know jack shit about china! hell, if you wanna brag about communism and how things are over there, why not actually GO there and see it for yourselves? on the surface it's not much different from the US, it's cot a capitolist economy, but the government IS corrupt and is practicly lead by the military. of all the people i've talked to in china, most of them get pissed when i refer to taiwan as a different country, sure they have thier bad parts, but that's ALL you people ever look at! GO TO CHINA! see the FSCKING place for yourselves and experience it before you babble on about all your bull shit! and to emphesise my point, i'll repeat my point, YOU PEOPLE KNOW SHIT ABOUT CHINA!
Hmmm, that's completely and utterly wrong in its entirety. The richest nations on Earth are the ones with the most expensive labor.
(* Japan leads in gadgets and cheap manufacturing; they do not lead at the cutting edge of engineering. *)
Cheap? I don't think so. They manufacture some of the most high-end products available, such as medical scanners and high-end manufactoring equipment (equipment for making equipment).
The difference is that the US tends to specialize in services and research rather than direct manufacturing.
"Different" is probably more applicable than "better".
Table-ized A.I.
We lag behind china in consumer tech, such as laptops and cell phones. Although we are wayy ahead of them as far as cutting edge, non-consumer technology.
One reason for this is that the U.S. culture encourages creative thinking more than Japanese culture. Japanese culture is very rigid as far as work goes. So anyway, we develop technology such as PC's and cell phones because we think more creatively. Then the Japanese take our inventions, improve on them, and make great consumer electronics.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
Just look at that map of the world at night. The places you see high lighting density are pretty much the places that are advanced. Pretty much it goes like this:
Western Civilization and Japan
Eastern Orthodox rooted Civilization (Russia et al)
That's pretty much it. Everywhere else is developing.
Granted, it is theoretically possible for China to pull something like that off, but the government is the biggest hindrance. Until there is some serious reform (i.e. eliminate corruption), I don't see China catching up within the next 50 years.
BlackGriffen
Ever met someone in marketing or "corporate strategy"? They are possibly the most clueless people on earth:
"Hey, we have 25 million customers in the US; if we could capture the same percentage of the Chinese market we'd have 120 million customers! We'd more than quadruple our revenues!"
"But China has a ludicrously low GDP; there's no way we'll get 120 million people who can pay that much for our product."
"No, no, don't you see? 120 million is MORE than 25 million! A LOT more! SEE?"
Right after the USSR went down the tube and the nuke threat was gone we should have bombed the living hell out of them, but noooo,
The nuke threat from Russia was never gone. Just because the Soviets were replaced by a democratic gov't doesn't mean the weapons dissapeared. They still have over 1000 warheads.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
i was tempted to moderate this as a flame, but decided a thought out response was better.
yes, the Chinese are commies. So what? Communism sucks, but thats their problem, not ours. I dont think they want us dead. Are they a competitor to us? Of course. When your #1 economically (which we are), everyone is a competitor.
Yes, the communist party is getting more rich, but sooner or later, democracy will take over in that country and the commies will get their butts kicked out. Look at South korea and Taiwan. They both used to be dictatorships, but in the past 10-20 years they become pretty democratic. Eventually i think China will too.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
Envision this scenario:
China, over the next 40 or 50 years, becomes an enormous economic juggernaut. With cheap labor, high tech industry, and a huge population, China begins to develop most of the world's goods for dirt cheap prices. World consumer choice is at an all time high.
Because of the political system in place within the country, the average standard of living doesn't increase significantly.
People are not stupid. The Chinese people will see how the majority are not benefiting from the economic prosperity and attempt to change the political system. The government in place will put down initial unrest, but a civil war could occur the likes of which we have never seen in the world. The world economy that has come to depend on the Chinese government for goods.
With the ensuing economic collapse of China during the civil war, the world is plunged into a depression comparable to the late 1920's and early 1930's. The US Federal Reserve could not handle the removal of a huge portion of the world economy from the picture.
Following the civil war, a democratic government is created in China, and the economy becomes similar to many western countries, with a higher standard of living and increased wages. The economic playing field is now leveled.
Either that, or everybody nukes everybody. Whatever happens, I'll be dead by then. Oh well.
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
There is no reason to believe that this is inevitably a long-term state. The US is a mid-size country (by population), and food, geographic isolation, and natural resources are becoming less and less important. And other countries are becoming as attractive as the US for skilled international workers.
If the US continues to have a leadership role, it will be because it earns it. But that means that US politicians have to give up on their assumption that US predominance is a right that Americans are born with. Isolationist policies like those we have seen over the last few years will likely simply make the US less and less relevant to international affairs.
yes, they do have nukes. However, I dont think the Chinese are insane enough to dare use them against us. Why? Our nuclear forces are many times theirs, numerically, and qualitatively. A single Ohio class sub (24 triton missiles, 5 or 8 Mirvs per missle depending on who you ask, check sources at bottom of posting) could problably kill 50% or more of the chinese population. And Chinese ASW capabilities are pathetic to say the least, so I highly doubt they could take out an Ohio before it fired.
m /970620-cr.h tm
. ht m
MAD (mutually assured destruction), while barbaric in concept, does seem to work nicely. Proof you ask? The Soviets, even during the blackest moments of the cold war, never launched a ICBM at us, knowing that the USA would retaliate with a massive counter strike.
The Chinese do not have the ability in any way to neutralize our nuclear forces, and for them to use their nukes would result in the effective destruction of their own country.
While the Chinese government and society are quite different from Western government and society in thought, morals, etc, I think they are logical enough to see the utter absurbity of using their nukes against the US.
Sources:
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/slb
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/slbm/ssbn-726
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
#1 China is not a "commie country". Sure the government is dominated by the "Communist Party" and is the product of a "communist revolution", but that doesn't make it a "commie country" in anything other than name.
#2 Communism means a lot of things. In the case of China their brand is "Maoist", or used to be anyways. In traditional Marxism Communism is the end state of a historical process, the idea being that a strong State run by "the Workers" will be created first to restructure society in the interest of people (i.e. along Socialist lines). Eventually the State will "whither away" and the Communist utopia will be created.
#3 Marx anticipated this happening in an advanced industrialized Capitalist system. Then along came Marxist-Lennism (i.e. the Russian Revolution) and the Maoists. Both of which were lead by peasants.
#4 Soviet Russia and Communist China are both really bad examples of theoretical Communism or Socialism, they are both very unique systems which, though influenced by Communism/Socialism, are not at all true to their foundation. (Which perhaps says something about the feasibility of said foundation).
#5 Both Soviet Russia and Communist China have been hugely succesful if you measure success along the lines of literacy or economic growth.
They are C-O-M-M-U-N-I-S-T-S
China now allows entrepreneurs in the "communist party". They are moving employees and businesses from the state sector to the private sector as quickly as possible. They are experimenting with village elections. In other words, they are trying to shed communism without imploding as the USSR did.
They want us D-E-A-D
Oh really? I've met hundreds of Chinese people and none of them seem to want us dead. I guess they hide their hatred well.
Why the HOLY FUCKING HELL are we selling them shit?
Mostly we are buying stuff from them, not selling to them. After all, we have money, they make cheap stuff.
ht after the USSR went down the tube and the nuke threat was gone we should have bombed the living hell out of them.
I'm just going to quit now. You're obviously not worth talking to.
Not to defend the government of China, but what about Singapore? They seem to be doing quite well with substantially less of these essential items than America.
China is the principal threat to US hegemony in
several ways. By 2010 pentagon force projections
estimate that they will have more nuclear warheads
targetted in the US than will Russia. The US is
legally bound to the defense of Taiwan against
attack. Because they abort their female fetuses
in large numbers (and female infanticide is endemic)
they have a large surplus male population at
cannon-fodder age. Their economy is growing at 9%
annually while the US economy is shrinking. They
have the benefit of the balance of trade, which
gives them increasing cash reserves, and a consequent
ability to manipulate capital markets.
Calling the CCP "Communist" is like calling
scientology a religion -- it's a gross abuse of
the denotative meaning of the term. The CCP
is a collection of warlord factions not unlike
the KMT in 1910, or any of a hundred other
examples from Chinese history.
The CCP may well be the most powerful organized
entity on the face of the earth today, and it
is utterly ruthless. It has imposed an hereditary
caste system on the Chinese people, utterly
crushes any sort of labor organization, in fact
maintains a gulag system of millions of literal
slave laborers, forces hundreds of thousands of
abortions on unwilling women every year, and has
a history of wild oscillations in policy that
result in mass starvation, brutalization, and
dehumanization.
Really, it's not very unlike the U.S. government,
except that it's violence is directed inward,
against the peasants and workers and intelligentsia,
instead of outward, against swarthy people who
have oil. Both systems represent an intense
concentration of power under the domination of
one autocratic ruler. Both systems use political
parties to exclude meaningful dissent. Both
systems manipulate law to funnel funds into the
hands of crony feudal barons. Both systems
exercise strangling control over the mass media
to preclude meaningful democracy.
But the Chinese nukes are pointed at *me*, while
the U.S. nukes are pointed *away*, so I prefer
to see the U.S. hang on to its global empire
for a few more decades, please.
Oh, and we are selling them shit. Such as VSAT
technology (Hughes/Loral) and missile technology
(McDonnel and TRW), thanks to the millions funnelled
by the "People's Liberation Army" into the
Clinton/Gore campaigns.
The chinese people are wonderful, and the
chinese culture is amazingly deep and beautiful,
as is the language. But the chinese state is
perhaps the single greatest source of human
evil on the face of this planet, and as such
it should be given all the respect one gives
a rabid predator. That dragon is not a mascot
or a pet. It breathes fire, and it is waking
up from a long sleep.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
The devil is in how you define 'prosperity' and for whom. The growth of the American economy might look great in macro terms and for large investors, but the loss of jobs hurts very much the poor working stiffs like me. You might point to unemployment figures as refuting the loss of jobs, but if you carefully consider in which sectors jobs were created and lost, you will see my point. For labor, skilled positions paying enough to support a family are few and far between compared to ten years ago and a world apart from 25 years ago. The sector that gained most positions is the service industry (read: unskilled or less skilled labor). End result is the greater separation between rich and poor, but hey, as long as Warren Buffett is happy, everything is ok right?
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
So it'll basically be like America right?
Get your Unix fortune now!
we ARE helping their elite communist class get even richer and more entrenched in power (ugh);
So it'll basically be like America right? Why are you still afraid of Communism?
I bet you still think that the people in China are "uneducated", yet you live in the country with almost the worst educational system in the world!
Get over yourself.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Arggh!
Japan is ahead of us because they use everything we do, and they use it 1000 times faster and better. We complain about 7-8 hour days, complaining about stress - we act as if working causes stress.
We invented the TV, and they make it, we invented the semiconductor... they use it in a million gadgets.
They are on "Tennis Time" we are on a beachy vacation time.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Yes, they are Communists, but that doesn't completely make them inhuman. They can be inhumane, but that is another issue.
They may leave things out or discourage certain lines of thought - but they teach physics, they've long been intellegent people and there is progress there.
Get your Unix fortune now!
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
80% of the country is below the poverty line, they're uneducated and agrarian. ("POOR")
18% of the country has a small amount of money and minimum knowledge ("LOWER CLASS")
2% of the country is rich ("UPPER CLASS") and use the cheap services provided by the poor 98% of the population.
This 2% of the population 0.02*1000mil = 20 million rich people which is a lot, even the US doesn't have that many rich people. The idea is that schooling will improve and this 2% will increase and spread to the rest of the population, there is much scope for intellectual growth. This assumes markets for these intellectual goods exist, if they don't then educatig your population is pointless, and with the high-tech crash it's becoming possible that educating your population won't increase your GDP any more. The US like Japan is starting to get saturated by knowledge workers, having an excessive number of knowledge workers just causes knowledge to be wasted (Unix guru working in McDonalds).
There's a limit to how much money Joe sixpack will spend on having the most advanced PC and software. The first wave of PC sales by Micro$oft has been incredibly succesful, but now that the market is saturated, unless Joe sixpack finds video-editing appealling we're looking at GDP stagnation unless a non-knowledge worker way can be found to increase GDP e.g. decreasing the cost of imported oil, hence Afghanistan to get more oil pipelines there. So just shut up and let the US army kill lots of innocent Afghan civilians, US GDP growth is at stake here. Otherwise in 20 years we'll all be trying to emmigrate to Ethiopea.
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
Not even close, although the US has a lead in GDP it certainly isn't the sole superpower. The EU zone as a whole actually has a larger GDP. Japan has a comparable GDP even in prolonged recession.
The US superpower status is military. The EU could match the US in military power if they were prepared to devote the same insane proportion of their budgets to military hardware. However doing that would cost the courtries their welfare state services which seems a lot to give up just to build weapons for the sake of it.
The bellyaching of the US right about China has nothing to do with human rights. The US right never gave a hang about human rights abuses by Pinochet, Marcos or the House of Saud. What they are really upset about is demographics and economics. It is a lot easier for a backward country to grow at 15% as it catches up than it is for a developed country to sustain 4% growth. The only way that China can fail to overtake the US in terms of economic power is to have a civil war and be broken into pieces. Same goes for India.
Bush and the cronies who control him could not give a damn about human rights or the Falun Gong. Their speeches about human rights and democracy are as hypocritical as their speeches on corporate responsibility - one of the chief Enron scam artist who bilked his division out of $15 million in bonuses while reporting $500 million is phony profits is still secretary for the army. If you think that fine speeches about democracy are worth anything I have a lorry load of Florida chads to sell you.
Military power follows economic power. China with a population four or five times that of the US could if it chose sustain a military the same size should it choose to do so. The militarist faction of the right can only understand prestige and power and cannot imagine that any country that has the option of building a superpower status military would give up the opportunity.
Fortunately most nations don't have the same inferiority complex that drives the US right. China, Germany, France, Britain have all done the empire bit and don't need to do it again.
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Actually South Korea did - or closer o homw Taiwan! But the issue is from what base. It is much harder for the US to grow at a Clintonian 4% a years than it is for bingobongo land to double its domestic product by buying a second cow. China is pretty well developed these days.
The source of GOP angst is that China is large geographically and population wise and so will inevitably rival the US once its economy achieves roughly half the GNP per head of the US.
When the GOP bash Communist China their real fear is that China might actually take their advice and reform and so be placed to challenge the US economically in 2015 rather than 2020.
While the USSR economy went right into the tank after they ditched communism there is no reason to believe that China would do the same. In the first place China has been gradually adopting a market model for the past 15 years and has the basic infrastructure of capitalism in place. Secondly the USSR collapsed ecconomically before it abandoned communism and saw the economy go worse. China is not likely to fail economically. Thirdly, China is certain to learn from the USSR experience and reject the IMF advised crony capitalism model.
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Back in the 1960s the charge was made that the Japaneese copied everything.
This lead to an oft repeated interview in which Robin Day of the BBC doorstepped the Japanese trade minister with an aleged Japanese copy of British ball bearings...
Looked like he had a case too, the ballbearings were identical!
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Your arguments about who could or couldn't be a military superpower are beside the point, as are your comments about whether human rights in China are an issue to the US government.
I agree with you about Bush and his ilk. But the fact is, over the past decade, there has been a huge degree of domestic dispute in the US about how we should deal with Chinese human rights issues. Is engagement a better means of influencing their behavior in that area, or is economic punishment?
China's armed forces hover at around 2.8M active personnel, while the US forces stand at about 1.3M. Include reserve forces, and the Chinese military balloons to well over 4x the size of the US military. So in fact it does choose to sustain a military of the same size (larger, actually).
I understand that you're upset about American military, economic, and cultural hegemony. But to chalk it up solely to an "inferiority complex" is a bit childish, don't you think? I agree with you that the US could stand to curb its military expendatures quite a bit, but as history has shown, power abhors a vacuum. The moment the US disengages from a region, someone else will step in to assert control.
None of the countries you mentioned gave up great power status willingly - their empires were wrested from them.
It's convenient having the US as a scapegoat, because while they're lording it over you, you can snarl about how overbearing they are, and if you get in trouble, they'll still be there to save your bacon. I guess memories are selective. Folks remember Pinochet and forget WW I, WW II, the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, etc.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
"We complain about 7-8 hour days, complaining about stress - we act as if working causes stress."
Recent studies have shown that Americans put it more hours at work a year than any other industrialized country (including Japan). The only ("non-industrialized") countries that have us beat in that respect are South Korea and the Czech Republic.
Yeh, the ming dynasty (not the emperor, i forget who it was who started it) cut itself off from the world. Built the great wall, etc.
Before the ming, China was way ahead of Europe and the middle east in trading and stuff. By the end of the Ming Dynasty they were behind.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
"Who are exploiting that resources from other countries, US."
By volume? Perhaps. Per capita? I think you need to start looking at Western Europe a bit more closely.
"sum of all the dogs consumption in US goes away beyond what rest of the world can feed to themselves."
And do you have numbers to back that up?
"If you give up on buying that coke, that other individual can benefit greatly and have more chance of feeding himself and his family in other countries."
If I stop buying Coke (which I don't buy anyway), I'll have more spending cash in my pocket. And other than donating that money to a charity, how is that supposed to equate with helping other people feed themselves? After all, most of that price of Coke goes to pay for Coke's marketing budget, not for the carbonated water, syrup and aluminum involved.
"Why do you rely on Japanese vehicle?"
The Koreans who made my car would be very insulted to be called Japanese. Which actually brings up another counterpoint...
" They get cheap labor, they get their metals, woods, oils (which Bush claims they own the oil) and they fucking process it go through small step that comes up as user-end product."
Hyundai may not have mined the iron ore themselves but probably made the machines that mined it. Hyundai processes their own steel. Hyundai then used the raw materials to make everything in the car themselves. Once the car is finished, they load it up onto a RORO cargo ship in Hyundai's merchant fleet that was built in a Hyundai shipyard (with Hyundai cranes moving around Hyundai steel again, ships powered by Hyundai diesel engines...). About the only thing on my car that didn't get manufactured or processed by Hyundai are the tires.
Where does Hyundai's vertical monopoly fit into your "small steps" statement?
No, thats true, a lot of them went to Canada as well. Its been fairly well established that the North American free trade pact has benefitted Canada and Mexico moreso than the US.
If cheap labor were the only factor in determining the relative economic strength of a nation-state, the Romans would never have built
WHAT? Are you not familiar with the concept of slavery? The Romans didn't pay their workforce, they whipped them. The same can be said for the south in the US prior to the Civil War. Wow, you are demonstrating an astoundingly bad grasp of history here.
China is not *the* place to be. Just ask the Falung Gong.
The US is not *the* place to be. Just ask the Branch Davidians.
And from a business perspective, lack of these things, particularly in a world economy dominated by post-industrial persuits that require human creativity and unfettered access to information, is the kiss of death.
How do you presume to state that Chinese citizens cannot be creative? Microsoft does much of its research (some of which lead to MP4) in China. You're just in denial now, offering up ridiculous reasons why everywhere but the US must fail.
The responses meander off into staw-man territory but don't acknowledge economics.
Some, not all, programming jobs are going to go to China, India and Russia. Deal with it, its already happening.
I disagree. Big Business wants tight governmental control over the people so their toes aren't stepped on, and loose control over themselves, so they can do what they please. This means that with the money they're making, they can afford to set governmental policy through bribery (even more easily than in North America) and the people, who are unable to assemble or speak out about the businesses fucking them over are going to be put to work.
You don't need people with freedom to have a strong economy. If you chain research scientists to their desks and demand that they work, you can squeeze enough work out of them to make it worth your while.
And don't forget the lesson of Hitler's Germany. He turned a broken state into a real world power, and he did it without the whole 'freedom' thing. Nazi Fascism isn't any prettier than Communism.
The growth of the American economy might look great in macro terms and for large investors, but the loss of jobs hurts very much the poor working stiffs like me.
If you can't compete with an illiterate Mexican who is glad to not be working in the fields under the punishing summer sun, then perhaps you need to ask yourself why you are a "working stiff" after receiving a free high school education and the opportunity to go to college on the GI Bill?
I know a Salvadoran who lived in poverty, came to the US, worked as a maid ("low-paid sevice industry"), saved her money, and started a restaurant. Now she has a chain of three, and is doing quite well. Nor is she the only poor immigrant success story I know.
Save money - go to school, get the right skills - don't have kids until you can afford them. Very simple.
Anyone who is "hurting" should not have time to be reading Slashdot!
Well, I have the unique perspective of a geek who just spent a bunch of time in China. It's an interesting place; plenty of contrasts, the bicycle rickshaw with a load of LCD displays outside Tsinghua university was one of them. The funny thing is the cities are capitalist and growing at a considerable rate. The countryside, where the bulk of the population is, is neither. And to move between the countryside and the city you need a visa. That sounds like a stable situation to me.
Already many of the cities have a comparable standard of living to the US; except it's very different. I stayed at the Holiday Inn in Shenzhen and enjoyed a view of Hong Kong from my towering hotel room; the city was beautiful. 20 years ago 6000 people lived in a fishing village there. They made it a special economic zone and now 6 million people live there. Not a bad demonstration of the power of capitalism.
I talked to some girls who worked at a nearby coffee shop. They were basically indentured servitudes for the coffee shop. They lived in a company dorm and the company gave them food. The company was, oddly enough, based out of Taiwan.
So that was a little strange.
The lack of a free press made people's view of america interesting; basically they had no idea of what life was like in the US and asked a lot of silly questions. But, they did have access to US movies, through the form of street markets or random guys on street corners who ask you if you want a DVD or VCD. So many people had seen US movies and were curious whether movies such as American Pie truely represented life in America.
Conclusions? China is still a third world country with some parts approaching second world quality of living. It'll be a while before they give us a run for the money. Smart, ambitious people in China still want to come to the US.
-Jay Thomas
http://www.uiuc.edu/~jthomas2
In the university where work as a research assistant, the majority of PhD students are from China and India. Chinese students invariably tend to be the best ones. It seems like by the time they come here they have already done A LOT of practical hitech research in their universities.
Because of this, (and because most of them don't mind being paid 2k$/month or less) a lot of departments actually prefer to hire Chinese students for tech projects.
Many of them will go back to China once their studies are over.
It is also worth considering that for each student that makes it to the US, maybe 100 will stay in China.
And, as the article says: "Hundreds of universities with strong tech departments have been created."
Is this enough to say that China is headed towards becoming the place where hi tech is conceived and grown ?
I think that, IF these government-funded policies will go on, it will be just a matter of time (maybe a couple of generations, maybe less
And btw, it seems to me that they are very inclined toward the sharing of knowledge and information,
giampy
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history - Tom Veneziano
Nah. I'm browsing this site from China right now. Geez there's a lot of misconceptions about this place! And a lot of people in this discussion showing their absolute ignorance of anything outside the good old US of A.
I can't compete because labor is becoming more and more a commodity on a broad 'global' scale. I can't compete with someone who is willing to work for minimum wage in a sweatshop (here in San Jose) doing E/M assembly for instance, living 12 to an apartment just to take the money and support their family back home. Don't fool yourself, the labor market is not sustainable for them either. You have a choice of either living in poverty here, or becoming migrant labor.
As far as education, not everyone can work your IT job. Remember that (by definition) half of the population has an IQ of 100 or less. Are these people condemned to compete with sweatshop migrant labor because they cannot complete a higher degree? The free high school is no longer sufficient to provide an acceptable standard of living.
I know a Salvadoran who lived in poverty, came to the US, worked as a maid ("low-paid sevice industry"), saved her money, and started a restaurant. Now she has a chain of three, and is doing quite well. Nor is she the only poor immigrant success story I know.
Ahh the great American myth. That Salvadoran woman surely employs a number of people at marginal subsistence levels so that she can live more comfortably and thus poverty is perpetuated. Not everyone can be a restaurant owner or the equivalent. There must always exist labor to staff the businesses, labor will always outnumber non-labor, and if the standard of living is forced further down by the introduction of sweatshop labor, bad bad things result.
Anyone who is "hurting" should not have time to be reading Slashdot!
Listen to what you're saying! Is leisure a luxury? Is the weekend a privilege?
For full disclosure, I did receive that free high school education, and I am using that GI Bill for which I spent years in the military, you're welcome.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
That's a widely-disputed claim.
You singled out my example of the Roman empire as proof of my ignorance of history, but my comment was that if cheap labor were the only factor in determining the relative economic strength of a nation-state, the Romans wouldn't have had an empire. And I'm not sure about the relevance of your comment about the US South prior to the Civil War. The South underperformed the North to a huge degree specifically because they used slave labor. It was only after the Civil War that the American economy, no longer dragged down by the Southern plantation economy, was able to truly modernise.
Just ask the Branch Davidians.
I'm not going to apologize for the US government's handling of the Branch Davidians standoff. But it's specious to compare the Branch Davidians incident with the clampdown on the Falung Gong. They are completely different in scale and cause. It's also instructive to remember that while the FBI was acquitted of wrongdoing, the repurcussions from the event have led to inquiries, a storm of debate, and changes within the FBI. There is no such internal debate regarding handling of the Falung Gong in China, because the system prohibits it.
I don't make any contention that the US is even remotely perfect, or that it's the only place to be, or even that it's going to maintain hegemony forever. But I do believe that whatever nation-state overtakes the United States will only do so on the basis of a social structure rooted in respect for the individual.
China is making huge strides. They have tremendous industrial and high-tech potential, and smart, hardworking people. That's obvious. But the Soviet Union had those same advantages, and their inability to reconcile their technological progress with the squelching of free thought made their experiment doomed to failure from the start.
It's my belief that the Chinese system of government will have to evolve if the country is to ever approach, much less overtake, the US economically.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
The US is the 3rd largest nation on earth.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
When you see pictures of "the great wall" you are seeing the Long City built by the Ming Dynasty. An origional wall was built long in the past of tamped earth, but it, for the most part, no longer stands.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
In Calcutta, India electricity is available for 40% of the day - like the California power cuts gone extreme. That's why the American IT facilities in Bangalore have primary and secondary generators and don't even draw power from the grid, like NORAD. The American telcos had enough time to fit a good fibre infrastructure though before the bust, but US power companies don't fix other country's infrastructures.
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
This leads me to the conclusion that the US doesn't want to catch binLaden, because then they'll lose their excuse for implementing these draconian domestic and international policies, plus the US threatening to veto the entire UN mission if US troops are forced to follow international human rights agreements. Clearly binLaden is protected by the US Government, he's their excuse for global domination. Mmmmmmmmmmkay.
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
And plus securing US airports is pointless, in Nigeria you pay $50 and they'll let you past the security checks, pay $50 more and they'll let you on the plane without security checks, so you can hijack an international 747 and smash it into any building you want in any country you want. Securing airports is a worldwide requirement, the current efforts in the US only are half measures. Saying that next WTC can be prevented by just tightening up domestic security is just PR.
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
The FBI doesn't want all your privacy - have you ever heard of the expression, "Ask for a mile, take only an inch and they'll be grateful"? Actually I don't know if this expression exists. FBI will ask for everything, and then they'll settle on having backdoors in all encryption algorithms, stuff that would make RMS pissed before 9/11, but this way at least you get to keep all your other rights - this is how they want you to see it.
Not in old Communist Russia. That's a very American idea echoed through the Courts, conspiracy circles and media. Remember that Bill Gates had to sit in Court and defend himself, penalty for a monopoly in the US is 3 times profit for the period of the monopoly, my guess is maybe a $20billion fine could have been theoretically imposed on Microsoft if Bill said the wrong stuff (shouted at the Judge). If someone tried to take from you the company you'd built up over decades you'd feel like your children are being taken away. Of course in the movies the assumption is that every monopoly always says the right thing after being advised and rehearsed by hundreds of the best lawyers. This keeps the Judges happy even in the event of gross violations so you need some power apart from law to regulate runaway corporations, just add Arnold Scwarzenegger to this and it's a wrap. Providing it's an enforced law in every country Microsoft sells in. Trouble is if the US legal system gives Microsoft too much trouble they can just move to China/Korea and fire all their employees in the US, and a big corporation can threaten any other country with this "If you implement those new child labour laws Unilever, Coca Cola, GM, Ford, etc. will move all our factories that pay 80% of your country's taxes to Nigeria, then when 90% of your citizens are unemployed they'll throw you out of Government"A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
I'm sorry but isnt it thew same old story about the salvadorian maid u always tell. its getting old.
Well I know a lot of Salvadoran maids. One runs a chain of restaurants. Another works as a hotel maid, but she saved enough for her children to go to college.
A third works at home making empanadas for maid #1. She is probably the "poorest," having never learned English, but made enough to have a home theater with surround-sound and to raise her daughter. The daughter is a secretary and has married another recent Salvadoran immigrant who went to a tech school, and did DSLAM installs. He did get laid off recently, but produced local music parties in a club to make money until he could get back to doing telco work.
As Americans, we are spoiled rotten. We have no clue how rough the rest of the world is. We forget that our poorest people live better than most of the population of the world. We often fail to understand why we are part of the 1/6 of the world with a "western" standard of living and a "western" economy.
We don't even understand how we got here, the role of freedom, open markets, and property rights. We think we can simply legislate everyone out of poverty, when there is a long list of countries that tried that and failed. You can't fool the economy. The rules of economy are not well understood, but like physics, there are rules.
And we are going to have to understand how those with low IQs play into the future. I believe that most that have low IQs have other "intelligences" such as emotional intelligence. I've met people with less capability for technical thought than I have that have better business ability or better graphical thinking. Of course, we will soon be hacking our own DNA, so the long-term future might be more interesting.
What we do need is to ensure that there are market signals to encourage people to live up to their potential and allow them to maximize their productive value.
For full disclosure, I did receive that free high school education, and I am using that GI Bill for which I spent years in the military, you're welcome.
That's great! You are a success story that others can follow.
But E/M assembly is a godsend for those in other countries, compared to most of the other options. "Sweatshop" is an interesting concept, but you sweat a heck of a lot more working in the fields doing susistance or low value-add agriculture.
As to "sweatshops in San Jose" I will bet you that most of those recent immigrants are saving. They might not be able to get much better jobs for themselves, but they are making sure their children will be able to do better than they did.
They made a choice to move hundreds, in some cases thousands of miles for a better life. They risked a great deal. They are pro-active.