They do know American society than most Americans and their politicians:
"Truth is, 90 percent of the people there [in the US], you will find, they'll do the most stupid things, impulsive things. I know for a fact. At the same time, Americans are bighearted people, and the remaining 10 percent of them are smart. Bloody smart. That's why they rule the world."
They are qualified to rule us. We just need to outsource the Congress.
"Truth is, 90 percent of the people there, you will find, they'll do the most stupid things, impulsive things. I know for a fact. At the same time, Americans are bighearted people, and the remaining 10 percent of them are smart. Bloody smart. That's why they rule the world."
There is nothing to worry. Eventually, when there are enough people without jobs and economy stops growing, people will either revolt or turn into socialism by fact even though our politicians will still resist socialism in their words. It is reflected by very high tax on both income and property. Europe has already reached that point. US will eventually end up there whether democrats, republicans, or tea party are in power. It is an irresistible trend. Even China will become socialistic once again (they are only socialistic by name now.)
in a very distance future, human beings will just become pets of robots.
There are no real equal rights for everyone everywhere. There are plenty of talks of such, including in China. If people in the US have more rights, like the rights to education, that's result of our impressive prior economic development and the current massive public debt. A lot more Chinese can now travel to Hong Kong, Taiwan, US, Japan, Australia, or Europe today, not because the governments of their destinations become kinder and respect people's rights to travel, but because Chinese people are richer and fewer of them end up being illegal immigrants.
As you said the Friendship Store was probably for reinforcing inequality, in fact the stores were for attracting foreigners and oversea Chinese to work and invest in China back then, but now these stores are gone and everyone can walk into any high-class department stores in China. Wouldn't that be a progress in your eyes? Now ordinary Chinese can live in any city they can afford to; you may have to pay higher school fees etc., but back then you were not even allow to travel to the city if you were not a resident. Wouldn't that be progress in freedom? (And such freedom still carries high costs, look at the property price and traffic in major cities in China.) You would still live miserably in China if you are poor, but you wouldn't be much better off in most other places; or otherwise the government is racking up huge debt to pay for the direct or indirect well-fare. China is moving to that direction too as now they have enforced their labor laws a lot more strictly, kicked start their healthcare reform while we were still bickering on the issue, built more subsidize housing to combat high property price, etc. I just wish they would rack up huge debts as we do, but I'm pessimistic about that.
Same for politics, today jailed dissidents may be numbered in the hundreds, but in Mao's era, that were numbered in tens of millions. There are plenty of criticism everyday on their websites, so long as you don't try to organize a movement.
The same kind stores, known as the Friendship Store, existed in China back in 1970s and 1980s. These stores sold things like imported TV sets. In fact, the stores only accepted a special form of currency known as the Dui Huan Quan which could only be acquired by foreigners with foreign currencies. Local people could not even enter high-class hotels unless accompanied by foreigners. These might create some ire but more of ASPIRATIONS.
Today, all of these are history. China becomes the leading suppliers of TV sets among many other things. They build some of most luxurious hotels that everyone can stay as long as one can pay. Thousands of Chinese tourists go visit abroad and stay in our 5-star hotels. Rich Chinese investors are buying high-end properties in Manhattan, silicon valley and Vancouver as well as other investment assets.
While their political system still looks oppressive today. It is a probably ten thousand times better than in Mao's era. It will not surprise me that 20 or 30 years later, we may envy at their social and political progress too.
So you believe the Chinese government does all these to catch 82,707 * 85% people into prison? It just show how much biased information you have received on your favorite free media. If I were you, I would learn Chinese and go visit Chinese forums for half year before I post another comment about China.
Slipper slop may not be logical but is real, unfortunately. We are dealing with human beings and not math. You may find people using pot have indeed higher probability to use meth as well. Or you could say slippery slop is indeed logical because human nature will tend to abuse one's own power or continuously going a step further than already taken, just like gravity will inevitably pull the cars down on a slippery slop. I don't like, probably nobody like, the rules made to guard against slippery slop but the slop is real in many social/economic area.
Your points are understood, but the other people's argument is not that there isn't any freedom because of the example limitations but that it is slippery slop that more and more limitations, which they think should not have existed, be imposed on them by force more powerful than them. That can be a valid point given all that have been happening.
There is no way that all people agree on what should be classified as restricted and what should not be.
Like there are still huge number of poor people in China and once somebody raise up pitching some SIMPLE POLITICAL EXPRESSION that sound attractive and compelling, the poors and disadvantages may very well unite and revolt. The last time this happened, that person was Mao Zedong and the simple political expression was known as communism, and the government overthrown was the KMT government. And it has just happened in Egypt. The SIMPLE POLITICAL EXPRESSION is not the cause, you would argue, but is definitely the catalyst. Can it happen again? Of course, because there are always more poor people.
Most Chinese people, especially the ones in the city, do not like suppression of SIMPLE POLITICAL EXPRESSION, but they also understand that some opportunists will seize the freedom to their own agenda and cause massive social uprising.
It seems the current strategy of the Chinese central government is to kick the can down, catch more and more corrupted officials so to cool off some complains, keep building the economy (by selling more the US,) while suppressing any attempt to call for political freedom, until the poverty level and population go down to manageable level. (Whereas the US strategy is to make corruption legal by allowing political donation and "election" while at the same time borrow massive amount of money to keep poor people working or on welfare. Also a kick the can down strategy -- the grand strategy of economy.)
It is a hard problem to solve and just naively adopting "democracy" is not going to work, as evident in countries like India and Mexico and probably in Egypt too.
Imagine if you are now the Chinese leader and inherited such a huge population, lots of poor people in the rural area, large bureaucracy, and high official corruption, how do you plan to choose between allowing unlimited political expression and social stability?
Clarification: I meant this part ""Automation becomes main labor source and the profits are shared with those that would otherwise be working in the form of social welfare and education..." of the #5, not the second part. The second part cannot be sustained because it will lead to revolution -- it is probably the final stage of advanced capitalism.
#5 is also known as Communism. As I grew up in China, I remember the teaching in the middle school political science class was that Marx claimed the very advanced capitalistic society would adopt communism successfully. I don't know if Marx had actually said the same, but the theory is certainly used to justify the extreme capitalistic economic reform since the 1980's without changing the political brand name. At the time, I doubted this theory, partially because nobody believed whatever the government said.
But after living in the US for a long time and comparing to what have happened in Western Europe, this theory may be right. It is not whether you like it or not, it may be inevitable. Most likely, we will stick to capitalism in names but practicing more and more communism. The tea party thing is only transient phenomena, whether you like it or not.
So the BP oil platform explosion didn't happen and killed nobody. It must be a conspiracy theory by the anti-Western propagandists. Thank you for telling us about that.
While we here in this forum respect engineers and scientists (because we are one of them,) they don't necessary make great leaders by any mean. So far, these 8 Chinese top officials, like the 8 preceding them, are just following the game plan set up by the early true leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, neither of whom are engineers but career generals and politicians. You can even claim the current leaders are "better" because they have not committed massive wrongdoings such as Great Leap Forward or Cultural Revolution or June 4 as their predecessor. But the current leadship's impact on Chinese history is much much less comparing to the still current political/economic impacts by Mao or Deng.
If capitalism were a success, we'd all be working fewer hours and adults would be living significantly longer. We are not and they are not.
Adults have been living longer indeed comparing to pre-(capitalistic)-industrial revolution. People's average life span used to be in the 30s. And for large part, capitalism is the one to thank.
China's space program makes pronouncements like this all the time, but they don't yet have the ability to make things like this happen. Heck, just the other day personnel from China's aerospace organization said that they were confounded by SpaceX's price/kg and unable to compete with it:
Your second sentence does not really support your first. (Being actively paying attention to space programs, it seems they do delivery but on a rather slow pace; maybe they learn from the Soviet and now the US, and don't want to break themselves financially?)
In any case, if SpaceX's price is real and we have yet to see real proof, wouldn't it be a good thing for SpaceX to beat China in term of price? If we all learn from SpaceX, then maybe soon China will outsource from US instead.
So is China. It used to be there were 300,000+ people jailed or harassed for their speech, belief or origin during Cultural Revolution. Now the number is probably down to a few dozen to a few hundred activists. And you can read tons of criticism against the government on Chinese websites by thousands of people everyday. Wouldn't that be an improvement as well?
No, China has never denied the principle of freedom or democracy in its official positions. These were in fact the "founding principles" of CCP and PRC when they fought the previous oppressor the KMT and ROC. Once in power, of course, they pretty much redefined what democracy is and where the line is drawn on speech freedom. There are no true democracy or unlimited free speech (as long as one cares of any consequence) anywhere in the world. For examples, the democracy in the US is pretty much a never-ending joke; and there are severe consequence if you show yourself naked in the broadcast TV in this country. On the other hands, China has real elections in the rural village level and you can read tons of criticism against the government by thousands of people on China websites everyday and only relatively few outspoken ones get in trouble. So it just comes down to where the lines are drawn and how you define things.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, there is a difference: robbery vs steal.
They do know American society than most Americans and their politicians:
"Truth is, 90 percent of the people there [in the US], you will find, they'll do the most stupid things, impulsive things. I know for a fact. At the same time, Americans are bighearted people, and the remaining 10 percent of them are smart. Bloody smart. That's why they rule the world."
They are qualified to rule us. We just need to outsource the Congress.
I like this quote:
"Truth is, 90 percent of the people there, you will find, they'll do the most stupid things, impulsive things. I know for a fact. At the same time, Americans are bighearted people, and the remaining 10 percent of them are smart. Bloody smart. That's why they rule the world."
Sounds like they are qualified!
Well said, wish I have mod points.
How can people on Slashdot bitch about software patents, and then complain about Chinese theft of software?
That's known as double standard mixed with scapegoating.
Fix typo. trying to beat crowd in posting. Got names mixed up. But you get the idea.
Yeah... sorry, trying to beat crowd in posting. Got names mixed up. But you get the idea.
Because he's Chinese, in light of our MacArthur-style political climate.
The evidence against him includes screen captures showing Yang in the act of copying source code files to removable drives from his laptop.
Sounds like another Wen Ho Lee.
There is nothing to worry. Eventually, when there are enough people without jobs and economy stops growing, people will either revolt or turn into socialism by fact even though our politicians will still resist socialism in their words. It is reflected by very high tax on both income and property. Europe has already reached that point. US will eventually end up there whether democrats, republicans, or tea party are in power. It is an irresistible trend. Even China will become socialistic once again (they are only socialistic by name now.)
in a very distance future, human beings will just become pets of robots.
In a smart home it could be used to offer help: 'Would you like some help with that recipe, Dave?'
Or... In a smart home it could be used to offer help: 'Would you like some help with that vi@Gra, Dave?'
There are no real equal rights for everyone everywhere. There are plenty of talks of such, including in China. If people in the US have more rights, like the rights to education, that's result of our impressive prior economic development and the current massive public debt. A lot more Chinese can now travel to Hong Kong, Taiwan, US, Japan, Australia, or Europe today, not because the governments of their destinations become kinder and respect people's rights to travel, but because Chinese people are richer and fewer of them end up being illegal immigrants.
As you said the Friendship Store was probably for reinforcing inequality, in fact the stores were for attracting foreigners and oversea Chinese to work and invest in China back then, but now these stores are gone and everyone can walk into any high-class department stores in China. Wouldn't that be a progress in your eyes? Now ordinary Chinese can live in any city they can afford to; you may have to pay higher school fees etc., but back then you were not even allow to travel to the city if you were not a resident. Wouldn't that be progress in freedom? (And such freedom still carries high costs, look at the property price and traffic in major cities in China.) You would still live miserably in China if you are poor, but you wouldn't be much better off in most other places; or otherwise the government is racking up huge debt to pay for the direct or indirect well-fare. China is moving to that direction too as now they have enforced their labor laws a lot more strictly, kicked start their healthcare reform while we were still bickering on the issue, built more subsidize housing to combat high property price, etc. I just wish they would rack up huge debts as we do, but I'm pessimistic about that.
Same for politics, today jailed dissidents may be numbered in the hundreds, but in Mao's era, that were numbered in tens of millions. There are plenty of criticism everyday on their websites, so long as you don't try to organize a movement.
The same kind stores, known as the Friendship Store, existed in China back in 1970s and 1980s. These stores sold things like imported TV sets. In fact, the stores only accepted a special form of currency known as the Dui Huan Quan which could only be acquired by foreigners with foreign currencies. Local people could not even enter high-class hotels unless accompanied by foreigners. These might create some ire but more of ASPIRATIONS.
Today, all of these are history. China becomes the leading suppliers of TV sets among many other things. They build some of most luxurious hotels that everyone can stay as long as one can pay. Thousands of Chinese tourists go visit abroad and stay in our 5-star hotels. Rich Chinese investors are buying high-end properties in Manhattan, silicon valley and Vancouver as well as other investment assets.
While their political system still looks oppressive today. It is a probably ten thousand times better than in Mao's era. It will not surprise me that 20 or 30 years later, we may envy at their social and political progress too.
Could be. But there have been a lot more than a few mechanical bad accidents involving airplanes, yet people are still flying.
So you believe the Chinese government does all these to catch 82,707 * 85% people into prison? It just show how much biased information you have received on your favorite free media. If I were you, I would learn Chinese and go visit Chinese forums for half year before I post another comment about China.
Notice the "per month" vs "per year"?
Slipper slop may not be logical but is real, unfortunately. We are dealing with human beings and not math. You may find people using pot have indeed higher probability to use meth as well. Or you could say slippery slop is indeed logical because human nature will tend to abuse one's own power or continuously going a step further than already taken, just like gravity will inevitably pull the cars down on a slippery slop. I don't like, probably nobody like, the rules made to guard against slippery slop but the slop is real in many social/economic area.
Your points are understood, but the other people's argument is not that there isn't any freedom because of the example limitations but that it is slippery slop that more and more limitations, which they think should not have existed, be imposed on them by force more powerful than them. That can be a valid point given all that have been happening.
There is no way that all people agree on what should be classified as restricted and what should not be.
Like there are still huge number of poor people in China and once somebody raise up pitching some SIMPLE POLITICAL EXPRESSION that sound attractive and compelling, the poors and disadvantages may very well unite and revolt. The last time this happened, that person was Mao Zedong and the simple political expression was known as communism, and the government overthrown was the KMT government. And it has just happened in Egypt. The SIMPLE POLITICAL EXPRESSION is not the cause, you would argue, but is definitely the catalyst. Can it happen again? Of course, because there are always more poor people.
Most Chinese people, especially the ones in the city, do not like suppression of SIMPLE POLITICAL EXPRESSION, but they also understand that some opportunists will seize the freedom to their own agenda and cause massive social uprising.
It seems the current strategy of the Chinese central government is to kick the can down, catch more and more corrupted officials so to cool off some complains, keep building the economy (by selling more the US,) while suppressing any attempt to call for political freedom, until the poverty level and population go down to manageable level. (Whereas the US strategy is to make corruption legal by allowing political donation and "election" while at the same time borrow massive amount of money to keep poor people working or on welfare. Also a kick the can down strategy -- the grand strategy of economy.)
It is a hard problem to solve and just naively adopting "democracy" is not going to work, as evident in countries like India and Mexico and probably in Egypt too.
Imagine if you are now the Chinese leader and inherited such a huge population, lots of poor people in the rural area, large bureaucracy, and high official corruption, how do you plan to choose between allowing unlimited political expression and social stability?
Clarification: I meant this part ""Automation becomes main labor source and the profits are shared with those that would otherwise be working in the form of social welfare and education..." of the #5, not the second part. The second part cannot be sustained because it will lead to revolution -- it is probably the final stage of advanced capitalism.
#5 is also known as Communism. As I grew up in China, I remember the teaching in the middle school political science class was that Marx claimed the very advanced capitalistic society would adopt communism successfully. I don't know if Marx had actually said the same, but the theory is certainly used to justify the extreme capitalistic economic reform since the 1980's without changing the political brand name. At the time, I doubted this theory, partially because nobody believed whatever the government said.
But after living in the US for a long time and comparing to what have happened in Western Europe, this theory may be right. It is not whether you like it or not, it may be inevitable. Most likely, we will stick to capitalism in names but practicing more and more communism. The tea party thing is only transient phenomena, whether you like it or not.
So the BP oil platform explosion didn't happen and killed nobody. It must be a conspiracy theory by the anti-Western propagandists. Thank you for telling us about that.
While we here in this forum respect engineers and scientists (because we are one of them,) they don't necessary make great leaders by any mean. So far, these 8 Chinese top officials, like the 8 preceding them, are just following the game plan set up by the early true leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, neither of whom are engineers but career generals and politicians. You can even claim the current leaders are "better" because they have not committed massive wrongdoings such as Great Leap Forward or Cultural Revolution or June 4 as their predecessor. But the current leadship's impact on Chinese history is much much less comparing to the still current political/economic impacts by Mao or Deng.
If capitalism were a success, we'd all be working fewer hours and adults would be living significantly longer. We are not and they are not.
Adults have been living longer indeed comparing to pre-(capitalistic)-industrial revolution. People's average life span used to be in the 30s. And for large part, capitalism is the one to thank.
China's space program makes pronouncements like this all the time, but they don't yet have the ability to make things like this happen. Heck, just the other day personnel from China's aerospace organization said that they were confounded by SpaceX's price/kg and unable to compete with it:
Your second sentence does not really support your first. (Being actively paying attention to space programs, it seems they do delivery but on a rather slow pace; maybe they learn from the Soviet and now the US, and don't want to break themselves financially?)
In any case, if SpaceX's price is real and we have yet to see real proof, wouldn't it be a good thing for SpaceX to beat China in term of price? If we all learn from SpaceX, then maybe soon China will outsource from US instead.
But it has been cancelled!
So is China. It used to be there were 300,000+ people jailed or harassed for their speech, belief or origin during Cultural Revolution. Now the number is probably down to a few dozen to a few hundred activists. And you can read tons of criticism against the government on Chinese websites by thousands of people everyday. Wouldn't that be an improvement as well?
No, China has never denied the principle of freedom or democracy in its official positions. These were in fact the "founding principles" of CCP and PRC when they fought the previous oppressor the KMT and ROC. Once in power, of course, they pretty much redefined what democracy is and where the line is drawn on speech freedom. There are no true democracy or unlimited free speech (as long as one cares of any consequence) anywhere in the world. For examples, the democracy in the US is pretty much a never-ending joke; and there are severe consequence if you show yourself naked in the broadcast TV in this country. On the other hands, China has real elections in the rural village level and you can read tons of criticism against the government by thousands of people on China websites everyday and only relatively few outspoken ones get in trouble. So it just comes down to where the lines are drawn and how you define things.