Page 14 of 125 FirstFirst ... 46789101112131415161718192021222464114 ... LastLast
Results 326 to 350 of 3115
  1. #326
    Thailand Expat OhOh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2010
    Last Online
    Yesterday @ 08:43 PM
    Location
    Where troubles melt like lemon drops
    Posts
    25,222
    Quote Originally Posted by Hugh Cow View Post
    what have the Romans (west) ever done for us
    Thank you for your reply. We have different views, but as you suggest, they are our own.

    Take care.

  2. #327
    Away
    MarilynMonroe's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2019
    Last Online
    @
    Location
    Canada
    Posts
    3,273
    I lived in China for four years, and travelled some in it.. what do ya wanna know, Sabang?
    Also, keep getting job offers to go back there.

  3. #328
    Thailand Expat
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
    Last Online
    @
    Posts
    38,456
    The good, the bad, the ugly. You've lived there MM, your view from China is welcome.

  4. #329
    Thailand Expat misskit's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Last Online
    @
    Location
    Chiang Mai
    Posts
    48,095
    Some lies from the RFA.


    Villagers Complain of Scant Help in China's Shanxi Amid Flooding, Landslides


    Torrential rains have battered the northern Chinese province of Shanxi in the past few days, leaving parts of the provincial capital Taiyuan and other areas under water, with bridges, railway lines, and houses collapsing after multiple landslides, local residents told RFA on Thursday.


    More than 10 districts and counties in Shanxi have been affected, with houses washed away in Ciying village near Jincheng, where a highway also collapsed, cutting off traffic.


    Tian Yanfeng, a resident of Pu county near Shanxi's Linfen city, said most of the houses and wells in the area had been buried under a landslide.


    "There are a lot of collapsed houses in Gupo village and Chengguan village," Tian told RFA. "The wells have collapsed, there's no water, and there is no one around to manage the situation."


    She said local residents have had scant help from ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials.


    "The village party secretary and the cadres don’t care," Tian said. "The water pipes are all broken. People in our village have been asking the county government and the provincial government for help, but they're not answering the phone."


    "We are having to make arrangements as best we can."


    A resident of flood-hit Jiexiu city surnamed Wang said he had heard of countless houses washed away by floods or buried by landslides in the area, including reported deaths in Houdangyu village.


    "Around a third of the residents of Houdangyu village have yet to be evacuated," Wang said. "One old house collapsed, crushing people inside, and some people have died."


    "There is a bridge in that town, and the river is flowing over the top of it, so people must have died for sure," he said. "Two other areas, Lianfu township and Zhanglan township, [were also affected] but I don't have specific details."


    "People weren't evacuated in time, and they stayed in their homes, but the government isn't allowing any reporting about that," Wang said.


    CCTV, Xinhua News Agency, and official media across Shanxi all reported the rainstorms, and covered the rescue effort in detail, but were devoid of reports on how local residents were affected.


    State broadcaster CCTV reported that more than 15,000 residents of eight villages in Qingxu county had been evacuated after a river burst its banks and flooded Xiaowu village, where rescue work is still in progress.


    A familiar pattern


    A Shanxi-based scholar surnamed Huang said the pattern is a familiar one in the reporting of disasters by CCP-backed media.


    "The usual pattern is to talk about how much leaders at a certain level are prioritizing these events, about instructions given by central government, about the meetings they held and about [local leaders] inspecting the rescue effort and telling people what to do," Huang said.


    "They never tell you how many people died; it's positive reporting all the way," he said.


    A local resident surnamed Sun said she doesn't even bother watching the news on state-run media.


    "I don't believe the media and I never watch TV ... it's impossible to tell what the truth is," she said. "It's just hymns of praise [to the CCP] and you can't tell fact from fiction."


    Meanwhile, more than 10,000 people have been evacuated in and around Shanxi's Jinzhong city, according to a Red Cross rescue worker who gave only the surname Zhao.


    "Residents on both sides of the river -- more than 10,000 people -- have been evacuated just to prevent accidents," Zhao told RFA. "The government has placed them in school buildings."


    "Water levels have been falling for four days and four nights ... there are only People's Armed Police and local rescue teams there now."

    Villagers Complain of Scant Help in China's Shanxi Amid Flooding, Landslides — Radio Free Asia

  5. #330
    Away
    MarilynMonroe's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2019
    Last Online
    @
    Location
    Canada
    Posts
    3,273
    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    The good, the bad, the ugly. You've lived there MM, your view from China is welcome.
    Well lately, I am happy that the two Michael's have been released to Canada after spending 1000 days in a Chinese jail after the release of Meng Wanzhou.

    In regards to the Harvard study you had mentioned regarding, 90% of Chinese being happy with their life/government....
    It may be all that they know. There is such a huge disparity in regards to classes now. There is more of a middle class than their ever was. There is a huge difference between people that live in the big cities compared to poorer people that live in rural communities. People that live in rural areas that move to big cities to work, are not treated the same as people born in big cities. The rural Chinese that live in the big cities have to pay to put their kids in school and surely can't afford to send their kids to better schools.

    There is also a huge difference in mentality between the Chinese that have some exposure to living outside of China even for a short while. I found the Chinese people that never left China have very poor English skills because they weren't taught English in public schools, and if they were taught English it was grammar and not oral language. They are not confident at all to speak English or even try to learn English. Obviously, they are not all the same, but in my experience. Also, the everyday Chinese person who works as a masseuse or in a restaurant makes peanuts. I met a guy masseuse and he told me what he got paid, and he worked 10 hours a day or more.

    Also, being raised in a communist society, they are raised to be sheep as they know what happens to people that speak poorly about the government or misbehave. A good example is the social credit score that was put in place. I feel sorry for some of the Chinese people also, because the pollution that I experienced in the three years I lived in Beijing was horrendous especially in the winter. We had to wear masks and school was cancelled sometimes.

    I also worked in international schools where only children who had lived in another country could attend. The kids were actually pretty good, compared to the kids here in the west. The parents pay a lot of money to send their children to these schools, so they take their education seriously. The kids were all at different levels though in their English abilities. Some parents spoke English more often in the house, but many didn't. The education system in these private schools are quite good imo and get a more western education, but not all Chinese kids can attend.

    Just a few things off the top of my head.

  6. #331
    Thailand Expat
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
    Last Online
    @
    Posts
    38,456
    I found a major difference between the local Chinese and the more internationalised Chinese- and for sure, a real class difference. But the last time I was actually in China was 2003 (I'm counting HK as different, 'cus it is). When did you live there, as a matter of interest?

  7. #332
    Away
    MarilynMonroe's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2019
    Last Online
    @
    Location
    Canada
    Posts
    3,273
    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    When did you live there, as a matter of interest?
    2014-2018. I left just in time as many Canadians were being arrested and then Covid happened. The timing was perfect to leave.
    I enjoyed it to an extent, and felt that by living there, I got an insight that I wouldn't have otherwise.
    It was a huge adjustment as I had come from South Korea. I often compared the culture and people. It was hard not to do.

  8. #333
    Thailand Expat
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
    Last Online
    @
    Posts
    38,456
    ^ Absolutely. For example, I found the people in Yunnan province to be much more easygoing and relaxed than the east coast cities. Also, I was fortunate enough to visit my wifes ancestral village in remote Guangzhou a number of times (I was the second gwailo to have ever gone there!), and found rural China to be a pleasant improvement from the grimy shithole Shenzhen was back them. But, sigh, the young un's just wanted to go the the big smoke and earn money. Same the world over I suppose.

    You just can't stop sniping at the fact that that a long term Harvard University study, among others, showed that 90% + of the Chinese people expressed overall satisfaction with their government, can you? Should I apologise on behalf of the Chinese people for not thinking the way you wish they would think? Na, not gonna happen. I'll just give ya something else to bitch about instead-

    A Harvard Kennedy School report at least tried to understand how Chinese “authoritarian resilience” appeals domestically. The report determined that the CCP actually benefitted from increased popular support from 2003 to 2016, reaching an astonishing 93%, essentially due to social welfare programs and the battle against corruption.

    Sinophobia, lies and hybrid war - Asia Times


    Really Sucks, e'hhh.
    Last edited by sabang; 09-10-2021 at 10:01 AM.

  9. #334
    5 4 Knoll
    david44's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2011
    Last Online
    @
    Location
    At Large
    Posts
    21,088
    Some empathy for the simplified view from China surrounded by rivals.

    I do have some little insight through work friendship and marriage

    1 I abhor dictatorship, like many other regimes from here to USA Oz UK there have been awful crimes in history, but while imperfect functioning democracies seldom fight each other and our best last hope.

    However the previous 2 leaders of China brought more people from crushing squalor to Thai standards or better than any regime in history.

    ,I vsited rural areas with filthy hovels with Chickens and grubby kids felt just like 1950s Ireland. All these peasant folks now have a motorbike and a huge tv, their city bound kids have cars jobs pensions apartments albeit small but far superior to grannies hovel and better than the poor in UK or USA and similar to Thai professional classes in much cleaner safer cities with better education, hospitals, dentistry and career opportunities.

    2 As a so called "Foreign Expert" I was well paid on time and $$ bonus with visa, residence card ID card bonus , right to travel anywhere bar Tibet leave anytime which I exrcised twice for vacations.
    Of course normal Chinese who may well afford a 2 week trp to Phuket have neither the capital or means to leave, of course exceptional talent wealthy will by condos in Melbourne or Hongcouver. The othe rgag aside from no passport right to leave for dissidents is internal social credit apps blocking travel or at teh extreme re education camps or death.

    3 Freedom of expression which I value for myself and other is a key difference. Unlike LM here or China I can mock Michael Hiiggins,sing Feck president Xi, Biden ,Prince Andrew St Willy or Scomo at the top my lungs and no consequence.My only moderator is my wife's frying pan /loss of privileges.

    This is not the case for free churches trade Unions, FalunGong,many other sects and of course minorities notable Uighur, Tibetan and any others who do not bend to the Han rod and of course Taiwan.

    It is tragic that Xi is appointed for life a big step backwards.

    My hope is that the change for China will be peaceful and like Eastern Europe a transition to something better for the for us for everyone, that the freedoms once enjoyed in HK Tawan might have spread to the mainland, At present the reverse seems likley

    It is hard for any leadership to admit errors esp in China, my hope with external encouragement engagement the next generation of leaders born in the internet age , some will have travelled , studies abroad willsee jaw jaw better than war war.

    The other major dynamic which is a very bitter pill for some USA will not reman the sole dominant superpower for ever.
    It surely will for my few remaining years and possibly decades but not centuries.It may not be China that replaces it could be whoever controls the data India, Germany, Israel, France, Singapore or no even a nation sate Musk, Appple , MS even so many unknowns.

    Let us hope it is not a dictatorship, an EU run like here with stiff immigration, soft men and flexible ladies.

    Just As Persia Rome Greece Habsburgs the Dutch, Cholas, Mongols,Ottomans,Spanish Portugiese French and British power waned so will USA, debt hubris and exhaustion from foreign conflicts will contribute as will future ownership of patents IP rights raw material and weaponry parity that can allow even small states like Israel or UK security from attack.
    Last edited by david44; 09-10-2021 at 10:15 AM.
    Quote Originally Posted by Latindancer View Post
    I just want the chance to use a bigger porridge bowl.

  10. #335
    Thailand Expat
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
    Last Online
    @
    Posts
    38,456
    Seems a fair summary actually- Bravo! I even share your disdain for She whose Thought is worth teaching.

  11. #336
    Thailand Expat
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
    Last Online
    @
    Posts
    38,456

    Grenville Cross! A View from Hong Kong

    Ho Li Kao- what a find! Grenville Cross no less- probably HK most senior expat in a governmental sense. You're gonna love this 'arry & co!

    Grenville Cross - Wikipedia

    Grenville Cross - still vocal after all these years | The Standard





    US hostility towards Hong Kong exposed for all to see


    By Grenville Cross


    In recent years, China’s achievements have surpassed all expectations, and the United States has become increasingly paranoid.


    It realises its post-war hegemony can no longer be taken for granted, and that its star is slowly fading. Ever since the United Kingdom-based Centre for Economics and Business Research reported in December 2020 that China would overtake the US to become the world’s largest economy by 2028, five years earlier than previously forecast, it has been panic stations in Washington, DC.

    The US, however, faces massive problems, and they are getting worse. It is burdened with a huge national debt, standing at US$28.4 trillion in August, about US$1.7 trillion more than a year earlier. Its foreign policy is a shambles, with the Afghanistan debacle being but the latest example, and even its closest allies are appalled by its incompetence and duplicity.

    Indeed, after the AUKUS deal between the US, Australia and the UK was sprung on an unsuspecting world on September 16, France, which was cheated out of a submarine contract, denounced it as a “stab in the back”, and, for the first time ever, withdrew its ambassador from Washington, DC.

    Instead, however, of taking a long, hard look at itself, the previous and present US administrations have resorted to scapegoating China, hoping to deflect attention away from their own woes.

    Although most of its problems are of its own making, the US has sought to blame China not only for its own ills but also those of the world, thereby laying the groundwork for hostile interventions. It has decided that one of the ways of dealing with China is by fomenting internal dissent and spreading misinformation about it, just as it has done in its efforts to weaken Russia.

    On June 9, 2019, when the protest movement in Hong Kong and its armed wing declared war on society, ostensibly over the special administrative region government’s fugitive-surrender bill, the US saw its chance.

    Although the proposals would have facilitated the return of criminal fugitives to 177 jurisdictions, subject to court oversight, and were entirely reasonable, the US, to inflame tensions, demonised them, and provided every encouragement to the protesters.

    Indeed, on August 6, 2019, at the height of the violence in Hong Kong, the US consul-general’s political counselor Julie Eadeh met covertly with protest leaders, including Joshua Wong Chi-fung and Nathan Law Kwun-chung at a local hotel, presumably to share US views on the insurrection and provide ongoing advice.

    Again, after Brian Leung Kai-ping, one of the rioters who trashed the Legislative Council complex on July 1, 2019, causing damage estimated at HK$50 million (A$8.86 million), fled the city, he was not only welcomed to the US, but also invited to Congress as an honoured guest.

    Instead of denouncing the rioters who were bringing death and destruction to Hong Kong streets, the then-secretary of state Mike Pompeo endorsed the protest movement’s demands, supported its anti-police agenda, and sought to blame the government for the insurrection.

    Even when the protest movement targeted the rule of law by firebombing the courts and threatening the judges, Pompeo and his cronies continued to lionize the protest leaders, and to whitewash their excesses. It was, by any yardstick, partisanship of the worst sort, and represented a new low in US foreign policy.

    Even when anti-China legislators, linked to the protest movement, sabotaged the work of the Legislative Council, preventing the passage of legislation for nearly seven months in 2019-20, the US condemned the initiatives taken to get things back on track.

    Even though it would never have tolerated obstructionism of this type at home, it expected the authorities to allow it in Hong Kong, although the name of its game was, of course, mischief-making.

    But with the exclusion of legislators bent on mayhem, and their replacement with responsible citizens committed to the well-being of Hong Kong and the national good, the city now has the prospect of effective governance.

    Working through front organizations, the US provided multifaceted support to the protest movement and its allies throughout the insurrection.

    They included various US-based entities, including the National Endowment for Democracy, always generous with its cash when opponents of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region government came knocking; and the US Agency for Global Media.

    It has also now come to light that various other US-backed groups were complicit in the uprising, including the Oslo Freedom Foundation, the Albert Einstein Institute, and the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies, which, despite their fancy names, all had sinister agendas.

    Although many of them operated in the shadows, this cannot be said of the US Strategic Competition Act of 2021, which allocated $10 million for the promotion of “democracy in Hong Kong”, a euphemism for stirring up trouble.

    Once, however, the National Security Law for Hong Kong was enacted, it provided the HKSAR government with the tools it required to save the city’s way of life and capitalist system, and put an end to undercover operations by foreign powers.

    The US, however, responded by imposing sanctions on the city, revoking its favourable-trade status, and suspending the agreement on surrender of fugitive offenders with the HKSAR.

    Not once, however, did the US explain how it thought damaging Hong Kong like this would in any way benefit its people, which was revelatory.

    Perhaps more than anything else, its inability to justify its actions highlighted not only its determination to undermine China by ruining Hong Kong, but also its willingness to throw a long-standing friend under the bus, just as it has now done to France, which also made the mistake of trusting it.

    The US attempts to destabilise Hong Kong are a disgrace, as well as a betrayal. The lengths to which it was prepared to go to hurt China beggar belief, and they have now been chronicled for all to see by the China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

    On September 24, it issued a fact sheet titled “US Interference in Hong Kong Affairs and Support for Anti-China Destabilizing Forces”, which is highly detailed and a real eye-opener.

    It exposes cynical, comprehensive and intensive efforts by a global bully-boy to ruin one of the world’s most successful cities, and is essential reading for anybody wishing to know the depths to which the US is prepared to sink.

    Quite clearly, if the evidence contained in the fact sheet were to be presented in a court of law responsible for trying the US for willful depredations against Hong Kong and its people, the only possible verdict would be “guilty as charged”. This, alas, will never happen, but great comfort can nonetheless be derived from the city’s survival against all the odds.

    Although, at one point, China’s adversaries thought they could bring Hong Kong to its knees and destroy the “one country, two systems” policy, they have, after the nation rallied round, been decisively thwarted. Indeed, with the central government’s steadfast support, the city has emerged from its experiences stronger than ever, and can now face its future with renewed confidence.




    Grenville Cross

    Grenville Cross is a senior counsel, law professor and criminal justice analyst, and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong SAR. He has just been awarded the Gold Bauhinia Star which is the highest Bauhinia Star rank in the honours system of Hong Kong, created in 1997 to replace the British honours system of the Order of the British Empire after the transfer of sovereignty to People’s Republic of China and the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.




    Just another chinky stooge I guess. He mounts a rather vigorous Defence, non?

    Last edited by sabang; 09-10-2021 at 11:50 AM.

  12. #337
    Thailand Expat OhOh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2010
    Last Online
    Yesterday @ 08:43 PM
    Location
    Where troubles melt like lemon drops
    Posts
    25,222
    ^ Thanks for another educated opinion.

  13. #338
    Thailand Expat
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
    Last Online
    @
    Posts
    38,456

  14. #339
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Last Online
    @
    Posts
    96,555
    What sycophantic fucking drivel.

    You boys aren't even in his league.

  15. #340
    Thailand Expat
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
    Last Online
    @
    Posts
    38,456
    Well he's a big schwinging dick 'arry.

  16. #341
    Away
    MarilynMonroe's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2019
    Last Online
    @
    Location
    Canada
    Posts
    3,273


    Uphill struggle to end poverty, this was three years ago.

  17. #342
    Thailand Expat Saint Willy's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2019
    Last Online
    30-04-2022 @ 02:44 AM
    Posts
    11,204
    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    I just thought
    Spare us

  18. #343
    Thailand Expat
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
    Last Online
    @
    Posts
    38,456
    The long term Harvard study was not performed on Harvard grads PH- it was everyday Chinese citizens. So who ya gonna blame- Me, Harvard, or the Chinese people?

    And why does America want to hurt the Hong Kong people so much. Jealousy? Or just collateral damage?
    Last edited by sabang; 10-10-2021 at 05:51 AM.

  19. #344
    Thailand Expat
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
    Last Online
    @
    Posts
    38,456
    My favorite harpy doesn't mince words-



    Anyone Who'd Support Going To War Over Taiwan Is A Crazy Idiot


    Taiwan has been in the news a lot lately, and it's really bringing out the crazy in people.




    The mass media have been falsely reporting that China has been encroaching on Taiwan's "air defense zone", which gets stretched into the even more ludicrous claim that China "sent warplanes flying over Taiwan". In reality Chinese planes simply entered an to threaten Beijing.

    As Moon of Alabama reports, US warmongers inflamed this non-controversy even further by feeding a story to the press about the already public information that there are American troops in Taiwan training the military there, citing "concern" about the danger posed by China.

    Now headlines are blaring about President Tsai Ing-wen responding to this non-event with the announcement that Taiwan will "do whatever it takes to defend its freedom and democratic way of life." Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott just visited Taipei to advocate that "democracies stand shoulder to shoulder" with Taiwan against China. The CIA has announced the creation of a new spy center that will focus solely on China, which CIA Director William Burns says will “further strengthen our collective work on the most important geopolitical threat we face in the 21st century: an increasingly adversarial Chinese government”.

    A recent poll says that now with people online who emphatically support the idea of the US and its allies going to war with China over Taiwanese independence.

    This is clearly nuts, and anyone who buys into this line of thinking is a brainwashed fool.

    This isn't some kind of complicated anti-imperialist issue, and it has nothing to do with which side you take in the debate over what government Taiwan belongs under. The US and its allies engaging in a full-scale war with nuclear-armed China over Taiwan is a prospect that should be vehemently opposed out of simple, garden variety self-preservation.

    Obviously if Beijing decides to launch a military assault on Taiwan in its bid to reunify China that would be a terrible thing which would cause a lot of suffering. I don't think that will happen unless western powers push Taipei into declaring independence or otherwise upset the delicate diplomacy dance in some major way, but if it does happen under any circumstances that would be awful.

    But Taiwanese independence is not worth fighting a world war that could kill millions, and potentially billions if things go nuclear. This should be extremely obvious to everyone.

    War proponents will reference Hitler, as they literally always do whenever there's talk of war against someone the United States doesn't like, arguing that China taking Taiwan would be like the Nazis invading Poland after which they'll just keep invading and conquering until they are stopped. But there's no evidence that China has any interest in invading Japan, much less Australia, still less everyone else, or that it has any ambitions on the world stage beyond reunification and securing its own economic and security interests.

    The idea that China wants to take over a bunch of foreign lands, make you live under communism and give you a social credit score is the same kind of foam-brained bigoted othering which told previous generations that Black men want to take over your neighborhood so they can have sex with your wives. It's the sort of belief that can only find purchase in an emotionally primitive mind that lacks the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes and understand that not everyone wants what you have.

    Anyone Who'd Support Going To War Over Taiwan Is A Crazy Idiot - by Caitlin Johnstone - Caitlin’s Newsletter (substack.com)





  20. #345
    last farang standing
    Hugh Cow's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2015
    Last Online
    15-03-2024 @ 01:44 PM
    Location
    Qld/Bangkok
    Posts
    4,110
    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    Ho Li Kao- what a find! Grenville Cross no less- probably HK most senior expat in a governmental sense. You're gonna love this 'arry & co!

    Grenville Cross - Wikipedia

    Grenville Cross - still vocal after all these years | The Standard





    US hostility towards Hong Kong exposed for all to see






    Just another chinky stooge I guess. He mounts a rather vigorous Defence, non?

    Err... Non. Just more pro chinese anti western propaganda with no mention of the loss of rights in HK whose agreement was betrayed by China. Yet somehow the USA is the problem. If Oh Oh agrees with you, you know you are following the CCP propaganda line... At least everyone but you.
    Another one of his statements taken from an interview.

    China’s introduction of the new Security Law sets the matter straight by providing electoral reform, extradition, while still maintaining the Basic Law. Hopefully, newly-elected legislators will show loyalty to HK and the PRC. If they do, HK will prosper and be a productive part of the Republic.

  21. #346
    Thailand Expat
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
    Last Online
    @
    Posts
    38,456
    Tell Grenville Cross. Tell Harvard University.


  22. #347
    Thailand Expat OhOh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2010
    Last Online
    Yesterday @ 08:43 PM
    Location
    Where troubles melt like lemon drops
    Posts
    25,222
    China marches on towards Fourth Industrial Revolution

    Pundit predictions of China's demise are the latest self-consoling illusions of a lazy elite who can't see the AI writing on the wall

    by David P. Goldman October 8, 2021

    "NEW YORK – When Covid-19 hit China before it hit the rest of the world, the meme in the Western media called it China’s “Chernobyl moment.” China’s remarkable success in suppressing the pandemic put that to rest. But every hiccup in Chinese markets elicits new predictions of Chinese economic decline. Stratfor’s George Friedman declares that “China’s power has been vastly overestimated” and that China will have to dial back its global ambitions due to straitened circumstances.

    Hal Brands and Michael Beckley write in Foreign Policy that “the problem is that China is declining.” “Since the late 2000s,” they claim, “the drivers of China’s rise have either stalled or turned around entirely.”

    These are self-consoling illusions of a lazy elite that has allowed America’s manufacturing, technological and education advantages to erode over the past 20 years – an elite that has nothing to say about reversing the decline.

    China has a nasty financial problem in an over-leveraged real estate sector, but countries with large current surpluses and huge saving rates don’t have crises. They have reorganizations. And China does have a demographic problem, not nearly as serious as in Japan, South Korea or Taiwan, and only slightly more serious than America’s.

    What the punditeska thinks is light at the end of the tunnel is, rather, the headlamp of the oncoming express, namely the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

    Americans don’t remember the Panic of 1873 and the six-year Long Depression that followed – nor the Panics of 1893, 1896, 1901, or 1907.

    They remember the transcontinental railroad, the McCormack reaper, Andrew Carnegie’s leadership in steel-making, John D. Rockefeller’s provision of cheap kerosene for lighting, the electrification of cities and Henry Ford’s mass production of the Model T. All that really mattered in fin-de-siècle America was the Second Industrial Revolution that lifted America to the status of a world power.

    Carnegie borrowed his steelmaking process from the British inventor Henry Bessemer and Edison lifted the electric light bulb from the British inventor Joseph Swan (who successfully sued Edison for patent violations). Britain’s talent earned easy money from the Empire, leaving Americans to turn British ideas into mass production on a hitherto unknown scale.

    Today it’s the Americans who don’t want to get their hands dirty, and the best American talent programs smartphone apps in the hope of instant wealth.

    A generation from now, the Chinese won’t remember the misery of Ant Financial, or the failure of property giant Evergrande, or this year’s power shortage, or any number of minor interruptions of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. They will remember .

    All of this is happening now in China, and at scale. The linked videos on Youtube provide more information than anything you will read in the Western media. China’s artificial intelligence (AI) applications look like science fiction, but they are real as rain, and happening before our eyes.

    The application of big data and AI to flexible manufacturing, smart logistics, health care and other fields promises to transform economic life as profoundly as the Second Industrial Revolution changed the United States and Germany.

    Historians well may date the AI revolution to January 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic hit China. As former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Harvard historian Graham Allison wrote last August:

    The virus has also pulled back the curtain on one of this century’s most important contests: the rivalry between the United States and China for supremacy in artificial intelligence (AI). The scene that has been revealed should alarm Americans. China is not just on a trajectory to overtake the US; it is already surpassing US capabilities where it matters most.

    Most Americans assume that their country’s lead in advanced technologies is unassailable .… In fact, China is already a full-spectrum peer competitor in terms of both commercial and national-security AI applications. China is not just trying to master AI; it is mastering AI ….

    To stop the spread of the virus, China locked down the entire population of Hubei province – 60 million people. That is more than the number of residents in every state on the US East Coast from Florida to Maine. China maintained this massive cordon sanitaire by using AI-enhanced algorithms to track residents’ movements and scale up testing capabilities while massive new health-care facilities were being built ….

    Top Chinese tech companies responded quickly by creating apps with “health status” codes to track citizens’ movements and determine whether individuals needed to be quarantined. AI then played a critical role in helping Chinese authorities enforce quarantines and perform extensive contract tracing.

    Owing to China’s large-scale datasets, the authorities in Beijing succeeded where the government in Washington, DC, failed.
    I broke this story in Asia Times in March 2020.

    All of China’s major ports are at or close to full automation. Industrial automation, although impressive, is still in pilot phase: Huawei says that it has 16,000 private 5G networks under development for factory automation, a small fraction of the country’s 2.8 million factories (as of 2015), but more than enough for proof of concept. And the Chinese telecom giant has installed 5G networks in 1,800 of the country’s 34,000 hospitals.

    China turned a population of subsistence farmers into industrial workers, moving 600 million people from countryside to city in less than 40 years, increasing per capita income tenfold in the process.

    It took the US from 1870 to 1995 to dectuple its real per capita GDP. China did this in the 28 years from 1992 to 2020. It certainly is the case, as Brand and Beckley write, that China has taken advantage of this source of growth. China’s leadership is bad at many things, but it is very good at one big thing, and that is planning for future productivity.

    Deng Xiaoping turned China’s peasants into factory workers, and Xi Jinping is turning the sons of factory workers into engineers. Only 2% of Chinese aged 55 or older – those in their 20s when Deng Xiaoping began China’s economic reforms in 1989 – received university education. But 27% of Chinese now in their 20’s have university degrees, and the proportion will keep rising.

    China now graduates seven times as many STEM baccalaureates as the US and three times as many STEM doctorates. A 2020 Chinese survey claims that the proportion of Chinese high school students who intend to pursue tertiary education is higher than is the case with their American counterparts.

    An industrial nation with Western living standards is already gestating inside China. Economist Lin Yifu, a former World Bank official, points out that China’s most developed provinces and cities are a country within a country, with per capita GDP approaching that of the United States. In a book scheduled for release later this month, he writes:

    At the end of the 19th century, the United States and Germany led the second industrial revolution. At that time, the highest income and technology levels were in the United Kingdom. The United States and Germany were at a stage of catching up in terms of income levels. In terms of purchasing power parity, the per capita GDP of the United States in 1870 was 76.6% of that of the United Kingdom, and that of Germany was 57.6% of that of the United Kingdom.

    The seven provinces and cities with the highest per capita GDP in my country – Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong – have a total population of 350 million. The per capita GDP of these seven provinces and cities has reached 54.5% of that of the United States, which is roughly the same level as Germany’s per capita GDP relative to UK’s per capita GDP when Germany began to lead the second industrial revolution.
    Yin adds, “In technology R&D, human capital is the main input.” China, he notes, has a much larger talent pool with a population four times that of the United States. “China’s sheer size gives it “economies of scale,” with “lower marginal cost of products and services,” and “stronger competitiveness in the international market. When new technological standards are set in competition with developed countries, my country’s population and the size of its market gives it a comparative advantage.”

    In addition, “My country is the country with the most complete set of industries, so that the time required for new technology to advance from concept to production will be the shortest, and at the lowest cost.”

    China is serious, focused and disciplined in its campaign to lead the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

    The US at best gives lip service to the concept, and at worst ignores the problem, the better to focus on “diversity” and “equity.”

    https://asiatimes.com/2021/10/china-...al-revolution/
    A tray full of GOLD is not worth a moment in time.

  23. #348
    Thailand Expat
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
    Last Online
    @
    Posts
    38,456

  24. #349
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Last Online
    @
    Posts
    96,555
    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    Christ can you imagine something *simulating* the chinky mind.

    We're fucking doomed.

    It will invade Tynemouth.


  25. #350
    Thailand Expat OhOh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2010
    Last Online
    Yesterday @ 08:43 PM
    Location
    Where troubles melt like lemon drops
    Posts
    25,222
    Haway the lads.

Page 14 of 125 FirstFirst ... 46789101112131415161718192021222464114 ... LastLast

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •