Even if the American economy is in the tank, at least we can console ourselves that in the long run, our democratic capitalism will win out. After all, isn't the United States the largest economy in the world?
Well, read this and weep (or write angry comments, up to you): China has beaten us in our own game.
One of the great ironies revealed by the global recession that began in 2008 is that Communist Party–ruled China may be doing a better job managing capitalism's crisis than the democratically elected U.S. government. Beijing's stimulus spending was larger, infinitely more effective at overcoming the slowdown and directed at laying the infrastructural tracks for further economic expansion.
As Western democracies shuffle wheezily forward, China's economy roars along at a steady clip, having lifted some half a billion people out of poverty over the past three decades and rapidly created the world's largest middle class to provide an engine for long-term domestic consumer demand. Sure, there's massive social inequality, but there always is in a capitalist system. (Income inequality rates in the U.S. are some of the worst in the industrialized world, and more Americans are falling into poverty than are being raised out of it. The number of Americans officially designated as living in poverty in 2009 — 43 million — was the highest in the 51 years that records have been kept.)
There's your answer.
For example, they saw the need for economic stimulus in the form of massive government spending so they did that without having to worry about how an opposition party would respond or how the people would complain. They become incredibly effective at the cost of freedom.
That doesn't make China a great place to live though; a similar comparison would be Nazi Germany, who got out of the Great Depression with one of the strongest economies in the world only to start and maintain the largest war in history.
They don't invent, innovate or discover. The only companies they have which are competitive on a global level are those which completely rely on cheap labor.
As soon as their middle class and general cost of living rises to a point where their labor is no longer considered that cheap, they will see their factories and fortunes move to poorer, developing countries like Vietnam, India and African countries which are just now becoming stable enough to be considered for long term investment.
They simply aren't invested in research and innovation. The way their society operates and their unfair attitude towards foreign ownership of Chinese companies essentially stifles any real research or innovation from being done there. They are a communist country with a thin capitalist facade, nothing more. Their economy does not operate like a true capitalist economy and until it does, they will never see an economy that isn't based on their eroding cheap labor pool.
Korea and Japan were once sources of cheap labor but their democratic and much more open capitalist economies produced universities and companies which have made major innovations in the fields of technology and medicine. Their economies are no longer based on cheap labor and has much more longevity as a result.
And measuring the success of China vs the US based only the size of their economy makes absolutely no sense. But if you want to play that idiotic game: They have over 4 times our population and an economy a third our size. 1 American citizen = 12 Chinese citizens in terms of raw GDP value.
And these numbers mean nothing. The average Chinese citizen has nowhere near the spending power of their American counterpart nor the opportunity to freely start and operate a business or gain a high quality education. China has no where near the national scale infrastructure or environmental protection that we do. They don't have anything close to the raw research potential (labs, universities and talent) that America posses.
Do you think you can run MIT, Stanford, Harvard and John Hopkins level universities and associated research labs in a communist society? Do you honestly think the best minds in the world want to live and work in an environment like that? Either do I.
Nice try China, enjoy the couple of more decades you've got left before robotic automation becomes cheaper than the rising cost of your human labor. Hopefully you'll be smart enough to end your communist government and allow a free society to emerge while you still have enough cash to ride through that transition.
China's idea is basically this; we want to be left alone. You show us how you do it, we will take that and adapt it to our culture. When visiting China, they want to be like Americans. They sing John Denver in the karaoke bars! They know who John Wayne is. They love the cowboy western scene.
Typical western views are; everyone else is wrong, it's only our way or the highway. This is a good example of the politics in the US right now with the ongoing fighting and nothing getting done. This is also a good example of how the US sees the rest of the world (not all Americans of course).
I think comparing China to Nazi Germany in terms of how fast and efficient they became a strong economy is okay. However, do not think in anyway that China's human rights or culture are as bad as Nazi Germany's. China does not have the best human rights, however, what the United States and the rest of the world does not seem to understand is that you cannot go from a communist dictatorship to democracy in a snap. Russia is the best example of this, and so is Iraq. It took the Western part of the world over thousands of years through war and revolutions to get to where we are today, and to show up with a book on "How to be wealthy, have religious freedom and rights in less than 10 steps" is insane. When you think of China, think of North America in the 1900s.
Take another example, the environment. Everyone is blaming China for all the smog and pollution. Although the damage they caused is already done, in the next 10-50 years they will be more ahead in environmental regulations than the rest of the world. China has more money invested in alternative energies than anyone else. http://www.comhaha.com/blog/518621-artificial-sun-to-enter-a-decisive-phase-program-funded-10-of-china/ China was also the first country to put a restriction on how many children a family could have. The rest of the world has done nothing to address that issue, and right there by reducing how many children are being born greatly reduces the carbon footprint.
America had the same vision in the 50s as China does now and that is the building of the middle class. Whether there empire lasts 100 years or 3 years, they want what the rest of the western world wants; cars, microwaves, ovens, houses, etc. You wait as China's population demands more cars, and watch your gasoline skyrocket. The difference is, China will be the first major power to switch from gasoline powered cars to something else, and I'll bet money it'll be a source they can produce and make, and have control of, thus lowering the cost to their own people.
The other thing that's made them so profitable is that every 10 years they aren't involved in military conflicts. War does bring money to certain people, but the war in Iraq has seriously decimated your own economy in ways, effecting social programs and health care.
Just my 2 cents, with a bit of added experience in there. The world is complicated and may you live in interesting times.
china is the world's largest poluter, and since their way of life is stedily growing, it dosnt matter how many kids they abort, its only going to grow.
you are activly supporting a country that killed anywhere between 50-60 million of its own citizens in the last century, you are also supporting a law limiting population growth by killing unborn fetuses, that produces a really really really really freaking bad situation.
take europe for example, their workforce to retiree ratio is nearly 1:1, their governments confiscate over 50% of their citizen's paychecks in taxes, and STILL can not meet their obligations and promises on entitlements, thats because despite over spending, their is a lack of revenue and availible workforce in europe, due to family planning over the last 50 years. that gap in workforce and manpower has been filled by muslim immigrants, who are litterally destroying, both indirectly and directly, the culture of europe. it will be a muslim dominated continent within 100 years, wonder how they will treat the enviornment based on how their homelands look.
and now you have the other problem with population control, CHINA. since the 70's chinese families have had the one child law, and since then the ratio of male to female babies has been sharply cut to males to the point that within 20 years, there will be more than THIRTY MILLION chinese male teenagers than females, thirty freaking million teens raised in an ambitious country that praises groupthink and sacrifice for the state, yea, wonder how well that will go over if you include the fact that during their most impressionable, frustraiting, and hormone crazed years they wont even have girls to look at.
also, the reckless spending here in america has led to the largest debt in the world, we pay interest on that debt, in the hundreds of billions of dollars. guess how large china's military budget is, its a little more than half of what we pay for interest on our debt. This Isn't By Accident DDT, they are using our money to fund their military, so when china attacks and takes taiwain, which they've been salivitating to do for more than you've been alive, it will be entirely funded by the US government, isnt it ironic?
include the fact that green technology and the majority of green legislation in the world is bogus and full of SH*T. there is an acronym in the energy industry call EROEI, Energy Returned On Energy Invested. that basically means that for every unit of energy you spend in mining, processing, and moving energy you get so many units of energy that can be sold. the EROEI for oil is in the mid-high 30's, depending on the part of the world its in, coal is in the lower 30's, nuclear is around 50, and biofuel is a whopping 1.05. you support culling a population and i guarentee you'd mention food shortages, well, because of biofuels britain needs to import grain to feed its population. because of biofuels and ethonol(america needs 2 million gallons a day) over 40% of our corn crops are grown for food, and get this, it dosnt cut polution or carbon output at all, it actually adds to it.
DDT, this is incoherant and full of spelling mistakes and such, but I will provide anylink to facts I've stated, and provide any direction needed to prove what i've said is real. you have to understand that what you're supporting is not going to work
it
just
won't
work
ethonol will go down as one of the sickest, saddest, and most retarted scams in history. fully 15% of the world's corn is used as fuel, and it dosnt even cut carbon emmisions. oh, it makes a car burn CLEANER air, but not that much less, but the real carbon costs of ethonol come from growing it, feeding it, watering it, moving it, using bacteria to biodegrade it into a low octane fuel that is mixed with regular gasoline. lower octane fuels produce less power, so after all the carbon is emmited producing enough ethonol that 10% of our tanks are filled with it, it still dosnt produce as much energy as high octane distilled gasoline.
if ethonol was removed tomorrow, cars would get an average of 5 more miles per gallon, gas prices would actually go down, and the food market would be flooded with crops, litterally crashing prices. we have the technology to feed the world, its when people become dependent on government handouts that starvation becomes commonplace, the examples of this are nearly endless, when people expect and demand to get something for nothing, the whole system will slow down until it collapses.
DDT, your ideas are only persued in government by people who will promise safety at the cost of individual freedom and dependence.