Giggle: <Tibet is not a nation, and never was, and never will be, but Hong Kong is now, was in the beginning, and always will be? > TJ is tendentious.
In China, words are something to toss around in the breeze with tenuous connection to reality and used mainly to acquire OPM, rather than to define reality and rules for the purpose of establishing and protecting personal and property rights. Which is not to say China has a monopoly in that regard as it's a worldwide hobby, achieved to a greater or lesser extent.
It's hilarious being in Beijing and talking to people and hearing how little words have any bearing on reality. I do NOT believe China is going to be anything more than a cheap workshop without a very major cultural shift, which I doubt is a possibility. GDP growth up to a certain level will be rapid, just as a confused layabout who decides to start working can become very well off relatively. But they can't aspire to achieve more than those for whom they work, numbers being irrelevant - even a billion Chinese couldn't outdo one Albert Einstein.
It was an excellent move to accept 16,000 Jews into Shanghai, albeit they weren't "accepted" so much as able to escape there as a result of British administrative visa-free process. But of course they left again when Mao decided to upgrade the place.
"For whom they work" is NOT the USA, so much as the creative people who are mostly found in the USA. The average American has an undue sense of entitlement, for example whining about outsourcing of their over-paid jobs to India and China, as though the Americans OWN the jobs, with their employers obliged to employ them.
Mqurice |
