Quote:
Originally Posted by RT14
As a Canadian living in China for the last 5 years, I have to say that some of the ideas about China being throw around are just silly, but also reflect some of the things I thought of China before moving here. To be honest, it makes me question just how good our education system is when we learn so little, and what little we do learn is severely flawed, about one of the major countries in the world.
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Good post, RT14, good post. The ignorance to the Chinese culture in this thread is absolutely mind boggling. JohnnyFlame made a very good post earlier in this thread about his experience moving to China in the past 10 years as well. Funny that the 2 people on CP that actually live in China have stood up and had nothing but positive things to say about the direction China is headed. Conversely, those ones saying "everytime I think China is taking a step forward, they take 10 steps back" are coming from Alberta, Canada.
Are they a utopia, and all roses and lollipops? Absolutely not. However, they are in a transition between a developing country to a world power, and many here fail to embrace the fact that a new dominant culture is having more and more influence in the world.
China is improving in alot of areas. Human rights are improving, although they are not up to par with the Western World. Environmental considerations, China has taken huge leaps and bounds into concerning in the past year (see the proposal for the eco-city Dongtan). Education, just look at the researchers and businessman in the world. I sat on a committee of a technical society of over 200,000 members which has historically been North-American based, with one of the topics being Asian interests - Asia is largely believed to be the biggest player to this society within 5 years (keeping in mind this society has historically been American-dominant) and resources would be allocated to supported this Asian interest. I went to a lecture yesterday on Cognative Radio Networks given by a researcher from India (now at UBC) and at the talk, there were over 70 attendee's, over 40 of them were Asian. There is alot of knowledge there. Their economy in the past 10 years has grown faster then any other country in history. (In 2006, they were the second largest economy int he world behind the USA) The infrustructure change from 10 years ago in Beijing (when I was there) to now, well you can barely tell its the same city. Look at developments of their tourism in Guilin. Look at how long it took for Las Vegas to grow, and look at how long it took for Macau to go (I attended MGM Grand Macau's opening 3 months ago).
China has tons of knowledge, skill, , resources and obviously, population. They have the means, the resource, the talent and the opportunity to be the world's most powerful country. Their international relations, the primary concern of this thread (and I do feel for those Tibet victims, but looking at the big picture) is just as what one would expect or worse then major world players (USA, England, etc) China still has things to work on, but they are getting there, and fast.
To HOZ, those are attitudes I brought up that internationals would have towards North Americans, not specifically China to Canada. Canada is known as one of the most polite countries in the world.
Flash, I generally like you as a power, but I don't think you could be any more wrong in your thoughts. USA government spending at 4%? Seriously, you think that? Look at the funding pumped into Sandia US National Reasearch Labs. Or Lawrence Livermore. How about the Iraq war? You seriously think China spends more on military after budgeting approx $50B for the Iraq war, and spending trillions? (ref: Lanny's thread earlier on this OT forum) Literacy? The biggest concern in the USA, to me, is education (or lackthereof). I think you are very mistaken if you think Americans are more educated then the Chinese. The Chinese may be a little stick-up-the-ass, but their education - and you only have to look at educational institues to see the talent - is light years better then North Americans. You think they run inefficiently? To give you a small sample, when I was in Guilin China, my passport was processed in less then 10 seconds (as opposed to a minute here). At the Guilin airport, the passport officer (is that what they are called?) had a "rate my efficiency" and for processing my passport in less then 10 seconds, she was given a 1/4 (i.e. very poor).
Communism? Mostly by political, not economics. Their economics is like a capitalist society (from my impressions). Two major players in the world, Hong Kong and Macau, run almost independently under the control of China.