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lllllllllllllllllll posted:I'm reading the book "When China rules the world" and it places India at the top 5 in 2025 and in the top three in 2050 GDP-wise. How on earth do you come to that conclusion? I love it but India is a mess and there are no signs of it becoming an economic powerhouse that would be passing by, say, all of Europe within the next twelve years, are there? Sorry if this is a bit off-topic but the book was recommended in this thread, so I thought I'd mention it here. Nothing like that is going to happen and even if India and China ever straighten out their corruption and government issues (not likely within the next century) there are immense hurdles to overcome in resource allocation and decreased global demand.
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Apr 24, 2012 17:38
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Ronald Spiers posted:Chinese like to brag about their academic achievements, especially the parents but not in terms of bragging about it to the media. Then again there was a lot of pressure on the Bo's by the media to disclose how his son was able to go to all those expensive schools and drive all those expensive cars. Chinese also like to flash their bling too.
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Apr 28, 2012 05:14
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Ronald Spiers posted:Are you sure most 2nd generation Chinese princelings are doing worse than Guagua? Xi Jinping's daughter is also in Harvard and has kept a low-profile. So? You could say that about the vast majority of upper class white kids in ivy leagues in the U.S. He doesn't deserve what he's getting unless he's personally been a twat about it or complicit in some of the crimes. Modus Operandi fucked around with this message at 06:33 on Apr 28, 2012 |
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Apr 28, 2012 06:30
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Ronald Spiers posted:His parents are enemies to the state, this label should be handed from parents to children unless the child clearly demarcates between him and his parents with public denouncement of the state-enemy parents.
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Apr 28, 2012 07:07
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GuestBob posted:I support the questioning of authority within this context of highly limited speech and political feudalism, even if it is limited to someone who is on the periphery of the main event. With that being said Bo Guagua is a college kid studying abroad. Is he being groomed for such a vaunted position in the PRC as the girl you mentioned above? Possibly but until it happens and he's put into some government chair that he's vastly unqualified for there's no reason to crucify him over simply being born from a well to do family. The thing is he's not doing anything abnormally corrupt or living any kind of decadent life style different from what your average U.S. college kid.
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Apr 28, 2012 10:09
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I guess I just don't believe in hunting down the children or the children's children of despotic bureaucrats and making them pay with punitive measures or blood like it's ancient Rome. Collective responsibility is nonsense. Good luck with that because so many people in the world have benefited greatly from their ancestor's misdeeds.
Modus Operandi fucked around with this message at 11:17 on Apr 28, 2012 |
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Apr 28, 2012 11:14
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Since I don't believe in states acting of humanitarian reasons I think Chen has little strategic value as a propaganda tool for the U.S. That's probably why Obama hasn't arranged asylum for him yet. Plus this creates a bad precedent for U.S. policy. There's a lot of people on the long U.S. poo poo list. Imagine if a Madoff type character with his billions was given asylum in China down the road. It's best not to open that can of worms over a blind Chinese hippie.
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May 4, 2012 03:08
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BrotherAdso posted:Fortunately, neither the US nor the UN take your position and both act, or profess to act, for humanitarian ends pretty regularly. quote:Why are you seriously comparing a physically abused anti-corruption advocate, defender of the rights of women to choose their own reproductive fate, and demanding voice for accountability and responsibility in the nasty lower levels of the Chinese government to Bernie Madoff or a blind hippie? It's pretty gauche.
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May 4, 2012 03:31
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Chen is too high profile to murder. They'll probably just brick up his family home and have government stooges watch over him like an eternal flame memorial. You know..the usual PRC reaction to these issues.
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May 4, 2012 05:18
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Wedesdo posted:Problem solved: http://news.yahoo.com/china-says-activist-apply-study-abroad-061440352.html I'm surprised China doesn't do this more often. They would be offloading political liabilities overseas where these people would be marginalized by foreign media. The mainstream U.S. press pays attention only because China kicks up a big controversy over it with their actions.
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May 4, 2012 12:35
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dj_clawson posted:If China deported everyone who ever acted in a protest against the government and will probably do it again, there wouldn't be a whole lot of people in China. TONS of people regularly protest conditions or corruption or policies. Whole towns do it. You would have to decide who's high-level and who's not. The problem is there aren't many countries out there that would want the type of people China would want to deport anyways. Activists always shed crocodile tears over Uighurs and such but do people really want potential islamic fundamentalists living in their country? Same goes for Falun Gong cultists or large impoverished populations of Tibetans. I'm sure China would be thrilled to offload them to the U.S. But realistically they can't. That leaves a few high profile guys really. It would be an interesting scenario if China tried to engineer a demographic time bomb by just opening up the borders to India and allowed Tibetans a one way trip. I imagine you'd end up with a situation like Castro's Cuba. A lot of prisons would "mysteriously" empty over night sending actual criminals out of the country too. Modus Operandi fucked around with this message at 18:20 on May 4, 2012 |
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May 4, 2012 18:17
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Typo posted:Also, lots of oversea dissidents isn't what you want either sometimes...remember in and before the 1911 revolution overseas Chinese had a habit of donating fund to anti-government groups. The majority of the "modern" era dissidents are the disenfranchised non-Han minority in most cases. There are exceptions like Chen but the ones making the most noise are usually still ethnic minorities. Overseas Chinese back in the early 19th century were the fairly well off mercantile class of southern Chinese who were exiled for mostly economic reasons. There was a direct Han connection to the mainland so it was easy to foment revolution. On the other hand the non ethnic Han minorities might be able to stir up movements within their own community in the mainland but it's a drop in the proverbial ocean of people in China without Han support. Modus Operandi fucked around with this message at 11:41 on May 5, 2012 |
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May 5, 2012 11:37
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Adar posted:It'd also potentially start a nuclear war in a few years once the now-Indian Tibetans organized enough to start an insurgency operating from Indian soil, which they'd assuredly do. You know, kinda like the other cold war between two nuclear powers in the area.
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May 5, 2012 21:50
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All asian countries are full of ultra nationalistic ethnocentric fuckwits though. Revisionist history is like the norm. You should hear some historical "arguments" on various issues between NE/SE asian nations in matters of culture or territory. Sometimes it's hilarious and sad because of the blatant disregard of facts or reality. Like for instance Thais outright manufacture their history and it's full of magic and fantasy. Anything to avoid admitting that they might have been part of the Khmer empire.GlassEye-Boy posted:Weren't Koreans the ones claiming that Sun Yat Sen was Korean? edit: Haha nevermind I won't fan the flames here..
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May 9, 2012 05:36
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ReindeerF posted:I wore my Cambodian "Preah Vihear - Kingdom of Cambodia" t-shirt in the neutral territory of Laos and a friend's Thai wife, who has always been very nice, was there. She asked why people were laughing at my shirt and he explained what it meant. Afterward, she was pissy with me for the rest of the trip, heh.
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May 9, 2012 06:03
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ReindeerF posted:Wasn't there some phrase from either Ho Chi Minh or a famous Japanese general that went something to the effect of, "The reason the West always dominates us is that when there's a conflict, they'll put aside their differences and work together to win, while we'll squabble with one another and individually either cut deals with them or fall to defeat." I know I read something like that (much more eloquent and succinct) somewhere years ago in the context of a noted Asian's commentary on relations between the countries and the history of colonialism (obviously the West's dominance is far more questionable these days, especially heading into the future). That statement coming from a Japanese general is puzzling too. The Japanese had every opportunity in the world to create a real pan-asian empire. They decided to squander it on military rape and torture fantasies instead. Interestingly enough the nations they did treat somewhat well (like the country formerly known as Formosa) the people were at least pretty comfortable in being willing subjects of Japan. You still have old Taiwanese grannies who believe they are Japanese or something deep down. It's the only time that i've heard of the Japanese actually winning hearts and minds anywhere during that period. So it was well within their ability to replicate this sort of colonial success but they decided to be heavy handed assholes about it elsewhere.
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May 9, 2012 07:28
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Ronald Spiers posted:
The Philippines situation is probably more serious but the modern identity of Filipinos has always been intertwined with the U.S. They still believe they are a de facto colony and a lot of neighbors around the Philippines don't really trust them because of it. So it's highly unlikely any other nation will join in with the Philippines if it became a shooting war. If it happened it would be completely unprecedented in modern history. The last time two asian nations joined (willingly) to war with another was back in the Imjin wars with China and Korea vs Japan. I don't count WW2 because Japan essentially colonized and forced people to fight (or be executed) for Imperial Japan.
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May 10, 2012 09:18
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whatever7 posted:After Philippine police's complete failure in rescuing the Hong Kong tourists, why would any Chinese tourist want to go to Philippine? Don't flatter yourself. The same reason why Chinese tourists flood the rest of SE Asia. #1 It's not too pricey and visas are easy #2 it's different #3 oceans with actual living fish #4 foo foo picture opportunities Money Chinese tourists aren't as interested in the sexy-time activities since China has its own well stocked domestic market but the danger factor doesn't matter when you consider the market and how many Chinese will ignore that.
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May 10, 2012 17:55
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BrotherAdso posted:Thank you very much for the information! I appreciate this kind of input a great deal. All my two years were spent in the North and I wrote all my papers on Confucianism, so HK is not an area of great expertise for me. There is no perfect way to measure corruption but Hong Kong always ranks extremely favorably in the CPI. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_perceptions_index It's ranked #12 Countries ranked above HK. 1. New Zealand 2. Denmark 3. Finland 4. Sweden 5. Singapore 6. Norway 7. Netherlands 8. Australia 9. Switzerland 10. Canada 11. Luxembourg 12. Hong Kong That list certainly jives with what i've seen with reality. Most business people do say HK is very corruption free and has none of the major tea money/bureaucratic issues of doing business in SE/NE Asia.
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May 16, 2012 02:04
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HK is also the only nation I know of that has actually put billionaires behind bars for corruption. (I don't count the U.S. Madoff case or the politically motivated Russian convictions)
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May 16, 2012 02:41
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Fine-able Offense posted:The long-predicted (by some) collapse in the Chinese real estate sector appears to be in full swing: This real estate bubble in China is the the usual market readjustment after a period of too hot growth. We've seen this in the U.A.E. and other places. It's the super wealthy playing musical chairs and eventually one of them gets pushed off at the end and the market readjusts. The middle class Chinese and the like might finally be able to afford housing in 5 years. With the demand being what it is you can't expect a total collapse of Chinese real estate.
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May 17, 2012 05:31
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Fine-able Offense posted:The problem with your thinking is that the proportion of the Chinese economy tied up in this real estate bubble is absolutely massive. Commercial and residential construction + infrastructure projects make up a truly ridiculous proportion of their GDP, hence Chovanec's research indicating even a small decrease in real estate could reduce GDP by as much as 40% as all the secondary and tertiary spillovers grind the economy to a halt. It's not "just a property bubble", because it's driving the majority of commerce in the world's second-largest economy. It will have ramifications akin to the U.S. housing bubble, which coincidentally is what first tripped off this European adventure. I can definitely see a major readjustment happening in residential property happening since it is a bubble but China's real estate boom isn't exactly out of sync with the rest of the region either. Real estate in Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Korea have all been skyrocketing in the past 5 years. The only markets not booming at a wild rate have been Hong Kong and Japan mainly because their real estate markets are already mature and have been through a boom/bust cycle over the past two decades. Modus Operandi fucked around with this message at 07:28 on May 17, 2012 |
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May 17, 2012 07:25
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Throatwarbler posted:Hong Kong's actually up like 80% in the last 5 years or something. They were recovering from a somewhat lower base after huge falls stemming from the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s.
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May 17, 2012 10:32
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Pro-PRC Laowai posted:
Which makes me curious as to how do they determine development as being underway in China. Is it based on just showing adequate investment capital, construction equipment on site, or structural proof? Sorry to bombard you with questions but does the home mortgage loan exist in the same way as it does in the U.S. Can people who own multiple condo units use those units to draw massive amounts of equity from it to buy more units?
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May 18, 2012 05:55
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I've been busy the last few days but thanks a lot Laowai for that excellent and much more in depth appraisal of China's real estate market than I expected.Readman posted:You can't really 'own' land in China (it's generally either leased from the government or owned by a village co-operative), but you can own buildings on the land. This arrangement doesn't have an analogy in western law, but there's no reason that, if you owned a building but not the land, that you couldn't put the building up as collateral. I understand this differentiation. It's really legal semantics. You can own the "property" on the land but not the land itself. So some corrupt bureaucrat can bend you over when it's time but they have some limits as to what they can do unless you are a foreigner. This isn't much different from SE Asia. However, i'm talking more about how and what P.R.C. citizens can do with the property units that they own.
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May 19, 2012 16:50
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The British rape video and now this incident is spreading like wildfire around the Chinese internet too: http://www.chinasmack.com/2012/videos/chinese-girls-beat-up-by-suspected-korean-men-in-chengdu-kfc.html I think the problem here is that there's a constant victim complex in a country like China. It also doesn't help that there really is a lot of China bashing and racism that gets directed towards ethnic Chinese everywhere but especially in places like Korea, HK, and Singapore. So it just compounds feelings of distrust and anger when the popular perception is that "foreigners" get a free pass to do whatever they want in China.
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May 20, 2012 12:07
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shrike82 posted:You touch upon it but the tension between HK/Singapore ethnic Chinese and mainlander immigrants is pretty fascinating to see. Is it called racism if the groups are technically of the same race? Modus Operandi fucked around with this message at 12:23 on May 20, 2012 |
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May 20, 2012 12:21
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Ronald Spiers posted:Also Chinese Singaporeans and Chinese Hong Kongers do NOT view the mainland Chinese as "ethnically" different. They all belong to the Han ethnic group or the more generic term "Chinese". Singaporean and HK Chinese may see themselves as more cultured, but not ethnically different from the mainland Chinese. There's a significant age old cultural gap between Cantonese Chinese people and regular mainland mandarin speaking "Han" Chinese that goes way back. This is true of the Hokkien/Teochew immigrated Chinese that became Singaporean and Taiwanese too. Many view themselves as ethnically unique and separate from the Mainland after centuries of living apart. I know a lot of TW nationalists and green party people play this card often. Back in the old days southern Chinese used to bear the brunt of purges, famines, etc.. because they were always considered separatists. That's why so many Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese etc.. speakers fled overseas or immigrated in droves to neighboring SE Asian countries. Modus Operandi fucked around with this message at 12:43 on May 20, 2012 |
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May 20, 2012 12:41
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shrike82 posted:The magnitude of PRC immigration is only going to continue fanning the flame of anti-immigration sentiment in Asia (or anywhere these days). quote:As an interesting side-note, the Singapore government has traditionally "encouraged" Chinese immigration to the country as a counterweight to the population growth of local Malays. It got them a bruisin' in the most recently elections (by PAP standards at least) which has pushed them to the other extreme of anti-immigration measures. I can't think of any other country where this sort of thing doesn't eventually break down. Yet Singapore has kept a real multiracial/multicultural society together and even prospered from it.
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May 20, 2012 12:53
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Electro-Boogie Jack posted:As someone who isn't even in the country at the moment I'm kinda worried about whether or not that's true, though- soooooo much potential for abuse if you're essentially telling different police and management authorities that they can run wild on foreigners, especially in the midst of so much anti-foreigner baiting. Fenqing barely need a reason to blow a gasket as is, if they have public figures openly calling for a cleanup of 'foreign scum' and consequences for people who criticize China then it may not even just be police that you need to worry about. Maybe it'll all blow over, but it'd suck to have that edgy violence that a bunch of us saw during Chinese New Year become a thing more than once a year. NE Asians tend to get pissier over foreigner behavior since it dredges up really ugly colonial comparisons. I wouldn't be surprised if you will have a lot of videos being posted up now of foreigners misbehaving especially in the nightlife scene. It seems like the sort of thing that instantly inflames nationalist/nativist feelings. Modus Operandi fucked around with this message at 18:37 on May 20, 2012 |
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May 20, 2012 18:34
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Electro-Boogie Jack posted:If foreigners are vandalizing stuff or causing fights that's fair game, but laowai-related problems seem like they're pretty rare in the vast scheme of things in China. quote:Then again, I've never spent much time in Beijing. I assume drug trade is still mostly handled by Chinese there, not actually by Africans or whatever I heard a few people saying?
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May 20, 2012 19:57
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hitension posted:Even in China, "foreigners" is wayyyy too broad of a category. Although it may focus on certain nationalities especially after that little KFC debacle with the alleged Koreans. Who knows though, these things don't take much to come to a head especially with a country like China that has a really deep victim complex. Remember how fast they turned on that pop star wearing that Japanese imperial flag and went on a Japanese embassy burning spree. It doesn't take much at all..
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May 20, 2012 20:15
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shrike82 posted:What's this about?
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May 20, 2012 20:27
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Last Buffalo posted:
It just seems like a pretty inefficient use of academic financial resources for poorer asian countries anyways. From what friends have told me a lot of Thais are figuring out now that the same basic english can be taught by Filipinos for less than a third of the salary normally paid to "native" english speakers. Plus Filipinos bring a lot less complications when it comes to visa or respectability issues. There's also the other side of it..how useful is English exactly? Most Chinese who work in China will be working for largely Chinese companies. If they do business abroad chances are high it'll be with other asian countries with equally poor english. The real elite/upper class business people all speak english anyways because they can afford to study abroad and those are the only people who are going to be cutting deals in EU/North American board rooms. Miss Shu Chin From Beijing 3rd rate U. with her EFL level english isn't going to get anywhere close to that level of business dealing. I know Thais who do business with Chinese companies and they speak 100% Mandarin or a combination of Thai/Mandarin. They don't even bother with English..so it's definitely not the primary language of business in many SE Asian countries who do business with China. Then there's countries like Korea and Japan. They have poured poo poo tons of money into English and they still suck at it. Yet they get along just fine economically speaking with the majority of the population being quite sucky at English. I think English teachers are still necessary in some cases but it's not as important a job as some people make it out to be. Just my observations from living in Asia for many many years now.
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May 22, 2012 16:12
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Throatwarbler posted:English is a Lingua Franca, people use it outside of the Anglosphere and the Chinese do huge amounts of business outside of the Anglosphere. Equipping your staff with some basic proficiency in English is a heck of a lot easier than trying to find Chinese speakers of Igbo or Persian or Pashtun. A lot of them are groomed to graduate from ivy leagues and such to take on board positions in the family businesses. They already speak native-level english so the whole EFL thing is meaningless to them. These are the type of people that are going to be doing high level business between ethnic Chinese run countries and the rest of the world.
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May 22, 2012 16:56
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ReindeerF posted:There actually are several strata there, at least in Thailand. The families who have the means and value education in a sincere way spend a lot money and time making sure their kids actually do learn things. That group is increasing in size. The rest, yeah, status. I think the people from families who are in the upper middle class (but not quite elite) are the ones who are truly competitive with education. But like I mentioned before most Thais I know who speak english really well were educated abroad anyways. They were part of the overseas raised Thai population who went to schools like UCLA and are back in Thailand running the family business. Even the ones who weren't raised overseas generally studied in Australia, NZ, U.K., or the U.S. for at least a couple years.
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May 22, 2012 17:05
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ReindeerF posted:Yeah, I'm incestuously intertwined with the latter group now. I don't want to go further into that discussion except to say that while there's no clear dividing line, there's a pretty broad distinction between the performance of the kids of historically wealthy Thai families and newly wealthy Thai-Chinese families, the latter of which have been taking over the country's economy and, slowly, politics for the last 50 years. The former of which have been selling off ancestral land holdings at record pace to the latter to finance cars, condos and a free-wheeling lifestyle. Still, that's a bit (not huge, but a bit) or a broad brush. Guys like Abhisit have very typical backgrounds for the new elite. They are hand groomed to be in elite positions. They make powerful friends abroad and cultivate these international connections. It's a cushion for them even if things go pear shaped in their parent's country. Have you heard Abhisit in BBC interviews? He's the yellowest British man ever. It's hilarious that he passes as Thai at all.
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May 22, 2012 17:19
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ReindeerF posted:
A Thai politician many years ago tried to drum up some old fashioned SEA anti-ethnic Chinese xenophobia but it failed spectacularly. I think it's because most of the middle class Thais just don't care about this. The ethnic divisions have blurred a lot due to families mixing. Plus lower class Thais are at that point where they don't see much of a difference between their dark skinned corrupt overlords in parliament and the light skinned corrupt overlords in parliament. They are all khun Thai at that level of corruption. I've heard people bitch in a roundabout way about Chinese but they're mostly referring to people like the foo-foo upper middle class Chinese-Thai land lady with the big hair, painted on red lipstick, gold, and gaudy clothing who constantly acts like a snooty bitch in dept stores.
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May 22, 2012 17:56
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Last Buffalo posted:
I don't entirely disagree with you there some English is important but when you're talking basic business functions you don't need a very high level of English education to be functional in a job like that. They just need to know enough to process orders, read simple e-mails, and input data when necessary. In the bigger picture it doesn't really impact business productivity in some major way if low level workers aren't conversational. Most Chinese business is factory or production based anyways. In an office or HQ for a company it certainly matters more but Asian companies are all top down heavy anyways. The Chinese men/women you would see in top management or more serious middle management positions probably still have some overseas education.
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May 22, 2012 18:05
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ReindeerF posted:I wonder if it works in China like it works in Thailand. In my role I consult with businesses to use online marketing to, basically, make more money. About 50/50 on Western clients I can communicate value to them about what I do and they're far-sighted enough to understand (the rest are absurd or thieves, or both). I would say that bigger Chinese companies are way more savvy at online marketing. They lace everything with online ads including filesharing programs. Plus they have an entire industry of Chinese search engines, video and social networking, etc.. that all compete directly with Google and Facebook. Alibaba and the like have been pretty impressive in the way they've connected lower level Chinese distributors with purchasers worldwide. They also just acquired a large piece of Yahoo. I won't even get into the corporate cyber espionage and the like but i'd say it's all pretty advanced. So Chinese companies take the internet very seriously unlike some Thai companies who think it's still a place to play game and see sec show. I think Thai companies don't care as much because it's the old style of business where they are happy to get their delegated share of the pie and don't see any reason to rock the boat as long as it's bringing in good money.
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May 22, 2012 18:36
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