Have you been following the Mr. Foxxcon Goes To Brazil saga? Pretty interesting stuff. The "fuck your own people" ethos has never left China, no matter what they call the latest incarnation of the practice.
yeah but, I give them a break. That's a lot of people and if they can just keep them from starving it's quite an accomplishment. But no, haven't heard, what is the deal with China and Brazil? Where do I find it?
That guy is a nobody, and he knows he says nonsense. Offer him a greencard, and he will take the first flight to come (and he will pay for processing fees). The chinese sometime say things that may suggest that they think that the people from around world as if they were talking to their populace with the assumption that the listener is a stupid. What this says is that they are the stupids once!
I'm Chinese, and perhaps predictably, very sympathetic of his point of view. Want to maintain your standard of living? Rather than complaining and hoping to distribute what's left of a small and diminishing pie, work twice as hard. Want to have money after retirement? Work harder now and save more. The average Chinese continues to study harder as kids, and work harder as adults. All else being equal (ie capital becoming equally available and fair global markets), why should the average Zhang make less than the average Joe? There can't be any justification, and as such the current trend is both reasonable and perfectly irresistible.
The proof that he is the idiot is that he is giving money at a ridiculous low rate of return, and he has no other choice but to give it to the west. What could he do otherwise? Also, the money he gave as loans is already given-- it is he who is on the hook, not the west. His words are further empty of sense, because he is still giving the money, even though he knows since years ago that the situtation is what it is and the words he is saying know, were said in the past and the action was opposite of the words. I think it is the westerners who are smarter: they have a higher return on their efforts, while the average chinese work harder, study harder, but his production are worth (by markets) less than the westeners' production.
you are right about it, they are king no more, new king in town it is history,200 years , time to chnage
Because Joe understands the role of margins, while Zhang works harder without thinking about working smarter: Zhang focuses on working and low-negative-margins, and Joe focuses on high margins. A 1/60 ratio of margins means that what Zhang produces in a life-time, Joe produces it in a year. So if Joe sleeps 59 years, and works only one year, he would do the same as a Zhang working his entire life.
I'm not even sure why I'm engaging in this "discussion" here... I guess it's a lazy Sunday afternoon, why not. Do you really think its a question of "choice"? If we transported you to China and got rid of your Western passport, would you still "choose" to work smarter and be more productive? And the Chinese who work in the West and get compensated very well, did we simply "choose" to be paid more? In the year 2011, the West is rich for the same reason that Paris Hilton remains rich: you were born with it. You're inheriting the wealth of past generations. The capital that your ancestors accumulated still paying off today... even if GDP growth is just 1% today (versus 10% in China), the fact is, America is still creating far more value every year than China is. I'm not going to get into a long discussion about *why* the West already had more capital ... those of you who study history already know why, and those who don't will just turn this into a pointless argument. The point is, the world has fundamentally changed. And I for one believe that we're well past the tipping point, with China's future growth becoming an irresistible force.