What do you disagree with in my statement? Do you equal skyscrapers, new stores, etc with technological revolution, this isnt Japan, wake up.. Give this a thought... How many people in Mainland China? second thought how many people in India? take a look at this list: http://www.aneki.com/nobel.html
WW3 against china huh? The way I see it, WW3 started years ago. China has been selling to both sides quite well since the start. They won´t fight until they know clearly who´s going to win {kind of the US´s Strategy on the first 2 wars}
Guess you haven't been paying attention to the Chinese manned spaceflights last year. They now have an astronaut team of their own. Grant you, we are still ahead of them, but considering how far they've come in how fast, it's hard to say how long it would take for them to catch up on this too. As for satellites, you don't think they have satellites? You're kidding? They run commercial satellite launching flights that are the cheapest around. I'm not going to do your research for you, but if you think all the Chinese have are MIG-16's, you'd better come out of your cave and look around a bit. There was an article a few months back in the popular press specifically about what the Chinese were buying and developing for their airforce, and what we were spending on maintenance and repair for ours. Their 5% is spent on the latest and greatest. Ours is spent on maintenance, upkeep and housing, with a few new purchases a year. We aren't keeping up because the aging gear we have costs a lot to keep up and perhaps dispose of. In other words, we're larger, but fast becoming junkier. Think Delta vs Skyblue or Southwestern. Low overhead, newer planes vs high overhead, higher costs, maintenance and an aging fleet. If there were a conventional war, and they brought it to us, we'd rule our skies, for more reasons than our planes. But if we took it to them, things would not be nearly so rosy or simple. Look out is right. I hope our Pentagon isn't as uneducated as you appear to be. Under Bush, the field military, and Pentagon, has been bleeding nearly all it's top minds and experience into retirement. Think how many US generals have left since Bush started... Stormin Norman, Colin Powell, John Batiste, Paul Eaton, Anthony Zinni, Tommy Franks, Wesley Clark, Tony McPeak, Charles Swannack among others... these are all field generals with decades of experience in some cases. Some may have retired anyway, but some were too young for retirement. Given that the President is the military 'Commander in Chief', and that some of these guys retired incredibly early for their positions, I think in most cases it was safe to say they 'voted with their feet' as a vote of No Confidence for Bush and Rumsfeld. Even Bush's father, Bush Sr, tried to get rid of Rumsfeld by approaching a retired General as potential replacement. His son, the family retard, told him to bug off. Who would lead the fight, should we have one, against the Chinese? If we did have to fight pathetic old Russian equipment, there's a chance we'd lose... we don't have any kind of strategic planning or military brilliance anymore. The best of the best left under Bush. That's not to say they wouldn't come back, but it's been a lot of years since Reagan. Bush isn't fit to lick Reagan's shoes.
I was in China this summer. I totally agree about the pollution, tho I was suprised to see BLUE SKIES over Beijing one of the days I was there. hehe. They are making progress. Very determined progress. And the pace of that progress has picked up dramatically... I was last there nearly 20 years ago... they had nothing, and I saw bicycles everywhere, few vehicles and the occasional mule cart, complete with the hayride, driving up the main blvd in Beijing. Today, the number of cars in EVERY Chinese city (I visited 7) makes almost everywhere look like the LA freeway during Rush Hour. If someone had told me then what it would look like today, I'd have called them a liar. I'd have wagered anything they cared to wager it wouldn't be possible. In 20 years... they have surpassed, in terms of development, the imaginable. But... consider the USA from 1945-1965 in terms of development. From farm tractors to man on the moon. With 5x the population, all their own money plus a whole lot of ours, it's not possible for them to surpass us in the next 20 years? You think? As for these Chinese dying to get here.... I asked people if they thought they might want to emigrate to the US someday. None of the people I talked to wanted to, though they'd like to visit someday to see it. China is BOOMING. Even their servants didn't want to come to the US, they didn't believe it would be a better life. All of them say it's gotten a LOT better in the last 2 years even. Considering that all it takes to get a HB1 visa in the USA is to make a 1 million dollar investment in a small business that hires a few americans. Many of them could come at ANY time, to stay. Per this article (similar count in Forbes Magazine: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2006-04/29/content_580097.htm " As of last year, China had at least 236,000 millionaires, counted in US dollars and based on their reported wealth, according to research by Cap Gemini and Merrill Lynch." (if you lived in China for a few years, you should know that few Chinese would 'report' their wealth to the Gov't unless they had to. Everything possible is done 'under the table', in the attempt to avoid graft). China has 15 BILLIONAIRES: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2006-11/02/content_722959.htm 236,000 millionaires, 15 billionaires. Here's Forbes top 400 list of China's richest: http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/74/biz_06china_The-400-Richest-Chinese_land.html . The combined net worth of the Forbes 400 individuals is a staggering 38 billion dollars. The MINIMUM wealth to make Forbes list btw is 100 million. While the US has many more millionaires than China... what does a million dollars buy here? A house and a car? What would a million US dollars buy in China, in Chinese $$? In cost adjusted dollars, a Chinese millionaire would be equivalent to a multimillionaire here. The pollution IS the worst problem they have... which they are working on. But it doesn't begin to slow them down in growth. While there are many problems still, problems associated with rapid growth and little experience with it, there's no way to not stand back and look in some awe at what they've done so far. And for me, the biggest shock was the improvement in public restrooms. That beat all other advances from a personal standpoint.
'we don't have any kind of strategic planning or military brilliance anymore.' totally disagree! military vrs military US can beat any force or combination of forces, within weeks or couple of months at the most. US can gain total air superiority over any nation including Israel, UK or France in a matter of two weeks and after that it is all smart bombs chipping away at the enemy military assets.
So tell me, why doesn't bloodthirsty Bush do something about North Korea and Iran's boldly announced (rub in face) WMD? Since we're so superior, and we just fought a war over the RUMOR of WMD (false at that), wouldn't it make sense to actually go fight over the announcement? Oh yah... we would be overstretched and have difficulty. Hrm. Why's that? We beat Iraq handily. That wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that they were under trade sanctions for 12 years while their infrastructure fell apart? They had almost no weapons or technology to speak of (as if our intelligence didn't know that. I'm sure that was turned over with the report that they had no WMD by the CIA before the war). We beat a 1 armed child, militarily speaking, and that makes us king of the heap. I agree. So why aren't we doing something about the only slightly tougher targets who are taunting us? (Iran and North Korea) We can beat 'any number of forces or COMBINED forces'? Are you serious? Where did you see this?
'So why aren't we doing something about the only slightly tougher targets who are taunting us? (Iran and North Korea)' politics, economics, elections, population views, world views etc. etc.
A lot of you guys are still stuck in an old frame of mind. Too much of "A Christmas Story". "There are starving chinese people" lol. dangerous mindset. And emmigration from Hong Kong? Well... that's Hong Kong. Most Chinese in America are from Hong Kong. Cantonese, the language some southern Chinese speak. The one that Rosie O'Donnell mocked was Cantonese. here's a quote from a travel website Chinese that are non cantonese are hard to find, unless you live in a dense immigration area like California or something.
Exactly. People still think that Hong Kong is China. The vast majority of chinese in the US are from Hong Kong, a former british colony that was and still is incredibly overpopulated, with a HUGE income disparity between rich and poor, with almost no middle class. It wasn't the rich that wanted to come to the land of immigrants and the beacon of Ellis Island with open arms for the 'humble, poor, and free". While there are plenty of hardworking rich Chinese in the US, most came from humbler beginnings. Think about how badly you'd want to emigrate to a foreign country if you have a home, a stable income and some savings. The typical middle class American wouldn't even consider it. The wealthy wouldn't even consider it. Who would consider it? The national language in China is Mandarin, and you have people making fun of Cantonese here in the US. Geographically, only 1 tiny area speaks Cantonese. It's like assuming the US is entirely Spanish by looking at the city of Miami and parts of South Florida. Yet people in the US are that ignorant. How ignorant is Rosie ODonnell? Wake up! The Chinese do not all own laundrymats and work as butlers or maids, or are dying to come here to serve white americans. It is one of the oldest civilizations on planet earth, and 50 of the last 100 years were spent in civil war and a brutal war of conquest by Japan on their own soil. The entire period of the US rise to power, they were recovering from a black eye, one far more crippling than any period the US has ever endured as a nation. Do not minimize who they are. If you have an opponent, even in a friendly competition, to underestimate them is to lose.