Scorched Earth Policy
Now, for the serious economic commentary:
China is coming and they don't give a shit what happens on the way. They are not motivated by profit or debt retirement. It's a dick measuring contest based on market share and public relations.
With loans from the World Bank and the Bank of China and the ability and intention to print as much money as they need, they have expansion strategies that are not based in reality. But who can guess what the reality of the future of China will be? The number of Chinese people who have moved from farms to cities in the last decade is equivalent to the population of the United States. And these ex-agrarian people haven't learned to be consumers yet or how to really use up natural resources. Until they all get Direct TV, they don't even know what they don't have yet. And they certainly don't know what they want to spend the money they're about to make on yet.
We visited the city of Suzho for one day. There are 6,000,000+ people in Suzho and we've never heard of it and they don't even have an airport yet. Try to fathom a situation like that in the US.
There is currently an auction system to get a licence plate for a car, starting at $5000. Wait until a bunch of new drivers encounter 5 million folks on bicycles. Dr. Welby to othopedics, stat! And the smog that already chokes the city and burns your eyes will only get much worse. Shanghai is like industrial revolution era London on steroids, or conversely like Japan with much more land. There's a crash a-comin' and we had better hope we're not in the passenger seat.
China is coming and they don't give a shit what happens on the way. They are not motivated by profit or debt retirement. It's a dick measuring contest based on market share and public relations.
With loans from the World Bank and the Bank of China and the ability and intention to print as much money as they need, they have expansion strategies that are not based in reality. But who can guess what the reality of the future of China will be? The number of Chinese people who have moved from farms to cities in the last decade is equivalent to the population of the United States. And these ex-agrarian people haven't learned to be consumers yet or how to really use up natural resources. Until they all get Direct TV, they don't even know what they don't have yet. And they certainly don't know what they want to spend the money they're about to make on yet.
We visited the city of Suzho for one day. There are 6,000,000+ people in Suzho and we've never heard of it and they don't even have an airport yet. Try to fathom a situation like that in the US.
There is currently an auction system to get a licence plate for a car, starting at $5000. Wait until a bunch of new drivers encounter 5 million folks on bicycles. Dr. Welby to othopedics, stat! And the smog that already chokes the city and burns your eyes will only get much worse. Shanghai is like industrial revolution era London on steroids, or conversely like Japan with much more land. There's a crash a-comin' and we had better hope we're not in the passenger seat.
posted by ceeelcee at 4:45 PM
1 Comments:
My mom said basicly the same thing after she returned from China last year.
She got a big presentation about their Olympic construction plans and all the no holds barred ways they were going to accomplish so much in so short a time. She said it struck her that "people" over there are so numerous and so cheap that they don't even need heavy machinery to accomplish what they want. She said that "we don't have a clue."
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