People's Republic of Capitalism

[Andy_S]

RE: Darth's Points:

It is spoken by more people than speak english on the whole planet.
- Yep, and how many of those people are NOT Chinese? English is the language of commerce, science, travel, academia, etc, etc. Which I think invalidates your first point: More people on the planet speak English as a second language than Chinese as a first language. Moreover, they are the people who matter (ie the educated, the powerful, those who travel, etc)

Is its culture - TV, film, music, Internet content, literature, sports - spreading worldwide? is anybodies worldwide or merely percieved to be so? People in asia watch a lot of chinese tv and even in my hometown we have an entire mandarin language station with exclusive chinese programming. I live in the largest city in Canada.
- Big deal. Cable channel means very little. The fact that it is American programming that people watch all over the world on both cable and terrestrial channels is the point, as is the fact that Hollywood dominates world box office, likewise, world pop world cultural. Where did Blues, Jass, Rock, Hip Hop come from? Educated people around the world are familiar with "Star Trek" "Friends," "Sex and the City" "The Godfather" and Arnold Schwarzenneger. Their Chinese equivelents simply don't exist beyond niche audiences.

Are its universities and research institutes coming up with green field tech? The top 25 percentile in chinese universities is more than the combined student body of all american universities and they work on all the same things taht we do so, yes
- No, there is a difference between good and bad universities. The fact that American universities are expensive, mean they are well funded. Look at the research coming out of Harvard, MIT, Yale, Stanford, and compare it to that coming out of Chinese universities, please.

Are its companies filing global patents? yes.
- OK. How many, compared to US companies? And in what sectors?

Do its companies own any top 100 global brands? yes
- Take a look at global brand indices, and tell me which country MS, Levis, Coca Cola, Gilette, Nike, etc, etc, come from.

Are its financial markets global hubs? they own america don't they?
- No they own a lot of Treasury Bonds. Fixed Income and equities are very different things. They have, AFAIK, minimal heft in the US stock market - how many multi-billion dollar major investment funds or pension funds are China-based? - and due to tight regulations on foreign ownership ceilings, Shanghai is insignifnicant as market compared to Singapore, Hong Kong or even Tokyo. Yes, I know HK is in China, but it is "one country, different systems," remember?

Does its military have off-shore power? they are nuke capable and one of the largest threats militarily speaking on this planet. A sleeping giant if you will in the sense of military might.
- Right. Still sleeping. Napoleon said the same thing in the early 19th century. y

Does it offer a lifestyle that people around the world aspire to? in america you can have a shitty lifestyle or a great one! the same is true of china.
- But in American the proportion of great is much higher than the proportion of shitty compared to China. Take a look at the respective GDP figures, for God's sake! There is a reason that the US is the world's richest country while China, which is catching up in gross economic terms, but has the world's largest population and is a third-world country!

- I would add that I don't see anything approaching the level of open, intellectual debate in China to what is available in the US, and there are obvious reasons for that (ie their government.)

Besides my bold points, I would say, America never controlled the world except in it's own collective mind and media. America is small by comparison to asia in general economically, military wise and so on.
- No it is not. American - well NAFTA - is the largest economic bloc on earth, followed by the EU. Japan, Korea and China can't get along to unify themselves into anthing comparable for the forseeeable. No Asian power has anything like US force projection capabilities, and will not for the forseeable future.

There are differences, but all your points are indicative of the general ignorance that many in america and europe (less so in europe) have about the rest of the world in general.
- Thanks I am European, have a masters degree in Asian Studies and have lived in Asia for over a decade. I won't coment about "general ignorance," but have you ever even visited the Far East?

[Mike Strong]

Zing !

[Wuyizidi]

Andy_S,

You just gave me an idea, China should send its military around the globe and occupy less developed countries (If China is more developed than them, than China knows what's good for them better than themselves right) for a few hundred years, this way there'd be more non-native speakers for sure!

Kidding. American culture is dominant in the world because economically it's the most dominant force. But popularity does not equal quality. Is the current crop of American pop music really better than classical European music?

Yes, China is very backward compared to the west when it comes to science, technology, and political system. U.S will be the no. 1 power for the forseeable future. I don't think any serious person really believes China will replace U.S as no. 1 anytime soon. Any American who thinks that don't know enough about China, and worse, don't know enough about America.

And yes, there are core elements of American culture that makes that advanced level of economic and technological development possible. But I don't think we can pass overall judgment about worthiness of a culture based just on those things. But it's very common for people to assume that: that everything about the most economically developed country is the best, and a less economically developed country has nothing to offer.

To use your example, where did "Blues, Jass, Rock, Hip Hop" come from? Do they come from "educated, powerful, well-traveled" elite? No, they came from America's poor underclass. The same is true for martial art. In ancient China, martial art skill, like skill in many sports today (soccer, boxing, basketball, baseball, tennis...), is mostly developed by people for whom martial art is the only way out. Highly advanced culture can come from both top and bottom (class, not quality) of the society.

Even today Chinese culture, even very fundamental aspects, are largely unknown to the general population outside Asia. Even when it comes to martial art, even on a forum made up of many knowledgeable people like this one, you see many of the core Chinese attitudes and beliefs about martial art practice missing (at least not talked about or expressed) right? But if Chinese culture were as well known around the world as American culture, I think there'd be many aspects of it that other people would aspire to.

Lastly, I would say, although everyone would like to have the material standard of living that Americans have, not everyone want to have the kind of culture, society we do, because every society has its own value system (which good is valued about what other ones). You're an European, so you already know what I'm talking about here.

Wuyizidi.

[jasonf]

Andy_S,

Yes, China is very backward compared to the west when it comes to science, technology, and political system. U.S will be the no. 1 power for the forseeable future. I don't think any serious person really believes China will replace U.S as no. 1 anytime soon. Any American who thinks that don't know enough about China, and worse, don't know enough about America.

Wuyizidi.

The US might not be the no. 1 power for the forseeable future...Look at a few pillars of our technilogical advances NASA, MIT...Now what percentage of those groups are Chinese, Indian or American Citizens? We dominate in the Science/Technology sector because we attract the worlds greatest minds. China is starting to not only keep their greatest thinkers at home, but even buying back some of those who left...Recently there is a lot of hype about Green Energy and we in the US have a major obsticle to overcome with the Power of Oil in our Government, if they create enough road blocks we could see other nations developing at a faster rate.

[Wuyizidi]

I've been trying to find a good translation of this for a while, this one's not bad (http://www.wam.umd.edu/~tkang/welcome_files/ideal.htm), I made a few changes. It's the Chinese ideal of good society as expressed by Confucius. Might be too socialist for American taste:

When Dao prevails, the world will belong to everyone. The people will elect virtuous and talented persons for the government; and they will promote good faith and friendship. Men will not consider only their own parents as their parents, nor treat only their own children as their children. The aged will find a meaningful life till their death; the able persons are fully employed; and the young are provided with upbringing and education; and the widowed, the helpless, the disabled, and the sick, will all be supported by the state. Every man will have his own rights and every woman her own belongings. They hate to see goods lying about in waste, yet they do not hoard them for themselves. They dislike the thought that their energies are not fully used, yet they use them not for egoistic ends. Therefore, all evil plotting is prevented in advance and anarchy do not arise. Thus, perfect security will prevail everywhere; people can leave their gates unchecked. This is called the Great Unity.

As we can see here the Chinese concept of family, of duties and responsibilities of parent and child, of country and its citizens, are very different from the American model. There is no one perfect, correct model. This is where W's intellectual blind spot lies, he assumes America's way is the One True Way, and if people knows what's good for them, they would all want to be just like us, and when that happens, there'd be no terrorism against us, no wars... That's just not true.

Most people want to have nice house, cars, and be able to speak their mind - but the content of that speech, the idea of what a good life is, is different for different people. Many traditional cultures, when they see young people emulating what they see on western cultural exports, placing more value on being sexy, rich, focused on ever higher levels of consumption, more self-focused, less caring about others..., they rightly perceive many things we seemed to care about are a direct threat to their way of life, or their vision of ideal life, such as one expressed by Confucius above. So this kind of cultural conflict will always be present.

And even when cultural conflicts are absent, economic conflict will still exist. America has heavy military presence in just about every part of the globe where there's a large supply of oil. The ones it doesn't, China is now there. The funny thing is America likes to tell China to get out of those countries because of their atrocious human rights records, but does not level the same criticism against oil rich countries we deal with (Iran under the Shah, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, many former soviet republics...) The rising hostility toward China and India right now, most of that is economic right?

What China has been doing since the cultural revolution is obeying the economic laws of market instead of going against it - following the dao of the market, and therefore prosper as a result. At this point in human history, the most advanced model of economic production is capitalism. When America was founded, capitalism was just in its infancy (Jefferson actually resisted it). And I'm sure 100, 1000, 10000 years from now, we will have even more advanced model of economic production, one that replaces capitalism. So we cannot equate capitalism with democracy. But many core aspects of democracy directly supports development of capitalism. How democratic do you have to be to support a capitalist economy, that remains to be seen.

The Chinese communist party is no longer communist (for example its goal is no longer overthrowing capitalism and achieving communism), but it still is a political monopoly, and therefore cannot tolerate dissention ("why do people have to listen to you only?" "Because I'm always right."). That in itself is a fatal flaw.


Wuyizidi

[Andy_S]

David:

SNIP
Kidding. American culture is dominant in the world because economically it's the most dominant force.
SNIP

Exactly.

SNIP
But popularity does not equal quality. Is the current crop of American pop music really better than classical European music?
SNIP

No, I don't think anyone would argue that - although it would also be difficult to argue the reverse without coming across as a cultural elitist. I am not making a value judgment that American culture is 'better' than Chinese culture (though I would take American government over Chinese governemnt any day of the week) I am just trying to inject a little reality into the
(a) "China is about to eat our lunch cos they have got a lot of people making a lot of stuff;" and
(b) "Woe (or joy, depending upon one's POV) America's day is over"
arguments

SNIP
Yes, China is very backward compared to the west when it comes to science, technology, and political system. U.S will be the no. 1 power for the forseeable future. I don't think any serious person really believes China will replace U.S as no. 1 anytime soon. Any American who thinks that don't know enough about China, and worse, don't know enough about America.
SNIP

Wholeheartedly agree. But read some of the comments higher up on this thread...!

Seems to me that a lot of people think in terms of size is everything - population, economy of scale, size of GDP. It ain't that simple. There is hard power, there is soft power, and there is a whole lot in between.

And while Confucian culture is admirable in many respects, so are many aspects of American culture, notably the "American dream" of the founding fathers. The US Decl of indedendence is one of the greatest political documents ever, IMHO (and I am English!). (This is a bit different than the dream of having a son on the football team, an outdoor BBQ, watching 'Friends' on TV and owning an SUV - which seems to be what many want. Even so, the fact that so many around the world should also tell us something about the simple/stark reality of human materialism.)

Of course, whether either America or China has lived up to the promise of its socio-political-cultural roots in international society is another question altogether.

[Andy_S]

SNIP
The US might not be the no. 1 power for the forseeable future...Look at a few pillars of our technilogical advances NASA, MIT...Now what percentage of those groups are Chinese, Indian or American Citizens? We dominate in the Science/Technology sector because we attract the worlds greatest minds.
SNIP

The fact that the "world's greatest minds" travel to the US for their education tells me a lot about who will be the "no 1 power for the forseeable future." I am not sure of the answer to this (anyone?) but you might want to discover what percentage of those "great minds" stay in the US, work for US companies, etc, likewise you may want to ask which companies (Chinese, American or Indian) are funding their research, and so benefitting from it.

[I-mon]

...Recently there is a lot of hype about Green Energy and we in the US have a major obsticle to overcome with the Power of Oil in our Government, if they create enough road blocks we could see other nations developing at a faster rate.

i still have some hope that china might be able to lead the way in this regard. given their system of government where the people at the top say "do it" and it gets done....since by all accounts china is facing massive environmental problems, and the fact that if they were to pull ahead here they would gain a huge amount of face and make america look bad....but probably no chance of anything really working, corruption at every level of government etc.

[CaliG]

Yes, China is very backward compared to the west when it comes to science, technology, and political system. U.S will be the no. 1 power for the forseeable future. I don't think any serious person really believes China will replace U.S as no. 1 anytime soon. Any American who thinks that don't know enough about China, and worse, don't know enough about America.

In 2035 China will have the biggest economy in the world.