Really??????? There are still people in the world who are brainwashed into believing this garbage?????
The article makes a good point that we are too complacent in our dealings with China. Aside from a national-level campaign of refusing to buy Chinese-made products, what else can we do?
Social Darwinism has reached the level of state religion in modern Chinese society, with the ubiquitous phrases expounding the importance of "developing oneself" and "using one's advantage" to prove one's fitness over others. There is usually a racial overtone to such talk, with the Han Chinese cast as the dominant race in the globe that - due to national complacency - were recently overtaken by hairy barbarians from the West, but will eventually reinstate their domination over the globe. Such views are not implicitly conveyed, but explicitly, in the form of an overtly racist natural history taught in the school system wherein Chinese physical characteristics of reduced body hair and physical size are taken to indicate a higher level of racial development over hairier and supposedly more physically robust Europeans and Africans who only recently became civilized and so bear the characteristics of a harsher lifestyle. My students unflinchingly express a condescending affection for Africans, with statements such as, "I like black people, because, since they are closer to animals, they are really good at sports." There is a widespread belief among average Chinese that Africans and Chinese are not able to produce offspring together and, therefore, effectively constitute separate species.
The issue of Chinese fascism is one which the people of the world must pay much greater attention than they have to date. Too much emphasis is placed on the economic power of China without thought to the origins of this power and the long-term sociopolitical consequences it may have for the globe. If the Chinese fascist regime is permitted by the international community to continue its rise to prominence, then the consequences will be borne by the people of democratic nations and we have already seen the early stages of this global trend. If China continues to be able to use its fascist state apparatus to attract investment at the cost of liberal democratic nations, then the characteristics of these nations will tend toward increasing fascism in an imitative defensive response.
"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill
Japan had similar views when they were dominating the world economically. Everyone who is at the top of the heap likes to believe and teach others in the society that we are the best. Multi-cultural nations like the US push a belief that the melting pot made us superior to other nations.
Do we need to do something to take China down a peg? I think you will see it happening without us doing anything. They have a number of ticking bombs, including pollution concerns, losing business to cheaper labor countries like Vietnam, and the one child policy creating too many men and not enough mates for them.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
Science Chic wrote: Really??????? There are still people in the world who are brainwashed into believing this garbage?????
The article makes a good point that we are too complacent in our dealings with China. Aside from a national-level campaign of refusing to buy Chinese-made products, what else can we do?[/i]
Get an administration in Washington that is friendly to United States manufacturers, an administration that will not regulate a company out of the country, an administration that will balance the protection of our earth and atmosphere with reasonable accommodations to businesses, an administration that will cater to a free market and not try to stifle labor with kickbacks and favors to power hungry unions... in short... get rid of the European Socialist we currently have in office by voting President Obama out in Nov. 2012.
We can also stop teaching our children that they are special little snowflakes who can't do a thing wrong, can't ever loose and should be afforded the same things as their friend next door. We have kids coming out of college who have no will to compete in business. Frequently these young adults have taken meaningless courses in college, that may be fun and good for their self esteem, but doesn't prepare them for the rigors of the labor marketplace. MFA's in "Puppetry" are fine for the 2 or 3 people that will be needed to staff Julie Traynor's next Broadway musical, but otherwise courses like that offer nothing of value to a perspective employer. And children who have been told over and over again that they "never lose" are going to be sadly disappointed the first time they are called into their bosses office and told "Junior... you're a loser, pack up the things in your desk drawer... you're fired". I honestly think that our high schools and colleges have forgotten how to prepare a person for the competitive world of employment. A business has to be staffed with fighters, people who want to be better than the other team, want to win the prize, want to become so good at what they do that the "other" person is put out of the picture. We use to teach our children how to do that... not anymore.
Our problems are holistic, the complete body politic, the body of future laborers and the body individual no longer wants to compete. It's a global economy, and the world is not going to treat us with kit gloves. We have to get back to a winning attitude. We have to get back to a country that understand the difference between equal opportunity and equal outcome. Outcome is according to how well the person want to compete, wants to win, wants to do better than the next person. Not everyone will be afforded an equal outcome, and social engineering to try to accomplish a constant equal outcome will be the destruction of our society.
China's domination of the marketplace is only the beginning. If we are happy with doing work such as an unkempt drab squatting on a log would do (Juvenal: Satire 2) we deserve the what we are sowing.
