Re: The Chinese... How do they do it?

That is just not true, our balance of trade with China is to our benefit. China and India take just about anything we can dig out of the ground. The last figure I saw was a surplus (in our favour) of $16billion with China alone - they are massive importers and the reason why we are still living in boom times as the world's economies collapse around us.

I don't think the assertion that they merely copy western ideas and articles is entirely true either. They are part of the global economy and it is not in their long term interest to break international laws on intellectual property rights. They are a booming economy and the population will get richer because of it. There is no evidence of widespread child labour (other than in rural communities) they are far too interested in educating their children to a very high standard - unlike the west they realise that education is the key to their future prosperity and with a command economy they can make it happen. Certainly at the moment they have the benefit of cheap labour.

China has a big problem built into the system in about 30 years time because of their rapidly ageing population caused by the one child policy (makes our ageing population problem seem positively insignificant). It will be interesting to see how that pans out.

Re: The Chinese... How do they do it?

I don't know much about the Chinese people but I always thought they were well up on technology, didn't they invent gunpowder? didn't archaeologists discover the remains of an electric battery thousands of years old, and they managed to keep the secret of making fine China hidden from the outside World. Maybe a succession of bad leadership and closed borders have kept the rest of the World unaware of the Country's abilities, they are a very clever race of people and I don't begrudge their present economical success, they have every right to be up there with the other big power and with the population and the cash they have now you don't see anybody shaking a stick at them, we need that kind of balance in the World, not all one sided as it was.
As for the aging population, that can be quickly solved by couples "Having a baby for china week", as was encouraged in these parts after the last war.
PS. I hope they remember who posted this when they take over the World.

Re: The Chinese... How do they do it?

Ha ha there must be some very rapid growing up happening for a quick solution to an ageing population. In the rest of the real world it takes a generation for the boom to become productive.

In fact having extra babies would be the totally wrong solution because the problem would solve itself in the same time as the older population died out. The problem is China is the vast scale of that ageing population compared with the productive population.

Re: The Chinese... How do they do it?

What I was trying to get at there Bruce was that a new generation doesn't take a very long time to come about, I'm sure they have already started to come to terms with the problem, maybe they will or have relaxed the two children law, say if a child is born in nine months time then in 14 years time that child could start working (I did at 14) on the land in apart time learning capacity, food production will be a top priority so millions of farm workers will be required. In the ever growing industrial sector the workers will need someone to look after the kids, enter the older folks who do a great job of this all over the world, as Del Trotter says "Everyone's a winner", hopefully

Re: The Chinese... How do they do it?

Have you ever noticed the Chinese are always taken pic's from everything, only to copie and produce in their own land and to sell back cheaper here.