Posted on 10/24/2004 8:57:15 AM PDT by winodog
Beijing — At the north end of Beijing's Imperial Palace stands Coal Hill, a man-made summit built with the sweat and blood of countless labourers. Climb it and you can absorb a sight that for 500 years, only emperors and their retainers could see: the inner precincts of the Forbidden City. With its arching, tiled roofs of mustard yellow and its high vermillion walls, this is the secret heart of the most inward-looking empire the world has ever seen.
For centuries, China shut itself off from the rest of humanity. Secure in its cultural superiority, disdainful of Western ideas and science, it welcomed foreigners only as supplicants, forcing them to kowtow before its emperors ”with ashen face and trembling knees” behind those walls.
But today, a new Chinese empire is rising, one that looks outward instead of in. Emboldened by 25 years of pell-mell economic growth, a reborn China is bidding to become a great power again — perhaps the great power.
It was Napoleon who warned, ”Let China sleep, for when she awakes she will shake the world.” Look down from Coal Hill and you can almost feel the tremors. Before you, to the south, lie the hundreds of palaces and lesser buildings of the imperial sanctuary; beyond that, the sweeping expanse of Tiananmen Square and the citadels of Communist power on its flanks.
(Excerpt) Read more at theglobeandmail.com ...
The people of China are now ready to live like we americans have been doing for over half a century. Is there enough natural resources to allow that to happen.
I just hope that america continues to educate more Bill Gate types so we can come up with some new technoligies that will allow us to remain at the top. I am one of the freepers who think packing up all our manufacturing and mailing it to China will have severe repurcussions.
I wish I could be more optimistic about America's economic tenacity for the next few decades... but I'm not. We've ceased to become a forward-looking, opportunistic, pioneering, and innovative people. The American Spirit is gone. We're afraid to take risks, we're afraid to create. Now we've raised an entire generation (or two) with a dependent mentality who's people, in large part, cannot think or act for themselves. This is what decades of socialist policies are doing to this nation.
Kudos to nations like China and India. The 21st century will probably be theirs.
They'll never do anything until they ditch communism.
In large part, China is Communist in name only. Over the past two decades they have been gradually reducing the amount of government interference in the economy, and introducing private markets. If anything, China now resembles a fascist state, not a Communist one.
I got news for you. They already have. I have been to Beijing and seen Mao's tomb. If the corpse could see out of his mausoleum he would see Colonel Sanders smiling down at him from across the street.
Any special reason you twice capitalize "China," and twice do not capitalize "America"?
Dan
PS -- Don't gripe at the question unless you'd've rather everyone assume his own answer.
As long as we can produce enough FOOD, we'll be okay. Can you feed 1.3 billion people and still be a strong country? I don't think so.
We have remember China started from ZERO so the number looks good now.
You need to get out more often.
We are the inventors and producers of all sorts of products demended by the less productive.
We have shifted production of many products elsewhere but that is the natural result of worldwide industrial evolution.
China is. How do we exploit that simple fact..... that is the question you should be asking. Your life will be involved in suceeding or failing to deal with that reality.
good read!
Absolutely not!!!!! A mistake on my part. I always have to check to make sure I capitalize stuff and I dont capitalize bill clinton, kerry, hillary , daschle and others of their ilk as a little rebellion on my part.
English was my worse subject and it certainly is not getting any better. I notice I did put American in capitols once. I have a long track record here and love this country. Its the people in the swamp that I have a strong dislike for.
So in answer to your question I screwed up again.
Thanks, very much. I really didn't assume anything. Once, I would have just shrugged. It was only because it was done twice in each case.
So I wondered if it was like the big, bad anti-Christians who make a point of violating grammar by not capitalizing "God," while using it as a proper noun — just to say to everyone, "Woo, look at how tough and bad I am!"
Dan
Now thats one I dont think I ever mess up on. I usually put anything even close to God like the Bible or the Word in capitols just out of respect. (Of course when I say the Word I am speaking of Jesus Christ)
There is one big problem: the one-child family, and the skewed sex ratio.
At a known time in the future, based on people already born, they will have the highest percentage of people over sixty ever known. And the young people will be a bunch of men who cannot get wives. This cannot be good.
I would bet the leaders have a plan. They are known for thinking long term. I am sure the plan involves tens of millions young men throwing themselves into walls of lead.
Maybe our leaders have a plan to fix that - having nearly a billion of them throwing their bodies into walls of RADIATION.
It would not suprise me a bit. I doubt if the western world will sit back and allow China to become the supersupersuperpower that they can become if we dont throw up some roadblocks. I am sure that the elite rulers of the west have looked at the numbers and they know that someone has to be sacraficed in order to feed the "yellow horde" (no racism intended) I just thought the term fit nicely.
China is a Party-controlled dictatorship.
I hope you disapproved of the Bush administration comment that outsourcing jobs to overseas is good for our economy.
So the question for them is what the hell do they do with about 50,000,000 or so extra single men? My guess is that if the current economic trends continue they will export men to work overseas and import millions of brides from countries that are more desparate than China.
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