Wow, that's what i call a back pedal. open tl discussion with anyone is always a good thing. Jus ask the US how their strategy is working.Please don't try to re-write things. Not sure if you are old enough to have lived those days. Trudeau was not a "communist sympathizer" but he was definitely known to be open to discussions, and he did feel some "camaraderie" with Fidel. In those days, that was enough to have you labelled a PINKO...
Except that Trudau is playing to a wider national audience. Ford's just playing to himself.Trudeau should make sure the next time he plans to say something that will be subject to spin in the media that he has doused himself with cheap rye and smokes a rock right before addressing his audience. It can only help his approval ratings amongst the feeble-minded as Ford has shown.
I respect your experience, and I don't mean to devalue it. However, if you hear many people talk about their trips to Cuba or Jamaica, they will all tell you how wonderful it is. Just like in Cuba/Jamaica, I am not sureFred can confirm for you that a number of my posts this year have been made from China, I am there frequently. (He knows because I complain about how many chinacom mobile IP addresses are blocked by terb). The Chinese have certainly embraced capitalism but it is still a collectivist society. Children are still raised by their grandparents, and still look after their parents when they are elderly.
Successful people expect and are expected to use their influence for the benefit of others. Certainly China is a status oriented place, and those who are successful love to show it off, but China was like that always, long before communism. It is the same in Taiwan.
Here we are discussing what Chinese people expect from their government, and they expect the government to prioritize the interests of society at large over the interests of individuals. They support ripping down old dirty eyesore neighborhoods and replacing them with modem construction that they can show off to visiting foreigners. They don't care whether the residents of the eyesore agree.
Not sure what you are referring to as a back pedal, perhaps you are confusing me with someone else. I don't believe that I have expressed my opinion of PET as a communist lover, etc..Wow, that's what i call a back pedal. open tl discussion with anyone is always a good thing. Jus ask the US how their strategy is working.
I'm old enough to have left school in Quebec by the time Trudeau showed the world how to deal with the FLQ. Once he said screw you, get the hell out of Dodge, the streets in Montreal were safe to walk in again with no fear of kidnappings and bombings.
Hey rob, thanks for the suggestion, but next time, can you come down from your crack high before offering advice?? Your post was even more feeble minded than ford nation.Trudeau should make sure the next time he plans to say something that will be subject to spin in the media that he has doused himself with cheap rye and smokes a rock right before addressing his audience. It can only help his approval ratings amongst the feeble-minded as Ford has shown.
When I travel for business, it's always to the eastern coastal areas which are the richest and best developed areas. Everyone has a motorized vehicle and enjoy a standard of living that is comparable to, say, people in Italy or Spain.I respect your experience, and I don't mean to devalue it. However, if you hear many people talk about their trips to Cuba or Jamaica, they will all tell you how wonderful it is. Just like in Cuba/Jamaica, I am not sure
if the places you visit are reflective of the overall country.
My point was that just like generalizing Americans or Canadians is a flawed premise, doing the same for the Chinese is also flawed.
It seems easy to imagine that he will find some kind of retort that will turn it around and cast Harper/Cons in a poor light.Look at the ammo Trudeau has given Harper!!! Just wait for the ads from the Conservative Party of Canada featuring Trudeau's quotes about the Chinese dictatorship
Very good read, and I agree.When I travel for business, it's always to the eastern coastal areas which are the richest and best developed areas. Everyone has a motorized vehicle and enjoy a standard of living that is comparable to, say, people in Italy or Spain.
It certainly is not representative of the rest of the country. This is the four hundred million odd Chinese who have caused China to surpass America as the world's largest market for new cars.
However, I have taken the time personally to travel throughout the country over the past fifteen years or so, I have been into the west, into places like Sichuan, which is still largely state run, and into agricultural communities. I went to the three gorges area while the dam was being constructed and spoke with people who were having their villages relocated.
I think I have a good grip on the problems China faces, the progress they have made, and I have seen with my own eyes the radical, unbelievable improvement in the quality of life in every part of the country.
Statistically, incomes in China are doubling every ten years in US dollar terms. Practically, the impact of that on people's standard of living over the decade and a half I have been visiting China is impossible to understate.
For most people it is the difference between living in tiny, dirt floor, drab concrete structure, without plumbing, and with a disgusting community toilet shared in the whole neighborhood, to living in a modern constructed home with plumbing, a proper toilet, internet broadband, electricity, heat. It means riding a motor scooter to get to work instead of a rusty old bicycle. It means shopping in a modern grocery store rather than a street market. It means having the money to travel, and being able to send your one child to university.
Let me be clear that I have visited the same family homes twelve or fifteen years ago, and again in more recent years, and seen the difference in their homes, their clothes, their buying power. I have used those disgusting, smelly, mosquito infested community toilets they used to have and appreciated the new modern plumbing they now have myself on my own visits to the homes of the various friends I have made over the years.
There are certainly concerns, the biggest being corruption and the second biggest being pollution. These are widely seen as hard problems to solve in a country that has developed rapidly, and they are. The air in Beijing is horrible. Everyone knows. They are food safety concerns. There are garbage disposal problems.
But every single Chinese is enormously proud of that country and what they have done, every one of them is better off, and the government, for all the concerns, is enormously popular with the people, which given what it has delivered, isn't too surprising.
You call it dictatorship. Its basically just a strong leadership. A country united under a dictator is better than a divided democracy. The US under pres. Kennedy was a strong united country, he needed not be a dictator to get things done. But the US today is divided, pres. Obama can't get anything changed without congress disapproval.
You're right , my bad. You slipped in there and I though you were WAIT FOR IT. Oooops!Not sure what you are referring to as a back pedal, perhaps you are confusing me with someone else. I don't believe that I have expressed my opinion of PET as a communist lover, etc..
When I travel for business, it's always to the eastern coastal areas which are the richest and best developed areas. Everyone has a motorized vehicle and enjoy a standard of living that is comparable to, say, people in Italy or Spain.
It certainly is not representative of the rest of the country. This is the four hundred million odd Chinese who have caused China to surpass America as the world's largest market for new cars.
However, I have taken the time personally to travel throughout the country over the past fifteen years or so, I have been into the west, into places like Sichuan, which is still largely state run, and into agricultural communities. I went to the three gorges area while the dam was being constructed and spoke with people who were having their villages relocated.
I think I have a good grip on the problems China faces, the progress they have made, and I have seen with my own eyes the radical, unbelievable improvement in the quality of life in every part of the country.
Statistically, incomes in China are doubling every ten years in US dollar terms. Practically, the impact of that on people's standard of living over the decade and a half I have been visiting China is impossible to understate.
For most people it is the difference between living in tiny, dirt floor, drab concrete structure, without plumbing, and with a disgusting community toilet shared in the whole neighborhood, to living in a modern constructed home with plumbing, a proper toilet, internet broadband, electricity, heat. It means riding a motor scooter to get to work instead of a rusty old bicycle. It means shopping in a modern grocery store rather than a street market. It means having the money to travel, and being able to send your one child to university.
Let me be clear that I have visited the same family homes twelve or fifteen years ago, and again in more recent years, and seen the difference in their homes, their clothes, their buying power. I have used those disgusting, smelly, mosquito infested community toilets they used to have and appreciated the new modern plumbing they now have myself on my own visits to the homes of the various friends I have made over the years.
There are certainly concerns, the biggest being corruption and the second biggest being pollution. These are widely seen as hard problems to solve in a country that has developed rapidly, and they are. The air in Beijing is horrible. Everyone knows. They are food safety concerns. There are garbage disposal problems.
But every single Chinese is enormously proud of that country and what they have done, every one of them is better off, and the government, for all the concerns, is enormously popular with the people, which given what it has delivered, isn't too surprising.
Yes there are many poor, but not nearly as poor as they were, they too have seen their living standards rise dramatically. China's development in the past twenty years has been the most successful anti poverty measure in human history, lifting literally a billion people out of utter poverty. Going from a dollar a day living to a five dollar a day living still means you are poor, but it's a huge improvement.The country's economy has indeed improved but there are still many poor or living in sub-standard conditions, no?
This is not the case. Since the 11 Oct 76 coup China has been on a program of free market reform and privatization which began tentatively but picked up steam through the 80s and 90s. China's economy is increasingly dominated by private enterprise, and the government continues to work on privatizing the remaining state enterprises.It's still a state-run economy under a totalitarian government.
Certainly, but there are few reasons to believe that they will change it to western parliamentary democracy. They will likely try and evolve their system into something with Chinese characteristics. It will have a greater focus on social harmony than on individual's rights than ours, and it is likely to form out of an evolution of the current system.Perhaps when living standards improve more and expectations rise, and people want more choice, then there might be change in the system of government.
I can not think of a better person to answer that question than Amartya Sen, a Nobel laureate in economics:Very good read, and I agree.
I'm curious, why did India not succeed as much as China during the same last 10+ years? Even though they are more democratic country and more Indians speak English than Chinese?
