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China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

nytimes.com

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Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#151

Post by throwaway053 »

dominotw wrote: post #142
marcell wrote: post #77

I'm struck by China's ability to attempt large, ambitious projects like this, compared to America's inability to do, well, anything really. The largest infrastructure project I'm aware of in the USA is California's High Speed Rail (~$60B+), was approved a decade ago and is barely making any progress. The federal government is in complete gridlock. The most ambitious legislation passed in the last decade, the ACA, cau…

China doesn't have to deal with hostile entities like Iran and Wahabi arabs. I bet Chinese are proud to be Chinese, I am a naturalised US citizen and being proud of being American is seen as racist.

Lol most of the Chinese is under the Chinese government brainwash via state propaganda and censored internet. You obviously don't know anyone who is from Hong Kong. Ask them how they feel about being Chinese. They will spit in your face

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#152

Post by irishcoffee »

jon_richards wrote: post #122
cylinder wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you know, Hollywood has never pushed American propaganda before...

Fun fact I learned recently: the US army provides a ton of props and consulting for free if they approve of the way a movie will portray them.

Fun "fact" as well: they won't arrest you, or worse, if they don't like it.

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#153

Post by nitwit005 »

marcell wrote: post #77

I'm struck by China's ability to attempt large, ambitious projects like this, compared to America's inability to do, well, anything really. The largest infrastructure project I'm aware of in the USA is California's High Speed Rail (~$60B+), was approved a decade ago and is barely making any progress. The federal government is in complete gridlock. The most ambitious legislation passed in the last decade, the ACA, cau…

The Republican party has been ambivalent or against new spending on infrastructure in recent history. Trump had some genuine appeal for being in favor of it. He even threw out the same $1T number: http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/306490-gop-braces-for...

Not that I actually expect that money to materialize.

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#154

Post by ximeng »

nostromo wrote: post #22
hemantv wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

without IP these high margin American technology is copyable, which China has already shown they can do that.

American technology companies don't rely on IP restrictions as much as they used to. You couldn't copy Facebook, Google, Apple, or Amazon's products and services effectively on a global scale even if they had no IP restrictions. And China is the second largest market for American movies, which absolutely require IP law to function. So I think this concern is overstated.

https://qz.com/981277/the-fast-furious-franchise-is-huge-in-...

Hollywood movies do well in China but aren't particularly profitable.

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#155

Post by ximeng »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #95
kcanini wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has shown that they are very adept at copying American high-tech innovation. * Facebook: WeChat/Weibo * Google: Baidu * Apple: already being made in China, clones everywhere * Amazon: Alibaba

Some Chinese products are better, but PLEASE remove Baidu from that list. Baidu has been ridiculous for the past few years: I can't find anything on Baidu, pretty much the entire first page is full of irrelevant ads; all my Chinese friends are complaining about that too. I use Baidu Maps every time I visit China. Heavily disappointed, it comes nowhere near Google Maps's quality.

Baidu often gives me better results than Google for Chinese search queries, particularly when looking for pages not blocked in mainland to share with people there.

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#156

Post by cheapsteak »

jon_richards wrote: post #125
taway_1212 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't the projects in China executed at complete disregard to the rights of individual citizens? I.e. if your house is in the way, sorry, we'll give you some laughable amount of money and send police over to brutalize you until you leave. Under such conditions, it's easy to make lots of change quickly (in such spirit, Stalin was even more efficient - he essentially enslaved a part of his nation via Gulags and used t…

I haven't looked it up, but I've heard from a local that if you are displaced by a government project you will "be rich". In his eyes it was similar to winning the lottery, if less extreme.

It does depend on the area

I remember coming across a few blocks of old densely packed single-family brick buildings in Shanghai that were about to be torn down. Each building had a large hand written banner above their entrance, half of them praising the communist party for its compassion or saying long live Chairman Mao (my interpretation was that they were hoping for mercy for being such loyal party members), the other half cussing out the party and local officials

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#157

Post by nradov »

dominotw wrote: post #142
marcell wrote: post #77

I'm struck by China's ability to attempt large, ambitious projects like this, compared to America's inability to do, well, anything really. The largest infrastructure project I'm aware of in the USA is California's High Speed Rail (~$60B+), was approved a decade ago and is barely making any progress. The federal government is in complete gridlock. The most ambitious legislation passed in the last decade, the ACA, cau…

China doesn't have to deal with hostile entities like Iran and Wahabi arabs. I bet Chinese are proud to be Chinese, I am a naturalised US citizen and being proud of being American is seen as racist.

China has to deal with India and Vietnam, which are hostile entities in at least some ways. There are many Uigurs who don't seem proud of being Chinese.

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#158

Post by yadongwen »

taway_1212 wrote: post #108
marcell wrote: post #77

I'm struck by China's ability to attempt large, ambitious projects like this, compared to America's inability to do, well, anything really. The largest infrastructure project I'm aware of in the USA is California's High Speed Rail (~$60B+), was approved a decade ago and is barely making any progress. The federal government is in complete gridlock. The most ambitious legislation passed in the last decade, the ACA, cau…

Aren't the projects in China executed at complete disregard to the rights of individual citizens? I.e. if your house is in the way, sorry, we'll give you some laughable amount of money and send police over to brutalize you until you leave. Under such conditions, it's easy to make lots of change quickly (in such spirit, Stalin was even more efficient - he essentially enslaved a part of his nation via Gulags and used t…

People are not stupid..nowadays some villagers in China get ~10M USD to move away for real estate construction.. this is the average number for an entire village in Shenzhen.. you call this laughable money?

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#159

Post by xfs »

podviaznikov wrote: post #126
xfs wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Far superior to state run propaganda as to what? Far superior for manufacturing consent? Sure. The western system of propaganda is far more competitive, innovative, or you can call it distributed in the way it hides its agenda in a network of proxies of capital instruments, which is exactly what it would evolve into with the free market. But what is dangerous about it is that this mode of propaganda is smarter than t…

This is a well put thought: > But what is dangerous about it is that this mode of propaganda is smarter than the people. In states with state-run propaganda, the people are smarter than the propaganda. Your own or inspired by some book ?

It had been my hypothesis. Julian Assange said it better:

> The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be "free" because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free. In states like China, there is pervasive censorship, because speech still has power and power is scared of it. We should always look at censorship as an economic signal that reveals the potential power of speech in that jurisdiction.

Recently I found Slavoj Zizek had even better criticism:

> The US doesn't treat prisoners as brutally – because of its technological priority, it simply does not need the openly brutal approach (which it is more than ready to apply when needed). But this is why the US is an even more dangerous threat to our freedom than China: its measures of control are not perceived as such, while Chinese brutality is openly displayed. In a country such as China the limitations of freedom are clear to everyone, with no illusions about it. In the US, however, formal freedoms are guaranteed, so that most individuals experience their lives as free and are not even aware of the extent to which they are controlled by state mechanisms.

Re: China's $1T Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order

#160

Post by throwaway27373 »

thablackbull wrote: post #94
propman wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm I don't think you are getting the fundamental logic here. America has pushed propaganda, but they also allow movies that make America look bad: botched CIA missions true or not, slavery, different look at revered historical figures, greedy American leaders/FBI/CIA or whatever. They don't purposefully stop what makes America look bad. China does, there is a huge difference in that. Secondly, the government itself…

What you're witnessing is manufactured consent[1]. There is no need for the crude methods of propaganda here because it's not even necessary. Compare that with China; people there are fully conscious of government propaganda. From the SMH article, they expected the west to be a land of freedom and democratization of ideas, but what they end up finding is that it more or less is the same thing. > [2] "A lot of them ar…

As an Indian who has worked and lived in the US, I wholeheartedly agree with the parent.

That which needs force outside is achieved via self censorship in the US. This is a fact. A sampling of NyT/WaPo pieces on wars US has fought published right before they were begun shows this quite well.

Then there is racist stereotyping of Asian cultures which often gets a pass under various high sounding titles ending with '-rights'.

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