91–100 of 213 posts
Any idea how honestly China reports these statistics?
Study: https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/s...
The US lifespan is decreasing due to opioid overdoses. Similar to Russia in the 90's with alcohol.
A quick google search would show this is untrue. Opioid overdoses kill 40,000 a year. 2.7 million Americans die per year. Even if you were talking about a decrease in healthy lifespan, Opioids do not generally cause a person to transition from healthy to unhealthy (they are prescribed to treat a preexisting condition). Sources: https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
Many of these people die young. There are more years of life lost before age 75 due to suicide / overdose in the US than diabetes
Earlier quoted context omitted.
google translate converts this to: Without the Communist Party, There Would Be No New China But considering the party that the communists replaced were the Nationalists... who are in control of Taiwan.. which is even richer per capita than China (31k/person)... that seems unlikely. Can you explain more why the Nationalists were successful in Taiwan, but you believe they wouldn't have been in China? Edit: this is not…
I don’t believe they’d be successful in China because they weren’t historically. Also we can compare how a nationalist, democratic, and capitalist country of similar size, population, colonial explotation, and natural resource wealth would fair in India. Which again makes the PRC come out rosey.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
没有共产党就没有新中国
google translate converts this to: Without the Communist Party, There Would Be No New China But considering the party that the communists replaced were the Nationalists... who are in control of Taiwan.. which is even richer per capita than China (31k/person)... that seems unlikely. Can you explain more why the Nationalists were successful in Taiwan, but you believe they wouldn't have been in China? Edit: this is not…
With that said, I can think of two (good) reasons people might think that China's current rise could not have happened under the Nationalists.
1. The Nationalists were extremely poor at stamping out corruption and warlordism. China appears to have been too large a region for them to competently exercise control. Their success in Taiwan therefore may be partly attributable to a smaller landmass over which they were more capable of exercising competent hegemony.
2. Taiwan's success is partly a result of their gradual liberalisation. It's hard to say whether this same liberalisation could have taken place on the mainland.
That said, like I mentioned, I think it's hard to argue that China wouldn't have been better off. Certainly in the short term. Without the Communists taking power you avoid every atrocity under Mao. That alone is hard to offset with any later (pseudo-)unity and progress.
Congratulations to China and the Chinese people who have managed to measurably improve their livelihoods over the last few decades.
And given the terrible air, water and soil pollution they suffer from, this means the rest must be really, really top notch. Or that we don't have all the metrics.
Or just assume China will fix its air in 10 years while Americans (and Chinese) keep getting fatter? Lotta ways you can work these numbers!
This study is backward looking; it hasn't taken account of China's current set of factors that could skew the lifespan down tremendously for average Chinese citizens. Factors such as 1.) Air pollution. In your typical big cities, e.g Beijing, it average AQI 100-150 for the past 10+ years https://young-0.com/airquality/ . In other lower tiered cities, it average between 50-100. Just to compare, WHO recommend only AQI…
Problem remains, but generally, comparing what China used to have in 90s, it is like a heaven and earth difference.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
google translate converts this to: Without the Communist Party, There Would Be No New China But considering the party that the communists replaced were the Nationalists... who are in control of Taiwan.. which is even richer per capita than China (31k/person)... that seems unlikely. Can you explain more why the Nationalists were successful in Taiwan, but you believe they wouldn't have been in China? Edit: this is not…
I say this as somebody who has had multiple-hour long debates with people on whether China would have been better off under the Nationalists. Despite ambivalence toward the Nationalists mixed with loathing for Chiang Kai Shek, I've always passionately advocated that China would be better off if the Nationalists had triumphed. With that said, I can think of two (good) reasons people might think that China's current ri…
And so on... it's a fascinating sequence of hypotheticals.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I say this as somebody who has had multiple-hour long debates with people on whether China would have been better off under the Nationalists. Despite ambivalence toward the Nationalists mixed with loathing for Chiang Kai Shek, I've always passionately advocated that China would be better off if the Nationalists had triumphed. With that said, I can think of two (good) reasons people might think that China's current ri…
US military and economic support for the ROC may have been a much smaller priority too if the mainland hadn't "gone red". But then again if the ROC had won the mainland, they probably wouldn't have poured resources into the Korean War. And so on... it's a fascinating sequence of hypotheticals.
I think that the role US money played in Taiwan's success is vastly overplayed anyway. The US basically abandoned them to their fate until the Korean war kicked off.
It's always a fascinating set of hypotheticals like you said.