Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

China’s liberalization and structural reform drives growth

project-syndicate.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 118 posts

Re: China’s liberalization and structural reform drives growth

#101

Post by jacobolus »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #81
jacobolus wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Different dialects of Chinese you mean No, the use of the term “dialect” is propaganda from the diversity-denying central government; describing Chinese languages as “dialects” is a gross abuse of the English word “dialect”, comparable to saying that French, Portuguese, and Romanian are all just dialects of Latin. “Chinese” consists of many mutually unintelligible languages (hundreds?), each of which has multiple d…

Sichuanese is much more of a dialect than Cantonese. Even my sorry laowai Chinese can make some of it out. Cantonese and fujianese are about as far away from mandarin as dialects get, and they still are somewhat intelligible with manadarin and each other. The real different languages of China are like Tibetan, Mongolian, zhuang, Miao, Uighur, and a plethora of minority languages, but Mandarin gets you far for work or…

> Even my sorry laowai Chinese can make some of it out

In a similar way, as a not-great Spanish/French speaker, I can understand lots of Italian words and grammatical constructions, and often get the gist of random Italian quotations that pop up in books written in English.

Doesn’t make them the same language.

Re: China’s liberalization and structural reform drives growth

#102

Post by dragonsh »

alienallys wrote: post #96
dragonsh wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western societies rise to prominence is due to acceptance of scientific temperament with a balanced moral view looking beyond religion and tribal mentality. They challenged the established religious groups and tribal rules. Traveled across oceans and built global trade. Property rights and all you described are just means which are just subservient not the main reason. China is moving forward due to the same scientif…

Western countries rose to prominence because they were built on Slaves, Colonies and Industrial revolution which was byproduct of World Wars. The India you're talking is India who got depleted, sucked, trampled country after 2 centuries of British hegemony. Stop your illogical and thinly vieled racism to justify why countries like India are the way they are like.

After world war II, Japan and Germany did wonders again due to scientific temperament, they were destroyed worse than Indian colonial rule. Japan and in earlier period five forces colonized parts of China. Korea from 1910-45 as Japan colony still developed after world war II due to science.

Indeed Nehru (first govt head of free India) put the foundations of scientific thinking in India. Built great institutions and foundations of IIT, BARC. But India capitulated it's advance to religion and tribal mentality.

Funny enough even today people like religion based leaders and chosen a government whose head proclaims in a science conference that before England invaded, India invented atomic bomb, aeroplane during ancient time of Lord Ram (a deity) and invitro fertilization during Mahabharata (religious book). India really needs a science revolution who can throw such leaders out and chose at least an educated one who understands science, that's the only way to bring up scientific temperament and progress. This will help avoid attacking neighbors or take religion driven populist changes to divert attention from real issues.

I understand racism in Indian context means untouchables, social class hierarchy, killing a person for transporting cows or marrying out of prescribed social order. I am not talking about it.

Re: China’s liberalization and structural reform drives growth

#103

Post by roboys »

pmontra wrote: post #91
oblio wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> industrialized countries Japan isn't western.

You're right. But Japan is an example of an Asian country that forced itself to assimilate the technology and habits of the West. They ended up invading China before WW2, last of a long list of countries.

Japan attacked China with the blessing of Teddy Roosevelt, a secret 1905 treaty allowed Japan to expand into Asia without push back from the US.

Pearl harbor happened because we reneged on this "secret treaty" by backing China 30 years later in the 2nd Sino-Japanese War... we reneged because congress had no clue the treaty existed.

Side note: Is Teddy Roosevelt the reason we got dragged into WW2? Yes.

Re: China’s liberalization and structural reform drives growth

#104

Post by seanmcdirmid »

jacobolus wrote: post #101
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sichuanese is much more of a dialect than Cantonese. Even my sorry laowai Chinese can make some of it out. Cantonese and fujianese are about as far away from mandarin as dialects get, and they still are somewhat intelligible with manadarin and each other. The real different languages of China are like Tibetan, Mongolian, zhuang, Miao, Uighur, and a plethora of minority languages, but Mandarin gets you far for work or…

> Even my sorry laowai Chinese can make some of it out In a similar way, as a not-great Spanish/French speaker, I can understand lots of Italian words and grammatical constructions, and often get the gist of random Italian quotations that pop up in books written in English. Doesn’t make them the same language.

You are seriously overestimating how much Chengdu hua or Kunming hua differ from mandarin. Yes, they are crazy weird accents, but no, it’s not like a Spanish speaker picking out some Italian words, not even close. Same goes for dongbei hua or shandong hua, it only starts getting weird in south east China (Cantonese, fujian/min yu, kejia hua, etc...), and even then, those dialects are still Chinese with lots of nuances, not to mention they are similar to each other as well.

Re: China’s liberalization and structural reform drives growth

#105

Post by dragonelite »

dragonsh wrote: post #102
alienallys wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western countries rose to prominence because they were built on Slaves, Colonies and Industrial revolution which was byproduct of World Wars. The India you're talking is India who got depleted, sucked, trampled country after 2 centuries of British hegemony. Stop your illogical and thinly vieled racism to justify why countries like India are the way they are like.

After world war II, Japan and Germany did wonders again due to scientific temperament, they were destroyed worse than Indian colonial rule. Japan and in earlier period five forces colonized parts of China. Korea from 1910-45 as Japan colony still developed after world war II due to science. Indeed Nehru (first govt head of free India) put the foundations of scientific thinking in India. Built great institutions and f…

Japan and Germany were already industrialized countries. Why do you think the Japanese thought they could attack and hopefully hold China. You can blow up the cities and factories but institutionalized knowledge makes it easier to start again, especially when the US gives you bags of money.

Re: China’s liberalization and structural reform drives growth

#106

Post by alienallys »

dragonsh wrote: post #102
alienallys wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western countries rose to prominence because they were built on Slaves, Colonies and Industrial revolution which was byproduct of World Wars. The India you're talking is India who got depleted, sucked, trampled country after 2 centuries of British hegemony. Stop your illogical and thinly vieled racism to justify why countries like India are the way they are like.

After world war II, Japan and Germany did wonders again due to scientific temperament, they were destroyed worse than Indian colonial rule. Japan and in earlier period five forces colonized parts of China. Korea from 1910-45 as Japan colony still developed after world war II due to science. Indeed Nehru (first govt head of free India) put the foundations of scientific thinking in India. Built great institutions and f…

So you're talking about what bunch of politicians say rather than textbooks?

Infact India has by far the better textbooks compared to developed countries like US. No one questions Theory of Evolution but many Christian schools and Islamic countries teach students to question this. Similarly abortion, anti-vax etc. Looks like US is suffering from religious-tribalism.

I was wrong to assume your were from some Western country and used the word "racism". The right word is Hinduphobia. When India is defending itself from neighboring country which named it's country, constitution based on religion, you are terming this defense as some sort of religious chavunism.

Many abhramic religions teach hatred towards polytheistic and idol worshipping religions like Hindusism and call it pagans and what not names. I believe you're indulging into same and spewing a hatred for Hinduism and spreading Hinduphobia disguised as 'religious-tribalism' word.

Re: China’s liberalization and structural reform drives growth

#107

Post by alienallys »

hungryhobo wrote: post #98
alienallys wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western countries rose to prominence because they were built on Slaves, Colonies and Industrial revolution which was byproduct of World Wars. The India you're talking is India who got depleted, sucked, trampled country after 2 centuries of British hegemony. Stop your illogical and thinly vieled racism to justify why countries like India are the way they are like.

As did China. And I didn't think 'India needs more scientific temperament to come out of its religious tribal mentality and need more science education.' is racism at all

Yes it's not racism but Hinduphobia. And since author seems to attach this Hinduphobia with development of India and current state of poverty, he's indirectly saying Hinduism is the cause; which is what our British colonizers used to say. So it's not racism but Imperialism laced with Hinduphobia.

Re: China’s liberalization and structural reform drives growth

#108

Post by bazooka_penguin »

WoodenChair wrote: post #12
lkrubner wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, for God’s sake, no, the Cultural Revolution was not devestating to the economy. Where did you read that? During the worst year of the Cultural Revolution, China still managed to grow 8%. Large scale civil rights violations are not automatically bad for the economy. The German economy grew dramatically during the Holocaust and the best decades for the USA overlap with the mass murder of the Indians and the savage…

> No, for God’s sake, no, the Cultural Revolution was not devestating to the economy. Where did you read that? During the worst year of the Cultural Revolution, China still managed to grow 8%. I'm afraid the data doesn't back you up at all. The Chinese cultural revolution is considered the years 1966-1976. Here is the data for those years in real per capita GDP growth[0]: 7.7, -8.1, -6.6, 13.7, 16.1, 4.2, 1.3, 5.4, 0…

You want to look at the total growth at the end of the period and then calculate the annual average growth as the base of the exponent.

Re: China’s liberalization and structural reform drives growth

#109

Post by jacobolus »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #104
jacobolus wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even my sorry laowai Chinese can make some of it out In a similar way, as a not-great Spanish/French speaker, I can understand lots of Italian words and grammatical constructions, and often get the gist of random Italian quotations that pop up in books written in English. Doesn’t make them the same language.

You are seriously overestimating how much Chengdu hua or Kunming hua differ from mandarin. Yes, they are crazy weird accents, but no, it’s not like a Spanish speaker picking out some Italian words, not even close. Same goes for dongbei hua or shandong hua, it only starts getting weird in south east China (Cantonese, fujian/min yu, kejia hua, etc...), and even then, those dialects are still Chinese with lots of nuance…

According to Wikipedia, Sichuanese shares Maybe you are underestimating how close Romance languages are.

In any event, I think everyone would agree that Sichuanese is much closer to Beijing Mandarin than other Chinese languages (like Xiang, Wu, Hakka, Min, etc. etc.).

Re: China’s liberalization and structural reform drives growth

#110

Post by seanmcdirmid »

jacobolus wrote: post #109
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are seriously overestimating how much Chengdu hua or Kunming hua differ from mandarin. Yes, they are crazy weird accents, but no, it’s not like a Spanish speaker picking out some Italian words, not even close. Same goes for dongbei hua or shandong hua, it only starts getting weird in south east China (Cantonese, fujian/min yu, kejia hua, etc...), and even then, those dialects are still Chinese with lots of nuance…

According to Wikipedia, Sichuanese shares Maybe you are underestimating how close Romance languages are. In any event, I think everyone would agree that Sichuanese is much closer to Beijing Mandarin than other Chinese languages (like Xiang, Wu, Hakka, Min, etc. etc.).

Link?

Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_Chinese

Officially sichuanese isn’t even considered another variety of Chinese (nor are any other western Chinese dialects). It’s even just called southwest mandarin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwestern_Mandarin

The page specifically for chengdu mandarin doesn’t mention anything about 50%...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu-Chongqing_dialect

Post reply on HN