As for 'China still lags far behind the West in living standards,' having lived in the West, Japan and China, I would choose China for its QOL: social, intellectual and material.
It is important to recognize the strengths of China, particularly in industrial processes and engineering. Their resistance to mass immigration and economic nationalism has indeed paid great dividends already. So have their neo-colonial efforts to secure coltan deposits in the Congo and other locations. Nevertheless, China is still the greatest enemy of the West in this century, and must be recognized as such in any realistic model of the world. One need only read the CCP documents advocating revenge for a century of "economic humiliation" for confirmation of this hypothesis. Therefore, I believe the United States is entirely justified in adopting certain economic strategies used by China in order to regain control of the rare earth mining industry, lithium batteries and other scientific and technical fields. The deindustrialization of the early twenty-first century will be regarded by future generations as quite foolish indeed.
"In the media, China is repeatedly condemned for its undemocratic government and vilified whenever it takes any action on the world stage that could be construed as assertive. On social media, it’s filtered through memes about collapsing buildings or doctored videos of empty cities. And in online intellectual circles—especially on the dissident right—there’s a recurring impulse to explain Chinese success or failure in moral terms: if China stumbles, it’s proof that the people are corrupt; if it advances, it must be cheating. The underlying message is consistent: the Chinese cannot be trusted."
This is a concerted effort to besmirch anything Chinese. The United States wishes to maintain its world dominance...a unipolar world, hence the extreme propaganda. The same is true of Russia.
The condemnation of China because it doesn't have a democratic government is laughable, coming from the United States. The United States is not a democracy either, nor is it a democratic republic. The electoral process is non-functional here. We live under a plutocratic oligarchy. The United States claims it is a democracy, China doesn't.
The bit about Japan is true. I lived there for 20 years and found four wallets in the street in that time. I took each of them to the nearest police kiosk rather than trying to track down the owner. In Britain, on the other hand, it is far easier to go to a person's house, regardless of where they live, than to find a police station. I now live in the English town where I was born and I have no idea where any police station is, let alone the nearest. Just saying, that that wasn't sleight of hand on the part of the researchers. Police kiosks are everywhere in Japan. And yes, the Japanese and Chinese are indeed ethnic cousins but in behaviour there is very little similarity.
The lost-wallet test doesn’t expose a flaw in Chinese society; it exposes a flaw in the scholars who designed it. They are trying to study a digital civilisation with Stone Age tools. Judging China by a wallet experiment in 2025 is like judging aviation with a pterodactyl. When your methodology belongs to an extinct world, the only dinosaur in the room is the researcher.
Great post. Many thanks>
As for 'China still lags far behind the West in living standards,' having lived in the West, Japan and China, I would choose China for its QOL: social, intellectual and material.
Please take a look at my reference to an article about GDP in my comment.
It is important to recognize the strengths of China, particularly in industrial processes and engineering. Their resistance to mass immigration and economic nationalism has indeed paid great dividends already. So have their neo-colonial efforts to secure coltan deposits in the Congo and other locations. Nevertheless, China is still the greatest enemy of the West in this century, and must be recognized as such in any realistic model of the world. One need only read the CCP documents advocating revenge for a century of "economic humiliation" for confirmation of this hypothesis. Therefore, I believe the United States is entirely justified in adopting certain economic strategies used by China in order to regain control of the rare earth mining industry, lithium batteries and other scientific and technical fields. The deindustrialization of the early twenty-first century will be regarded by future generations as quite foolish indeed.
"In the media, China is repeatedly condemned for its undemocratic government and vilified whenever it takes any action on the world stage that could be construed as assertive. On social media, it’s filtered through memes about collapsing buildings or doctored videos of empty cities. And in online intellectual circles—especially on the dissident right—there’s a recurring impulse to explain Chinese success or failure in moral terms: if China stumbles, it’s proof that the people are corrupt; if it advances, it must be cheating. The underlying message is consistent: the Chinese cannot be trusted."
This is a concerted effort to besmirch anything Chinese. The United States wishes to maintain its world dominance...a unipolar world, hence the extreme propaganda. The same is true of Russia.
Here is a recent article pertinent to this issue.
https://www.rt.com/news/628590-gdp-economic-metric-illusion/
The condemnation of China because it doesn't have a democratic government is laughable, coming from the United States. The United States is not a democracy either, nor is it a democratic republic. The electoral process is non-functional here. We live under a plutocratic oligarchy. The United States claims it is a democracy, China doesn't.
The bit about Japan is true. I lived there for 20 years and found four wallets in the street in that time. I took each of them to the nearest police kiosk rather than trying to track down the owner. In Britain, on the other hand, it is far easier to go to a person's house, regardless of where they live, than to find a police station. I now live in the English town where I was born and I have no idea where any police station is, let alone the nearest. Just saying, that that wasn't sleight of hand on the part of the researchers. Police kiosks are everywhere in Japan. And yes, the Japanese and Chinese are indeed ethnic cousins but in behaviour there is very little similarity.
The lost-wallet test doesn’t expose a flaw in Chinese society; it exposes a flaw in the scholars who designed it. They are trying to study a digital civilisation with Stone Age tools. Judging China by a wallet experiment in 2025 is like judging aviation with a pterodactyl. When your methodology belongs to an extinct world, the only dinosaur in the room is the researcher.
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