7 ms·

The American Dream Is Alive in China

58 points by johnny313 8y ago

cityzen 8y ago
I love the irony of this headline so much I want to make a poster of it and put it in my office. I think my favorite critic of The American Dream™ is our old friend George Carlin: "The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it."
tabtab 8y ago
Most people judge based on their life-time experience. Being the average person is about 40, they typically judge based on the last 4 decades. China's history is full of violent revolutions. A big economic slump could snowball into political and social catastrophe. The gov't could grow complacent and/or out-of-touch and try to solve social unrest with ham-hands, making it worse. As the investment disclaimer says, "Past (near-term) results are not a guarantee of future results."
canada_dry 8y ago
Give China another 20 years and they will surely have overtaken the USA in world leadership. Consider their new Silk Road initiative. 3rd world/developing countries and America's numerous enemies alike are lining up to ally themselves with China. Meanwhile the USA shits on its closest allies.
- axaxs 8y ago
  People have been saying this for 40ish years, if not more, and it's never been close to happening and still isn't. China's relationships with developing nations tend to be predatory/parasitic, not an alliance.
  - statguy 8y ago
    At least those relationships don't involve carpet bombing rich and thriving places back in to the stone age.
    - dikei 8y ago
      Not yet. As the last country to go to war with China, we know full well that they won't hesitate bombing former allies should the circumstance calls for it.
      - statguy 8y ago
        Let's reserve judgement until China actually orchestrates a Fallujah scale bombing.
- thanosnose 8y ago
  > Give China another 20 years and they will surely have overtaken the USA in world leadership. I guess anything is possible but I highly doubt it. Do you really think culturally, linguistically, militarily, politically and even economically china is going to lead the world? Every major international instution in the world from the UN to the ICJ to the WTO is in western nations. > Consider their new Silk Road initiative. 3rd world/developing countries and America's numerous enemies alike are lining up to ally themselves with China. Sure. But they are also working to contain china as well. You really don't understand politics in a local or a global setting if you think china is going to be leading in asia, let alone the world. If you think the likes of india, japan, korea, vietnam or even iran will let china lead, then you don't understand geopolitics. And lets not forget russia with their thousands of nukes along china's border. The day that the US doesn't control the world is the day regional competition and violence begins as 2nd rate powers vie with each other for influence within their regions. Nobody, especially china, is going to replace the US as the leader of the world. Once we are done, it'll be back to regional power plays.
- bassman9000 8y ago
  Where will they get the IP from?
- aeriklawson 8y ago
  Not going to happen. Maybe after half a century or more (I'd bet close to one hundred) assuming everything goes perfectly, but not even close in twenty - at most they'll be a very strong regional power and their sphere of influence will push the US further out of SEA (which is still heavily favoring the US as of today). China's economy will probably be the most powerful in the next twenty years, but that's not nearly enough. People vastly underestimate how interconnected and influential the US is economically and militarily - the idea that the US will not be the world's dominant superpower for the next fifty years is click bait in the era of Trump. We're also quickly increasing the number of unknown variables as the years go by - no one knows how or when the next financial crisis will play out in China, or the volatility of their governmental system - countries often do well until one day they don't. The same could be said about the US, but the country has proven itself to be incredibly stable thus far. > 3rd world/developing countries and America's numerous enemies alike are lining up to ally themselves with China As you mentioned, 3rd world - they are playing the long game, certainly longer than twenty years. The payoffs they are hoping for are fifty to one hundred years away (in Africa, etc.)
lalos 8y ago
It would be great to compare the growth China kicked off in the 80s with the growth the USA kicked off after WWII. See if its the same trend, feel weird comparing growth of a country with another that had a 40 year head start.
contingencies 8y ago
I have been telling people this for over 15 years. Catches include: we economic migrants have reduced access to the market, less progressive regulatory stance, shifting and complicated bureaucratic visa/banking/tax processes to deal with, and even difficulties getting capital out again. One summary is: it's relatively easy to make big money in China, but hard to make a liveable salary - this affects Chinese people more than migrants. Macro economically, lots of cash was recently won on real estate (like in many developed economies recently, such as my native Sydney), and prior to that outright corruption, though both avenues are now closing and priority is being placed upon technology IP by the government (read: free government handouts for local competitors, foreign companies generally excluded).
joefranklinsrs 8y ago
These flurry of NYTimes favorable articles on China, the last few days, is....fascinating. It's almost like those with vested interests knew a huge crash is about to come to China in 2019, and is trying to unload some investments. However, the ever connected world is not blind, and can see the dramatic fall China has suffered in the last 2 years in terms of stock market, yuan weakness, capital outflow, human rights, massive debts, international relations, factories leaving, fake GDPs, and much more. $250B in tariff on Chinese imports in January 2019, followed up with potentially rest of the $600B in tariff on Chinese imports in 2019, will crash China.
- Jyaif 8y ago
  FYI, China is investing in the long run (20 years+). A couple of points that leads me to think China will dominate the world in the next decades (if it has not started already): * With the Belt and Road initiative China is building deep relationships with half of the countries of the world. * Their industry is not slowed down by regulation, so they iterate and learn quickly. For example, some people think they'll be the first to widely deploy self driving cars. Yes there will be a ton of accidents because their technology will suck at first, but they'll be able to improve faster than any company in the west. An other example is everything related to medicine (e.g. gene editing). * Their culture values hard work. If it were not for the quotas MIT would be 70% asian.
  - Paraesthetic 8y ago
    Wow.. you really have no idea.
  - sdinsn 8y ago
    Keep in mind that institutional investors don't invest much "in the long run".
  - joefranklinsrs 8y ago
    Belt and Road: Malaysian government stopped a $20B project. Maldives just called it one-sided. India refuses to have anything to do with it. So do most of the EU members. Media around the world is calling it debt trap Regulation: deadly vaccines. deadly milk powder. Their citizens then choose to buy foreign goods only hard work: they are at their job 60 hours a week. but only working 20.
NicoJuicy 8y ago
No it's not, the world speaks English, not Chinese Doesn't mean the destination is America though. Ps. Why would big Chinese companies translate their open source in English and have research hubs outside of China
pascalxus 8y ago
It's a mistake to say we're rich because our GDP or even GDP per capita is high. What matters is PPP - purchasing power parity with a basket of goods weighted towards the essentials of life: housing, transportation, food, water, child care and medical insurance. By that measure, I don't think the US is as rich as we think we are. but i would like to see things measured and quoted in that regard, it would be more relevant and accurate for comparing wealth. Such an analysis would also be useful for comparing the rich and poor within a country. here in the US: someone earning 100k in the midwest is much wealthier than someone earning 150k in palo alto. Of course, if your basket of goods comparison is how many apple cell phones they can buy, it's not gonna be an accurate comparison
calebm 8y ago
That data visualization showing the morphing of China from being heavily poor to heavily middle-class made me go "Wow!" That's quite something to note.
g9yuayon 8y ago
One thing important that many people ignored about China is its K-12 education system. It is much better than the US in a number of ways, especially for the ordinary students, which accounts for the majority of the student body, myself included. - For starters, teachers in China are responsible. They care about the subjects they teach, and spend countless hours finding challenging problems for students as well as grading students' solutions with detailed feedbacks. Parents could just leave the education of their kids to school. They didn't have to worry about tutoring at all, because they knew that their kids would be sufficiently challenged in school. This is true equality, isn't it, as financially challenged families did not have to worry about not being able to afford tutoring. In contrast, teachers in Cupertino, a town known for good schools, asked parents to grade students' homework. - Second, they believe in their students. No no no, I'm not talking about this "every student is unique and therefore it's okay to not doing well in academically" crap. When I grew up, my teachers were tough, but they were tough by being honest, by telling me that I didn't do well in exams because I didn't try hard enough, because I didn't use the right techniques to study, or because I didn't focus on the right things. In other words, we truly believed that I could excel in school work. They didn't give up on me or other kids just because we did poorly in homework or in exams. They were truly happy if their students did well in school, and then they told the students that they could do even better by assigning more challenging problem sets. That is, they believed that their students could grow by keeping themselves in their discomfort zone. In contrast, Why did the US schools keep lowering their standards just to keep students happy? The K-12 education systems in the US are great for two types of students: those who are really challenged academically, and those who know how to push themselves. For the former, they enjoyed the love from teachers or the policies like "no kids left behind". For the latter, they got excellent resources, such as taking advanced classes in universities, and participating in all kinds of competitions. It is the students in the middle, the majority of the students like me, who will lose, big time. The students in the middle will not be challenged enough, who will falsely believe that they are good at STEM and then get shocked or even defeated by not-really-so-hard courses like calculus or organic chemistry, those who could've had a wonderful career in STEM but bail out because they didn't get enough training in high school. How sad is that? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Chinese K-12 did everything right. I spent way too much time preparing for the national entrance exam. I spent way too much time mastering all kinds of problem-solving skills that are not needed in college. I didn't learn advanced subjects like calculus or stats until college. That said, my teachers truly prepared me, like they did millions of other ordinary students, for advanced STEM subjects. They injected passion and a sense of pride of studying STEMs. I wouldn't be able to do what I do today without my teachers' dedication and caring. That's what matters, isn't it?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
umsure201 8y ago
I thought this article was going to be about Muslim re-education camps.
csense 8y ago
This isn't a surprise. Back in the day, a kid fresh out of high school in the US could get a job that supported a house with a yard, a car, children, and a non-working spouse. Factories were both directly paying good wages for non-high-skill positions and fueling a myriad of local businesses where those workers spent their money. Then globalization happened, and those factories went to China. Entire local and regional economies collapsed and a lot of them STILL haven't recovered. Great opportunity for Chinese people, not so good for American people. You might think from this that I hate the Chinese, or the poor, or something. That's not true. I just think we need to find a way for regular Chinese people to have hope and opportunity, that doesn't involve taking hope and opportunity away from regular American people. Billionaire Ray Dalio said in a recent interview that 8 of 12 times there's been a rising power situation like the current one with China, it's turned into a shooting war. My own opinion: If people's hope and opportunity are taken away, they start to get into the mood for a shooting war with the people they think took it. Bringing hope and opportunity back to regular Americans could prevent World War 3. How do we do it?
- kkarakk 8y ago
  >How do we do it? space, humans have been stagnating since the 60s. the earth cannot support all of us anymore,it's breaking down
  - pxtail 8y ago
    > the earth cannot support all of us anymore,it's breaking down Of course this is overly dramatic and just wrong but you have a good point, in very very very long time frame this is viable option and provides big "goal" to achieve. Latest NASA promo video mentions Moon, Mars as next goals, I'm wondering if they are not setting narrative/preparing ground for more efforts targeted towards space. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeA7edXsU40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeA7edXsU40
nitwit005 8y ago
I'm not sure why picking the American seemed obvious in the choice at the begining? A poor country seems far more likely to see a large economic upturn.

58 points by johnny313 8y ago

I love the irony of this headline so much I want to make a poster of it and put it in my office. I think my favorite critic of The American Dream™ is our old friend George Carlin: "The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it."

tabtab 8y ago

Most people judge based on their life-time experience. Being the average person is about 40, they typically judge based on the last 4 decades. China's history is full of violent revolutions. A big economic slump could snowball into political and social catastrophe. The gov't could grow complacent and/or out-of-touch and try to solve social unrest with ham-hands, making it worse. As the investment disclaimer says, "Past (near-term) results are not a guarantee of future results."

canada_dry 8y ago

Give China another 20 years and they will surely have overtaken the USA in world leadership. Consider their new Silk Road initiative. 3rd world/developing countries and America's numerous enemies alike are lining up to ally themselves with China. Meanwhile the USA shits on its closest allies.

axaxs 8y ago
People have been saying this for 40ish years, if not more, and it's never been close to happening and still isn't. China's relationships with developing nations tend to be predatory/parasitic, not an alliance.
- statguy 8y ago
  At least those relationships don't involve carpet bombing rich and thriving places back in to the stone age.
  - dikei 8y ago
    Not yet. As the last country to go to war with China, we know full well that they won't hesitate bombing former allies should the circumstance calls for it.
    - statguy 8y ago
      Let's reserve judgement until China actually orchestrates a Fallujah scale bombing.
thanosnose 8y ago
> Give China another 20 years and they will surely have overtaken the USA in world leadership. I guess anything is possible but I highly doubt it. Do you really think culturally, linguistically, militarily, politically and even economically china is going to lead the world? Every major international instution in the world from the UN to the ICJ to the WTO is in western nations. > Consider their new Silk Road initiative. 3rd world/developing countries and America's numerous enemies alike are lining up to ally themselves with China. Sure. But they are also working to contain china as well. You really don't understand politics in a local or a global setting if you think china is going to be leading in asia, let alone the world. If you think the likes of india, japan, korea, vietnam or even iran will let china lead, then you don't understand geopolitics. And lets not forget russia with their thousands of nukes along china's border. The day that the US doesn't control the world is the day regional competition and violence begins as 2nd rate powers vie with each other for influence within their regions. Nobody, especially china, is going to replace the US as the leader of the world. Once we are done, it'll be back to regional power plays.
bassman9000 8y ago
Where will they get the IP from?
aeriklawson 8y ago
Not going to happen. Maybe after half a century or more (I'd bet close to one hundred) assuming everything goes perfectly, but not even close in twenty - at most they'll be a very strong regional power and their sphere of influence will push the US further out of SEA (which is still heavily favoring the US as of today). China's economy will probably be the most powerful in the next twenty years, but that's not nearly enough. People vastly underestimate how interconnected and influential the US is economically and militarily - the idea that the US will not be the world's dominant superpower for the next fifty years is click bait in the era of Trump. We're also quickly increasing the number of unknown variables as the years go by - no one knows how or when the next financial crisis will play out in China, or the volatility of their governmental system - countries often do well until one day they don't. The same could be said about the US, but the country has proven itself to be incredibly stable thus far. > 3rd world/developing countries and America's numerous enemies alike are lining up to ally themselves with China As you mentioned, 3rd world - they are playing the long game, certainly longer than twenty years. The payoffs they are hoping for are fifty to one hundred years away (in Africa, etc.)

lalos 8y ago

It would be great to compare the growth China kicked off in the 80s with the growth the USA kicked off after WWII. See if its the same trend, feel weird comparing growth of a country with another that had a 40 year head start.

contingencies 8y ago

I have been telling people this for over 15 years. Catches include: we economic migrants have reduced access to the market, less progressive regulatory stance, shifting and complicated bureaucratic visa/banking/tax processes to deal with, and even difficulties getting capital out again. One summary is: it's relatively easy to make big money in China, but hard to make a liveable salary - this affects Chinese people more than migrants. Macro economically, lots of cash was recently won on real estate (like in many developed economies recently, such as my native Sydney), and prior to that outright corruption, though both avenues are now closing and priority is being placed upon technology IP by the government (read: free government handouts for local competitors, foreign companies generally excluded).

joefranklinsrs 8y ago

These flurry of NYTimes favorable articles on China, the last few days, is....fascinating. It's almost like those with vested interests knew a huge crash is about to come to China in 2019, and is trying to unload some investments. However, the ever connected world is not blind, and can see the dramatic fall China has suffered in the last 2 years in terms of stock market, yuan weakness, capital outflow, human rights, massive debts, international relations, factories leaving, fake GDPs, and much more. $250B in tariff on Chinese imports in January 2019, followed up with potentially rest of the $600B in tariff on Chinese imports in 2019, will crash China.

Jyaif 8y ago
FYI, China is investing in the long run (20 years+). A couple of points that leads me to think China will dominate the world in the next decades (if it has not started already): * With the Belt and Road initiative China is building deep relationships with half of the countries of the world. * Their industry is not slowed down by regulation, so they iterate and learn quickly. For example, some people think they'll be the first to widely deploy self driving cars. Yes there will be a ton of accidents because their technology will suck at first, but they'll be able to improve faster than any company in the west. An other example is everything related to medicine (e.g. gene editing). * Their culture values hard work. If it were not for the quotas MIT would be 70% asian.
- Paraesthetic 8y ago
  Wow.. you really have no idea.
- sdinsn 8y ago
  Keep in mind that institutional investors don't invest much "in the long run".
- joefranklinsrs 8y ago
  Belt and Road: Malaysian government stopped a $20B project. Maldives just called it one-sided. India refuses to have anything to do with it. So do most of the EU members. Media around the world is calling it debt trap Regulation: deadly vaccines. deadly milk powder. Their citizens then choose to buy foreign goods only hard work: they are at their job 60 hours a week. but only working 20.

NicoJuicy 8y ago

No it's not, the world speaks English, not Chinese Doesn't mean the destination is America though. Ps. Why would big Chinese companies translate their open source in English and have research hubs outside of China

pascalxus 8y ago

It's a mistake to say we're rich because our GDP or even GDP per capita is high. What matters is PPP - purchasing power parity with a basket of goods weighted towards the essentials of life: housing, transportation, food, water, child care and medical insurance. By that measure, I don't think the US is as rich as we think we are. but i would like to see things measured and quoted in that regard, it would be more relevant and accurate for comparing wealth. Such an analysis would also be useful for comparing the rich and poor within a country. here in the US: someone earning 100k in the midwest is much wealthier than someone earning 150k in palo alto. Of course, if your basket of goods comparison is how many apple cell phones they can buy, it's not gonna be an accurate comparison

calebm 8y ago

That data visualization showing the morphing of China from being heavily poor to heavily middle-class made me go "Wow!" That's quite something to note.

g9yuayon 8y ago

One thing important that many people ignored about China is its K-12 education system. It is much better than the US in a number of ways, especially for the ordinary students, which accounts for the majority of the student body, myself included. - For starters, teachers in China are responsible. They care about the subjects they teach, and spend countless hours finding challenging problems for students as well as grading students' solutions with detailed feedbacks. Parents could just leave the education of their kids to school. They didn't have to worry about tutoring at all, because they knew that their kids would be sufficiently challenged in school. This is true equality, isn't it, as financially challenged families did not have to worry about not being able to afford tutoring. In contrast, teachers in Cupertino, a town known for good schools, asked parents to grade students' homework. - Second, they believe in their students. No no no, I'm not talking about this "every student is unique and therefore it's okay to not doing well in academically" crap. When I grew up, my teachers were tough, but they were tough by being honest, by telling me that I didn't do well in exams because I didn't try hard enough, because I didn't use the right techniques to study, or because I didn't focus on the right things. In other words, we truly believed that I could excel in school work. They didn't give up on me or other kids just because we did poorly in homework or in exams. They were truly happy if their students did well in school, and then they told the students that they could do even better by assigning more challenging problem sets. That is, they believed that their students could grow by keeping themselves in their discomfort zone. In contrast, Why did the US schools keep lowering their standards just to keep students happy? The K-12 education systems in the US are great for two types of students: those who are really challenged academically, and those who know how to push themselves. For the former, they enjoyed the love from teachers or the policies like "no kids left behind". For the latter, they got excellent resources, such as taking advanced classes in universities, and participating in all kinds of competitions. It is the students in the middle, the majority of the students like me, who will lose, big time. The students in the middle will not be challenged enough, who will falsely believe that they are good at STEM and then get shocked or even defeated by not-really-so-hard courses like calculus or organic chemistry, those who could've had a wonderful career in STEM but bail out because they didn't get enough training in high school. How sad is that? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Chinese K-12 did everything right. I spent way too much time preparing for the national entrance exam. I spent way too much time mastering all kinds of problem-solving skills that are not needed in college. I didn't learn advanced subjects like calculus or stats until college. That said, my teachers truly prepared me, like they did millions of other ordinary students, for advanced STEM subjects. They injected passion and a sense of pride of studying STEMs. I wouldn't be able to do what I do today without my teachers' dedication and caring. That's what matters, isn't it?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

umsure201 8y ago

I thought this article was going to be about Muslim re-education camps.

csense 8y ago

This isn't a surprise. Back in the day, a kid fresh out of high school in the US could get a job that supported a house with a yard, a car, children, and a non-working spouse. Factories were both directly paying good wages for non-high-skill positions and fueling a myriad of local businesses where those workers spent their money. Then globalization happened, and those factories went to China. Entire local and regional economies collapsed and a lot of them STILL haven't recovered. Great opportunity for Chinese people, not so good for American people. You might think from this that I hate the Chinese, or the poor, or something. That's not true. I just think we need to find a way for regular Chinese people to have hope and opportunity, that doesn't involve taking hope and opportunity away from regular American people. Billionaire Ray Dalio said in a recent interview that 8 of 12 times there's been a rising power situation like the current one with China, it's turned into a shooting war. My own opinion: If people's hope and opportunity are taken away, they start to get into the mood for a shooting war with the people they think took it. Bringing hope and opportunity back to regular Americans could prevent World War 3. How do we do it?

kkarakk 8y ago
>How do we do it? space, humans have been stagnating since the 60s. the earth cannot support all of us anymore,it's breaking down
- pxtail 8y ago
  > the earth cannot support all of us anymore,it's breaking down Of course this is overly dramatic and just wrong but you have a good point, in very very very long time frame this is viable option and provides big "goal" to achieve. Latest NASA promo video mentions Moon, Mars as next goals, I'm wondering if they are not setting narrative/preparing ground for more efforts targeted towards space. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeA7edXsU40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeA7edXsU40

nitwit005 8y ago

I'm not sure why picking the American seemed obvious in the choice at the begining? A poor country seems far more likely to see a large economic upturn.