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Yes, the transition to modernity was almost as much of a shock for China as it was for the west. Nonetheless, the net effect is raising about 800 million people
by Fricken 5y ago
Yes, the transition to modernity was almost as much of a shock for China as it was for the west. Nonetheless, the net effect is raising about 800 million people out of poverty in a little over a generation, an achievement that has no historical precedent.
- logicchains 5y ago>Nonetheless, the net effect is raising about 800 million people out of poverty in a little over a generation, an achievement that has no historical precedent. Taiwan, Singapore and Korea started from around the same starting point as China after World War Two, and all became developed countries much faster (compare their GDP per capita now to China's). You could say "their populations aren't as big as China", but in that case wouldn't the ideal solution have been to split China up into a bunch of smaller countries that could grow just as fast as Korea etc?
- Fricken 5y agoWhat? What sort of mental gymnastics is this?
- logicchains 5y agoAll the "East Asian Tiger" countries achieved much faster economic development in terms of GDP per capita (per head) than China did: search for China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Korea on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi.... There's no theoretical reason a political region should develop slower if the population is larger, if anything economic theory suggests the opposite (a common argument for why America's GDP is higher than Europe's is that it has a larger homogenous internal market). So China's size can't be used as an excuse for its slower development.
- jessaustin 5y agoYou reject population as a factor in modernization (along with, apparently, initial development level, initial education level, initial infrastructure, etc.) and you offer instead... longitude? Why are you comparing China to Singapore?
- woah 5y agoChina developed more slowly than its neighbors, unsurprising given the communist party’s crushing of free communication and enterprise and the killing of tens of millions of people. You’ve gotta be playing really dumb to pretend there’s anything complicated about that.
- wayoutthere 5y agoHuh? China literally slowed its pace of development intentionally so they didn’t kill millions more. They learned that the Great Leap Forward was too fast so they slowed it down and made it a multi-decade project. Interior China was largely subsistence farming 50 years ago and now boasts some of the largest cities in the world. They have industrialized incredibly quickly given the scale of the challenge. You can’t bootstrap enough industry to modernize 1.6 billion people overnight; it takes decades to build. They haven’t gone faster because a country like Singapore can buy enough industrial output from Japan or the US to bootstrap their industry. Nobody has enough spare capacity to build at the scale of China, so the Chinese had to cultivate industry over a period of decades. Given that most of the worlds manufacturing is done there now, I’d say they’ve been quite successful.
- jessaustin 5y ago"Neighbors"? Singapore is 2000km from the closest part of China! I'm not "playing" dumb; in this entire thread you have given us no reason to expect Singapore and China to have similar modernization performance. Less charitable people than myself might suspect that your personal reason is one you can't mention in polite company.
- logicchains 5y ago
- monocasa 5y agoChina didn't really attempt to start the process of increasing until the late 70s to early 80s. Their cultural revolution was focused on rooting out hidden vestiges of the old power structures before attempting to modernize. Since that point their growth rate has been quicker, they just got started later.
- logicchains 5y ago> Since that point their growth rate has been quicker, they just got started later. That's not true. You can see the historical growth rates for China and Korea here: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?end=2020&locations=KR-CN&start=1961&view=chart https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?end=2... . China's growth rate at no point in time was greater than Korea's was in the 1970s and 1980s.
- monocasa 5y agoWhat? The highest points on that graph are Chinese. And there are similar Chinese bursts to the Korean one you're talking about, followed by China sustaining higher growth. Are we looking at the same graph?
- logicchains 5y agoThe highest single point is China, followed by a very low point the following year. If you average the growth rate over 3-5 year period their maximum rates are similar.
- monocasa 5y agoWell, the highest four points on the graph are Chinese. Yes you can cherry pick a three year period that makes Korea look good, but you can do the same with China.
- simion314 5y agoDin't US dump tons of money in South Koreea?
- BurningFrog 5y agoSure, but that only happened after they abandoned the communist economic system. Under Mao, it was constant famine, genocides, and wars.
- alkonaut 5y agoSo what we are saying is that the dropping of socialism and adoption of capitalism lifted 800 million people out of poverty in a generation? I don't think that's a bad review of capitalism at all.