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> Have you seen the population size of China ? Have you seen the geographic size of China ? British thinking seems to be that because we won the Opium War we s
by pjc50 3mo ago
> Have you seen the population size of China ? Have you seen the geographic size of China ?
British thinking seems to be that because we won the Opium War we should just expect a country with 20 times our population and a vast land area to be poorer, both per capita and in total, than our island, forever.
- lazide 3mo agoIt did work for awhile though, eh?
- psd1 3mo agoI think you're ascribing intent to a stochastic outcome. China's rise comes because it acquired, from inauspicious beginnings, competence at planning an economy. Britain's decline relative to China comes because it is a democracy - which is to say, vacillating. Britain has been particularly callow over the part decade, because we indulged ourselves in a bunfight about Brexit to the exclusion of all other concerns. This created a purge of ministerial talent and a sequence of governments primarily occupied with propping themselves up. Elections have been fought on Get Brexit Done and I Would Have A Pint With That Man, not on policy. The entire edifice is deeply stupid, but it is a stupidity orthogonal to questions of industrial policy. Ministers haven't been in post long enough to reveal any strategy about such. In a microcosm, the compulsory land purchases were done for HS2 and it was as on-track as infrastructure projects get, when Sunak cancelled half of it, writing off the sunk costs but crippling the long-term value of the project. Meanwhile, China laid more track than the test of the world combined, because it has the will to make large long-term investments.