Just an observation after being in a megastore in China.

[HEyHEY]

I was just at a carrefour (french walmart) here looking for cheap wine and a cucumber (For Zaofan) and one thing that always hits me when I shop in these places is that this country has no idea what it is in for.

I see many people from very meger begining who can now buy things, not just food and clothing, but actually items purchased with disposable income. The shopping frenzi is unlike anything you'll ever see in the west. Go to the Ikea in Beijing on a Saturday and you've basically been "in the shit."

But, the country, despite all these years of communism, still values wealth even more than we do. It's just the culture. So, at some point this bubble will burst and migrants and such will demand more wages etc... So, it's like this nation has grown up too quick and is just satisfying everyone's fantasies and such as quick as it can and you wonder where all this money and such will come from.

So, basically they have to go through all we went through with working class rights, surburbs, disenfranchaised youth all of these things. I feel that when it snowballs, and it will, there's gonna be some crazy 60s type shit happening here, but more violent.

I just think, at some point all the over consumerism and such has to hit a wall where supply, demand and disposable income will clash to create the perfect storm. After that I wonder what will happen.

I meant for this to be a much more introspective and analytical post, but I got caught up looking for John Denver on Itunes and forgot all the other shit I wanted to say.

[DCBob]

1. I was just in Zhuhai which is near Hong Kong and just across the border from Macau..

That place is out of control. Every day tens of thousands of frenzied shoppers line up on the Macau side with shopping carts and huge bags and cross the border into China to shop for the day in the massive Zhuhai shopping district. You can buy anything you can imagine and its dirt cheap. Its like a city of Walmarts on steroids. The Chinese have embraced consumerism even more than us. And yes, it is impossible to sustain long term. China will likely collapse under its own weight but at the same time, may take the rest of world with it.

[HEyHEY]

3. Well, they are a capitalist culture by nature.

Always have been, and 60 years of some so-called communist party won't change that. In fact, they've basically assimlated communism to the point it's just another dynasty now.

My friend has a theory that China is basically a ponzi scheme, and I think he's right.

[DCBob]

5. "China is basically a ponzi scheme"

Kind of funny, but I think your friend may be right.

[HEyHEY]

9. No other way to explain it.

For instance, my GF grew up so poor her family couldn't afford books. Suddenly they own land and have money without swtiching jobs? WHere did that money come from?

[JBoy]

15. You might want to check your bank balance.

:evilgrin:

[HEyHEY]

19. Nah, I owe her money

So ha!

[aquart]

11. Which means all our industrial capability will collapse with them?

[HEyHEY]

20. I don't think so

I think they're moving so quick that as other nations ike Vietnam and India surpass them they won't have the new technology capabilities to compete when it happens.

[riderinthestorm]

49. I've said it before and I'll say it now, I believe India will be the next superpower.

They already have a larger educated class, they have English as a second language for most of their population, they have a better infrastructure (yes rudimentary but the Brits taught them well about that), and they are closer to Europe and the west, and their ability to innovate and grasp technology over broader segments of their population - to name a few.

China is more unstable than most realize I believe. And I've often pondered that it may be India that's the next superstar.

[formercia]

23. The Chinese love to gamble

even if they know the House wins in the end.

The die is cast.

[tsuki]

28. It's not just the Chinese. Have you ever been to a pachinko pallor?

[alfredo]

2. Nixon should have never "opened" China.

[HEyHEY]

4. That was a great move

Hey, things happen slowly, these people will be free one day. It's true.

[alfredo]

6. Freedom is good, but consumerism is suicide.

[HEyHEY]

7. Yeap, especially in a country that hasn't had the frowing pains

That we have, many of them really do just think it's there for the taking. And they go NUTS. The average Westerner at least GETS that there are consequences.

[alfredo]

8. When we went nuts, we lived in a world with plenty resources.

[HEyHEY]

10. Yeah, and we still do

I'm from Britih Columbia. We had a government in the 90s that closed alot of resources based industries off through regulation with the idea we can't always rely on them. Then the economy went to shit and the new guys took over and it blossomed. Why? Because all they did was say, "Okay! It's all here for the taking!" Then the comodaties market crashed and we became FUCKED cause the entire time we got rich they never gave a thought to sustainable finances and spent all the money on the olympics or the "owe-lypmics" as we like to call em.

[alfredo]

17. In some ways China is being smart. The coal plants are a

short term solution to their energy needs, but their investments in alternatives is the long term solution. One reason we are in our present fix is short term thinking.

[HEyHEY]

24. They actually do alot for green energy, but it is never reported. n/t

[alfredo]

27. They know that innovation means their ownership of patents

and ownership of patents means revenue streams.

[HEyHEY]

29. True, butm seriously, this country cannot innovate

I have been constantly amazed at the inability to think on their own and innovate. I'd been here a few months and i gave my team a speech about onnovating and such, one of them chuckled and said, "You haven't been in Chin along, have you?"

They just can't do it.

[alfredo]

32. American business has become conservative.

Innovate or die. Drug companies know that once a product is on the shelf, it is worthless. What is in the pipeline is the real test. Innovate or die.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/14/startups-or-behemoths-which-are-we-going-to-bet-on/

So we can’t count on the Intels or Microsofts to create employment: we need the entrepreneurs. And there is an important lesson here for the states and cities that offer huge incentives to companies like Dell, Google, and Intel to locate their operations there. The regions should, instead, be focusing on creating more startups, not providing life support to technology behemoths.

Now let’s talk about innovation. Apple is the poster child for tech innovation; it releases one groundbreaking product after another. But let’s get beyond Apple. I challenge you to name another tech company that innovates like Apple—with game-changing technologies like the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and iPad. Google certainly doesn’t fit the bill—after its original search engine and ad platform, it hasn’t invented anything earth shattering. Yes, Google did develop a nice email system and some mapping software, but these were incremental innovations. For that matter, what earth-shattering products have IBM, HP, Microsoft, Oracle, or Cisco produced in recent times? These companies constantly acquire startups and take advantage of their own size and distribution channels to scale up the innovations they have purchased. They let the startups take the risk and prove the business models.

This raises an interesting question. Google and Microsoft have always prided themselves for hiring the cream of the crop of software developers. It is ridiculously hard to get a job at either company. But when technology’s top guns join these companies, they seem to make a smaller impact than those that don’t get hired. So would these companies be better served by releasing their most brilliant developers into the wild and arming them with seed financing to start companies? (They could negotiate partial ownership and right of first refusal on acquisition.) We would certainly get more innovation this way.

Simply put, if we are serious about lifting the economy out of its rut, we need to focus all of our energy on helping entrepreneurs. Provide them with the incentives (tax breaks and seed financing); education; and infrastructure. And gear public policy—like patent-protection laws—toward the startups. Let’s not bet on the companies that are too big to fail or too clumsy to innovate.

[alfredo]

36. China needs to overcome their history of tyrannical rule. Standing out

In a crowd can be dangerous. You know the saying about the nail that sticks out gets hammered down? It can be said about China.

[HEyHEY]

40. They have a similar expression "The tallest trees catch the most wind"

[Odin2005]

45. That's because of their authoritarian culture and education system.

Creativity and independent thinking is not in the Chinese psyche.

[Warpy]

12. I've known many people here from the PRC on business

or doing scientific collaboration and have seen the same thing you have. When they're exposed to shops full of goods, they just seem to go a little crazy, not knowing the difference between prudent purchases and foolish purchases, just spending money for the sheer pleasure of being able to do so. It takes them a year or more to start to numb out from consumerism the way we have and even then, they're spendaholics.

The workers are already demanding better wages and better conditions. A few reports of wildcat strikes and peasant riots have managed to filter through the bamboo curtain and the corporate news here. Once this has begun to be achieved, China will no longer be the sudden powerhouse it still is.

The only depressed populations left for corporations to exploit now are in Africa and good luck to them in that.

[HEyHEY]

13. What I find amazing is that people had to commit suicide before that one park

Would start granting decent wages. That's pretty well the way it is here, someone kills themself and it gets attention, had they all rioted for wages, wouldn't have been as big a deal. This place is so weird. I meet people that have lived here 15 years and still can't figure it out.

[Warpy]

16. I know someone who lived there nearly 3 decades

and he tells me even they can't figure it out, so don't feel bad.

However, the winds of change are starting to blow there, enough that one of their generals published an opinion calling for increased democratization at all levels, or "a Soviet style government will lead to a Soviet style collapse." This would have been a dangerous thing to do even five years ago. Maybe it still is, but I haven't heard about his disappearance yet.

[HEyHEY]

25. We'll see

This place is so strange. When I arrived you could get youtube and facebook, both are blocked now. To speak the truth mainland China is fucked up it's not even funny. Alot of immature thinking and people looking out for themselves first, makes for a big mess.

[alfredo]

31. The lack of infrastructure and political instability has

slowed down economic development in Africa. Much of the instability was from the colonialist powers drawing of national borders without respect for traditional tribal boundaries.

[LooseWilly]

52. India had a general strike on July 5 this year...

http://sify.com/news/opposition-calls-all-india-strike-on-july-5-news-national-kg3mkdfhcdj.html

I was in Mumbai, and about 95% of the shops I saw were closed. Groups of 5-12 police congregated in the shade at major intersections in any remotely touristy district. Kids played cricket in the streets (which, if you've ever seen Indian traffic, is a little crazy to contemplate). We had to go to tourist hotel restaurants to find food.

This was a reaction to allowing the price of fuel to rise. If wages don't keep rising, I suppose more strikes are liable to be in the works. (How long before Indian and US wages come to some sort of equilibrium, do you suppose?)

I wonder where the corporations will turn to next for sweat shops?...

[unblock]

14. another reason to loathe john denver

i was looking forward to more introspection and analysis on this topic!

[HEyHEY]

18. Next time, I promise!

But you know what's weird? One of the staple songs of Beijing pubs is "Country road" I could never figure that out until a Chinese friend told me the song is that its in many textbooks for learning English.

[UTUSN]

21. K&R #10 for "assimlated communism to the point it's just another dynasty"

All I know is from two semesters of Chinese history, not from the AMAZING first-hand contact the DUers in this thread have, and the bottom line of all the reading was that Chinese culture assimilates all the invaders, turns them all into one more Chinese dynasty. A hundred years of waiting for the latest invaders to turn into just another CHINESE dynasty is nothing in the scope of 5,000 yrs of history.

Besides that, not just with China but totally among humans, commerce and trade appear to be innate social traits, and even if a Big Somebody is outlawing stuff from above the peddlers and roadside stands stay forever and eventually explode into flea markets and HUGHer bustling markets.

[HEyHEY]

22. I'll grant that observation to a friend of mine

I could never put my finger on it, then he said that one night and I thought, "Yup, that's true." My Hip chinese friends say the same. Young, educated Chinese cats know the score and do the math.

[cilla4progress]

26. Wow, what a fabulously interesting thread!

Thanks so much for sharing your observations!

[HEyHEY]

30. They'd be better were I sober!

thanks though!

[islandmkl]

33. gratuitous John Denver comment:

from Rolling Stone #186, May 8th, 1975, with John Denver on the cover:

"Alice Cooper's music is a from of entertainment that's a fad right now. It's going to go the way of psychedelic rock and Sixties protest songs. ALice read me saying that once and said he'd be around long enough to piss on my flowers. So I sent him some flowers." - John Denver (December 31, 1943 – October 12, 1997)

John was a helluva guy, musically, morally, politically...but I think he called this one wrong...wonder what Alice did with the flowers?

[HEyHEY]

34. Well, really, was Denver wrong?

He's more timeless than cooper.

In that respext the best was when Rue Mc Clanahan had cancer and bety white sent her flowers with a card that read "I hope you die, I will be the last golden girl!"

[Kat45]

38. His music may be timeless, but Alice Cooper's is also still viable.

He wasn't just a flash in the pan, as Denver seemed to imply. As a matter of fact, he's still putting out albums and touring, and his hits from the seventies are still getting airplay. I was at a concert in the late eighties/early nineties where I saw kids pumping their fists while singing "School's out for summer..." I was reviewing the show and commented that their parents had probably been doing the same thing when the song was originally out. And even now, their grandchildren may be doing the same thing.

[SwampG8r]

51. see cooper Live

before you say that
awesome stage show
very theatric

[Ruby the Liberal]

35. I heard an economist say that China today is like the 1950s US

when it comes to the fast-growing middle class with sudden disposable income.

[Johonny]

37. Yah but it is like modern America in its upper class

I went there to meet some really wealthy Chinese. There is a huge extremely wealthy upper class. They tend to hate things Chinese. They wear European fashions, love American cars, have 5 star restaurants and clubs that rival or are better anything seen in the US. Almost all of them that I've met are extremely A-political. China is a country with a ruling caste, a military caste and business caste. It's not clear exactly how the future of that structure is going. When the older guard in China dies off will the ultra rich in China demand say in their government (or just continue to buy it) or will they remain outwardly A-political sense so many are truly international with the ability to move about between Canada, Australia and China easily.

[ThomWV]

39. When you think about it China today is more like Germany following the 1st World War.

Keep in mind that much of what caused both the 1st and 2nd World Wars was a result of Germany's late unification and even later entry into the Industrial Revolution. Just as China will go though in just several years what the West absorbed over several decades so did Germany about a century ago. Look at the result last time and the future will look bleak.

[Confusious]

53. WW1 was the result of competition for empire

Britain and france had their colonies, germany wanted some too. Everyone built armies and ships to keep those empires, and then made pacts to help each other out. Once mobilization started, it couldn't be stopped.

Industrialization wasn't the cause of WW1, it created the death toll of modern warfare.

[HEyHEY]

41. Thier middle class is shrinking now

People aren't getting poorer, but the rich are getting super rich and the rest are staying the same.

[Odin2005]

42. I expect then to have the 30s and the 60s all at the same time.

[Skittles]

43. so, materialism and greediness are not uniquely American

how nice :puke:

do they have to by cheap Chinese garbage like we do? just curious

[HEyHEY]

44. Oh the shit you buy here is much worse than anythign you'd find in the USA

Believe it or not they export the "well made" goods.

[Curmudgeoness]

46. My understanding is that the Chinese are already looking for

better pay, better hours, improved working conditions. And that the "new" nations for cheapest labor are places like Vietnam.

Corporations seem to be on a race now for the lowest wages possible, and things are changing much more quickly than it did after the 1950's US boom.

[HEyHEY]

47. And that's why I wonder

that said, the government will do its best to keep wages here down.

[Curmudgeoness]

48. Not sure where "here" is, but if you are talking about China,

they will try. But there is a certain momentum that happens and there is no stopping it. The Chinese will start to look for better conditions through unions at some point, just as we did when it became the only answer.

[HEyHEY]

50. yeah

I meant China, I'm in China.
They are already looking for better conditions, but they are all alone. The government doesn't exactly hop to it.

[Old and In the Way]

54. Chinese, historically, have been capitalists (on the coast).

I've been going there for 15 years. Guys my age tell me about about their youth....no Beatles, Traffic, Neil Young, or Grateful Dead for them. More like surviving on dirt and roots. This generation has gone from "0" to "90" in 30 years flat. Hard to understand for us Westerners. But they are, almost by nature, capitalists. No one can hustle a buck like they can. Interestingly, western-style capitalism, in the form of Wal-Mart, is making a dent in their culture. Will box-stores be their future? Don't know, but wouldn't surprise me. It is the ultimate in distribution management. We were told it was communism that would control supply and demand....turns out it was that capitalist monolith Wal-Mart.