My friends went to China when they first opened the country to tourism. The Chinese plane they took from modern Hong Kong was scary, the food was scary, and the Communist Party "handler" that never let them get off the beaten path was scary. They said it was like you opened a door and traveled 100 years back in time. Fifty years later th…
My friends went to China when they first opened the country to tourism. The Chinese plane they took from modern Hong Kong was scary, the food was scary, and the Communist Party "handler" that never let them get off the beaten path was scary. They said it was like you opened a door and traveled 100 years back in time. Fifty years later they are trying to economically rule the world. It was awful for their people then, and now it's a new kind of awful for them, because the Communist Party is "handling" them with data and cameras.
It's difficult to separate what their government is doing from the folks working their ass off to make all the goods. Working in a factory is a miserable job for most people, and the more we automate them the better. To hell with those kinds of jobs. I question whether we could get people back to the factory floors in the numbers we might need.
They are going to have to pay people top dollar to work the clean rooms needed to manufacture those chips. If you hate wearing a mask, try wearing that gear! Regardless, we have to try to temper our relationship with China and return to making things here. Time to review the property and businesses we have let them buy; Canadians are up in arms about their holdings there. We should be too.
Alis, I was there 10 years ago. As you said, things changed (and have now changed again in other ways). The Beijing airport was beautiful, the train to Xi'an made our American ones look sick, and the only "scary" food was when my group was taken for a "real American meal." That was KFC. As for a handler...there was none. In fact I wandered around two cities as much as I liked, the tour leader laughing and saying, "We're not North Korea." In Tiananmen Square the guide did say that everybody knew what happened here and just to stay off the topic, but that was about it.
There's no question that it is a dictatorship. Tiananmen had little fire extinguishers to put out any Tibetans who burned themselves alive in protest, there were cameras and metal detectors all over the place and it was clear that minorities were figuratively in "the back of the bus." But at the time (not now with COVID) for visitors state power was kept in the background. It was obvious some problems were building up--downtown Beijing looked like New York City on steroids but a lot of those huge buildings were empty, built on speculation, and the air pollution was bad. But I've been to well over 100 countries, many of them dictatorships or rough Third World nations, and within the parameters of what I saw in the PRC it seemed far better than those places. But nothing lasts forever and how close the West should be to this awakened giant, as well as what comes next, are excellent questions that you and Thom are right to ask.
A pleasure. I like to travel and am a professional geographer so try to see as much as possible, and read a lot of history. Every place is different but sometimes their stories are similar. But people are people throughout time and space.
My friends went to China when they first opened the country to tourism. The Chinese plane they took from modern Hong Kong was scary, the food was scary, and the Communist Party "handler" that never let them get off the beaten path was scary. They said it was like you opened a door and traveled 100 years back in time. Fifty years later they are trying to economically rule the world. It was awful for their people then, and now it's a new kind of awful for them, because the Communist Party is "handling" them with data and cameras.
It's difficult to separate what their government is doing from the folks working their ass off to make all the goods. Working in a factory is a miserable job for most people, and the more we automate them the better. To hell with those kinds of jobs. I question whether we could get people back to the factory floors in the numbers we might need.
They are going to have to pay people top dollar to work the clean rooms needed to manufacture those chips. If you hate wearing a mask, try wearing that gear! Regardless, we have to try to temper our relationship with China and return to making things here. Time to review the property and businesses we have let them buy; Canadians are up in arms about their holdings there. We should be too.
Alis, I was there 10 years ago. As you said, things changed (and have now changed again in other ways). The Beijing airport was beautiful, the train to Xi'an made our American ones look sick, and the only "scary" food was when my group was taken for a "real American meal." That was KFC. As for a handler...there was none. In fact I wandered around two cities as much as I liked, the tour leader laughing and saying, "We're not North Korea." In Tiananmen Square the guide did say that everybody knew what happened here and just to stay off the topic, but that was about it.
There's no question that it is a dictatorship. Tiananmen had little fire extinguishers to put out any Tibetans who burned themselves alive in protest, there were cameras and metal detectors all over the place and it was clear that minorities were figuratively in "the back of the bus." But at the time (not now with COVID) for visitors state power was kept in the background. It was obvious some problems were building up--downtown Beijing looked like New York City on steroids but a lot of those huge buildings were empty, built on speculation, and the air pollution was bad. But I've been to well over 100 countries, many of them dictatorships or rough Third World nations, and within the parameters of what I saw in the PRC it seemed far better than those places. But nothing lasts forever and how close the West should be to this awakened giant, as well as what comes next, are excellent questions that you and Thom are right to ask.
Thanks doc Weil for the interesting assessment. I always value the first-hand accounts I hear and read.
A pleasure. I like to travel and am a professional geographer so try to see as much as possible, and read a lot of history. Every place is different but sometimes their stories are similar. But people are people throughout time and space.