zzzaai schreef op 31 augustus 2011 09:12:
Ik vond dit stukje over de relatie met China
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China has only two things going for it: cheap labor and a government which does everything it can to attract international investment of manufacturing capacity.
They don't invent, innovate or discover. The only companies they have which are competitive on a global level are those which completely rely on cheap labor.
As soon as their middle class and general cost of living rises to a point where their labor is no longer considered that cheap, they will see their factories and fortunes move to poorer, developing countries like Vietnam, India and African countries which are just now becoming stable enough to be considered for long term investment.
They simply aren't invested in research and innovation. The way their society operates and their unfair attitude towards foreign ownership of Chinese companies essentially stifles any real research or innovation from being done there. They are a communist country with a thin capitalist facade, nothing more. Their economy does not operate like a true capitalist economy and until it does, they will never see an economy that isn't based on their eroding cheap labor pool.
Korea and Japan were once sources of cheap labor but their democratic and much more open capitalist economies produced universities and companies which have made major innovations in the fields of technology and medicine. Their economies are no longer based on cheap labor and has much more longevity as a result.
And measuring the success of China vs the US based only the size of their economy makes absolutely no sense. But if you want to play that idiotic game: They have over 4 times our population and an economy a third our size. 1 American citizen = 12 Chinese citizens in terms of raw GDP value.
And these numbers mean nothing. The average Chinese citizen has nowhere near the spending power of their American counterpart nor the opportunity to freely start and operate a business or gain a high quality education. China has no where near the national scale infrastructure or environmental protection that we do. They don't have anything close to the raw research potential (labs, universities and talent) that America posses.
Do you think you can run MIT, Stanford, Harvard and John Hopkins level universities and associated research labs in a communist society? Do you honestly think the best minds in the world want to live and work in an environment like that? Either do I.
Nice try China, enjoy the couple of more decades you've got left before robotic automation becomes cheaper than the rising cost of your human labor. Hopefully you'll be smart enough to end your communist government and allow a free society to emerge while you still have enough cash to ride through that transition.