Until the Chinese learn how to loosen-up their authoritarian teaching
methods, then China will never become the lead country in the world.
It will undoubtedly become a very large economic force in terms of
GDP -- if not the largest -- just as Japan almost managed to do in
the 1980s (but was then poleaxed when America insisted on the yen
being revalued upwards so much that Japan's export trade became
stabilized instead of growing further). Like Japan, China will remain
brilliant at reverse engineering almost every advanced product that
is made in America, the UK or Germany, but it will never initiate any
new industrial or commercial sector on its own anytime soon -- other
things (parental ambitions and education methods) being equal.
A possible exception to this may occur if China were to send enough
of its children at a young enough age to be educated in the West.
When they reach their 20s, these Chinese would likely be at least as
innovative as Western 20 to 30-year olds. But it would then depend on
whether the innovators return to China to advance their ideas there
or whether they remain in the West (as many post-Doc researchers do).
Also, innovators need supportive friends and colleagues of like
(maverick) mind, not to mention rich individuals who are prepared to
invest in whacky ideas. There may not be enough of those back in
mainland China for many decades yet. Goodness knows, venture funds
have taken a long time to become established in the West. On balance,
therefore, although Chinese people are likely to be as prosperous as
those in the West in 20 years' time and with wage rates just as high,
China is likely to be stuck as fast as Japan now is with nowhere else to go.
There is already too much evidence that biology will dominate man's
next commercial phase. As the 'metal-bashing' industrial revolution
in the West continues to pause in the coming decades while China
catches up, and when no new mass-produced consumer goods appear in
the shopping malls or on the internet, when will the biological
revolution take place? Whether we are talking of extinguishing
mid-life killer diseases, or of breeding better quality children
(that is, with fewer harmful mutations), or of carbon-based products
(with DNA-based machine tools) far superior in performance to the
present metallic or simple plastic ones, or of repopulating denuded
ecosystems for our enjoyment, then this is where the West is already
clear in the lead with tens of thousands of research scientists
exploring every nook and cranny.
Governments in the West ought to be heartened by the better long-term
prospects but, of course, politicians and civil servants are almost
completely uneducated in the basics of the last revolution, never
mind the coming one. As in the 18th and 19th centuries, they're going
to have to run very hard behind new businesses in order to retain
even a semblance of seeming to lead their punter-electorates.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
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