Keith, glad you enjoyed the brief prose on Texas, a place where I still have family and have lived. It's not as mythological as some think but not as blandly assimilated as others wish.
I'm not up on Chinese research in biogenetics, but do keep a interested eye on the Chinese scene/market finding it relevant from years of conversations with my Chinese friends from school and business people trying to break into that market. It's been too many years since my class in Chinese history, but I was hooked young by Pearl S. Buck and still marvel that the China of today has skyscrapers, millionaires and technology that belie the political propaganda and backwater images still so prominent in Western minds. Granted, my Chinese friends are products of English speaking schools and expatriate families, so they are Chinese Internationalists rather than bubble-wrapped domestics, but there is more reason than consumer markets to pay attention to China today. Just as Europe was caught unaware by the phenomenon of the American century, we may be caught napping when it comes to China. Back to the first theme of your post, I am reading through several articles that S. Lerner pointed to a few weeks ago on the Foreign Policy website, one is Immanuel Wallerstein's The Eagle has crashed landed regarding the US in decline http://www.foreignpolicy.com/issue_julyaug_2002/wallerstein.html; and a Brooks-Wohlforth piece titled American Primacy in Perspective from Foreign Affairs http://www.foreignaffairs.org/articles/brooks0702.html Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote in his Cycles of American History that the US has a 30-year political cycle which I believe is intrinsically linked to economics and culture, not just politics and government. If I ever get through that book, I'll feel more knowledgeable and less instinctual on the subject. Just as Ed disagreed that the British Empire had actually expired (it's just be cryogenically frozen for later resuscitation) we should be careful to distinguish between political/military and political/diplomatic issues. Great Britain provides, once again, very valuable insight and historical experience for its former colonies, both in what to do and what not to do, much as parent to child. Again, I'm behind on this reading but will be glad to hear from anyone who has or wants to shortly. Since I'm new to FW, I'm still catching on to the pattern of debate and topics discussed, but enjoy having the opportunity to participate. Karen -----Original Message----- From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, July 17, 2002 1:05 AM To: Karen Watters Cole Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Move over, America (was RE: The latest Krugman Hi Karen, I much enjoyed your description of Bush and his origins. For the delectation of FWers who might have missed this previously I append it below. Over here, we know little about Texas apart from the fact that their window-cleaners have trucks the size of our fire-engines and that the males of the species wear strange metallic devices round their necks instead of historically-validated neckties. One of the most fascinating questions of today is just how long will America remain at the top of the heap? The writer who discusses this directly is Kennedy ("The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers") but Fukuyama (in "Trust") and Landes "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations") also contain more than a few hints that it might be thumbs-down sometime soon. With a navy four times larger than all the rest of the world's, and with a quarter of the world's surface under its control, there cannot have been a more powerful nation than England four generations ago. That's only yesterday. Perhaps we're more sensitive than most about the fugacity of power and maybe I'm betraying some sort of lurking Schadenfreude in suggesting that America has probably already topped it. But, let's be honest, there must be something badly wrong with a nation that can elect such an intellectually handicapped, and very possibly criminal, president as Bush. As suggested in my recent reply to Ed Weick, a predominant empire loses its power when other nations take innovation and technology further. In the old days when nations actually fought one another this was mainly military technology but, in the last collapse of a great empire, the Soviet Union, it was because it couldn't match up to the fecundity of America's consumer-based innovations. So, in this view of history, what technology will be the cause of America's decline? As I see it there are only three leading candidates at present: nanotechnology, solar technology and biogenetics. The first two -- for which there is no pressing market need at present -- are bubbling quite nicely in the retorts of R&D labs in several parts of the world, but with no clear lead anywhere as far as I can judge. It is biotechnology which is the really interesting one. I've already given sufficient evidence (16 July and previously) that the Chinese are several years ahead of any other nation and that the name of Lu Guangxiu will be as well known to our grandchildren's grandchildren as Newton, Darwin or Einstein. There can be very little doubt that within about five years -- and ten years at the very most -- Lu Guangxiu's techniques will be able to offer unrejectable organ-tissue replacements to anybody who can afford it. Bearing in mind that there are about 40 million individuals in the world who have wealth in excess of $1million (that is, loose cash in addition to their property and incomes), and that, probably, about a fifth of these could already do with a better heart, liver, kidneys, what-have-you, then it's likely that at least a million will be queuing up for treatment in Beijing when the doors open. I don't know what proportion of health spending will be devoted to tissue replacement in the coming years, but we already know that the cost of health in America is already approaching 15% of income, and nudging over 10% elsewhere. I will simply make the judgement that, in 20 or 30 years, organ replacement will likely be the most expensive item in health care and the largest single item in a (middle-class) consumer's lifetime shopping list. Now then: what are the practicalities? As I see it, there are two constraints. One is the legislative permission to practise human cell cloning (which is absolutely necessary in order to match tissue precisely), and the other is the training of the surgeons and technicians able to carry out the operations. In the case of the first, Chinese legislation is already allowing the cultivation of cloned cells in foetuses (though not allowing them to develop further into 'individuals') but in America and other developed countries (though I'm not sure of the position in Japan) there is legislation preventing present research to be taken much further and, what's more, opposition to more liberal legislation appears to be growing rapidly (from the reactionary right in the US and, ironically, from the liberal left in Europe). Thus, I cannot see any country other than China having the freedom to develop the new technology within at least the next five to ten years. The other constraint is: how quickly can the Chinese train sufficient numbers of doctors and technicians. There is already evidence that they can turn them out in large numbers if necessary. They have long practised the idea of differential medical training, so that millions of 'barefoot doctors' were able to fan out across the whole extent of China in the early decades after the Communist Revolution in 1949. More recently, after the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s, when medical schools were resuscitated after being shut down for years, high quality training of surgeons was telescoped into about three years instead of seven. For the most part, tissue replacement technology will probably be able to be automated on a large scale. Patients who need a new heart or lungs will be able to send a blood sample to China, where the appropriate tissue will be grown in vitro or in animals such as pigs. Then, when the organ is large enough some months later, the patient will need to go to China (unless America opens its doors to Chinese businesses) and the organ is merely inserted in standard operations with absolutely no problems due to rejection. In short, I think we can take it that if the Chinese research of the next five to ten years goes forward without meeting insuperable problems, then they will be able to supply the infrastructure that is able to cope with consumer demand on a considerable scale. On any pan balance, tissue replacement will outweigh in money value all other normal consumer products added together. If America or Europe are not able to develop tissue replacement technology in the next five to ten years and catch up with China's lead, then China is going to wipe the floor with America and the rest of the world. By the way, I'll make an intermediate forecast. All those American corporations who've been pushing for stricter intellectual copyright laws within and without the WTO's rules, will before long, change their tack completely when they realise that the Chinese are already patenting many vital aspects of tissue replacement technology. If there are going to be charges of intellectual piracy and plagiarism then it will be American businesses, not Chinese ones, in the dock. But, probably, unless the American politicians can get their fundamentalist voters off their backs, and legislate accordingly, America is going to miss the next boat. Keith At 08:01 16/07/02 -0700, you wrote: (KWC) <<<< Keith, this Texas Tale has a message, just as most good stories do. In hindsight, it might have been a good idea if Texans had been able to look beyond that old time homeboy pride and famous name recognition when Poppy and Bab's firstborn decided to run for governor. I can't decide if this chapter of a family's history and the nations' is more of a tale from a banana republic or Shakespeare. But you can't really blame the Texas voters for this. You have to look at the money people who saw an advantage in having a well-connected native son with poor training, limited experience and dubious motives advanced in national politics and furthermore, the people who have become his Troika of Power advisors. >>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- Keith Hudson,6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel:01225 312622/444881; Fax:01225 447727; E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________
