Is ChinaPhobia costing the US Taxpayers Billions?

2009, brutal return to protectionism (bring back the factories home boy), Obama...

3 easy things to remember and to see unfold before our very own eyes...

The US are obviously playing a very unhealthy game with China right now and it won't take long before the masks go off and we start seeing the true colors of what's going on. I fear the worse is to come. Forget about all this crap about mutual benefit, blabla bull****... The US are using China in a blatant way for their own purposes, remotely shadow puppeting China (once again), as incredible as it might seem.

i don't think that there has ever been any pretense about it, America has always been open about the fact that it is using Chinese industry to subsidize its own economy, and the entire world already knows that when America says "Globalization" what is really means is that it wants other countries to open up their economies in a one way deal. This is why America traditionally chooses to partner with developing countries. America bleats on about having an open system but it only offers such openness to countries that are too poor or too underdeveloped to actually invest in the US in any significant way. Only now China is in a position to invest in the US and the US doesn't like it.

America wants to open up all kinds of businesses in China and to be able to invest in whatever takes its fancy, but as soon as the tables are turned Washington gets out a big fat marker pen and starts putting parts of its economy off limits. For example, America wants to invest in China's airlines and to open up offices in china, but it bans China from investing in US domestic carriers. The same with the US domestic energy sector, and mineral extraction/processing. America wants to open new container ports in China, but the second that China wants to invest in a US container port it suddenly gets struck down on national security grounds.

ACB wonders how much money the US tax payer is having to fork out right now in order to cover the bailouts that China would have covered, but isn't being allowed to for "national security" reasons. The same for everything else. How many Americans are going to suffer because Washington is forbidding Chinese investment?

If you allow me to do so, I will copy paste a very huge comment I've made in the past (the following is a collage from different sources, that I've posted on the subject)... It's very provocative, to say the least, but I do think it's true somehow. It's way to big to be a blog comment (it's spam, wtf is spam anyways, blogs are a free platform, this drives me nuts, why the fuck can't we waste a couple of electrons spreading some information, who cares if it's too long, if it's not a witty 3 lines snarky comment, what if it means something somehow and this information belongs into the cyberspace, who the fuck can judge about this... Isn't the net supposed to be a platform to express ourselves, in various format?), and like in the past, it will probably end up being wiped out, but at least YOU will have the chance to read it before you delete it, and maybe at least it will trigger some seeding of information. So here we go:

I wrote this on October 20 2008, on a China related blog (Peking Duck)... I know it very far fetched, but somehow, more and more I think it makes sense. Please take it lightly, I'm not a paranoid freak with an obscure agenda. But it's a theory, nothing more. Taking into account the possible global agenda, I would not be surprised by anything nowadays. I've been ridiculed a lot and mostly ignored.

But in the the following weeks after this post, I've witnessed more and more signs and facts that this theory could actually be real. I've stated many things on this blog as a commenter, that turned out to be true. We live in a crazy world...

I think China is applying some very basic rules from the Sun Tzu book, basically along the lines of "deception" is the way to go. It just doesn't make sense to think of any super power today in our world and think they don't have any outreaching goals. China is on the verge of collapsing, mainly ecologically. What will happen when the water runs out ? When the desert reach the golden towers ? I know it seems far fetched, but it's the reality. And sadly, it's too late for China right now. Time is running out. And they know it. The cow has been milked to death, by the US yes (the classic hit/loot and run scenario they've been repeating over the last centuries around the globe).

You've got 1.3 billions peoples, a land on the verge to become similar to our worse ecological scenarios, rising seas, you name it.... China is a ticking bomb, on numerous and very varied ecological, social and economical fronts. And I'm sorry to say, but I don't envision any positive outcome on the long term. And no, It's not all about the economy.

In my opinion, this is the perfect storm that spells out in big neon letter: Expansionism for survival, in a couple of decades. The irony in all that is that the current mantra is "sustainability", but only, this comes 30 years too late, the damage is done and undoubtedly irreversible.

The big picture is way bigger than the current economic crisis, it stretches beyond it far away. It's a Geo-strategical issue of never before encountered size, and an overpopulation issue as well.

You just can't bring 1.3 billions people to a lifestyle level of the US middle class, it's just... not sustainable, planet wise. I think you know what I mean. We're headed for some serious conflicts around the corner, and we will witness it in our lifetime, be sure of that.

In September this year we've reached a critical threshold: For the first time in human history, we are consuming more than what the earth can produce on a yearly basis, globally. In 20 years, to sustain our current lifestyle and the population, the predictions point to a need to have the equivalent of 1.5 earths, in 50 years, 2 earths.

Think about this, it's real, it's no sci-fi anymore or some hippies freak visions. This is our world, right now. And now put this in the balance considering China's rise. China cannot rise, simple as that. It's unjust, it's horrible, it sucks. But that's the reality. India is in the same boat as well. Late comers in the race as we say.

Otherwise, the solution is for the western world to cut down their lifestyle, and get back to the way they used to live 60 years ago. It won't happen, people are not that smart, sadly.

Sorry for being so grim, but I think it's time for people to wake up about these issues.

Taming The Dragon

I am still trying to figure out the global outcome of this crisis, and I am glad to see that I am not entirely crazy (some might argue on this point, I have to admit)… Since some of my apprehensions are becoming reality. At least the media are starting to catch up on these issues.

For a while, I've been speaking about the possibility of the following scenario: What if the current (engineered ?) financial crisis was aimed at China ?

What if what we were witnessing right now was just a gigantic planned domino effect in order to slow down the development of the Dragon ?

The current popular reasoning is that China will be able to avoid the economic turmoil, mainly because of domestic consumption. This makes no sense.

Where are the numbers and studies to support these claims ? Is there anybody here that can point me to solid data about this (honest request) ?

China's GDP is a big fat lie (in the same line as mostly anything "official" in this country), and this since the opening reform of the country.

So can anyone explain me how we are supposed to draw rational conclusions based on these loquacious calculations ?

Here's a study made by Carsten Holz. His main focus is on the Mainland economy with "Chinese characteristics"… (Btw, am I the only here that whenever I hear the words "Chinese characteristic" it instantly equals to me as: "the following could / has been heavily manipulated in order to fit in a certain predefined Chinese vision of the world = BS ?).

http://repository.ust.hk/dspace/bitstream/1783.1/2085/1/DeconstructexpappGD P28Oct03.pdf

I don't expect anybody to read this lenghty piece, so I'll just give the outlines:

"China's National Bureau of Statistics has on repeated occasions explained in great detail how its GDP statistics are derived from underlying data. Based on these explanations, this article reconstructs Chinese official household consumption, which accounts for half of GDP. The findings are condemning. Not only do the various official explanations offered between 1997 and 2001 differ from each other, but none allows the researcher to accurately reconstruct household consumption. The relationship between the GDP component household consumption and the underlying data, furthermore, varies from year to year, which suggests that time series comparisons of Chinese GDP may be invalid."

Some key quotes (worth reading in its entirety if you have time)

"Third, time series comparisons of the consumption data with the underlying data reveal roller-coaster relationships that stretch credulity."

"Two clearly identifiable effects are a tendency of official GDP to underestimate actual GDP throughout all years until 1994, and to overestimate GDP growth between 1994 and 1995."

"That households routinely consume one-quarter to one-third more consumer goods, in terms of value, than they report, especially in the rural case, is also not plausible (questioning the level of NIA commodity consumption)."

The last extract brings me to one point: The internal consumption is overrated and takes into account the global population. But the actual projected ratio of distribution is ridiculous.

Why ? because in the event of an economical crisis in China, the rural sector contribution to the GDP will be next to nothing. The people that are loosing their job right now (thousand of factories shutting down as we speak in Guangdong - other regions to follow soon) are the first on the line of fire. These people's power of consumption is already not much, and it will become almost zero.

So that would leave the urban regions: The stock market has been crumbling since the last 1-2 years (from a 6000 peak to now what ? 1800 ?), house prices and real estate market are going down the drain (40% in certain areas). This is also a clear sign that people are cautious and cutting on expenses.

So my question is: Where will this magical internal consumption comes from in the event of a major crisis here ?

Do you think that the new measure giving the ability to the farmer to rent and transfer their land is a coincidence ? Of course it's not. It's a direct answer to the fear of what is coming next. In addition to distributing evenly the wealth in the country, they hope it will help to put a plaster on the job losses. So it's a very good timing for them.

I think that all the elements are now coming together for the perfect storm. As stated in some other articles, the power and the support of the people to the CCP comes mainly from the economical miracle that they generated. But what will happen once it's not true anymore ? High unemployment rate leads inevitably to social unrest (it's already starting in some regions).

So in my opinion this is a double direct strike from the US to China: And impending economic blow and a direct influence on the social stability of the country.

If the US alone acted with their single power, it would not be enough to make a difference (20% export). But couple that with a worldwide crisis (i.e. Export market demand slowing down globally and not just from the US). And then it can become a real threat to China's grow.

These links are a courtesy of China Herald: http://www.chinaherald.net/2008/10/china-crisis-watch-6.html

http://www.ibankcoin.com/flyblog/index.php/2008/10/19/chinese-industry-on-t he-brink-of-collapse/

"This financial crisis in America is going to kill us. It's already taking food out of our mouths," the 42-year-old laborer said Friday as he stood outside the shuttered Smart Union Group (Holdings) Ltd. factory in the southern city of Dongguan.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=6066427

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7679180.stm

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95727213

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/03f8445c-9df0-11dd-bdde-000077b07658.html?nclick_ check=1

I would really not be surprised to see some article about what I envision soon. Maybe not also. I tried to search about this but could not find anything in the media yet about this concept.

I am not an expert or even an economist. So please feel free to debunk what I say. I would actually be very happy to hear some professionals on this.

Finally…

Food for thought:

http://chinaredux.com/2007/02/24/dick-cheney-as-chinas-worst-enemy/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/etc/wolf.html

"There are three additional aspects to this objective: First the U.S must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests. Second, in the non-defense areas, we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. Finally, we must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role."

Nothing is happening in this world due to pure coincidences. Only fools would think this way.

A while ago how, I pointed the readers to Nouriel Roubini, only this time I'd like to point the readersto a more obscure personage, major Scott P. Nolan, from the US Army. In my constant search to find non mainstream media sources, I've stumbled upon this jewel tonight.

He's no public persona, nor does he intend to become a celebrity. But he's part of the US army. I am not sure he even exists for real. It's not even relevant, what matter is the message that is now publicly available for the world to see.

But one point remains: He's basically summarizing everything that has ever been said or will be said about China and the Us on every single blog and news sites.

A very insightful analysis of what is happening right now and what is to come in the near future. I sometimes wonder if everybody is using this document as their master source in order to post their "personal" view on the current situation on the different blogs.

It's not information from infowars.com or from an indie underground movie available on YouTube. It's coming straight to you from the academic department of the national defense of the US. And… It got approval for public release.

- US plans to extend their global empire ? Checked - Economic Warfare ? Checked - Trade Deficit ? Checked - Peaceful China's rise debunked ? Checked - 2050 China Superpower ? Checked - US answer to China's rise ? Checked - And much more, by reading this, the last 4 years or so of blogging, will bring you memories of comments and "visions" from users.

It's all there, covered from A to Z.

http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA470819&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc. pdf

I GREATLY encourage everybody to read this paper, and to read the references as well.

Extracts and food for thoughts:

"One element of national power that is of critical importance because of the recent explosion in technology and globalization is the economic arm."

"Whether our nation has a large or small military, our leadership does understand economics, but not necessarily in the same manner the Chinese do as a weapon of warfare. Economics is a great tool to create conditions for further action or to coerce a nation to change its behavior. As the world further embraces globalization, economics as an element of power will only gain greater influence in the United States and around the world."

"America has at its disposal the elements of national power (diplomatic, information, military, and economic) to support the U.S. National Security Strategy. The use of these elements of national power protects and allows the United States to remain the lone superpower in the world today.

"The National Security Strategy states that economic freedom is "a moral imperative…that also reinforces political freedom. It creates diversified centers of power and authority that ultimately limit the reach of government. It expands the free flow of ideas; with increased trade and foreign investment comes exposure to new ways of thinking and living which give citizens more control over their own lives."37 In short, the NSS articulates our economy as central to the spread of democracy, also a theme throughout the NSS.

Some more information for those that still think that all this is just tin foil hat material. The following document was produced by International Security Advisory Board (ISAB).

You won't find this report on the official US gov site since it was created by a special task force.

http://video1.washingtontimes.com/video/ChinaStrategicPlan.pdf

Again, this is not infowars.com material or David Icke stuff (although it's clear to me now that they probably use these sources to create their material as well). It's directly coming from and funded from the US government.

This is the actual complete version of the report. You can find a condensed version here:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/china/2008/china-081001-isab 01.htm

I discovered this site today, and it's a gold mine for whoever like me enjoy wasting time "connecting the dots". A lot of the compiled information in this site permeates the news on a daily basis in different forms.

For anybody with an in interest in Geo-politic, I highly recommend it.

Some very interesting excerpts:

"The communist leadership in Beijing seeks three primary and interrelated goals: (1) regime survival; (2) dominance in the Asia/Pacific region, together with growing influence on a global level; and (3) prevention of Taiwan's de jure independence. These goals shape its views of, and policies toward, the United States."

"The United States is viewed as China's principal strategic adversary and as a potential challenge to the regime's legitimacy, specifically with regard to Taiwan. At the same time, managing a positive relationship with the United States at least for the short to medium term is desirable to achieve other national objectives, most importantly sustained economic development. China views the United States as its most significant trading partner, and sees that trade as essential to China's continued economic growth."

Basically, to sum it up, the US - China relationship is one of the most twisted and hypocritical in the entire modern history.

I'm pretty much done analyzing the US side of the story for now. From now on I'll switch my focus to the "other" side: Russia - China - And South America

I expect these researches to complete the big picture somehow, I've already seen glimpse of it, and so far it's confirming what I was already suspecting.

And if this kind of blog comment is too much for your brain to process (ADD anyone ?), than I say to the readers: Go back watching CNN and Fox, and get news in a format that your lazy brain can process...

"Is ChinaPhobia costing the US Taxpayers Billions?"

-- Of course, but again, SO WHAT?

We're not living in an ideal world, where all men/countries are created equally. We were told at school to be kind, respectful to others and peace loving. Look at what we're doing right now.

Reality is an ugly bitch, get used to it.

anonymous:

"So what?" What kind of attitude is that to take?

For a number of reasons ACB doesn't pay US taxes, but ACB would rather not see the hard earned dollars of others being spent on propping up these organizations when much of the capital could come from the private sector but isn't because Washington is still scare of Reds under the Beds.

Not only is Washington spending other people's money needlessly but it is also interfering in the natural balance of the US economy as well. Let the private sector sort out the private sector, and save public money for public services.

Bao:

A couple of basic errors. Firstly China is not practicing any form of deception, at least not in this field. Everything is as it appears, and there are no hidden meanings or agendas. This is basic free market business and international competition, nothing more, nothing less . Secondly, China has a pollution problem that is primarily generated by the clustering of people and industry in tightly packed zones. This is not even close to "self destruction". You are being melodramatic to say the least. There is plenty to go around, China simply needs to spread things out a bit more and to reign in some of the worst excesses of industry using technology that is freely available in the West, but which has been left out of China's industrial development up until now due to its price. If your average Chinese factory was up to Western codes the pollution problem would be slashed to a much more manageable level, and if people moved away from the coast and back into the interior much of the trouble caused by sheer human population density would be resolved. The problem is getting the clean technology in without bankrupting the factories, and getting the Chinese interior up to an economic standard that will draw people into it. both of these problems can be solved with time and money.

People are moving to the "interior" in droves, but while such a mass migration (which I think is well underway already) may solve one problem, I'm sure having read many of your posts you know it's never ever that simple. Just as you're calling out America for unfairly playing economic imperialism, you can't move millions of people to Xinjiang without expecting *someone* to lose in the end. Because you can't make the mistake that there was nobody out here to begin with, that these are vast, empty fertile lands that the East Coast Han are stupidly neglecting. Seriously, come out here to the wild west, the prosperity differentials are quite tangible. Move globs upon globs of Chinese people here and maybe that solves pollution and density problems on the east coast but then you're outsourcing the suck to the indigenous peoples. There are actually some interesting parallels to this kind of migration-slash-shouldering-out-the-natives in American history and god forbid modern China do anything that looks like Yankee arrogance (interestingly many Han have pointed to American history when I discuss what's happening in Xinjiang - which is hilarious because 1) American crimes don't excuse Chinese ones and 2) by making that kind of analogy they're tacitly admitting China is guilty of doing that, haha). But I digress, this kind of stuff is for a whole different ACB post.

By the way Urumqi is horridly polluted, it's quite notorious, far more so than east coast cities. And the city is overwhelmingly made up of Han Chinese who have completed the migration you mentioned in your last comment as a solution to solving population and pollution issues - at least on the East Coast. It didn't seem to work so well - would you propose furthering your strategy and take maybe 500 thousand or so Wulumuqiren and throw them out into the Taklamakan to relieve population pressure? I think you can disperse the Han population only so much.

Job:

ACB doesn't know who taught you geography, or Chinese demography, but right here and now ACB needs to point three VERY important things out to you.

Firstly, there is no mass migration to China's heartland, none whatsoever. It's the other way around. Millions of central Chinese have left the heartlands and have moved to the South and East coasts looking for a better quality of life. This migration has significantly unbalanced China in the last 20 year, moving people from rural to urban environments where they consume more than they produce, and leading to a significant gender imbalance as males tend to leave the countryside more than females. Over the past few months there has been some small measure of return as labor for migrants decreases on the coastal regions, but this is small when you look at the number of people who actually left.

Secondly, Xinjiang (more correctly known as East Turkestan) isn't an interior province, and isn't part of China's heartland. It's China's most westerly province. So far West in fact that the native population aren't actually ethnic Chinese, they are Turkic Muslims known as Uygur.

Lastly, while the go West drive did shift some of China's population, it is part of the problem, not part of the solution. The Han migration to XinJiang is exactly the same as the migration to the South and East coasts. It was a mass migration of people from the heartlands to densely packed cities in order to fuel industrial growth. People don't leave Shanghai to go to Xinjiang, at least not more than a handful of people who receive significant promotions to run factories and such there, they leave Sichuan, Qinghai and Gansu and in doing so they create the exact same problems as have occurred in the coasts.

First of all, there indeed is a considerable migration of Chinese to the Western regions, which is primarily Xinjiang since, geographically speaking the Western half of China is divided into much larger provinces than the Eastern half.

One of the most obviously indicators of this migration can be gleaned precisely from looking at demographics involving Xinjiang's largest minority, the Uyghurs. I think it's hilarious that you matter-of-factly tell me who the Uyghurs when not only am I far more familiar than "Uygur" culture than you are, but my whole previous post made indirect allusions to the unacceptable treatment of Uyghurs by the incoming and burgeoning Han population - which I obviously wouldn't be capable of making were I unaware that Uyghurs were a Turkic Muslim people. I thought I didn't have to come out and say it but I guess with you things have to be stated plainly otherwise they'll go over your head. So I'll say it then, Chinese treat the Uyghurs like shit. It's not just the condescending all Uyghurs are lazy thieves or dancing monkeys attitude (It surprises me to this day how common this belief is among Han, who will tell you in the next sentence "There is no racism in China"). More urgently it's the fact that the flood, yes, flood of Han Chinese coming into Xinjiang are shouldering the Uyghurs out of reaping the benefits from Xinjiang's natural riches which are just now being exploited. Whereas at the dawn of the 20th century Han Chinese made up far less than 10% than the regional population, now they're way past 40 and that's not counting the migrant workers who are working for the big companies here - I also think the Bingtuan has it's own census too so there may be even more. Point being that even in places where the Chinese are following your grand masterplan such things can't happen without people getting screwed over, but nobody cares if those people getting screwed aren't Han, right.

Furthermore, I don't know who taught you history, but neither "East Turkestan" or "Xinjiang" have a greater claim to being the "more correct" appellation for the region. Before the 20th century the Uyghurs hardly even had a unified ethnic identity under the name "Uyghur" let alone a national identity centered around the concept of "East Turkestan." The term "Uyghur" was a modern ethonym concocted by scholars in the Russian empire to distinguish Turkic peoples in Russia from the Turkic peoples in present day Xinjiang; it was adopted from the name of a khanate from the 8th and 9th century that was actually Buddhist and has little cultural continuity with today's Uyghurs. Likewise "East Turkestan" was a name for a political entity was used for the first time in the 30s and then again in the 40s as the name for two extremely short lived republics which emerged in the utter chaos between the fall of the Qing empire and the consolidation of the People's Republic. Note that at such dating the first use of East Turkestan came well after the Qing empire named the region "New Frontier," Xinjiang. If East Turkestan was used unofficially before that it was again by Russian scholars who used the vague designator "EAST" simple to distinguish that area ungoverned by Russia from "WEST" Turkestan, I.E. all the former soviet republics. Not a very flattering origin, and certainly not something the Uyghurs themselves came up with (some activists like the far more aesthetically appealing and logical "Uyghuristan" but you probably didn't know that). Bottom line is neither is more legitimate and the place is called "Xinjiang" today by Chinese living here and "Shinjang" by Uyghurs living here and "Sherqiy Turkestan" by Uyghurs living outside of China, all of which have degrees of historical legitimacy. If we're going to use another standard - for example, whatever name the sovereign power who exercises control over the region, then Xinjiang is the correct term. By no objective measure is "East Turkestan" MORE correct than the others unless you're an angry Uyghur diaspora activist bent on inventing an Eastern Turkestan nation in history where one did not exist. Smugly telling me that what's more "correct" was dilettantish and demonstrated that you have no idea what you're talking about.

Not a part of the "Chinese heartland?" That's a completely arbitrary distinction, and it's also an imperceptible if it's even a fact because here the CCP is hard at working drilling into the skull of every human being who goes to school here that Zhang Qian came here in the 2nd century BC and established a commandery thus proving that Xinjiang has always been, is, and will always be a part of China. It doesn't matter what stupid labels you assign to different sections of China. Is Maryland a southern state, or not? Who cares? The point you were making is Chinese people need to move from places with too many people to places with fewer people. I think in order to do that there are some <a href="http://en.wikipedia.or g/wiki/File:Population_density_of_China_by_first-level_administrative_regio ns(English).png"> very very clear places to go</a>. And people indeed are going there.

Lastly, it's funny that you mention "people don't leave Shanghai" to go to Xinjiang because a few months ago I actually met a Han Chinese guy who owns a restaurant here who said he moved here from Shanghai because he said, and I freaking quote, "I'd rather open a restaurant and live in a two room apartment out here than live in closet under a stairwell in Shanghai." Because when he was a cook in Shanghai he lived in a closet under a stairwell. Then he came to Xinjiang where there is less competition and opened a restaurant. Hahaha. Hilarious. Granted, that's only one story but one's all you need to prove wrong the allegation that "People don't move from Shanghai to Xinjiang," because they do. The kids that are moving from Xinjiang to Shanghai are yuppie middle class college educated 20 somethings who are probably not contributing that much to the whole "making the East an overcrowded dump" problem. Anyways as anecdotal as it may be come here and ask any Chinese person anywhere here where their jiaxiang is. EVERYONE will mention a place that is not in Xinjiang, almost without exception. Either their grandparents, their parents, or they moved here from some other province, you name it. Oh yeah, and from Shanghai, which is not a province, lol. They're not from Xinjiang. They came here recently. There are lots of them. I think we can call that a modern population shift but then again you don't know who taught me demographics.

So the Han Chinese went from being 5% to almost over half the population of the region in a century - that's a significant population bloom (read: migration) even when you don't factor population growth. The point of my last post was that it's naive that something as simple as putting Western technology onto polluting factories and moving a crapload of people from the Eastern seaboard to the "interior" is a good idea, and I was trying to prove that by pointing out how the Uyghurs are getting shafted in Xinjiang but that completely flew over your head and you hilariously had to tell me that the Uygurs are a "Turkic Muslim" people like some sort of cheap guidebook. Even if Xinjiang isn't "interior" (which is stupid because regardless of what you want to call it is a region of the PRC with an extremely low population density and vast, job-creating economic potential which means it fits perfectly within the proposal you're putting forward) it's still dumb that your response is something along the lines of, "I didn't mean move people to Xinjiang , I meant move them BACK to Gansu and Qinghai and Sichuan." First of all, if people are migrating out of Sichuan it's probably to Chongqing which is freaking next door. Secondly, Gansu and Qinghai? There are freaking reasons people are leaving these provinces. Are you suggesting that we can take all the factories these people are working at in, say, Zhejiang and put them in Qinghai? Factories do not simplistically equal prosperity, and furthermore the factories are in Zhejiang and not Qinghai for a ton of reasons. There are reasons why the oil wells and oil refineries are in Xinjiang and not Henan. There are a billion factors that conspire to produce regional prosperity and those factors are mostly absent or negative in places like Qinghai and Gansu. Similarly, Wyoming will never be as prosperous as California even if the government opens ten thousand movie studios and computer firms there. It's just a poor idea. A poor solution for an extremely complex problem. No wonder you're Angry, ACB. I'd be angry too if I thought fixing problems of these magnitudes were that simple.

The fact of the matter is that you're still missing the point completely: China's pollution, resource and population problems all stem from mass migration from the central farming regions to the border industrial regions, be they on the East/South coast, or in East Turkestan. If China's population was more evenly distributed many of these problems would reduced considerably.

You may also wish to take a step back and consider your wording more carefully, especially when it comes to the difference between China of 5,000 years history, and the PRC which superimposed itself on top.

No, ACB, you're missing the point completely, and you're clearing avoiding the points I made in my comment because you're incapable of addressing them. Threfore I'm repeating myself. People moved from the central FARMING regions to the East Coast INDUSTRIAL regions because of a completely IRREVERSIBLE nationwide shift from an AGRICULTURAL society to an INDUSTRIAL society (see the links here? Maybe?). Like I said in the last comment, people are leaving the central FARMING regions for the East Coast INDUSTRIAL regions because of INCENTIVES which you would have to undo if you wanted everyone to move BACK, which is impossible. Like I said in the last comment, there are reasons the central FARMING regions are FARMING regions and the East Coast INDUSTRIAL regions are INDUSTRIAL regions. Like I said in the last comment, even if your idea "makes sense" doesn't mean it's not a stupid idea. Of course if everyone magically moved into the "interior" these population density issues would be solved. You're not a rocket scientist or some sort of wacky genius for thinking it up. The only reason there aren't other geniuses like you advocating your awesome idea is because it's a stupid unimplementable idea. All it takes to think up this proposal which you are so smugly carting out like you have some sort of special view on these issues that no one else has is the elementary school understanding that population density is population divided by land area, whoop de doo (and complete neglect of the complexity of social problems). Let me provide a modest counter proposal to your idea: "The pollution and population problems of China would be solved by murdering and and disposing of all the homeless people, unemployed males, disabled poor, and non-working old people in the country." It fits the same principles your ideas do. These individuals are not productive members of society anyways. Am I a genius for thinking this up? No, because it's a stupid unimplementable idea.

The nuclear problem would be solved if everyone would just destroy their nuclear caches. The terrorist problem would end if we just converted everyone to Buddhism. The energy problem would be solved if all people making over $50,000 ate half the amount of food they eat now. The global warming problem would be solved if everyone gave up their car. Any 10 year old with half a brain can come up with a harebrained solution to any urgent social problem if, you know, you aren't constrained by reality. So don't be so self-congratulatory by thinking up your "Move back to less populated regions plan." People smarter than you are quite aware of the definition of population density but are also aware that such an idea is as impractical as getting Los Angelinos to move to North Dakota or Western Europeans to move to Eastern Europe.

Oh and your last sentence didn't make any sense. What are you even talking about? I love how suddenly vague and obscure smug smart alecks get when they're called out for having wrong and/or stupid ideas. They do it every time. Oh and at this point you're not calling it East Turkestan because you're right, you're calling it East Turkestan because you don't want to admit you're wrong. Very juvenile. ;D

Happy Site Keep up the good work

ACB has no reason to avoid any points about why people move away from the heartlands because the point is not in dispute. If you go back and read what ACB wrote rather than just skimming it you would see that the entire thrust if ACB's comments are about WHAT has happened, not WHY. You stated that China is in ecological meltdown, ACB corrected you by saying that China only had the appearance of meltdown because of localized overcrowding, and that there is plenty to go around.

ACB is also very disturbed about what you are suggesting. That would be mass murder and it goes against every moral code ever written, let alone 5,000 years of Chinese history. Maybe China should murder America's homeless instead and move it's population to America? Would you like that one better? If you wish to promote mass murder ACB suggests that you go find some other website to promote such sickening ideas on.

As you pointed out above, China has seen mass population movement to the coast because the coast is more economically productive, and people have gone there seeking a better life. Surely a better solution than murdering people would be to transfer the economic intensives from the coast to the heartlands? Beijing is well know for its re population plans, and it would only take a change of focus of an existing plan to get people to resettle in central areas.

There are two primary reasons why the coastal provinces have attracted the most people. firstly Beijing set up special economic zones and supplied intensives that allowed these areas to become more developed that the rest of China, and secondly because once these areas had become more developed the local governments could afford to offer more intensives themselves. The heartland provinces could not afford to make such offers and in the early days were at a significant disadvantage because they did not have the special economic privileges of the coastal regions, so they lost out right from the start and things steadily got worse from there onwards because they could never catch up with the coastal regions. All that Beijing would need to do would be to launch a similar scheme that put money and resources into central territories. ACB does not understand why you are fixated on the idea that a central region must be agricultural. This makes no sense. Beijing could do any number of things that are not agricultural. For example, China has an up and coming IT and technology industry, Beijing could easily subsidize technology villages in the heartlands to attract companies and people. This would build up the regional economy and would space people out more. Beijing just has to make certain that it builds several such places well spaced out so as not to just create another Shanghai further inland.

This is not a hard thing for Beijing to do. Beijing has done it twice before when it wanted Hans to settle in non Han areas such as Tibet and East Turkestan. The only difference needs to be that this time Beijing MUST spread the population out from the begining, rather than encourage it to settle in one or two large enclaves.

ACB is calling East Turkestan "East Turkestan" for the same reason that you call Taiwan "Taiwan" instead of "Taiwan Province". ACB would also again like to remind you that the PRC is an entity superimposed over China. China was China under the foreign concessions, and under Japanese occupation, and it is still China under the PRC. If/when the PRC falls China will still be China, and if/when the PRC is replaced by something else, the same will still be true. You should not confuse the two.

First of all, ABC, you are now a bona fide idiot. Congratulations. In the hallowed halls of nominally intelligent debate, I can think of no instance where an arguer looks more idiotic then when he or she takes satire seriously in responds in such a manner. Apparently you haven't been schooled in this art, telling me that "mass murder" is against every "moral code" thus verifying that you completely, entirely, and stupidly missed the entire point of the "mass murder proposal" that I put forward. In order to enlighten you, I recommend you read over a text most 14 year old Americans read called "A Modest Proposal", by Jonathan Swift. I'll provide the link.

http://www.uoregon.edu/~rbear/modest.html

If you read that article and still find yourself looking like a slackjawed moron and wondering why the author proposes such a hideous plan, then you can cliffnote it up by reading the wikipedia article, here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_modest_proposal

I pray that after you learn the meaning of satire you'll go back to my post and try again, with all your might to try and figure out what my real intent in putting that idea forwad was. Trust me, Job needs no training whatsoever on what is moral and what is preposterous, and you'll realize that completely once you master the art of interpreting satirical points. Nonetheless, you're a bona fide idiot. You can trust that anyone else who digs this deep into the comments and observes your clumsy shock at how "appalling" my idea was will also think you're a complete idiot as well. Of course the idea was appalling, moron. That was the freaking point.

You say that coastal migration exists because Special Economic Zones set up there and because there were more local and developed governments that could offer more incentives. You need to avoid this thing called "shallow thinking" and always strive to take things a step forward. For example, why were SEZ's set up on the Eastern Coast and why were the local governments wealthier and more developed there in the first place? You clear the path to the destruction of your own arguments. An entire book could be written about the myriad reasons the Eastern Coast is and will remain more economically properous than the interior. There are features endemic to the coastal area, such as access to international markets which drive China's rise, and proximity to the advanced capitalist structures and investors of Hong Kong and Taiwan, that make Eastern areas the natural centers of economic growth and inevitable destinations of massive population shifts. These features are lacking in the interior and are 1) the reason why they are poorer in the first place and 2) the reason why your idiotic idea of mass relocation would fail anyways.

You see, arguments here are based on an extremely simplistic and flawed premise that human capital is the only existing factor in economic productivity. You naively forge forward believing prosperity in the East Coast is predicatedly SOLELY on human decisions (hence you argue that Eastern prosperity is the result of policies and can be distributed more evenly simply by reversing those policies) and you moreover believe that if that human capital were simply moved to another spot on the planet they would be capability of equal productivity. This is completely, absolutely, 100% wrong. You are totally wrong. The complexity of economic productivity is far more complex than this and simply "luring" people inland with "economic incentives" is a completely idiotic and unimplementable plan which I illustrated above through satire which cleanly zinged over your head.

There actually is a very beautiful and elegant instance in Chinese history where a naive understanding that human capital was the only factor in economic productivity guided policy, and predictably that policy ended in total disaster. I'm referring of course to The Great Helmsman's Great Leap Forward plan to outpace Britain's steel production. The Beloved Leader Mao, like you, believed that economics was merely a matter of man-hours, other factors be damned, and naturally if we get a gazillion people to produce steel than the PRC would overtake Britain in steel productive in a little over a decade. Mao, like you, was an utter idiot and didn't take into account the literally thousands of other factors involved in both steel production and nourishing a nation-state. We all know the result. But the fundamental principles are the same. He believed that if you allocatted millions of farmers to steel production, and hoped that a bunch of stupid slogans would motivate the extra labor from these farmers to output BOTH steel and crops, then China would simultaneously be able to feed itself AND produce unprecedented amounts of steel. You believe that if you take millions of people on the east coast and lure them to the interior with a bunch of stupid slogans (you use the word "incentives" without apparently understanding that incentives are economic phenomenon and not something the government can "generate" wherever it chooses) then the population will be more evenly distributed without a single hiccup in the national economic engine. It's complete idiocy.

Your elegant decision to bring up Xinjiang and Tibet as "examples" of successful relocation projects by the government again can be summoned, reversed, and used to obliterate your own point. These are perfect examples underscoring what I'm trying to say. First of all, since I'm a Xinjiang enthusiast myself, I can tell you quite clearly that EVERY SINGLE Xinjiang scholar will tell you that from the Han dynasty until the beginning of the 20th century almost ALL attempts by Chinese central governments to relocate people to Xinjiang FAILED. Even the coercive powers of the dynasties were unable to bring about a massive population shift, even during the Qing dynasty when the rulers were becoming quite aware that population issues were becoming pressing in the interior. This is precisely why in the early 1900s the Han population of Xinjiang was less than 10%. These efforts FAILED. They began to succeed in the second half of the 20th century? Why? Because it was then and only then that the government and the people of China realized that Xinjiang was brimming with assets vital to national security and the national economy - specifically, coal, oil, and gas, the latter two having very little economic significance before the advent of the combustion engine in China. Any boneheaded China journalist can tell you the reason Xinjiang is prospering is primarily because of the mining and energy industries. The two nodes of power in this part of the country are Sinopec, who are the people who are extracting the oil and gas, and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a paramilitary group originally composed of KMT rejects and exiled criminals but whose descendents are now in charge of Xinjiang's agricultural and contstruction projects, both of which are blossoming due to the surge of people coming to get the gas and oil, and the secondary surge of people who are coming to make food, fix clothes, do labor, blah blah blah, for the people that are getting the gas and oil. The point of this all is that it is precisely a *fixed, geographical feature* of Xinjiang that is powering is economic rise, and the same could be said in a more nuanced form for the East Coast. Case in point: you could open all the freaking Sinopec oil wells and gas wells you want in Guizhou and hope, like YOU do, that simply "transplanting" all the crap in Xinjiang to the interior would lead to similar success, but any idiot could tell you that wouldn't work. It wouldn't. It wouldn't work for the East Coast either.

As for Tibet: Tibet is way poorer than Xinjiang and the population flow there is but a tiny fraction of the people surging into Xinjiang. So you're making a dumb point. People aren't flowing into Tibet, they're flowing OUT of Tibet, and unless Tibet gets lucky like Xinjiang and something in abundance there suddenly shoots up in value, nothing's going to change. And similarly, if Xinjiang didn't have all that oil and gas the CCP efforts to colonize the area would fail just like the efforts of all the dynasties that came before them.In fact, there was actually a full scale rebellion by Han Chinese in Xinjiang who were forcefully relocated there and wanted to go back home in the interior - this, mind you, was before Xinjiang rocketed into economic prosperity from its natural resources. Xinjiang is to the East Coast as Tibet is to the Interior. Reproducing the success of Zhejiang in Ningxia is as utterly impossible as reproducing the success of Xinjiang in Tibet. And it's completely moronic to even think that's possible.

Furthermore, I'm going to reiterate the point I made in the very first post: even with the (natural, endemic) economic incentives of Xinjiang luring droves of Han way from the interior (and yes, even Shanghai!) to a place far more open (and indeed Xinjiang is), someone is going to lose out and in Xinjiang's case it's the Uyghurs. Massive populations shifts always have unintended consequences. Even in places originally Han like Sichuan, a vast, government manded population shift is going to let loose a thousand negative, unintended consequences which you're not even bothering to think about.

I find your last point about naming conventions both incorrect and stupid. My convention when it comes to what I call a particular place is going by whatever name the authority with consistent, efficient, and uncontested control over the region uses. I call it Xinjiang instead of East Turkestan because regardless of how much I sympathize with the Uyghurs (which I do, as a resident and a speaker of the language), China has complete and absolute control over the region. I call Taiwan Taiwan and not Taiwan province because Taiwan has a completely seperate government, military, and diplomatic corps that sets it aside as a distinct entity and prefers to be known as Taiwan in shorthand and the Republic of China officially. MY standards are consistent. YOURS are not. Your noble diatribe about the "greater concept of China" is bullshit and irrelevant to the point at hand. If what you're attempting is to set up some sort of "historical precedent" standard for naming conventions, then you're WRONG and inconsistent by your own standards because I EXPLAINED the origins of the word "East Turkestan" which you to this point have conveniently sidestepped. I particularly like your wording of "the PRC is an entity superimposed over China" because EAST TURKESTAN is an entity superimposed over the history of the peoples of the Jungaria Basin and DID NOT EXIST HISTORICALLY as such a term before either the Qing Dynasty or the PRC conslidated rule over the area. Furthermore, your standard is bullshit because you've referred to 内蒙古自治区 as INNER MONGOLIA previously in your blog and the term INNER MONGOLIA has similar origins as NEW FRONTIER; INNER being a relative adjective implying the importance of China as a positioning marker. Like Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia was a name bestowed upon the area by the Qing. What the hell do you call Inner Mongolia? Chinese-occupied Mongolia? You're a joke. The point is you've been proven wrong with your own standards but because you're so smug you can't admit you're wrong, which in the end is exceedingly hilarious because that's kind of the exact same flaw you see in all the entities you criticize in your blog posts. What a hypocrite.

Your idea is stupid, you have no understanding of the complexities of economics or demographics, your standards for naming are shoddy, you can't admit you're wrong, you debate by not addressing the previous points, and you don't know how to understand satire. Angry indeed.

Ah, here it comes, at last. The ad Hom attack. you can't match ACB's arguments, or even meet them head on so instead you resort to playground insults.

Ad Hom attacks are the last resort of the desperate. You could hit the books but instead you strike out wildly with silly insults.

"You say that coastal migration exists because Special Economic Zones set up there and because there were more local and developed governments that could offer more incentives."

No, you said that in your last post.

"why were SEZ's set up on the Eastern Coast and why were the local governments wealthier and more developed there in the first place?"

That one is simple. Because of their location. Coastal regions, good for imports and export and manufacturing. They were based on the existing concepts of the concession. Except they weren't run by foreigners.

"An entire book could be written about the myriad reasons the Eastern Coast is and will remain more economically properous than the interior."

At no point did ACB argue against this, it's not disputed yet you keep going back to it as if it is. You are still purposefully avoiding the point: The problems that you mentioned in your earlier post are caused by the mass concentration of people and industry and could be significantly reduced by population redistribution.

"These features are lacking in the interior"

They were also lacking in Tibet and East Turkestan, UNTIL BEIJING BUILT THEM. Beijing could encourage central migration in 100 ways. For starters, investing in a good railroad system to carry freight. It would actually be cheaper to set up factories in central China than on the coasts because the cost of living is lower, if only Beijing would put in the transport links. Lay down some fiber optics and you could have an entire city based on IT. India did it, so why not China?

"idiotic idea of mass relocation"

Again, Tibet, East Turkestan. Put in the infrastructure and offer incentives, and people come running.

"You naively forge forward believing prosperity in the East Coast is predicatedly SOLELY on human decisions"

You mean like the decision to allow capitalist enterprise, or the decision to offer businesses incentives to start up there? If location was only factor, why is half of the East Coast still populated by small fishing villages?

"if that human capital were simply moved to another spot on the planet they would be capability of equal productivity"

ACB didn't say that, please be more careful. This isn't a debate about productivity, it is a debate about population density. This is why Beijing needs to offer companies incentives to move into central regions.

"The complexity of economic productivity is far more complex than this and simply "luring" people inland with "economic incentives""

Again with the productivity? Do you, or do you not, understand the concept of subsidies? The state wants people to move so it put in place schemes to compensate them. For example, tax breaks.

"He believed that if you allocatted millions of farmers to steel production, and hoped that a bunch of stupid slogans would motivate the extra labor from these farmers to output BOTH steel and crops,"

Again, please read what ACB has written more carefully. Mao redistributed labor, ACB is only talking about changing the location in which labor takes place. Realistically, you can locate a factory anywhere just so long as raw materials can get in and finished products can get out. Labor is mobile, it will follow the factory (In fact, many Chinese factory workers are migrants who live in factory owned dorms. They came to the factory, not the other way round).

If you have good freight links a factory can be put pretty much anywhere. Ala Tibet and East Turkestan.

"ALL attempts by Chinese central governments to relocate people to Xinjiang FAILED"

Because it was done badly, and for the wrong reasons.

"Even the coercive powers of the dynasties were unable to bring about a massive population shift"

A massive population shift isn't required, only a series of small shifts. Why move 1 million people out of Shanghai only to have them start up another big city that has the exact same problems? What you want to do is to build up the economies of the small towns and cities. A couple of hundred people here, a thousand people there. The aim is not to turn a province into an industrial hub, it is to make the small towns and cities that already exist more attractive to business by offering companies incentives to set up there. Small industrial and residential boosts spread out over a wide area so that no single area takes a hit bigger than its natural resources can handle. You are thinking on too grand a scale.

"People aren't flowing into Tibet, they're flowing OUT of Tibet"

If you break down this flow on a ethnic basis, ethnic Tibetans are leaving because there are fewer and fewer opportunities for them.

"it's completely moronic to even think that's possible"

You're thinking on too big a scale. recreating them would just recreate the problem. You've missed the point again. Beijing should be working on many small scale projects, not a few mega projects. The aim is to spread people out, not to gather them together.

"someone is going to lose out"

Somebody always looses out, but it needs to be done. The big cities are unsustainable. They create pollution and suck up resources faster than they can be replenished. People need to be spread out fo rthe greater good of China.

"My convention when it comes to what I call a particular place is going by whatever name the authority with consistent, efficient, and uncontested control over the region uses"

So, you're a Manchukuo kinda guy?

"I call Taiwan Taiwan and not Taiwan province because Taiwan has a completely seperate....."

According to pretty much every world government Beijing has "consistent, efficient, and uncontested control" over Taiwan. The fact on the ground might say otherwise, but they often do.

"Your noble diatribe about the "greater concept of China""

Really, weren't you saying the exact same thing about East Turkestan?

"内蒙古自治区"

Go on, tell me how many foreigners could find 内蒙古自治区 on a map? You practically have to stick a flag in an atlas to let most foreigners know where Taiwan is, these days. It's nothing personal, it's just the most common translation.

"Chinese-occupied Mongolia"

Usually, ACB calls it, Liaoning, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Hebei, and so on. ACB only really ever says Inner Mongolia when referring to Western reports than name it so, and then it' mostly to avoid confusion. See above. If you say Jilin in one sentence and Inner Mongolia in the next, most foreigners will think that you are talking about two different places.

"Your idea is stupid, you have no understanding of the complexities of economics or demographics, your standards for naming are shoddy, you can't admit you're wrong, you debate by not addressing the previous points."

Actually, ACB's idea is pretty sound, you just seem to have gotten confused somewhere along the line. This is why whenever ACB talks about population dispersal you talk about population consolidation. China doesn't need to relocate big cities, it needs to break them up. Most of the points in your previous post either don't require meeting, many are not in contention and many are irrelevant to the issue at hand, or had you forgotten what the issue was. Allow ACB to restate it: China's resources and pollution and resource problem is caused by over concentration or population and industry, not by a lack of resources. It's pretty much irrelevant if a scheme to attract a million people to East Turkestan failed 100 years ago, because that's actually the complete opposite of what needs to be done today.

Businesses go to big cities because of transport links, facilities and state incentives. If these were distributed more widely, then so too would industry be.

To put it bluntly, if the government made it worth people's while to set up businesses elsewhere, then they would set them up elsewhere.

Ad hominem? Perhaps. But if you want to put it that way, I invite you to describe in your own words your complete and amusing

misunderstanding of irony I used. As you continued to congratulate yourself on discovering the defintion of population density, I decided to

outline how unoriginal and preposterous your idea was by sarcastically proposing the massacre all the unproductive individuals of China,

specifically because it acheived the same goals you have outlined but is similarly unimplementable for moral reasons I was quite aware of

when I wrote it. Sarcastically. Ironically. Yet you responded in all seriousness, giving me a quick lesson on morals. What am I supposed to

call that? You can dimiss it by shouting "ad hominum" all you want - a favorite technique of xanga and livejournal philosophers, I might add

- but the fact remains that taking irony seriously absolutely reflects a lack of intellectual vigor, or, stupidity, one could say.

Did you read A Modest Proposal? You know what it is, right? A proposal to solve economic problems by cooking and eating babies? I'm sure

there were at least a few people in England and Ireland who read Swift's work and in utter shock, said, "I can't believe this writer is

proposing we eat babies!" and go on to tell their friends why eating babies is wrong. Surely you and I can agree and call such people idiots.

So "Ad hominum, ad hominum" away, my friend. You like to say "ad hom attacks" are the last resort of the desperate but step back a moment,

look around the interwebs, and you'll slowly realize, much to your chagrin, that whining "ad hominum ad hominum" is the true marker of the

desperate. It is the crutch of the mentally careless. It's also based on the assumption that people who do stupid things somehow have the

magical right to not be called out on their stupidity. But have you ever thought about that? Does that right really exist? Why can't someone

be called an idiot if the accuser explains and outlines the idiocy? Just remember, ad hominum is only a legitimate logical fallacy of the

person who is carrying out personal attacks is substiting that attack for legitimate counterargument. However, when the point being

established indeed *is* the stupidity of the other party, it's totally legitimate should the arguer supply the evidence - and ironically, I

didn't really supply the evidence, you did, I just pointed it out. Also, ad hominum doesn't apply here as well because me calling you out for

being stupid did *not* substitute my argument as a whole - more followed. You should brush up on your terms a little bit, and I advise you

learn your logical fallacies from places other than blogs or message boards.

Anyways, since you can't seem to keep your respones in order, the first question I pose for you is, if I'm being ad hominum, what's the best

way to point out the... shall we say, laughable incorrect-ness... of you having taken irony literally? If not stupid, then what? Enlighten

me. But don't expect me to let you off the hook for doing something as stupid as taking an ironic tone seriously.

You said: No, you said that in your last post.

No, you said it. Here's the exact quote. "There are two primary reasons why the coastal provinces have attracted the most people. firstly

Beijing set up special economic zones and supplied intensives that allowed these areas to become more developed that the rest of China, and

secondly because once these areas had become more developed the local governments could afford to offer more intensives themselves."

You say: That one is simple. Because of their location. Coastal regions, good for imports and export and manufacturing. They were based on

the existing concepts of the concession. Except they weren't run by foreigners.

Thanks for verifying what I've been saying all along. Location. Location is something Zhejiang has that Guangxi doesn't. Zhejiang will always

be where Zhejiang is and Guangxi will always be where Guangxi is. Great!

You say: You are still purposefully avoiding the point: The problems that you mentioned in your earlier post are caused by the mass

concentration of people and industry and could be significantly reduced by population redistribution.

Actually, I didn't avoid the point. A few points up, I congratulated you for figuring out what everyone already knows, that "population

redistribution" will solve a number of social problems. In fact, to underscore that this is not some sort of revelation, I solved the nuclear

problem, global warming, terrorism, and the energy problem. To further establish my point, I ironically delivered a solution to China's

population problem that for some reason you swallowed literally in one gulp like a chump. Never have I disputed the fact that

"redistributing" the population will solve the "population density" problem (am I permitted here a jovial "No Shit Sherlock?" Or would that 伤

害 your 感情?) Point addressed: any Joe down the road can tell you the conditions required to solve a pressing world problem, the fact remains

that the way you're flippantly describing these conditions are unrealistic and unimplementable.

You say: They were also lacking in Tibet and East Turkestan, UNTIL BEIJING BUILT THEM.

No, Beijing didn't build the oil, gas, and coal deposits in Xinjiang. They found them. Beijing also didn't build Zhejiang's proximity to Hong

Kong, Taiwan, and international markets. Beijing perhaps did build the oil wells extracting the black gold, and the factory/transportation

infrastruction that taps Zhejiang's proximity to the world markets. But that's irrelevant. Those oil wells and merchant infrastructures are

generating prosperity because they are taking advantage of features endemic to those regions.

Furthermore, you have conveniently and completely sidestepped an observation I made to cut the legs out from under your arguments, namely,

you're citing migration to Tibet and Xinjiang as "evidence" of successful Beijing relocation projects, except that Tibet actually isn't a

successful relocation project. =\.

You say: Beijing could encourage central migration in 100 ways.

Sure. But just because you will encourage something doesn't mean it will happen. The dynasties from Han to Qing used more than 100 ways to

encourage migration to the frontiers.

You say: It would actually be cheaper to set up factories in central China than on the coasts because the cost of living is lower, if only

Beijing would put in the transport links.

A business friend of mine just switched from buying bottle caps from Xinjiang to buying bottle caps in Guangdong because they're cheaper. ^_

Cost of living isn't the only factor in setting prices but you've shown a repeated and unbroken tendency to attribute economic phenomenon to

one factor alone. Cost of living may lower prices for factories in the interior but the price, for example, of rebuilding the streamlined and

developed production lines and management systems of areas with decades of experience could very well be prohibitive. Again, in terms of your

ideas for solving China's problems, you're all about touting the conditions that will solve the problems but being sparse with explaining how

we can get there. Anyone can describe the successful endgame to all sorts of huge problems - it's jus that you're the only one patting

yourself on the back for it.

You say: Lay down some fiber optics and you could have an entire city based on IT. India did it, so why not China?

Yes, because a bunch of uneducated migrant workers who sew Nike sweaters in Guangdong will be stunningly productive in an "IT" city. Right.

Anyways, if you want to know my take on solving China's problems (and you certainly don't), including things like population overload and

pollution, my personal views, in contrast to yours, have a lot to do with rewiring and reworking the (currently horrid and ineffectual)

education system. In a nutshell, I favor grassroots, voluntary, self-directed reform starting with today's youth (i.e. tomorrow's workforce),

who themselves would ideally direct China's restructuring, in contrast to you, who prefer the wise sages of Beijing toss chunks of population

across the playing field. But that's content for a different discussion.

You say: Again, Tibet, East Turkestan. Put in the infrastructure and offer incentives, and people come running.

Again, I already addressed that point in the last comment and you totally, 100%, shamelessly sidestepped it. Since reform and opening,

Xinjiang's success it's utterly and completely disproportionate to the scant gains Tibet have made. Why? Because it's far more than

infrastructure and incentives, as you so crudely and simply put it. The "infrastructure and incentives" that pulled Xinjiang out of the

poverty mire WAY beyond Tibet and even past Sichuan were, for the bagillionth time, features ENDEMIC to Xinjiang and lacking in Tibet. The

infrastructure enriching Xinjiang is the energy industry. You don't extract energy out of a vacuum, otherwise, they would've done the same

with Tibet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_China_administrative_divisions_by_GDP_ per_capita

I'll make it loud and clear: your fantasy that Beijing has some godlike power to part the population masses is based on the entirely

erroneous "examples" of Tibet and Xinjiang. Only, Tibet is not an example, and the reasons Xinjiang is one are not Beijing's magical powers

but Beijing's exploitation of resources that existed in Xinjiang and not elsewhere. But again you're more than welcome like you did with this

last post to *completely* ignore this point which kicks the foundation out from under the point you're making. Talk about cherry picking! :)

You say: You mean like the decision to allow capitalist enterprise, or the decision to offer businesses incentives to start up there? If

location was only factor, why is half of the East Coast still populated by small fishing villages?

Yes, the decision to allow capitalist enterprise! Note the operative word here: ALLOW. Allow, allow, allow. The "human decision" that you are

worshipping so much was actually a PASSIVE removal of a restraint. Let's say it again: ALLOW. The verb allow implies the lifting of

restrictions. Allow. This decision you're referring to so enthusiastically was nothing more than the eradication of stupid socialist

policies, thus allowing China to grow in its own way. Those places with the advantages required for fast economic growth, who previously were

constrained by stupid Maoist ideologies, were ALLOWED to prosper. Those places without those advantages were unfortunately consigned to their

fate. Allow. Allow the geographic and demographic contous of the country to do what they're capable of. The "decision" you smugly referred to

was not something that actively caused anything, it was a passive ALLOWance of each region to do what it is capable of doing.And location is

not the only factor, only you are interpreting it that way, because you have a simple mind and can only accept one cause per one effect. My

argument here is that there are millions of causes. Your argument rests on only one cause - "where people are", and so you naively think that

if this one cause is altered or moved, then the effect will be too. I say things are more complex than that, but perhaps you live in a

simple, simple world.

You say: ACB didn't say that, please be more careful. This isn't a debate about productivity, it is a debate about population density. This

is why Beijing needs to offer companies incentives to move into central regions.

ACB likes to simplify. Productivity and population density are inextricably linked. People go to where they can be productive and make a

living. Places that have a readily available labor force are more productive. It's kind of stu- oh wait, let's not forget ACB'S 感情 - it's

kind of silly to think that productivity and population density shouldn't be discussed in the same arena. Throughout this discussion you have

established consistently and repeatedly that you have an unnerving tendency to simplify things inordinately. No wonder you think everyone is

so stupid for not solving these problems, again, I say that I'd be angry too if the world were so simple.

You say: Again with the productivity? Do you, or do you not, understand the concept of subsidies? The state wants people to move so it put in

place schemes to compensate them. For example, tax breaks.

Of course I understand what subsidies are. The point I've tried to hammer into your skull repeatedly is that all you seem to be saying is if

"subsidies" or "incentives" were created in the interior then the problems would be solved. This is the extent of your brilliant plan -

revealed when a reader of your blog decided to call out you out on your smug assuredness and say, "Everyone knows this, what about doing it?"

Like I said before (If you notice me saying "like I said before" a lot, it's because you always ignore points that you are unable to

address"), *governmental* incentives do not create business. Governmental incentives are one of a million incentives that govern the way a

business operates - profits, shareholders, supply and demand, market, blah blah blah. Government incentives are only one factor in a whirling

maelstrom of an equation. But as has been demonstrated without end, in this argument it comes to you seeing things from a simplistic,

reductionist, and mostly erroneous point of view and me arguing for a far more nuanced, complex view of things. Tax breaks? If you treat them

as one variable among many, then you may use them wisely. If you view them as a sole factor, however... well, 2005-2009 America is case in

point.

You say: Again, please read what ACB has written more carefully. Mao redistributed labor, ACB is only talking about changing the location in

which labor takes place. Realistically, you can locate a factory anywhere just so long as raw materials can get in and finished products can

get out. Labor is mobile, it will follow the factory (In fact, many Chinese factory workers are migrants who live in factory owned dorms.

They came to the factory, not the other way round).

Wait, is this the same ACB that was suggesting China make "IT" cities as a way to encourage population redistribution? Mao makes farmers be

steelmakers, ACB wants the people who are clogging the east (a bunch of uneducated migrant workers) to work in fiber-opticified IT cities.

Also, I love the next sentence, which, like many sentences you've written, actually support my arguments if scrutinized. Notice how you

sneakily tuck "as long as the raw materials can get in and the finished products can get out" into a subordinate clause. What does "as long

as" mean? It qualifies a statement. It defines a statement's requirements. Once again, things go in and out much easier at Fujian than at

Guangxi, and like you so kindly said earlier, a lot of it has to do with location. The moment Thailand and Myanmar become wealthy first world

countries with a ravenous consumer population, Yunnan and Sichuan too will rocket into prosperity. And why are you mentioning that factory

workers go to the factories? It really merits another no shi- I mean, no poop, Sherlock. They came to the factories. I, unlike simple little

you, bother to ask why the factories are in the places they're at to begin with. For you, they're on the East Coast only because some Beijing

fat cat put them there - and that's the only reason and you stop there. I think there are thousands of reasons, Beijing is only one of them.

You say: If you have good freight links a factory can be put pretty much anywhere. Ala Tibet and East Turkestan.

First, I point you back to my comments completely establishing the fact that Tibet cannot be pointed to as either an economic success or a

success of population relocation. Second, Xinjiang doesn't have factories, it has crop plantations, wind farms, oil and natural gas wells,

and coal mines. Take your sentence: "If you have good freight links, a crop plantation/wind farm/oil or gas well/coal mine can be put pretty

much anywhere." <-- this sentence is completely incorrect.

You say: Because it was done badly, and for the wrong reasons.

Oh ho ho ho. This is hilarious. First of all, I need you to tell me how the reasons for trying to Sinify Xinjiang during the Qing dynasty

were 1) "wrong" and 2) different from the CCP's reasons today. Secondly, I need you to tell me what possibly makes you think the CCP is

capable of NOT doing it "badly." Because if it tried, it would do it badly. Oh yes. I'm not going to let you get away with a sloppy

allegation like this.

You say: A massive population shift isn't required, only a series of small shifts. Why move 1 million people out of Shanghai only to have

them start up another big city that has the exact same problems? What you want to do is to build up the economies of the small towns and

cities. A couple of hundred people here, a thousand people there. The aim is not to turn a province into an industrial hub, it is to make the

small towns and cities that already exist more attractive to business by offering companies incentives to set up there. Small industrial and

residential boosts spread out over a wide area so that no single area takes a hit bigger than its natural resources can handle. You are

thinking on too grand a scale.

Spreading out residential and industrial areas sounds sort of similar to a demographic phenomenon known as suburbanization. Surburbanization

has become a pretty bad problem in the United States. Traffic, pollution, urban sprawl, decay of the inner city. Like I said before, no

considerable population shift can occur without thousands of negative, unintended consequences. Do you really think millions of Chinese

people would be content to live in a spread out sprawl of medium sized cities? Do you think that, if they do not own cars, they will be

content staying in their artificially modern villages, unable to get around with a public transportation system that can only exist in a

larger city? Or do you think that if all these people did own cars to see family members, go out for recreation, or buy groceries, that the

effect of millions of new vehicles won't have just as detrimental effect on the environment? Or do you think you can solve this problem by

putting movie theaters, dance clubs, super markets, and what not into these cities? When you do that, won't you need people to hire and work

and manage and maintain these places? Won't this idyllic little city then become yet another metropolis? If you take 100 million people who

live at the mouth of the Yangzi and spread them out evenly along the length of the river, are they still not pouring the same amount of

refuge into the river itself? Oh, move them away from the river you say, right? Well, they were pouring factory byproducts into the river,

now they'll just bury it underground or burn it into the air. You have a 100 square kilometers and 80% live in 20 of them. You mandate even

redistribution. Did you ever stop and bother why they were in those 20 sqkm in the first place? Do the other 80 offer whatever the populated

20 offer? Will the resettled people in the other 80 have the same opportunities and resources? Again, your whole proposal is entirely based

on simplistic, juvenile thinking. This is way, way more complex than you're bothering stating - or perhaps capable of thinking.

You say: If you break down this flow on a ethnic basis, ethnic Tibetans are leaving because there are fewer and fewer opportunities for them.

Given that 92% of the Tibetan population is Tibetan, I think that probably means people are indeed flowing out of - wait... I already said

this. Oh yeah.

You say: You're thinking on too big a scale. recreating them would just recreate the problem. You've missed the point again. Beijing should

be working on many small scale projects, not a few mega projects. The aim is to spread people out, not to gather them together.

I love how this is the second time you're admonishing for me thinking to "big" when you've admitted *the goal of your proposal is to somehow

move hundreds of millions of people out of the East Coast to relive population pressure.* Listen, if your evisioned goal is the relief of

problems caused by having too many people you can't reach your goal without taking many people out. Yeah, yeah, you're saying "we'll

redistribute them evenly!" but is really that simple? If we're talking about relieving the east coast of, say, 100 million people, the

"smaller" the projects that relocate them, the more varied and numerous they have to be. Just for the sake of discussion, if we were to break

this block of people into groups of 10 million, you'd have to have 10 projects in 10 different locations. If you broke them into 5 million,

you'd have to have 20 projects in more locations. In order to break this number of people into "small scale projects" you'd have to diversify

China's economy WAY more than is even humanly possible (now, we have my envisioning of a hopeful Chinese future that involves serious reform

in education - and that is the proper way you can restructure an economy, as opposed to some government mandated nonsense which ALWAYS has

failed in modern Chinese history - but who cares about what I think, right), and already China's manufacturing economy is diversified to the

hilt.And if you say, well, just take less people out of the dense regions - you're lessening the effect you intended to make in the first place. Again, again, and again: it's not as simple as you think it is and want it to be.

You say: Somebody always looses out, but it needs to be done. The big cities are unsustainable. They create pollution and suck up resources

faster than they can be replenished. People need to be spread out fo rthe greater good of China.

So it was cool that the Americans obliterated the Native Americans to become the world's top power, right? It was for the greater good of

America. Wait, is this the same ACB that was lecturing me on the immoralities of genocide a few comments up? Heh heh heh.

You say: So, you're a Manchukuo kinda guy?

Wait, what the fuck is this even supposed to mean? Is this supposed to be clever? Yes, according to my standard if I freaking was alive

during the 1930s I would indeed call North East China Manchukuo, good thing Japan was kicked out and now, I summon my standard, mind you, the

power with control over these areas calls them Jilin, Heilongjiang, and Liaoning, so that's what I called them. What a stupid observation. If there's one thing I hate more than an idiotic observation it's one that's made as if it were a smart one.

You say: According to pretty much every world government Beijing has "consistent, efficient, and uncontested control" over Taiwan. The fact

on the ground might say otherwise, but they often do.

What the fuck is this supposed to mean too? You're losing your steam, my friend. You quoted my standard correctly: I call a place by the name

of the entity that has consistent, efficient, and uncontest control over it. I did NOT SAY I call it by the name that the entity that

everyone else thinks or says has control over it, which is what I would have had to have said in order for this pithy point you've

ineffectually lobbed in my general direction to mean anything. I call Taiwan Taiwan and I've stuck by my standard and you absolutely have not

poked any hole in it here. Weaksauce. You are awarded no points.

You say: Really, weren't you saying the exact same thing about East Turkestan?

What???

You say: Go on, tell me how many foreigners could find 内蒙古自治区 on a map? You practically have to stick a flag in an atlas to let most

foreigners know where Taiwan is, these days. It's nothing personal, it's just the most common translation.

How many Westerns could find Xinjiang on a map? Weaksauce question. It implies finding something on a map is a standard for naming a place,

and that's totally idio - I mean, silly billy. Also, if we're talking about "most common translation," have a gander and eat your foot:

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=xinjiang&word2=east+t urkestan

Most Westerners neither know Xinjiang nor East Turkestan, but if they were to know one and not the other Xinjiang is absolutely the term to

go with. If you're changing you're standard (and you are, since the last one was utterly pohuai'ed) to "what readers will understand," again,

your own words are now gleefully shoved back down your throat.

Also again, you have yet, in ANY capacity whatsoever, to address at all my explanation of the origins of the term "East Turkestan" and how

this makes you incorrect by your own standards. Several times in this rebuttal I have written I have pointed out very important points - not

peripheral at all - that go far in illustrating how farcical your ideas are and you have not said one word in response. It's very telling.

You say: Usually, ACB calls it, Liaoning, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Hebei, and so on. ACB only really ever says Inner Mongolia when referring to

Western reports than name it so, and then it' mostly to avoid confusion. See above. If you say Jilin in one sentence and Inner Mongolia in

the next, most foreigners will think that you are talking about two different places.

I didn't ask you what you called those provinces. I asked you what you call Inner Mongolia and why, and thereafter you should tell us what

you call Xinjiang, and why. You cannot avoid being called a hypocrite. Both Xinjiang and the "Inner" of Inner Mongolia were given during the

Qing Dynasty. Both names are designed to imply the centrality of inner China. Both names are contested by the local populations. Both names

are the most conventional ways that the areas are referred to by both the ruling government and outside agencies (far more than East

Turkestan). Yet you use one but not the other. The bottom line is you've been called out for being inconsistent and a hypocrite but because

you're so smug and self-aggrandizing you can't admit you're wrong. And again I'd like to point out that's the ultimate hypocrisy because

you're whole blog is based on calling out people for being wrong and wishing they would confront their own shortcomings. Time for some Zen

self-reflection.

You say: Most of the points in your previous post either don't require meeting, many are not in contention and many are irrelevant to the

issue at hand, or had you forgotten what the issue was.

Along with crying ad hominem, another rallying cry for internet dilletants incapable of mustering a response. Note here I've graciously

responded to every section of your response. Crying "irrelevant" is 99.9% of the time an excuse to avoid a tricky situation or admitting

wrong and that's exactly what's going on here. I dare you to articulately respond to each and every point I've laid here regardless of how

"irrelevant" you judge it to be - because indeed, you are the only one judging which points are irrelevant and this is a subjective

evaluation and naturally you have always sidestepped those points I have made which are most damaging to your position or claims. Address

what I have said. This debate is littered with dozens of points I have made that you have left unaddressed. I, on the other hand, always

address what you have to say. You can surmise this just at a glance; my responses are always 3 or 4 times longer then yours. I don't care if

they're long winded or if you're the only person reading them. I make my points.

You say: Allow ACB to restate it: China's resources and pollution and resource problem is caused by over concentration or population and

industry, not by a lack of resources. It's pretty much irrelevant if a scheme to attract a million people to East Turkestan failed 100 years

ago, because that's actually the complete opposite of what needs to be done today. Businesses go to big cities because of transport links,

facilities and state incentives. If these were distributed more widely, then so too would industry be. To put it bluntly, if the government

made it worth people's while to set up businesses elsewhere, then they would set them up elsewhere.

I've been quite thorough in my rebuttal and so I've addressed these points, but if you've summed up, I will to. First of all, "lack of

resources?" What the hell? If you're so noble as to continually address Xinjiang as East Turkestan, thus implying that it's not a part of

China, then "lack of resources" is actually a huge freaking problem which is precisely why China is so busily exploiting resources outside of

China (in East Turkestan!) to feed the rapid appetite for energy that has developed in the interior an appetite that will not change one iota

if half the population of Jiangsu ended up in Sichuan - both are outside of "East Turkestan" and both require this "foreign country's"

resources to supply their own - let's not even get into the intricate Chinese diplomatic relationships with resource rich Central Asian

nations, including the pipeline from Kazakhstan to Shanghai, nor China's resource seeking expeditions in other parts of the world, most

prominently AFrica. I don't know when the hell you wanted to shift this discussion to "lack of resources" - I never said "lack of resources"

caused overpopulation in the East, I only said "lack of resources" is one of myriad reasons that overpopulation in the East can't be undone

and thrown back into the interior. Next, it's absolutely not irrelevant that Xinjiang colonization attempts failed in the past because they

are a control group we can use in discovering precisely what is causing success today - and as I've reiterated several times and as you have

always, reliably ignored, that cause is Xinjiang's energy economy which springs forth from a feature Xinjiang has that other regions doesn't

have - including Tibet, which is and will remain far poorer than Xinjiang although both were very poor at the beginning of the 20th century.

Next, if you think that big businesses go to cities because of only 3 factors - "transport links, facilities, and state incentives" - you're

an idio - a dum dum. There are thousands, THOUSANDS of reasons why businesses go to big cities, and state incentives are a small, SMALL part

of them. Transport links? Well, as I have encouraged you several times, you have to go beyond just one layer and ask why transport links are

arranged as they are in the first place. Facilities? Go a step further and ask why infrastructure exited in Jiangsu and not in Yunnan. Next,

you overestimate the role the government can play in the economy - it's unreliable and unpredictable, just in the case of rescusitating

existing industries like in the US, LET ALONE, using government power to RELOCATE human lives. This philosophy of yours is ironic given

modern China's history of the government always thinking it knows what the fuck it's doing but reliably failing and royally fucking up every

time - except with the reform and opening, which you brought up and I had to remind you was the one instance of the government saying "Here's

something we WON'T do anymore" rather than something they WOULD do.

Owned. Again.

P.S. Stop referring to yourself in the third person. It makes you look like a huge fucking pri- wait a minute. Actually, continue this practice. It is quite accurate. Thanks.

Jiminey cricket! That last post came out terribly. For your reading sanity I'm positing it again reformmated. It's up to you to delete the wonked out post. Or all three of these posts for that matter, if you like censorship. ;D

Ad hominem? Perhaps. But if you want to put it that way, I invite you to describe in your own words your complete and amusing misunderstanding of irony I used. As you continued to congratulate yourself on discovering the defintion of population density, I decided to outline how unoriginal and preposterous your idea was by sarcastically proposing the massacre all the unproductive individuals of China, specifically because it acheived the same goals you have outlined but is similarly unimplementable for moral reasons I was quite aware of when I wrote it. Sarcastically. Ironically. Yet you responded in all seriousness, giving me a quick lesson on morals. What am I supposed to call that? You can dimiss it by shouting "ad hominum" all you want - a favorite technique of xanga and livejournal philosophers, I might add - but the fact remains that taking irony seriously absolutely reflects a lack of intellectual vigor, or, stupidity, one could say.

Did you read A Modest Proposal? You know what it is, right? A proposal to solve economic problems by cooking and eating babies? I'm sure there were at least a few people in England and Ireland who read Swift's work and in utter shock, said, "I can't believe this writer is proposing we eat babies!" and go on to tell their friends why eating babies is wrong. Surely you and I can agree and call such people idiots. So "Ad hominum, ad hominum" away, my friend. You like to say "ad hom attacks" are the last resort of the desperate but step back a moment, look around the interwebs, and you'll slowly realize, much to your chagrin, that whining "ad hominum ad hominum" is the true marker of the desperate. It is the crutch of the mentally careless. It's also based on the assumption that people who do stupid things somehow have the magical right to not be called out on their stupidity. But have you ever thought about that? Does that right really exist? Why can't someone be called an idiot if the accuser explains and outlines the idiocy? Just remember, ad hominum is only a legitimate logical fallacy of the person who is carrying out personal attacks is substiting that attack for legitimate counterargument. However, when the point being established indeed *is* the stupidity of the other party, it's totally legitimate should the arguer supply the evidence - and ironically, I didn't really supply the evidence, you did, I just pointed it out. Also, ad hominum doesn't apply here as well because me calling you out for being stupid did *not* substitute my argument as a whole - more followed. You should brush up on your terms a little bit, and I advise you learn your logical fallacies from places other than blogs or message boards.

Anyways, since you can't seem to keep your respones in order, the first question I pose for you is, if I'm being ad hominum, what's the best way to point out the... shall we say, laughable incorrect-ness... of you having taken irony literally? If not stupid, then what? Enlighten me. But don't expect me to let you off the hook for doing something as stupid as taking an ironic tone seriously.

You said: No, you said that in your last post.

No, you said it. Here's the exact quote. "There are two primary reasons why the coastal provinces have attracted the most people. firstly Beijing set up special economic zones and supplied intensives that allowed these areas to become more developed that the rest of China, and secondly because once these areas had become more developed the local governments could afford to offer more intensives themselves."

You say: That one is simple. Because of their location. Coastal regions, good for imports and export and manufacturing. They were based on the existing concepts of the concession. Except they weren't run by foreigners.

Thanks for verifying what I've been saying all along. Location. Location is something Zhejiang has that Guangxi doesn't. Zhejiang will always be where Zhejiang is and Guangxi will always be where Guangxi is. Great!

You say: You are still purposefully avoiding the point: The problems that you mentioned in your earlier post are caused by the mass concentration of people and industry and could be significantly reduced by population redistribution.

Actually, I didn't avoid the point. A few points up, I congratulated you for figuring out what everyone already knows, that "population redistribution" will solve a number of social problems. In fact, to underscore that this is not some sort of revelation, I solved the nuclear problem, global warming, terrorism, and the energy problem. To further establish my point, I ironically delivered a solution to China's population problem that for some reason you swallowed literally in one gulp like a chump. Never have I disputed the fact that "redistributing" the population will solve the "population density" problem (am I permitted here a jovial "No Shit Sherlock?" Or would that 伤害 your 感情?) Point addressed: any Joe down the road can tell you the conditions required to solve a pressing world problem, the fact remains that the way you're flippantly describing these conditions are unrealistic and unimplementable.

You say: They were also lacking in Tibet and East Turkestan, UNTIL BEIJING BUILT THEM.

No, Beijing didn't build the oil, gas, and coal deposits in Xinjiang. They found them. Beijing also didn't build Zhejiang's proximity to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and international markets. Beijing perhaps did build the oil wells extracting the black gold, and the factory/transportation infrastruction that taps Zhejiang's proximity to the world markets. But that's irrelevant. Those oil wells and merchant infrastructures are generating prosperity because they are taking advantage of features endemic to those regions.

Furthermore, you have conveniently and completely sidestepped an observation I made to cut the legs out from under your arguments, namely, you're citing migration to Tibet and Xinjiang as "evidence" of successful Beijing relocation projects, except that Tibet actually isn't a successful relocation project. =\.

You say: Beijing could encourage central migration in 100 ways.

Sure. But just because you will encourage something doesn't mean it will happen. The dynasties from Han to Qing used more than 100 ways to encourage migration to the frontiers.

You say: It would actually be cheaper to set up factories in central China than on the coasts because the cost of living is lower, if only Beijing would put in the transport links.

A business friend of mine just switched from buying bottle caps from Xinjiang to buying bottle caps in Guangdong because they're cheaper. ^_ Cost of living isn't the only factor in setting prices but you've shown a repeated and unbroken tendency to attribute economic phenomenon to one factor alone. Cost of living may lower prices for factories in the interior but the price, for example, of rebuilding the streamlined and developed production lines and management systems of areas with decades of experience could very well be prohibitive. Again, in terms of your ideas for solving China's problems, you're all about touting the conditions that will solve the problems but being sparse with explaining how we can get there. Anyone can describe the successful endgame to all sorts of huge problems - it's jus that you're the only one patting yourself on the back for it.

You say: Lay down some fiber optics and you could have an entire city based on IT. India did it, so why not China?

Yes, because a bunch of uneducated migrant workers who sew Nike sweaters in Guangdong will be stunningly productive in an "IT" city. Right. Anyways, if you want to know my take on solving China's problems (and you certainly don't), including things like population overload and pollution, my personal views, in contrast to yours, have a lot to do with rewiring and reworking the (currently horrid and ineffectual) education system. In a nutshell, I favor grassroots, voluntary, self-directed reform starting with today's youth (i.e. tomorrow's workforce), who themselves would ideally direct China's restructuring, in contrast to you, who prefer the wise sages of Beijing toss chunks of population across the playing field. But that's content for a different discussion.

You say: Again, Tibet, East Turkestan. Put in the infrastructure and offer incentives, and people come running.

Again, I already addressed that point in the last comment and you totally, 100%, shamelessly sidestepped it. Since reform and opening, Xinjiang's success it's utterly and completely disproportionate to the scant gains Tibet have made. Why? Because it's far more than infrastructure and incentives, as you so crudely and simply put it. The "infrastructure and incentives" that pulled Xinjiang out of the poverty mire WAY beyond Tibet and even past Sichuan were, for the bagillionth time, features ENDEMIC to Xinjiang and lacking in Tibet. The infrastructure enriching Xinjiang is the energy industry. You don't extract energy out of a vacuum, otherwise, they would've done the same with Tibet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_China_administrative_divisions_by_GDP_ per_capita

I'll make it loud and clear: your fantasy that Beijing has some godlike power to part the population masses is based on the entirely erroneous "examples" of Tibet and Xinjiang. Only, Tibet is not an example, and the reasons Xinjiang is one are not Beijing's magical powers but Beijing's exploitation of resources that existed in Xinjiang and not elsewhere. But again you're more than welcome like you did with this last post to *completely* ignore this point which kicks the foundation out from under the point you're making. Talk about cherry picking! :)

You say: You mean like the decision to allow capitalist enterprise, or the decision to offer businesses incentives to start up there? If location was only factor, why is half of the East Coast still populated by small fishing villages?

Yes, the decision to allow capitalist enterprise! Note the operative word here: ALLOW. Allow, allow, allow. The "human decision" that you are worshipping so much was actually a PASSIVE removal of a restraint. Let's say it again: ALLOW. The verb allow implies the lifting of restrictions. Allow. This decision you're referring to so enthusiastically was nothing more than the eradication of stupid socialist policies, thus allowing China to grow in its own way. Those places with the advantages required for fast economic growth, who previously were constrained by stupid Maoist ideologies, were ALLOWED to prosper. Those places without those advantages were unfortunately consigned to their fate. Allow. Allow the geographic and demographic contous of the country to do what they're capable of. The "decision" you smugly referred to was not something that actively caused anything, it was a passive ALLOWance of each region to do what it is capable of doing.And location is not the only factor, only you are interpreting it that way, because you have a simple mind and can only accept one cause per one effect. My argument here is that there are millions of causes. Your argument rests on only one cause - "where people are", and so you naively think that if this one cause is altered or moved, then the effect will be too. I say things are more complex than that, but perhaps you live in a simple, simple world.

You say: ACB didn't say that, please be more careful. This isn't a debate about productivity, it is a debate about population density. This is why Beijing needs to offer companies incentives to move into central regions.

ACB likes to simplify. Productivity and population density are inextricably linked. People go to where they can be productive and make a living. Places that have a readily available labor force are more productive. It's kind of stu- oh wait, let's not forget ACB'S 感情 - it's kind of silly to think that productivity and population density shouldn't be discussed in the same arena. Throughout this discussion you have established consistently and repeatedly that you have an unnerving tendency to simplify things inordinately. No wonder you think everyone is so stupid for not solving these problems, again, I say that I'd be angry too if the world were so simple.

You say: Again with the productivity? Do you, or do you not, understand the concept of subsidies? The state wants people to move so it put in place schemes to compensate them. For example, tax breaks.

Of course I understand what subsidies are. The point I've tried to hammer into your skull repeatedly is that all you seem to be saying is if "subsidies" or "incentives" were created in the interior then the problems would be solved. This is the extent of your brilliant plan - revealed when a reader of your blog decided to call out you out on your smug assuredness and say, "Everyone knows this, what about doing it?" Like I said before (If you notice me saying "like I said before" a lot, it's because you always ignore points that you are unable to address"), *governmental* incentives do not create business. Governmental incentives are one of a million incentives that govern the way a business operates - profits, shareholders, supply and demand, market, blah blah blah. Government incentives are only one factor in a whirling maelstrom of an equation. But as has been demonstrated without end, in this argument it comes to you seeing things from a simplistic, reductionist, and mostly erroneous point of view and me arguing for a far more nuanced, complex view of things. Tax breaks? If you treat them as one variable among many, then you may use them wisely. If you view them as a sole factor, however... well, 2005-2009 America is case in point.

You say: Again, please read what ACB has written more carefully. Mao redistributed labor, ACB is only talking about changing the location in which labor takes place. Realistically, you can locate a factory anywhere just so long as raw materials can get in and finished products can get out. Labor is mobile, it will follow the factory (In fact, many Chinese factory workers are migrants who live in factory owned dorms. They came to the factory, not the other way round).

Wait, is this the same ACB that was suggesting China make "IT" cities as a way to encourage population redistribution? Mao makes farmers be steelmakers, ACB wants the people who are clogging the east (a bunch of uneducated migrant workers) to work in fiber-opticified IT cities. Also, I love the next sentence, which, like many sentences you've written, actually support my arguments if scrutinized. Notice how you sneakily tuck "as long as the raw materials can get in and the finished products can get out" into a subordinate clause. What does "as long as" mean? It qualifies a statement. It defines a statement's requirements. Once again, things go in and out much easier at Fujian than at Guangxi, and like you so kindly said earlier, a lot of it has to do with location. The moment Thailand and Myanmar become wealthy first world countries with a ravenous consumer population, Yunnan and Sichuan too will rocket into prosperity. And why are you mentioning that factory workers go to the factories? It really merits another no shi- I mean, no poop, Sherlock. They came to the factories. I, unlike simple little you, bother to ask why the factories are in the places they're at to begin with. For you, they're on the East Coast only because some Beijing fat cat put them there - and that's the only reason and you stop there. I think there are thousands of reasons, Beijing is only one of them.

You say: If you have good freight links a factory can be put pretty much anywhere. Ala Tibet and East Turkestan.

First, I point you back to my comments completely establishing the fact that Tibet cannot be pointed to as either an economic success or a success of population relocation. Second, Xinjiang doesn't have factories, it has crop plantations, wind farms, oil and natural gas wells, and coal mines. Take your sentence: "If you have good freight links, a crop plantation/wind farm/oil or gas well/coal mine can be put pretty much anywhere." <-- this sentence is completely incorrect.

You say: Because it was done badly, and for the wrong reasons.

Oh ho ho ho. This is hilarious. First of all, I need you to tell me how the reasons for trying to Sinify Xinjiang during the Qing dynasty were 1) "wrong" and 2) different from the CCP's reasons today. Secondly, I need you to tell me what possibly makes you think the CCP is capable of NOT doing it "badly." Because if it tried, it would do it badly. Oh yes. I'm not going to let you get away with a sloppy allegation like this.

You say: A massive population shift isn't required, only a series of small shifts. Why move 1 million people out of Shanghai only to have them start up another big city that has the exact same problems? What you want to do is to build up the economies of the small towns and cities. A couple of hundred people here, a thousand people there. The aim is not to turn a province into an industrial hub, it is to make the small towns and cities that already exist more attractive to business by offering companies incentives to set up there. Small industrial and residential boosts spread out over a wide area so that no single area takes a hit bigger than its natural resources can handle. You are thinking on too grand a scale.

Spreading out residential and industrial areas sounds sort of similar to a demographic phenomenon known as suburbanization. Surburbanization has become a pretty bad problem in the United States. Traffic, pollution, urban sprawl, decay of the inner city. Like I said before, no considerable population shift can occur without thousands of negative, unintended consequences. Do you really think millions of Chinese people would be content to live in a spread out sprawl of medium sized cities? Do you think that, if they do not own cars, they will be content staying in their artificially modern villages, unable to get around with a public transportation system that can only exist in a larger city? Or do you think that if all these people did own cars to see family members, go out for recreation, or buy groceries, that the effect of millions of new vehicles won't have just as detrimental effect on the environment? Or do you think you can solve this problem by putting movie theaters, dance clubs, super markets, and what not into these cities? When you do that, won't you need people to hire and work and manage and maintain these places? Won't this idyllic little city then become yet another metropolis? If you take 100 million people who live at the mouth of the Yangzi and spread them out evenly along the length of the river, are they still not pouring the same amount of refuge into the river itself? Oh, move them away from the river you say, right? Well, they were pouring factory byproducts into the river, now they'll just bury it underground or burn it into the air. You have a 100 square kilometers and 80% live in 20 of them. You mandate even redistribution. Did you ever stop and bother why they were in those 20 sqkm in the first place? Do the other 80 offer whatever the populated 20 offer? Will the resettled people in the other 80 have the same opportunities and resources? Again, your whole proposal is entirely based on simplistic, juvenile thinking. This is way, way more complex than you're bothering stating - or perhaps capable of thinking.

You say: If you break down this flow on a ethnic basis, ethnic Tibetans are leaving because there are fewer and fewer opportunities for them.

Given that 92% of the Tibetan population is Tibetan, I think that probably means people are indeed flowing out of - wait... I already said this. Oh yeah.

You say: You're thinking on too big a scale. recreating them would just recreate the problem. You've missed the point again. Beijing should be working on many small scale projects, not a few mega projects. The aim is to spread people out, not to gather them together.

I love how this is the second time you're admonishing for me thinking to "big" when you've admitted *the goal of your proposal is to somehow move hundreds of millions of people out of the East Coast to relive population pressure.* Listen, if your evisioned goal is the relief of problems caused by having too many people you can't reach your goal without taking many people out. Yeah, yeah, you're saying "we'll redistribute them evenly!" but is really that simple? If we're talking about relieving the east coast of, say, 100 million people, the "smaller" the projects that relocate them, the more varied and numerous they have to be. Just for the sake of discussion, if we were to break this block of people into groups of 10 million, you'd have to have 10 projects in 10 different locations. If you broke them into 5 million, you'd have to have 20 projects in more locations. In order to break this number of people into "small scale projects" you'd have to diversify China's economy WAY more than is even humanly possible (now, we have my envisioning of a hopeful Chinese future that involves serious reform in education - and that is the proper way you can restructure an economy, as opposed to some government mandated nonsense which ALWAYS has failed in modern Chinese history - but who cares about what I think, right), and already China's manufacturing economy is diversified to the hilt.And if you say, well, just take less people out of the dense regions - you're lessening the effect you intended to make in the first place. Again, again, and again: it's not as simple as you think it is and want it to be.

You say: Somebody always looses out, but it needs to be done. The big cities are unsustainable. They create pollution and suck up resources faster than they can be replenished. People need to be spread out fo rthe greater good of China.

So it was cool that the Americans obliterated the Native Americans to become the world's top power, right? It was for the greater good of America. Wait, is this the same ACB that was lecturing me on the immoralities of genocide a few comments up? Heh heh heh.

You say: So, you're a Manchukuo kinda guy?

Wait, what the fuck is this even supposed to mean? Is this supposed to be clever? Yes, according to my standard if I freaking was alive during the 1930s I would indeed call North East China Manchukuo, good thing Japan was kicked out and now, I summon my standard, mind you, the power with control over these areas calls them Jilin, Heilongjiang, and Liaoning, so that's what I called them. What a stupid observation. If there's one thing I hate more than an idiotic observation it's one that's made as if it were a smart one.

You say: According to pretty much every world government Beijing has "consistent, efficient, and uncontested control" over Taiwan. The fact on the ground might say otherwise, but they often do.

What the fuck is this supposed to mean too? You're losing your steam, my friend. You quoted my standard correctly: I call a place by the name of the entity that has consistent, efficient, and uncontest control over it. I did NOT SAY I call it by the name that the entity that everyone else thinks or says has control over it, which is what I would have had to have said in order for this pithy point you've ineffectually lobbed in my general direction to mean anything. I call Taiwan Taiwan and I've stuck by my standard and you absolutely have not poked any hole in it here. Weaksauce. You are awarded no points.

You say: Really, weren't you saying the exact same thing about East Turkestan?

What???

You say: Go on, tell me how many foreigners could find 内蒙古自治区 on a map? You practically have to stick a flag in an atlas to let most foreigners know where Taiwan is, these days. It's nothing personal, it's just the most common translation.

How many Westerns could find Xinjiang on a map? Weaksauce question. It implies finding something on a map is a standard for naming a place, and that's totally idio - I mean, silly billy. Also, if we're talking about "most common translation," have a gander and eat your foot:

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=xinjiang&word2=east+t urkestan

Most Westerners neither know Xinjiang nor East Turkestan, but if they were to know one and not the other Xinjiang is absolutely the term to go with. If you're changing you're standard (and you are, since the last one was utterly pohuai'ed) to "what readers will understand," again, your own words are now gleefully shoved back down your throat.

Also again, you have yet, in ANY capacity whatsoever, to address at all my explanation of the origins of the term "East Turkestan" and how this makes you incorrect by your own standards. Several times in this rebuttal I have written I have pointed out very important points - not peripheral at all - that go far in illustrating how farcical your ideas are and you have not said one word in response. It's very telling.

You say: Usually, ACB calls it, Liaoning, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Hebei, and so on. ACB only really ever says Inner Mongolia when referring to Western reports than name it so, and then it' mostly to avoid confusion. See above. If you say Jilin in one sentence and Inner Mongolia in the next, most foreigners will think that you are talking about two different places.

I didn't ask you what you called those provinces. I asked you what you call Inner Mongolia and why, and thereafter you should tell us what you call Xinjiang, and why. You cannot avoid being called a hypocrite. Both Xinjiang and the "Inner" of Inner Mongolia were given during the Qing Dynasty. Both names are designed to imply the centrality of inner China. Both names are contested by the local populations. Both names are the most conventional ways that the areas are referred to by both the ruling government and outside agencies (far more than East Turkestan). Yet you use one but not the other. The bottom line is you've been called out for being inconsistent and a hypocrite but because you're so smug and self-aggrandizing you can't admit you're wrong. And again I'd like to point out that's the ultimate hypocrisy because you're whole blog is based on calling out people for being wrong and wishing they would confront their own shortcomings. Time for some Zen self-reflection.

You say: Most of the points in your previous post either don't require meeting, many are not in contention and many are irrelevant to the issue at hand, or had you forgotten what the issue was.

Along with crying ad hominem, another rallying cry for internet dilletants incapable of mustering a response. Note here I've graciously responded to every section of your response. Crying "irrelevant" is 99.9% of the time an excuse to avoid a tricky situation or admitting wrong and that's exactly what's going on here. I dare you to articulately respond to each and every point I've laid here regardless of how "irrelevant" you judge it to be - because indeed, you are the only one judging which points are irrelevant and this is a subjective evaluation and naturally you have always sidestepped those points I have made which are most damaging to your position or claims. Address what I have said. This debate is littered with dozens of points I have made that you have left unaddressed. I, on the other hand, always address what you have to say. You can surmise this just at a glance; my responses are always 3 or 4 times longer then yours. I don't care if they're long winded or if you're the only person reading them. I make my points.

You say: Allow ACB to restate it: China's resources and pollution and resource problem is caused by over concentration or population and industry, not by a lack of resources. It's pretty much irrelevant if a scheme to attract a million people to East Turkestan failed 100 years ago, because that's actually the complete opposite of what needs to be done today. Businesses go to big cities because of transport links, facilities and state incentives. If these were distributed more widely, then so too would industry be. To put it bluntly, if the government made it worth people's while to set up businesses elsewhere, then they would set them up elsewhere.

I've been quite thorough in my rebuttal and so I've addressed these points, but if you've summed up, I will to. First of all, "lack of resources?" What the hell? If you're so noble as to continually address Xinjiang as East Turkestan, thus implying that it's not a part of China, then "lack of resources" is actually a huge freaking problem which is precisely why China is so busily exploiting resources outside of China (in East Turkestan!) to feed the rapid appetite for energy that has developed in the interior an appetite that will not change one iota if half the population of Jiangsu ended up in Sichuan - both are outside of "East Turkestan" and both require this "foreign country's" resources to supply their own - let's not even get into the intricate Chinese diplomatic relationships with resource rich Central Asian nations, including the pipeline from Kazakhstan to Shanghai, nor China's resource seeking expeditions in other parts of the world, most prominently AFrica. I don't know when the hell you wanted to shift this discussion to "lack of resources" - I never said "lack of resources" caused overpopulation in the East, I only said "lack of resources" is one of myriad reasons that overpopulation in the East can't be undone and thrown back into the interior. Next, it's absolutely not irrelevant that Xinjiang colonization attempts failed in the past because they are a control group we can use in discovering precisely what is causing success today - and as I've reiterated several times and as you have always, reliably ignored, that cause is Xinjiang's energy economy which springs forth from a feature Xinjiang has that other regions doesn't have - including Tibet, which is and will remain far poorer than Xinjiang although both were very poor at the beginning of the 20th century. Next, if you think that big businesses go to cities because of only 3 factors - "transport links, facilities, and state incentives" - you're an idio - a dum dum. There are thousands, THOUSANDS of reasons why businesses go to big cities, and state incentives are a small, SMALL part of them. Transport links? Well, as I have encouraged you several times, you have to go beyond just one layer and ask why transport links are arranged as they are in the first place. Facilities? Go a step further and ask why infrastructure exited in Jiangsu and not in Yunnan. Next, you overestimate the role the government can play in the economy - it's unreliable and unpredictable, just in the case of rescusitating existing industries like in the US, LET ALONE, using government power to RELOCATE human lives. This philosophy of yours is ironic given modern China's history of the government always thinking it knows what the fuck it's doing but reliably failing and royally fucking up every time - except with the reform and opening, which you brought up and I had to remind you was the one instance of the government saying "Here's something we WON'T do anymore" rather than something they WOULD do.

Owned. Again.

P.S. Stop referring to yourself in the third person. It makes you look like a huge fucking pri- wait a minute. Actually, continue this practice. It is quite accurate. Thanks.

"if I'm being ad hominum, what's the best way to point out the... shall we say, laughable incorrect-ness... of you having taken irony literally"

Alternatively, you wrote something pretty nasty in anger and are now trying to take it back. you wouldn't be the first person to do this.

"Location is something"

Location wherever Beijing chooses. The point is that if Beijing had chosen somewhere else then most of these locations would still be fishing villages. they would not be what they are today if Beijing hadn't designated them for development.

"A few points up, I congratulated you for figuring out what everyone already knows, that "population redistribution" will solve a number of social problems."

So why oh why did you spend half of your last post hammering on about population centralization schemes not working? It sounds suspiciously like you miss understood everything and thought that ACB was suggesting that Beijing should build a new Shanghai in central China, and were trying to tell ACB that it wouldn't work now because it hadn't worked in the past.

"伤害 your 感情"

Is it so hard to write that sentence entirely in Chinese?

"the fact remains that the way you're flippantly describing these conditions are unrealistic and unimplementable"

So, it's unrealistic for Beijing to offer economic subsidies for companies to set up in small towns? you are still thinking on too big a scale. ACB isn't talking about creating mega cities, only about encouraging local industrial development. It's hardly rocket science, and it's been done a hundred times before. America's drive West, for example. Half of the British Empire was founded on this principle.

"Beijing didn't build the oil, gas, and coal deposits in Xinjiang."

Roads and pipelines, not oil.

"Beijing also didn't build Zhejiang's proximity to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and international markets."

No, but it provided businesses with all sorts of intensive to help them take advantage of all of the above. Government funded container ports and rent subsidized warehouses don't grow on trees.

"you're citing migration to Tibet and Xinjiang as "evidence" of successful Beijing relocation projects,"

East Turkestan was successful, Tibet is still in its early days. These projects take a long time. Besides, ACB didn't cite them as being successes or failure, ACB simply cited them as being attempts.

"Xinjiang to buying bottle caps in Guangdong because they're cheaper"

That would probably be down to economies of scale. Labor costs were a "for example".

"you're all about touting the conditions that will solve the problems but being sparse with explaining how we can get there."

ACB should stop you write there. Did you go to business school? Because ACB actually did, and a Western one at that. So ACB could write you a nice neat report explaining how government funds could be made available to allow cottage industries supplying a local market to expand into SMEs supplying a regional market, how the provision of enhanced transport links would open up the interior to commerce and how the state could use subsidies and tax breaks to off set the cost of relocation. ACB could also explain how when a company is supplying good to an international market it doesn't matter if they are located inside a container port or if they are located 100 miles from it so long as there are good transport links to get raw materials and finished goods out, because at the end of the day everything is going to spend 6 weeks on a container ship. But ACB doubts that you would actually read it through.

"because a bunch of uneducated migrant workers who sew Nike sweaters in Guangdong will be stunningly productive in an "IT" city"

No, but graduates from Shanghai might. I also put forward Dalian as an example of how you can build a technology center simply by offering state intensives.

"I'll make it loud and clear: your fantasy that Beijing has some godlike power to part the population masses is based on the entirely erroneous "examples" of Tibet and Xinjiang."

Wellll, there was the relocation of people because of the three gorges, and East turkestan was actually your example.

It's pretty much irrelevant anyway. ACB is talking about small scale relocations. Building an industrial park, not an entire city. The dynamics are completely different. In fact you don't even need to relocate businesses, you just provide smaller ones with the ability to expand cheaply to the point that they can encourage the local people to stay rather than to migrate to the coast. Once you have done that you can slowly build the local economies up to the point where they can naturally support large industries.

"The "human decision" that you are worshipping so much was actually a PASSIVE removal of a restraint"

ACB notes that most of the small fishing villages that had poor roads and no state subsidies to build infrastructure are still poor fishing villages with poor roads and no infrastructure.

Allowing commerce alone isn't enough. Would businesses have set up in Zhejiang nearly so readily if Beijing hadn't built roads and industrial parks for them to set up in?

"People go to where they can be productive and make a living"

But that's not the productivity that you were talking about, is it. You were talking about business output.

People go were the work is, and if you make it easier for businesses to start up in one area then the businesses will come and the people will follow (or in this case, not leave for the coast).

"Of course I understand what subsidies are. The point I've tried to hammer into your skull repeatedly is that all you seem to be saying is if "subsidies" or "incentives" were created in the interior then the problems would be solved."

No solved, reduced. The problem will not be solved until China's development is even.

"governmental* incentives do not create business."

No, but they attract it and allow it to expand. If you allow somebody to upgrade a workshop that already exists in a small town into a factory .....

"Mao makes farmers be steelmakers, ACB wants the people who are clogging the east (a bunch of uneducated migrant workers) to work in fiber-opticified IT cities"

Again, please read more carefully. ACB wants IT workers in Shanghai to relocate by offering them new opportunities else where. When they relocate the migrant workers who service them in the city will follow them. Somebody has to build the houses that they live in and run the restaurants that they eat their lunch. Remember your friend who moved his restaurant westward?

Equally, you can always build universities, that's how India did it. You don't think that Bangalore woke up one day and found that it was an IT hub, do you?

"Tibet cannot be pointed to as either an economic success or a success of population relocation."

No, but it is an example of the early stages of a mass migration program. A few years back they put in direct rail links, and in a few years time more pieces of the puzzle will be built. Again, you keep harking back to mass migration, why? ACB is envisioning the exact opposite of this as being the solution.

"I need you to tell me how the reasons for trying to Sinify Xinjiang during the Qing dynasty were 1) "wrong" and 2) different from the CCP's reasons today."

Is this more of your so-called irony, are are you just letting your fingers move faster than your brain? 1) Because it's a form of slow genocide. Remember when the Japanese did it in what was then Manchuria 2) Irony?

"Spreading out residential and industrial areas sounds sort of similar to a demographic phenomenon known as suburbanization."

That would just exasperate the problem. You can live in central Shanghai or you can live in the suburbs, but you've still got the same water supply and the same food supply. What needs to happen is instead of moving people to the peripheries of a big city, you need to provide them with incentive to leave the big cities all together and to spread out amongst the smaller cities that have their own water and food supplies, and so on. Don't move people 10KM, move them 100.

"Do you think that .... content staying in their artificially modern villages"

See above, there would be nothing artificial about it. ACB is not suggesting building suburbs. You are thinking too big again. ACB is suggesting that existing smaller cities be made more attractive. If people have opportunities in smaller cities then suburbs aren't required. Think smaller. If you could get just one or two factories to set up/expand in each of the central cities/large towns, you could remove the need for an entire suburb. And if you expand upon this ....

"the goal of your proposal is to somehow move hundreds of millions of people out of the East Coast to relive population pressure."

Again, too big. You don't need to move hundreds of millions. Just sufficient that the local resources can cope.

"In order to break this number of people into "small scale projects" you'd have to diversify China's economy WAY more than is even humanly possible"

Nope, you're forgetting how big China is.

As of 2007 China had 656 official cities. 1/3 of which had a population of less than 200,000. Distributing several million people amongst these and the thousands of towns and townships isn't too big a task, especially since many of them would be in secondary industries servicing the primary industries.

"So it was cool that the Americans obliterated the Native Americans to become the world's top power, right?"

No, America became the world's top power by enslaving the Africans and exploiting the fact that it's industry was still intact after WWII whereas everybody else's was decimated. Is this more irony?

"How many Westerns could find Xinjiang on a map? Weaksauce question. It implies finding something on a map is a standard for naming a place,"

No, it implies two things. 1) if you said zhongguo the odds are that most of the world's population would not know what you were talking about and 2) Most of the world's population is not familiar with geography beyond the basics.

"If you're changing you're standard (and you are, since the last one was utterly pohuai'ed) to "what readers will understand," again, your own words are now gleefully shoved back down your throat."

ACB calls East Turkestan East Turkestan out of solidarity with East Turkestan's quest for self determination. Nothing more, nothing less. This stands independent of what Beijing thinks, and of what you think, and of what any scholar that you care to mention thinks.

Now, it's getting late.

On a final note, ACB requests that you please stop cursing. Otherwise ACB will be forced to filter you.

Really, this discussion is grinding to a halt, because:

1) You’re absolutely refusing to address many points I’ve made, mostly the ones that show how farcical you are. 2) You’ve developed and clung to a habit whereby you plan on winning this argument simply by taking real world phenomenon and simplifying it so much that it fits into your poorly-thought out plans. The problem is that you didn’t expect someone to call you out on how stupid your underdeveloped ideas are – but now that you have been called out to preserve your “ACB is always right” self-image you have to make crap up as you go along. But you’re just digging the hole deeper. 3) Those points that you are responding to are gradually becoming overwhelmed by non sequitors that literally have nothing to do with what you claim your responding too, and 4) You’re retreating to a well-defined, well known set of pithy internet-philosopher strategies cyber-dilettantes like to use to snake out of a discussion, such as “ad hominum”, “that is irrelevant,” and what Sun-Tzu might have called “finding a peripheral excuse to censor someone because you can’t hack it anymore.”

I’ve read over your responses – or rather, your pathetic excuse for one – and again you’ve simply avoided what I’ve said, but for the sake of proving to you and any readers out there that I, unlike you, will take everything you say and systematically point out the flaws and stupidities of it (as I have been doing in all of my responses), I’m going to grind through it. By staying on topic, addressing every point with a counterpoint or an observation, and by not deploying trite internet clichés to avoid discomfort, I’m doing the opposite of what you’ve been doing and can show that whereas I’m still standing on both my feet you’ve now been reduced to wriggling out of the ring.

You say: Alternatively, you wrote something pretty nasty in anger and are now trying to take it back. you wouldn't be the first person to do this.

Non-sequitor. First of all, I require you to copy and paste my words and show me how precisely I am now “trying to take it back” because, pardon me, I’m not. Every since you took my ironically worded post seriously I’ve persisted in thinking that you must be of below average intelligence (after all, who said it took smarts to write a freaking blog), and I continue to think that now, and in the English language, “stupid” and “idiot” are words used to describe such people. We must first wonder why you are delivering this utter non-sequitor in the first place – “Why would ACB pretend to interpret Job is ‘taking it back’ when he did no such thing?” If we’re going to frolic among latin philosophical phrases (you started it), I think we call this ignoratio elenchi, or “red herring.” It’s a pretty juvenile logical fallacy whereby an arguer tries to bolster his position by framing his rival’s words erroneously. Nowhere have I taken anything back and if you think that you’re going to have to prove it. I still think you’re an idiot.

And one of the reasons I think that is I gave you a good dressing down on the meaning of ad-hominum which you did not reply too. It’s simply because you were wrong in your usage of it. Learned it from the internets. I invite any 3rd party readers to note that ACB ALWAYS ignores things that prove her wrong. Always. And I also want to observe that in order to solve the cognitive dissonance brought about by your failure – dissonance because you’re an arrogant prick who can’t accept being wrong – you simply tell yourself that it was “irrelevant” or you simply erase it from your memory. What don’t you get a little 胆 and take what I say head on.

You say: Location wherever Beijing chooses. The point is that if Beijing had chosen somewhere else then most of these locations would still be fishing villages. they would not be what they are today if Beijing hadn't designated them for development.

Inane simplification. This has to be the fifth or sixth time in this discussion where you state an obvious fact as if it resolves the dispute, when in fact all your observation does is invite someone with a more curious mind to take things a step further. You can ctrl + F and see how many times I’ve said “take things a step further” because all you do is say something stupid without exploring why. First of all, now that reform and opening is 30 years old “Beijing’s choice” plays a far smaller role then it did during the authoritarian Mao days which I can’t help think you yearn for for some reason. It’s a market economy and if you really went to freaking business school (I couldn’t help but snort when I read you typed that) you would know that in a market economy development isn’t determined entirely by one central governmental authority. The “point” is that the reason they were all fishing villages to begin with is because the People’s Republic of China subjected itself to idiotic, ineffectual, poorly-thought out economic policies from its founding up until reform and opening. As I explained, and you failed to address, the refom and opening was an allowance, to use your own words, an unfettering, an unleashing, an unbonding. All of China was backwards before the reform and opening. Afterwards, some places prospered, and some didn’t. Again, I’m repeating myself, those places that did prosper did so for myriad reasons, yes, in some of them Beijing was a player but 1) it wasn’t the only factor and 2) the reason Beijing chose to invest in certain areas and not others was because of preexisting situations that logically lended these areas - like Guangdong, or Fujian - to better investment, because these places by virtue of their features were more prone to economic success. This isn’t limited to China, either. In US history, both California and Nevada were frontier territories with sparse populations and subsequently low productivity. The United States government built transportation infrastructures – railroads and then roads – to these areas, and that’s the role the government played. However one state now has the GDP of a Western European country and the other state is far poorer and remains sparsely populated. Why? Because there are thousands of other factors involved other than “government providing incentives” or “government building infrastructure” and the fact of the matter is no matter what the government does Nevada will NEVER be as prosperous as California, and nor will Sichuan EVER be as prosperous as Guangdong.

You say: So why oh why did you spend half of your last post hammering on about population centralization schemes not working? It sounds suspiciously like you miss understood everything and thought that ACB was suggesting that Beijing should build a new Shanghai in central China, and were trying to tell ACB that it wouldn't work now because it hadn't worked in the past.

I didn’t spend any of my time hammering on abstract fact that “a widely spread population will reduce certain population pressures.” Nor, for example, can YOU argue with the abstract fact that “killing all unproductive members of Chinese society will reduce population pressures.” I’m repeating myself yet again, but you deserve NO recognition, kudos, or right to congratulate yourself for stating a FACT that everyone knows. What I’m “hammering” is your stupid, harebrained, and simplistic idea that if the government dangles tax breaks in interior provinces then everything will work out and “Angry Chinese Blogger” should be the freaking Minister of the Interior for her genius. As for the Shanghai in central China business, this is a red herring, a really futile and pathetic effort in your part to make me *look like* I’m misunderstanding your points, however, the challenge for you to do – and a challenge you will certainly not accept because you will fail – is for you to *prove* through my own words (aka evidence) that I hold such a misunderstanding, because up until this point you’ve only been repeating your OWN words saying that I’ve misunderstood your arguments. The fact of the matter is I haven’t misunderstood and your repeatedly arguing with a point of mine that doesn’t even exist.

You say: Is it so hard to write that sentence entirely in Chinese? In English we call this “grasping for straws.” Did you even stop and think what the point of writing this sentence was after you wrote it? Maybe your 脑子 has 毛病. Pointless.

You say: So, it's unrealistic for Beijing to offer economic subsidies for companies to set up in small towns? you are still thinking on too big a scale. ACB isn't talking about creating mega cities, only about encouraging local industrial development. It's hardly rocket science, and it's been done a hundred times before. America's drive West, for example. Half of the British Empire was founded on this principle.

Again, you are oversimplifying. No, Beijing can offer all the economic subsidies it wants to set up small towns. The fact of the matter is both human beings and business are far more complex than you think them to be and don’t follow a simple “carrot on a stick model,” moreover, even if people were merely a bunch of idiots following carrots, the fact remains that in the world of business and migration there are ten THOUSAND carrots and if Beijing dangled one carrot (incentives) in (a bunch of “small towns in) Sichuan it probably wouldn’t make a significant migration shift because there are twenty other carrots in Guangdong, like established factories, access to international markets, a developed capital pool, family members, a familiar environment, a familiar language and so and so and so on. I repeat myself. It’s a mantra: none of these things are as simplyeas you make them out to be and want them to be. You understanding of history is broken. America’s drive West wasn’t piloted by the government. Like reform and opening, the colonization of the frontier and the opening of the West was about the government removing restrictions on opportunities rather than actively creating any policies – things like the homestead act allowed people to go out on their OWN initiative. Where did they go? They definitely didn’t go where the governmental told them to go, or even recommended them to go, they went to places where they KNEW they could make a living and chose, and this was INEXTRICABLY linked to the state of the land. This is PRECISELY why California is doing better than Nevada. It was a far richer land. It’s something that was in California and not Nevada. No active government management solely produced California’s prosperity or solely kept Nevada down. Since you seem to be a highly unintelligent person, I’m going to recommend another book to you to read long side the Modest Proposal essay – it’s Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck – another book American 15 year olds read. The book is considered an English language masterpiece and part of the epic tale it tells is one family’s struggle because the most fertile land of the Central Valley was already taken and this particular family had to struggle with barren land – human presence is not the only factor in prosperity. No matter how many wells that poor family built on their land, no water would come out of them. Simple. Also, your understanding of the British Empire is broken too. The United Kingdom was a MERCANTILE empire. Much of its expansion was driven by profit and Britain went where there was money to be made and NOT where a cabal of government workers told them to go. Why India, after all? Because India provided resources to the British population could not provide itself – tea, spices, narcotics, and more. That’s why India was the crown jewel of the British empire and not Antarctica. What about Australia? It was a place where they exiled prisoners, because when they found it they realized it was a giant desert. So as usual, your own words and examples can elegantly be used to destroy your own reasoning. I think you need to go back to grade school.

You say: Roads and pipelines, not oil.

Are you freaking illiterate? Answer the freaking question for Christ’s sake: what is in the freaking pipelines, you dolt? The point you’re repeatedly trying to make is that Xinjiang and Tibet are models of repopulation success, I am REPEATEDLY telling you they are not and people are moving to Xinjiang because there are economic opportunities there that the government can not magically recreate elsewhere in China. Answer the freaking question: WHAT. IS. IN. THE. PIPELINES? Answer the freaking question: CAN WE MAKE A BUNCH OF PIPELINES IN TIBET AND EXPECT THE SAME ECONOMIC SUCCESS THAT’S IN XINJIANG?

You said: No, but it provided businesses with all sorts of intensive to help them take advantage of all of the above. Government funded container ports and rent subsidized warehouses don't grow on trees.

No shit, Sherlock. Good job continually stating facts that aren’t even in dispute. Just like with the Xinjiang oil thing above, the POINT is that they provided business with intensive help to take advantage of ALL OF THE ABOVE. Exact quote from you. ALL OF THE ABOVE. The point is that ALL OF THE ABOVE can be found in Guangdong but not Yunnan. If ALL OF THE ABOVE is not in Yunnan, how can the government “provide businesses with all sorts of intensive help to take advantage” of them?????

You said: East Turkestan was successful, Tibet is still in its early days. These projects take a long time. Besides, ACB didn't cite them as being successes or failure, ACB simply cited them as being attempts.

No. 100% wrong. You did cite them as being successes.

“Again, Tibet, East Turkestan. Put in the infrastructure and offer incentives, and people come running.”

You wrote this sentence to allegedly provide a counter example to my claim that the government is not capable of single-handedly mandating and managing population redistribution. You responded with the above sentence precisely because you erroneously believed that they are successes and are in the process of succeeding. Don’t be an idiot. If you WEREN’T citing them as successes then bringing them up doesn’t make any sense at all in the context of the point you were trying to make. And if indeed you are now saying that you did not cite them as a success and thereby secondarily admitting that Tibet ISN’T succeeding, then congratulations, you have been proven wrong on Beijing’s ability to sponsor migrations. The fact which remains unaddressed by you is that Xinjiang is successful because of its resources and Tibet is not because it has none. The government has built the infrastructure to tap the resources, but that is irrelevant because you are arguing that the government has the power to resuscitate the economy of any region regardless of what resources or natural advantage it has. However, the Xinjiang-Tibet contrast proves your entire axiom wrong.

You say: That would probably be down to economies of scale. Labor costs were a "for example".

Not addressing the point, which was that as things stand now it is far cheaper to manufacture on the Southeast coast than the interior and the costs and challenges to change that situation through government mandates are prohibitively high. You simply did not address the fact that it’s cheaper to make things on the coast than in the interior and while “theoretically” it may be possible to make things cheaper in the interior you are not factoring the various costs, both monetary and in human resources, it would require to bring about that change. Wen Jiabao does not wave a wand and suddenly a fully operational plant with management experience, skilled workers, and a supporting infrastructure appears. Theoretically it would be possible to manufacture glass bottles on the freaking moon because there’s lower gravity out there. It doesn’t matter what’s possible, what matters is how to make it into a reality – and in our argument, 1) I’m not debating what is possible though you pretend I am and 2) your ideas for making the possible into reality are either absent or stupid. This is the debate we’re having.

You say: ACB should stop you write there. Did you go to business school? Because ACB actually did, and a Western one at that. So ACB could write you a nice neat report explaining how government funds could be made available to allow cottage industries supplying a local market to expand into SMEs supplying a regional market, how the provision of enhanced transport links would open up the interior to commerce and how the state could use subsidies and tax breaks to off set the cost of relocation. ACB could also explain how when a company is supplying good to an international market it doesn't matter if they are located inside a container port or if they are located 100 miles from it so long as there are good transport links to get raw materials and finished goods out, because at the end of the day everything is going to spend 6 weeks on a container ship. But ACB doubts that you would actually read it through.

Non-sequitor. An idiot with a degree is still an idiot. I don’t care what your credentials are, your actions and behavior are all that matter in concluding whether or not you know what the hell you’re talking about. Write your stupid paper and send it to the Chinese government. If you’re so god damn brilliant they’ll implement your policies right away. The reality is they’re stupid, trite, cliché, unimplementable, and not worth praise which is why I bothered to post in the first place. In the meantime, you could do well in this context by responding to the points that I’m making.

You say: No, but graduates from Shanghai might. I also put forward Dalian as an example of how you can build a technology center simply by offering state intensives.

Yes, because we’re remembering here that your alleged goal is siphoning off population from the east coast to solve coastal problems. Even if EVERY single educated person who graduated from universities in Shanghai went to “IT villages” in the middle of Gansu and Qinghai (we’re going to ignore for argument’s sake the fact that not one single high-class stylish urbanite Shanghai would be willing at all to do that – because those are the people who can get educations in today’s system), that would hardly put a DENT in the population density problems of the east. Realistically speaking, maybe AT MOSTone in five hundred students would be willing and able to make that kind of leap. And even if every single graduate were moved to Gansu and say 100 people went along with each graduate to help set up shops and provide services, that still wouldn’t make a dent. Stupid idea. Let’s not forget that people in your example country, India, actually speak English. That goes a long way in enabling India to generate service oriented jobs. Chinese people can’t speak English – again we can take this back to the education system.

You say: Wellll, there was the relocation of people because of the three gorges, and East turkestan was actually your example.

Oh yes! Let’s bring up relocations from the Three Gorges. Brilliant. A humanitarian disaster that drove millions of people away from their ancestral homes and cut a huge scar of resentment and dissatisfaction across the people of the region. What a success. Xinjiang? For the billionth time, that wasn’t an active government relocation, that was people willingly going to Xinjiang to profit from the resources Xinjiang and Xinjiang alone has.

You say: It's pretty much irrelevant anyway. ACB is talking about small scale relocations. Building an industrial park, not an entire city. The dynamics are completely different. In fact you don't even need to relocate businesses, you just provide smaller ones with the ability to expand cheaply to the point that they can encourage the local people to stay rather than to migrate to the coast. Once you have done that you can slowly build the local economies up to the point where they can naturally support large industries.

Repeating myself, again. I already said in the last post that your idea has become so convoluted (because honest-to-God you are making this crap up as you go along). The goal you have set out with is to somehow find a solution that solves Beijing’s population problems. The fact is in order to this, a lot of people have to be moved at once. Not at the same time, and not to the same place, which are two things I have never said but you have repeatedly argued against - a straw man, and not me. Now that you’ve concocted on the spot a counter argument along the lines of small-scale relocations and small-scale cities, you cannot lose site of the fact that still millions of people have to be moved in order for the population pressure to be eased. I repeat myself in shortened form: if you want to spread the excess population of Shanghai throughout the sparser regions of China, the “smaller scale” the proposed businesses, the MORE of them there have to be. This is simple division. You are continually repeating that you advocate smaller cities and smaller scale businesses, but that is only the only the divisor, you are completely neglecting the awesome size of the dividend. Simply go back and reread my last post and address the points you failed to address.

You say: ACB notes that most of the small fishing villages that had poor roads and no state subsidies to build infrastructure are still poor fishing villages with poor roads and no infrastructure. Allowing commerce alone isn't enough. Would businesses have set up in Zhejiang nearly so readily if Beijing hadn't built roads and industrial parks for them to set up in?

Again, simplifying, incomplete picture. Yeah, you’re right on this point. Does that make your right in general? Absolutely not. Yes, there are still poor fishing villages on the east coast. Some villages that had their infrastructure improved turned into bustling metropolises. *KEY OBSERVATION* did these villages turn into bustling metropolises ONLY BECAUSE roads were built and infrastructure was provided? ANSWER: No. Roads were built to Shanghai, for example, and infrastructure was brought to Shanghai WHICH THEN allowed Shanghai to take advantage of its NATURAL, ENDEMIC resources, such as its location at the mouth of Yangzi, its history as a concession (which may have been shameful but nonetheless provided a capitalist foundation that would help it get ahead – see Hong Kong), its proximity to investors in Taiwan and Japan, etc. etc. This example is trash. Roads and infrastructure ENABLE Shanghai and Xinjiang to prosper, they do not CAUSE the prosperity. If you build roads and infrastructure to a village in the middle of the freaking Inner Mongolian plains, it will not propser. Because there are more factors involved. This is yet another juvenile straw man because I am absolutely not arguing that state built infrastructure is NOT necessary for prosperity – I NEVER said that and I challenge you to use my own words to construct that fantasy argument – what I AM arguing against is the naïve believe that ONLY state built infrastructure and incentives are necessary for prosperity and that is completely incorrect.

You say: But that's not the productivity that you were talking about, is it. You were talking about business output. People go were the work is, and if you make it easier for businesses to start up in one area then the businesses will come and the people will follow (or in this case, not leave for the coast).

Businesses don’t start in a vacuum. They also won’t magically start up on their own if “you” simply “make it easier for a business to start up.” If a thousand other conditions aren’t met, it won’t happen. Those conditions are met on the coast and not on the interior.

You say: No solved, reduced. The problem will not be solved until China's development is even.

No, not reduced. Subsidies and incentives alone do not create long term regional prosperity.

You say: No, but they attract it and allow it to expand. If you allow somebody to upgrade a workshop that already exists in a small town into a factory .....

No, oversimplification. That assumes the workshop exists in the first place. The reform and opening is precisely that which you are describing – it allowed existing workshops to upgrade to factories and businesses. It JUST SO HAPPENED that all those existing workshops were on the Eastern Coast. After the reform and opening, someone who had a workshop in Qinghai had just as much of a right to upgrade as someone with a workshop in Jiangsu. It’s simply a fact that the factory in Qinghai would likely fail and the one in Jiangsu can succeed. Is it because the government invested less in the one in Qinghai? Perhaps that is one of a hundred reasons, but why did it invest less? Is it because the Qinghai government had less money? Perhaps that is one of a hundred reasons, but why did the Qinghai government have less money? Is it because Qinghai itself is an unfertile land lacking in profitable resources, remote from markets and raw materials, a factor that will not change no matter how many roads you build? Yes.

Already covered this – you’re making this stuff up as you go along and “IT villages” was one weak counter that you came up with, but I’ve already shown how ridiculous this idea is in light of your ORIGINAL goal of solving Chinese overpopulation. Every single graduate with a degree in technology could disperse themselves over China’s vast wastelands (they’re wastelands, by the way, because nobody wanted to live there in the first place) and that won’t be enough to put a dent in Eastern population problems. The ratio of educated people to uneducated people in the East coast is probably TINY. The ratio of people educated in IT to the rest of the East coast populations is even TINIER, microscopic. The ratio of people who are educated in IT and willing to move to the middle of the Qinghai plateau to the population of the East Coast is probably very close to 0. My friend who moved his restaurant westwards? Do you ever follow threads of thought? Or are your thoughts just a bunch of isolated inane observations? My friend moved his restaurant westwards – because there were people out here who would eat his food – there are people out here who would eat his food - because the energy industry is booming – the energy industry is booming BECAUSE THERE ARE ENERGY RESOURCES IN XINJIANG THAT ARE NOT IN OTHER PARTS OF CHINA.

You say: Equally, you can always build universities, that's how India did it. You don't think that Bangalore woke up one day and found that it was an IT hub, do you?

India entirely different from the PRC, and the PRC could learn many things from India and “the government should single-handedly mastermind and implement massive population shifts” is NOT one of them. India is a democracy, they have a freer education system, the shameful British colonial legacy nonetheless left the Indian people with better resources, language among them, for integrating as a service industry to provide for the global economy which for the most part communicates in English. How is it not stupid of you to bring up Bangalore as an example? Bangalore is a huge sprawling metropolis and historically has been a large hub of its region. How could Bangalore POSSIBLY be used to prop the idea that the “government should pilot programs that redistribute a nation’s population.” What? If anything, Bangalore is yet another elegant counterexample proving how stupid your ideas are. An IT industry cropped up in Bangalore and NOT in some rural Indian village in the middle of no where PRECISELY because Bangalore had the human and mental resources that LEANT itself to be an IT hub. NOT the other way around – NOT Bangalore was dubbed by the semidivine Indian government to be an internet hub and at thus became so. Bangalore proves you wrong. Bangalore proves that IT cities don’t pop up in the middle of nowhere, they pop up where the right education level and human resources exist.

You say: No, but it is an example of the early stages of a mass migration program. A few years back they put in direct rail links, and in a few years time more pieces of the puzzle will be built. Again, you keep harking back to mass migration, why? ACB is envisioning the exact opposite of this as being the solution.

No, wrong. Building a railroad does not bring people. Building a railroad to real economic incentives and prosperity brings people. Those don’t exist in Tibet. If I build a freaking railroad to Antarctica will that make Antarctica an economic wonderland?

You say: Is this more of your so-called irony, are are you just letting your fingers move faster than your brain? 1) Because it's a form of slow genocide. Remember when the Japanese did it in what was then Manchuria 2) Irony?

No, this is not irony, because you can’t try to distinguish what the Qing dynasty did back then and the CCP is doing now without looking a total moron. Your answer to number 1? CORRECTOMONDO! It was a slow form of genocide, and TODAY IT STILL IS a slow from of genocide. This was the reason I freaking brought up Xinjiang in the first place, long, long ago, to illustrate that in our times, today, the government has encouraged people to move to Xinjiang and this is coming at a great price to the local Uyghurs. Thanks for unintentionally underscoring my points and cutting your own legs out from under you. The government is bringing great harm to the Uyghurs out here and you trust this same government to responsibly carry out some sort of program that will result in the redistributions of 100 of millions of people throughout the Chinese landscape. As for number 2? No, not irony, because the reasons the Qing and the CCP want to colonize Xinjiang are the same – to relieve population pressure, to serve as a strategic buffer zone between inner China and neighbors of dubious trustworthiness, to exploit resources to send back to the interior. The reason is important is your argument rests on the idea that the Qing and the CCP are somehow different – that the Qing did it “wrong” and the CCP can do it right. My argument rests on the fact that these two agencies are still operating under the same principles and motivations and that the only thing that made the CCP successful was the fact that oil and gas are only valuable commodities in today’s world and only now do we have the technology to efficiently get to them. You are wrong again.

This is first of all, a poor understanding of how human populations consume resources AND perhaps the dozenth time something you said when scrutinized actually supports what I’m saying and damages your own credibility. First of all, you don’t seem to understand the scale of population in China. China and the US have approximately the same land area but China has over three times the population. Have you been to Jiangsu? Have you seen the sprawl that stretches from Nanjing all the way to Shanghai? That IS over 100 kilometers. And so your response is, it needs to be more than that. The population that lives between Nanjing and Shanghai should actually be stretched between Shanghai and Xi’an. If we for arguments sake ignore the utter infeasibility of this proposition, you yourself in the above sentence made the proper observation that reveals the limits of your thinking. I quote “you’ve still got the same water supply and food supply.” CORRECT! Perhaps the reason why Shanghai is crowded in the FIRST place is that it began with these water supplies and these food supplies – but I don’t stop there – Shanghai is crowded because it has a million resources that other places didn’t have. Take what you’ve stated – and expand it beyond water and food – include access to markets, include educated population, include developed infrastructure, include natural resources – include all these things. Then we go back to your sentence - “spread out amongst smaller cities that have their own ALL OF THE ABOVE.” The all of the above being the reasons Shanghai is crowded in the first place – it’s way more than just “food and water” and you’re an idiot if you genuinely think that. The problem is those smaller cities DON’T and CAN’T have their own “all of the above.” And only SOME of the things included in “all of the above” can be built by the government – but as long as most pieces of the equation are missing then prosperity will not happen.

You say: See above, there would be nothing artificial about it. ACB is not suggesting building suburbs. You are thinking too big again. ACB is suggesting that existing smaller cities be made more attractive. If people have opportunities in smaller cities then suburbs aren't required. Think smaller. If you could get just one or two factories to set up/expand in each of the central cities/large towns, you could remove the need for an entire suburb. And if you expand upon this ....

Oversimplification. This entirely reveals your misunderstanding of how cities even work. Existing smaller cities are SMALLER for pre-existing reasons, not just one reason, and not just because “the government is neglecting to provide incentives” there. These cities exist. They are small. They are small for reasons. They are small because the surrounding area cannot support a bigger population. They are small because the natural resources (Beijing can’t make natural resources, remember) don’t exist to support a bigger economy. They are small because the terrain does not lend itself to intercity commerce, or because there is unrest due to ethnic grievances or peasant unrest, they are small because of a thousand reasons – again you think simply, I think realistically this divides you and me. If we lived in a black and white world, and the ONLY reason these existing cities were small was because the “government” never offered “incentives” there then you *would* be right, and incentives would fix the problem. However, that is NOT the reality. “Lack of incentives” is not the only reason these cities are small – it’s not even an important one.

You say: Again, too big. You don't need to move hundreds of millions. Just sufficient that the local resources can cope.

What an idiotic observation. You have to reinvent your whole starting argument because I’ve repeatedly proven you wrong. Your qualification is “sufficient that local resources can cope.” My response is in order for local resources to cope you WOULD have to move millions of people. Prove me wrong. Getting just a thousand people to move to a new place is a monumental task that consumes a lot of energy, resources, and money.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIp_AmVtsqM

Even with “incentives” these people are refusing to vacate their homes and we’re talking about a few thousand people, let alone MILLIONS. If it takes more than a thousand people leaving to relieve population pressure in East China, it is going to be a monumental, energy consuming, painstaking task. That is a fact.

You say: Nope, you're forgetting how big China is. As of 2007 China had 656 official cities. 1/3 of which had a population of less than 200,000. Distributing several million people amongst these and the thousands of towns and townships isn't too big a task, especially since many of them would be in secondary industries servicing the primary industries.

Gather a panel of the world’s brightest demographers and urban planners and public policy makers, and conducting a survey asking whether or not the statement “Distributing several million people amongst thousands of towns and townships isn’t too big a task” is true or false, and I’d wager my life’s savings on the fact that all of them would agree that you’re a total moron. Moving millions of people is a monumental task. To accomplish this requires either total tyranny or absolutely delicious and irresistible incentives. We both agree that the former is out of the question, however, you naively believe that all it takes for someone to abandon their home is the government to offer more tax breaks, whereas I believe more realistically that it takes a whole package of factors to get some to uproot and move, and the one good existing example we have of this happening, i.e., all these Han Chinese in Xinjiang, is only possible because of features completely unique to Xinjiang, a success that absolutely cannot be repeated elsewhere.

You say: No, America became the world's top power by enslaving the Africans and exploiting the fact that it's industry was still intact after WWII whereas everybody else's was decimated. Is this more irony?

Again, you’re killing yourself. I lay all these traps and you fall right into them, I can’t help but snicker. America became the world’s top power for a number of reasons, enslaving the Africans is only one part of them and obliterating the Indians so we could occupy their land is another one of them. Thank you for agreeing with this because it aids me in showing how morally inconsistent you are. Two comments ago you said that someone will “lose out” and that it’s for the “greater good of China.” This whole argument started exactly when I pointed out how the Uyghurs are losing out because of Xinjiang’s occupation and that one can’t flippantly recommend “mass repopulation” without considering the side effects – go back up and read my very first post. So on one hand America is all bad and evil because they obliterated the Indians for their own “greater good” – and they did, because if they didn’t do so they wouldn’t have control over the territory they call their own. And you fell into my trap and agreed how evil that is. However, you make yourself look like an idiot because at the same time you’re fine with people “loosing” out for the “greater good” of the country though a cultural annihilation is occurring in Xinjiang as well. My very first point is that you’re congratulating yourself on being smart (when you’re not) but you’re failing entirely to consider the potential, unintended negative side effects of mass migration ANYWHERE, be it Xinjiang or Qinghai or whatever. My very first point stands, untouched, and since then you’ve only proven how little you know about Xinjiang, history, demographics, economics, logical fallacies, and thinking in general.

Yous aid: No, it implies two things. 1) if you said zhongguo the odds are that most of the world's population would not know what you were talking about and 2) Most of the world's population is not familiar with geography beyond the basics.

Total non-sequitor. Your point number 1 establishes nothing. In no way is calling China Zhongguo in ANY way analogous to calling Xinjiang Xinjiang. Zhongguo is the name of the country in the native language. Xinjiang ALSO is the name of the region in Mandarin but it ALSO is the name of the region used in documents by the reigning government issued all of over the world. When China talks about Xinjiang in English, they say Xinjiang. When the American government talks about this region in English, they say Xinjiang. When anyone talks about this region, they say Xinjiang, EXCEPT for diasporic Uyghur human rights groups. And if number 2 is correct, then Xinjiang is the term to use, not East Turkestan. I’m going to post this link again:

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=xinjiang&word2=east+t urkestan

You say: ACB calls East Turkestan East Turkestan out of solidarity with East Turkestan's quest for self determination. Nothing more, nothing less. This stands independent of what Beijing thinks, and of what you think, and of what any scholar that you care to mention thinks.

I’m sorry, this is total bullshit. This statement is the most chock full of bullshit that I have ever seen on your site, and trust me, I’ve seen a lot. This takes the cake. Let me lay it down nice and clear for you. You know jack shit about “solidarity” with “East turkestan’s” quest for self-determination. You don’t know who the Uyghurs are, you don’t know their history, you don’t know the origins of the term Uyghur or East Turkestan, you don’t know the history of the region, you don’t know what the situation is like here on the ground, you don’t belong to Uyghur social circles, you don’t walk the streets of Xinjiang every day, you don’t eat at Uyghur restaurants and speak Uyghur with the Uyghur workers in Xinjiang, you haven’t been to a Uyghur language school in the Xinjiang countryside. You. Don’t. Know. Jack. Shit. And to pretend that by expending the immense energy of TYPING the words “East Turkestan” on your piece of crap blog twice a year could possibly or remotely represent solidarity with the Uyghur people is one of the most insulting propositions I have ever seen in all of my discussions of China. You are an insult to people everywhere who truly do show solidarity with the Uyghur people. I live in Xinjiang. I speak Uyghur. I’m here. I speak with Uyghurs about Uyghur problems in Uyghur, you can’t. I read Uyghur publications by both the state and human rights groups abroad. You can’t. And despite all this, knowing a little through observation about what Uyghurs go through, I look at my life, both here as a foreigner in Xinjiang and as a Westerner in my homeland, and I know what I rights I have and what blessings I have and wouldn’t DARE do presume I know what “solidarity” with the Uyghurs are, even as far as I’ve come. I can only admit that even the little I know is scary and intimidating and I can only continue my quest to master the Uyghur language and learn as much as I can about modern Uyghur society and share that knowledge, while you run your smug, arrogant, self-aggrandizing blog and think that typing “East Turkestan” into your fucking blog posts counts as “solidarity” with the Uyghurs? What a righteous asshole you are. You don’t know shit. Don’t forget that.

Nonetheless, I reassure myself a little by telling myself that you yourself didn’t take your claims of “solidarity” seriously since anyone can observe your stated reasons for using “East Turkestan” have changed rapidly throughout this discussion as I have proved you wrong over and over again. I reiterate: first, it was for historical reasons, but then I proved you wrong with history and the glaring hypocrisy behind your use of the term “Inner Mongolia,” you did not respond to. Secondly, it was for recognition purposes but then I proved you wrong with a simple google search, and beyond that there is tons of evidence that Xinjiang is far more conventional and common than East Turkestan. Thirdly, after the previous second rationales had been proven wrong without any response on your part, you came up with the worst bullshit ad hoc rationale yet, “solidarity,” and I think I have smashed this third rationale even more thoroughly than the other two. May you never, ever claim in your life that you have any fucking shred of solidarity with the Uyghurs. Only after you come here and learn the language and learn what solidarity means and how distant you are from it can I even possibly take you seriously. Until then, you have as much solidarity with the Uyghurs as I have with the Chechnyans.

You say: On a final note, ACB requests that you please stop cursing. Otherwise ACB will be forced to filter you.

Bullshit. This is just the last in a long litany of stupid internet techniques amateur intellectuals use to silence voices that embarrass them. It’s absolutely clear that you have a self-serving ulterior motive in threatening to censor me simply from the fact that ANYONE – absolutely ANYONE who reads a blog of your nature – a critical, vituperative one on the topic of China – will not give a damn about cursing. I can guarantee you there aren’t any 5 year old Mormon kids reading your stupid blog. That fact alone demonstrates quite clearly that you’re making crap up for the express purpose of silencing someone you simply can’t handle. That’s a fact: anyone reading your blog doesn’t care about cursing, especially in the comments, ESPECIALLY in comments that are long winded and tortuous and nobody else is reading any more. Face it, ACB. This is a debate between you and me and no one else is involved anymore. No one is going to read through these pages upon pages of endless bickering between tw stubborn anonymous internet users. Just you and me. Acknowledging this unavoidable fact, you have no excuse whatsoever to censor me. Beyond this, if you simply have some sort of medical aversion to curse words, go into my posts and use the power of CTRL + f, find and replace, to remove those parts which you disapprove of on “cursing” criteria and ONLY those parts. But the moment you start deleting entire posts is the moment you fully admit what has already come to pass, that you are defeated, you have been defeated, and you will continue be defeated because as smart as you may be or as you think you are, right now in this context you are filled with nothing but stupid ideas, and as long as this is a fact I am capable of proving you wrong until the cows come home.

Oops, I made a mistake. I mixed up my Steinbeck. I meant to recommend you read East of Eden, not Grapes of Wrath. My high school English teacher would kill me.

Job:

Yawn. If you want ACB to address your points, then you are simply going to have to start getting to the point. You have written long rambling screeds that jump from topic to topic and back again. To respond to everything that you have said would hours.

ACB is going to tell it to you straight. ACB isn't going to bother to read what you have written unless you take a long hard look at what you want to get across and then compress it into the smallest possible post containing only the core points. Preferably bulleted.

ACB is also going to tell you this once and once only. If you wish your posts to remain on this site then you are going to have to reign in your cursing. That also means no *ing out. Foul language may be OK where you come from, but this isn't America, you have no constitutional right to curse on this blog.

First of all, if my posts are long it's because, like I've said previously, I, unlike you, deliberately choose to address every point to make since almost every single one of them is incorrect, outlandish, or outright stupid. Having seen you deliberately and repeatedly cherry pick your responses so as to avoid those which prove you completely wrong, I decided to do whatever it takes to be *unlike* you and show confidence in the superiority of my thought over yours by soundly defeating anything you've had to say, which I have an all my posts.

Your second criticism of my posts - that they "jump from topic to topic" is entirely incorrect and is illustrative of you grasping for an excuse to somehow preemptively end a discussion which has been embarassing for you as it demonstrates the full extent of your stupidity. My latest posts have structurally been nothing more than taking exact quotes from *your* posts - starting with the first paragraph and ending with the last sentence - and systematically shredding your points and arguments to pieces. That's simply how my post is. To accuse it of "jumping from topic to topic" is idiocy because the topics addressed are LAYERED on top of your last post. If my posts truly jump around it can only be so because YOURS did. Moron.

That ACB has an aversion to reading long things goes a long way in explaining 1) how much of an idiot ACB is and 2) the half-baked, piss-poor quality of most of her observations and blog posts. I get it now. You were one of those MBA retards who couldn't read books. You DO strike me as the kind of person that learns things through bulllet point lists. Exclusively. Anyways, you've already revealed that you've graduated from graduate school and yet the fact that you're writing a trashy blog on blog-city assures me that you're not in any significant policy-influencing positions with any major players. This reassures me, as you are the worst kind of dumbass, one that has no idea what she is talking about, but *thinks* she does.

Lastly, * you. This scene plays itself millions of times a day by little internet tyrants. Someone proves them wrong and they invoke the "this is my monarchy card." Censor me all you want. You're wrong and your ideas are dumb. Almost everything I've pointed out above lays intact and entirely unaddressed by your feeble, feeble mind. You're welcome to try to tackle them when you overcome your fear of reading.