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Angry Chinese Blogger:
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china: from Silk Road to Cr*p Road
When you get right down to it, China owes much of it modern wealth to the fact that foreigners (Particularly Americans) seem to have an insatiable desire to own "stuff". To cut a long story short, China, with its large pool of labor to produces "stuff" cheaply. And foreigners, with their desire to own "stuff" buys it in copious amounts. The perfect partnership of supply and demand. so long, that is, as you ignore the fiscal deficit between the West and China.
Some of what China produces is useful and/or practical and has allowed foreigners to improve their standard of living significantly. With ready supplies of cheap Chinese goods pushing down the per unit prices of everyday clothes and home wares to a level that is it affordable to even poor foriegners, and making what were previously luxury goods - such as microwave oven and big screen TVs - into everyday commodities.
However, a lot of what China produces for foreign consumption can more accurately be classified as novelty items. Cheap junk with no practical value, or actual use. Items which foreigners often purchase on a whim, use for a brief period of time, and then either dispose of or forget about. Indeed, and in no small part due to the reforms of Deng, the Silk Road has now been replaced with the Cr*p Road. An endless flow of garbage like this rather scary singing/dancing Christmas tree. Made in China for a pittance, sold in the West for $US20-$US25, and amusing for all of 5 minutes.
ACB isn't sure whether or not they should be angry about this. Or who to be angry at.
On one hand it's all money in the bank for China. It's school fees, medical treatment, and food for children, and it's hardly for China to say what foreigners should spend their money on. On the other hand China has long critisized foreigners for their excess and for their wasteful obsession with consumerism and trivia, yet here is China feeding it for it's own financial gain, but at the cost of it's self respect. China has become part of the problem, not part of the solution, and in doing so has thrown away much of it's reputation as an ancient and wise civilization and forged a new identity as being a merchant of junk.
China today can't represent the 5000 years of history, especially after the
disastrous 10 years.
When making money is the top priority and culture is next to nothing, one
is bound to lost dignity.
"君子愛財，取之有道。"
China today has lost the WAY.
As an American, I am ashamed that we consume so much sh*t that we do not
need. What's even more frustrating is that Americans are buying all of
this junk on credit. The average credit card debt for a typical US
consumer is $8,500. If you are a woman, how many pairs of shoes or
handbags do you need in your closet? If you are a man, how many electronic
gadgets do you need to fill your living room?
ACB would have to disagree with you somewhat about credit cards. Most
Chinese don't trust them, or banks. And most banks don't trust Chinese,
either. This is why you often need to have a large deposit account with a
bank in China before they will give you a credit card. Even China's new
middle classes have a much lower credit care ownership than their US
equivalents.
It's sad that not only are Americans and others in the West consuming at an
all time high, the problem is doubled when there are ever fewer places to
dump the items when they're no longer cute or interesting. The economic
crisis has impacted my family and we are amazed at how little you *need* in
order to be happy.
China dug it's own grave. It chose to make its population a bunch of
factory workers instead of intellectuals, it did this by having the
cultural revolution and by continuing that cultural revolution TODAY in
2009. Chinese universities are nothing more than diploma mills, no one can
talk about their ideas on the internet or use the internet in a meaningful
way because the government prevents this. If Chinese can't think for
themselves, can't express themselves, can't educate themselves, then how
can they do anything other than copy? The Chinese people themselves "stood
up" and decided that they want this kind of a system, the don't want to
think for themselves, they don't want to have their own ideas, so its their
own fault that all they can do is produce "crap", and they fully deserve
any repurcussions that arise from that.
Anyway, they are not foreigners, they are in their own country. Someone can
only be a foreigner when they are in a country foreign relative to them.
Look up 'foreigner' in the dictionary.
Gaz: