It’s in to hate China.
Jim Cramer, confusing Karl Marx with Groucho, keeps referring to the government of Xi Jinping as “Communist China.” Its efforts to fight tech monopolies there cost him money in Didi Chuxing, China’s Uber.
China is also a great whipping boy for neocons who want to get their war on after Afghanistan fizzled. They point to its crackdown in Hong Kong and the ongoing genocide in Xinjiang. Those are terrible crimes. But are they that much worse than Shock and Awe, or the ongoing beatings of protestors by our police?
These crimes cost China more than reputation. They cost money. Chinese taxpayers are in deep doo-doo already. The Sinovac vaccine turns out to be garbage. You can see the air, which is not supposed to happen. There are floods of Biblical proportions in brand-new Chinese cities. Economic growth is slowing. The stock market is down, so wealth is down. And you can’t trust the Chinese Internet, which is a bigger spy than even Facebook.
If things were like this in America, we’d be revolting. Critics like to insist that you can’t in China, but it ain’t necessarily so. China can’t match Taiwan’s semiconductor technology, despite buying its engineers with fat bonuses. Its biological technology is nowhere. Its science publications are rife with cheating, which means its papers are rife with lies.
This is a technology age. In a technology age, the gating factor to growth is brains. It’s not resources. We’re not just talking about having a lot of brains. We’re talking about having high quality brains. We’re talking about people who are educated, who are comfortable, who are motivated, and who are (more important) free to imagine the future they want. China has many more people than we do, it graduates many more engineers and scientists. Yet, if anything, it’s falling further behind at the leading edge.
Like an average student with OCD, China can repeat what it learns. It remains a manufacturing powerhouse. A manufacturing economy needs lots of willing, easily-trained, complacent hands. China has them, and to spare.
But things are not OK over there, and we need everyone on the planet pulling together if we’re to save human life on Earth.
There are opportunities here for the use of American soft power. Pointing them out, as I’ve just done, isn’t helpful. Fortunately, no one listens to me.
