[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Tom Bombadil

@SaintessHeart,

The Chinese education outpacing its US counterpart is just a myth. It really depends on where you look. Take Beijing or Shanghai and compare it to some random town in US? Sure. I am sure the Singapore education is vast superior than some town in Hokkaido, but I would hesitate to pick a winner between Singapore and Tokyo. In China's vast hinterlands, the education condition is not optimistic at all. For one thing, the basic Chinese systems is only 9 years, comparing to 12 in the US, and there are a lot of drop out even at that level. The teachers are poorly paid, and hence rural areas have a huge lack of decent quality teachers. I started my 7th grade in a boarding school in the nearest city, and the same style all the way to college. The Chinese universities are not known for their merits either (it is getting better, though). The other day in a BBC documentary (shot in around 2007) says that the percentage of over all GDP that Chinese has invested in education lags behind many African countries, and I am willing to believe it.

The last time I checked, Singapore's schools are still lauding Keynesian Economics as a modern marvel and every other economists' idea is negligible.

However, what I am bringing up is that China is getting better while US is getting worse at their education system. Education has to be consistent throughout the ages and constantly adapt to the newest ideas and methods in every field. If I am not wrong, US schools tend to have a too relaxed standard of teaching, whereas China has a more stringent one.

The Chinese put alot of emphasis on Maths and Science - it is unfair for my local kids to even compete with them in the Secondary level maths Olympaid when they are only 1 year older and have known the entire calculus at the back of their hand. To train scientists, researchers and inventors, a strong background in the sciences must be present, as well as a powerful imagination for logical ideas. China already has the former, whereas US, mostly, has neither.

As for resources, what can I say? It is a quite complicated issue. The nation has a huge population, what can you do about it? Start the third world war to kill part of it? Per capita, I am sure the numbers will be far below average. There is yet another aspect to it. China needs a lot of resources to fuel its export sector, so part of the resource are not destined for China: they just pass through China with limited added value and go to a more developed nation. Think about all those dirt cheap spoons you can get in Walmart. They need either crude oil or iron ore to produce. China is doing some dirty job for the developed world while large internationals gets the bigger pie (google up the profit margin of Walmart and Chinese manufacture). I know this economical model is flawed. The longer it lasts, the worse the crash will be. But it won't change over night, and there are active oppositions from both sides (multinationals in the US and exporters in China, for example). Even changes are accompanied by sinophobia alarmists like Mr. Farrel.

So are my Malaysian and Indonesian neighbours sewing Nike shoes and footballs for $10 each, and the MNCs selling for $300 in Singapore. This is a serious sweatshop issue, but for some reason, part of the $10 used to pay taxes aren't used to build schools or hospitals, but rather, going into the extragravant lifestyles of the abovementioned government. The only winner is Big Corp.

By the way, I absolutely hate a particular term Farrel has used: "economic warfare". That enrages me more than anything else. The word he is looking for is "symbiotic". The two economies are so dependent on each other that if one fails, the other one is sure to fail. Hell, the US is the world's largest example of "too big to fail".

Given how some of the PLA generals speak (i.e to build up and make US smaller that it is unable to be big again), I doubt the politicians in the CCCP will push for a "symbiotic" relationship, and attempt to settle for a "US is China's lapdog" one.

I am not sure what the correct economic principle is. But inflation sounds like a problem of excessive money supply.

My mistake. I was referring to the nominal interest rate, which is supposedly tied to inflation. But I do know that the demand for money drives the cost of goods up too as interest rates goes up, banks lend at a higher cost, and businesses rack up their costs accordingly too. Demand pull inflation leading to cost push inflation, resulting in a significantly higher inflation rate.