I was in china last week, (PRC), actually. It was my first trip to asia. I
expected third world, like the text books had groomed me to believe. What I
found was a place alot like any big city in the US, only with more chineese
speaking people =). It was very suprising to me, also, even more suprising,
was that nearly everyone I ran into spoke english pretty well (at least well
enough to communicate). Japan was exactly opposite, it was much more
difficult to find english speaking people, and those that did, were more
difficult to communicate with.


"Gary Coffman" wrote in message
...
On 17 Apr 2004 16:34:01 GMT, (Gunluvver2) wrote:
Taiwan has had a taste of freedom and I can't see them ever submitting
willingly to a tyrannical government on the mainland. IMO if the PRC
tries to
assimilate the Taiwanese they will be infected with the idea of freedom
and
that will be the downfall of the old Communist system.

Your understanding of mainland China seems to be at least a couple of
decades out of date. The mainlanders are already infected with capitalism
(and the necessary freedoms which go along with that). They're also
rapidly
developing consumerism, with what that implies in terms of politics as
well.

The central government remains much more authoritarian than the US,
but then so is the government on Taiwan, or in Singapore, or even Japan.
The US represents one extreme of the political spectrum, places like North
Korea the other. Most modern industrial nations fall somewhere in between
the two extremes. China has definitely become a modern industrial nation
over the last two decades.

Gary