On Wed, 28 Nov 2007 07:37:42 -0500, Kurt Ullman
wrote:

What is happening in China today is truly astounding and equally
incomprehensible. Except that it works and the results
incontrovertible. Yup. They cost me my jobs, many times too, except
I made it to retirement in one piece. I am proud for China can at
last work for her advancement in peace and take its place among the
leading nations of the world. This can't be comforting for the rest
of the world that has to accommodate this development. I have no easy
answers to that.
I think wealth tends to moderate the desire to go about and
steal things. First of all, barring meglomania on the part of the
rulers, you don't tend to do things that take money out of your own
pocket and even the Chinese government knows the advantage of letting a
sleeping peasant lie.

I will let these argument lie too as they will take too much effort
and time and won't change anyone's position.

My longer-term concern with the Chinese center on the demographic
outcomes of the one-child laws. Admittedly, when there are a few billion
people floating around a country, you do have a few to "give",

[Total fertility rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[1] Taken globally, the total fertility rate at replacement is 2.33
children per woman. At this rate, global population growth would trend
towards zero. ...]. Therefore China's one child policy should see a
steady reduction in population. Yet official statements say that with
forceful enforcement of the one child policy China's population could
hopefully stabilize at 1.5 billions by 2035!

When the communists won power (1949) China's population was 400 to 450
millions. Until the eighties famines and food shortage were everyday
realities. I won't even try to reconcile the figures much less attempt
to explain China's demographics. But it means there will be no
relaxation of birth control. One slip and China will be overwhelmed
and the world will not remain unaffected.

but as the last "real" generation retires, what happens when there are so many
fewer to support them.

So what paradise on earth was there for the eldery before the
Communists took over?

One traditional solution was to organize homes for the elderly along
clan and language dialect groups. Those who do not have families or
children join them for a small membership fee. The members usually
have some form of employment income, for example as housemaids,
farmhands, etc. On their off days or when unemployed they can stay in
the hospice and help out with chores and take care of the older
retired members until their own turn comes to retire. The hospice
also took in the sick and elderly whose family can no longer care for
them. They provide shelter and comfort and what little medical care
there is based on traditional herbal remedies. There is no attempt to
prolong life. This system is still a common practice. The less old
and still mobile take care of the less capable and the sick until they
too join their ranks. There is government financial and medical
assistance under the CCP but it will never be enough to emulate
anything like the independent living ideal of western societies. The
system works well enough though.

The other side of that is the high percentage of
males, nothing worse than a bunch of horny males having problems finding
a mate (g).

China has gone through worse, the decade long wars, famines, all
manner of natural and man made disasters. She'll make it through.
Read any of the biographies of Chinese immigrant labor in the States
in the 19th and into the mid 20th century. They came alone and toiled
under horrendous conditions. They went home once to marry
(prearranged), had a child and never saw them again. But continued to
remit money back for their support. It should be an intolerable
existence. Yet they triumphed in the end. Today's single men do not
have to endure what their forefathers did. I don't have any valid
comment on what will happen with them. But one alarming consequence
is the spread of AIDS and STDs that the public health authorities have
not have a good handle on yet.

There are many significant developments happening at the same time in
China today. Little if any of them follow familiar economic,
sociological or political conventions and therefore offer few clues on
which to make predictions Americans call this "lack of transparency".
The truth is the Chinese don't know what is happening any more than
they do. But as DXP so famously said "to cross the river by feeling
for stones" China will work its way through to the future one careful
step at a time. Do not judge China by your tired patronizing
attitudes. China has enough development problems of her own without
your trying to add yours to that burden, such as......

Both of these might trigger governmental "adventurisim" as both a
solution and a way to shift blame away from the Men Behind the Curtain.