February 3, 2011
by Paul Stanner
Dear Readers :
Assuming that many of you are still believers of the current political orthodoxy that China will soon rule the world I have great news for you. It isn’t going to happen in your life time and probably never UNLESS we persist in allowing our government to continue on this self destructive free trade path. The reason for this is because creativity and innovation is strongly discouraged in China. Kong Zi whom you know as Confucious and Chairman Mao are probably the two most important figures in Chinese culture and they both feared creativity and innovation as well as an educated self thinking populace with critical analysis skills. They are bad for social order is the thinking. It’s very difficult to have a ” harmonious society ” when you’re populace is bright enough and brave enough to point out the flaws in the current Committee of 17′s latest ” 5 Year Plan”. Another reason they will never rule the world is because the Chinese have the most naturally shitty attitude about life and business of any group in the world in my opinion. I’m going to give you an example of that today.
On Shamian Island there is a clothing store with an in house tailor. I’ve walked by this shop many times and always been invited to come in. Since it’s extremely difficult to buy or even have clothes tailor made for someone of my size in China I had declined their invitation every time. Finally one day last week I got sick of the badgering and went in to take a look just to get them off my back. Much to my amazement they did indeed have clothes of my size. They had nothing of any style that interested me though. God forbid you should ask for brown shoes. lol The vast majority of the time they will have black and that’s it. In any case they assured me that they could make me clothes to my order. Now I’ve been in China long enough to know that NOTHING is ever that easy unless there is a tremendous and usually direct financial advantage although they’ll deal with an indirect advantage if it’s big enough , for the Chinese in it being that easy. It would be accurate on your part to color me skeptical about actually being able to purchase what I needed from these folks. In any case being an optimist I went back in a few days with a shirt of the exact size and material I wanted. I asked if they could make me seven shirts of varying color in that size and material . This is what I was told.” If you bring us the fabric certainly we can do it. ” Now think about that for a minute. A foreigner who is visiting their city on vacation and knows next to nothing of it or about tailoring and does not speak their language is expected to go to the fabric market by himself, find the material , negotiate the price and bring it to the TAILOR. Then and only then will they be able to to their job. When I pointed out the obvious flaws in their methodology and asked them respectfully if they could please be creative enough to solve this problem as regarded my situation it did not matter to them. “This is China and this is the way we do it — PERIOD !!” was their attitude. I was also told that it would be difficult because Chinese New Year is in a few days. Now keep in mind that I’m going to be here another two weeks but they just didn’t bother to ask me about that. Folks virtually all of China will be on the move the next 2 – 6 weeks during the New Year Holiday and the Spring Festival. Very little will be open for business. My campus for example is already a ghost town. ALL the businesses have closed and gone home. Now let me ask you a couple of questions here. Do any of you have any theories yet on why after 5,000 years of history and 65 years of The New China , they are still a developing country? Do any of you have any theories yet on why there are still so many Chinese people in poverty in the second biggest economy in the world? It seems to me that if you are really that poor then you find a way to take a little time out of your 2 – 6 week vacation and get the job done and take the lao wai / foreigner’s money which for this job would be a considerable amount of money probably about 700 RMB. To put that in context the average Chinese family makes about 1,200 RMB PER MONTH. That’s probably my American cultural prejudice talking though. In America we call that a work ethic. God I’m proud to be an American of a generation that still believes in that old fashioned philosophy.
You see folks in China the Chinese have no problems until a problem effects them PERSONALLY and usually financially. They could not care less if I went naked and certainly will not see or admit that the reason I’m naked is because of their stupidity. The prevailing attitude among the Chinese that even know about their Nobel Peace Prize winner being jailed which is about 5% of the population in my opinion is ” well he MUST have done something . ” They also do not give a damn what the rest of the world thinks. They have a 5,000 year old history and culture so you see they posses the wisdom of the ages so how could any other culture be right and themselves wrong. It never occurs to them that everybody has a 5,000 year old history and culture . If you ever run into this attitude from a Chinese person and you want to totally defeat this viewpoint and piss him off to the max in one fell swoop just ask this question. lol ” Well if what you say is true then how is it that America came to be # 1 in 200 years? ” They’ll hate that and you passionately. They do need to hear it though. lol ” You see he is not from their families and the problem does not effect them personally so there is no problem. Now conversely if somebody from their family was arrested on trumped up charges and jailed with no outside contacts then that would be a huge problem. They would accept anybody’s help that they could get and should that help ultimately lead to a successful resolution of the problem they would be very grateful — OUTWARDLY. Once the problem was resolved do not ever expect them to stand up and help the next family with a similar problem. You would be foolish to expect that because you see there is no more problem.
The Chinese truly believe that they are destined to rule the world and that will only be justice for so many centuries of disrespect of China on the part of the rest of the world.They also truly believe that once the world gets to know them better they will accept the Chinese Way as the truly enlightened path to prosperity. I say that they are riding high right now but once the world and especially America gets a taste of what the Chinese Way really is they will not accept it. I also say that as soon as India , Russia and Brazil get their acts together they are going to steal all the business that China stole from the Western countries and particularly America. Those three countries are going to use China’s tactics against her. China is going to find out very soon that an economy based solely on exports and cheap labor can’t sustain itself for long. There is always somebody that will do it cheaper and I’d certainly trust any of the three of India , Russia or Brazil to do it better. I think most people would. Do you agree? There are also some cultural / societal reasons China will never rule the world also. Do you think America / The West will accept squat toilets , rationing of electricity and water by the government , censorship of the internet and media , persecution of political and religious dissent and shitty business practices as described above? Ladies and gentlemen China will never rule the world UNLESS we let them because China can only play in a rigged game and only by their rules and because the Chinese have the most naturally shitty attitude of any group on Earth about life and business. In short China doesn’t have the ” stones ” to be a world leader like America or even Japan or Germany. So why do we let them? STOP buying Chinese products , STOP shopping at Walmart !! START telling your Congresspeope to hold China accountable to all their agreements. Be part of the solution.
If you would like to read ” There Is A Promise Coming Down That Dusty Road ” which is the story of American adoptive parents of Chinese children just click here.
If you would like to read ” If You Go Carrying Pictures Of Chairman Mao # 1 “click here.
If you would like to read ” If You Go Carrying Pictures Of Chairman Mao # 3 “ click here
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