|
It's probably the case that the upper echelons of power want to keep HK on a short leash and promote one of the "native" Chinese cities to be the premier financial centers of China. Sadly, HK's days as a juggernaut were probably numbered ever since 1997 but in a way that few people would have imagined. Edit: Maybe another way for HK to regain relevance and prosperity is to reinvent itself as an innovation/technology hub similar to a San Francisco or Silicon Valley. I don't see many other choices, because it can't step backwards into manufacturing again and being such an advacned economy innovation/service is probably all that's left. Vladimir Putin fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Jan 25, 2013 |
#
¿
Jan 25, 2013 19:28
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 15:49 |
|
|
Oracle posted:
I would say that Japan is more like America in that they match all of those things and are a bit less comfortable with chaos. For one, the Japanese can stand in line, and there is a certain order. As an American, the chaos lines of China is a bit scary to me.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 25, 2013 20:58
|
|
|
Pro-PRC Laowai posted:You'd think being worried about the safety of the powdered milk and the prices and the acquisition of it would be more inconvenient somehow. The deal with breast feeding is that it's ideal nutrition for your baby. There are additives in baby formula which mimic what's in the mother's milk, but of course they come from cows or something like that. Formula is a pretty sturdy substitute, I imagine most people that are in our generation grew up on it because it was at one time thought to be superior. HOWEVER. Breast feeding is not easy for a host of reasons. For example, if you have twins, what the gently caress are you supposed to do, have one baby one each boob? There's just not enough milk there. Plus with all the meds and interventions that go on in delivery these days, mothers are really doped up post-delivery and often are in no shape to breast feed. The baby is often whisked away to a nursery where it undergoes a battery of tests and it has to be fed formula or it will go hungry. So it's actually very hard to breast feed these days because of a variety of reasons, never mind the fact that it's not easy to begin with. You can learn and perfect it in 1-2 days, but what the gently caress is your baby supposed to do until then? Starve? What if you never learn to do it properly, is your baby supposed to die? Formula has widespread use in the developed world, because we don't want the baby to die, or even worse have hidden developmental hurdles because it didn't have the right nutrition at birth. Vladimir Putin fucked around with this message at 16:36 on Jan 28, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Jan 28, 2013 16:33
|
|
|
Bloodnose posted:Oh I forgot the other sinister part. Formula companies giving free samples in the maternity wards. Public hospitals finally stopped this and breastfeeding rates have increased significantly as a result. But who knows what goes on at the private hospitals. And company reps still hang out outside public ones to offer samples to people leaving the ward. All of this is true. In America it's also a huge fight. It was a huge deal to finally have insurance companies cover lactation consultants and I think the PPACA finally chips in for breast pumps. But on the other hand, I see the need for formula on hand at hospitals because babies are constantly hungry and new mothers may or may not be up to the task of breast feeding at that moment. The baby needs to eat and you can't give it scrambled eggs.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 28, 2013 17:37
|
|
|
They are so cute though.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 29, 2013 03:33
|
|
|
VideoTapir posted:Baby formula may have changed since then, and from that abstract it doesn't sound like they did much to eliminate other factors. What does "chose to provide milk but failed to do so" mean, and does that fully account for differences in how much of a poo poo the parents give about their kids? It means they tried to breast feed fully intending to do it, but could not do it. I think that means that they give a poo poo.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 29, 2013 04:47
|
|
|
IQ boosting as apposed to what? Just regular cow's milk? That would be true.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 29, 2013 20:33
|
|
|
Vegetable posted:What exactly is the point of posting these street-making GBS threads photos? To show that the mainland Chinese are socially backward? I think because people are upset and outraged that other people are taking shits on their street.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 30, 2013 21:59
|
|
|
Bloodnose posted:Hong Kong's birth rate is actually lower than Japan's, once you take out babies born to two non-permanent resident parents, who tend not to stay in the territory. I wonder why that is. I mean the Japanese aren't having kids because they are loving wierdos. HKers though? I'd think they are the type to get married have kids and do all of that kind of poo poo.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2013 04:19
|
|
|
How can people even be sure they are buying genuine formula even if they go to Hong Kong? It can't be that hard to fake the packaging and the profit margin on selling fake must be enormous.quote:Countries like Germany, the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand exercise rationed sale to tourist buyers from China for milk powder but the Hong Kong government simply frame the situation as a matter of free trade and refuse to exercise law which is already there to stop cross-border smuggling. We request for international support and assistance as babies in Hong Kong will face malnutrition very soon. If it's gotten to the point that people are hoarding formula from places out of the Pacific Rim, why hasn't American seen some of this crazy buying from tourists?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2013 05:31
|
|
|
Pro-PRC Laowai posted:Ok, but they are putting it on the wrong places. If hongkies want China to stop buying all their baby formula, instigating a fear of it being fake is the way to go. It seems like paranoia anyway. The differences in weights can be due to settling. To make any sort of conclusion, she should probably weight the two cans.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2013 21:00
|
|
|
The latest on Japanese-Chinese tensions is that Chinese vessels locked on their fire control radars onto a Japanese ship and a Japanese helicopter. This poo poo is getting out of hand.quote:TOKYO—Japan accused China's navy of locking weapons-guiding radar onto Japanese naval forces twice in the past three weeks—a serious escalation in the two countries' long-running territorial dispute that has heightened fears of a looming military conflict between the two Asian giants. So I guess this is equivalent to if you are in a fighter jet in a dogfight and your instruments say someone locked onto you. You probably are starting your evasive maneuvers and countermeasures and are preparing to get blown up.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2013 16:29
|
|
|
To me it sounds like an attempt at intimidation.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2013 16:46
|
|
|
Paper Mac posted:It's not clear what type of FC radar was used, and I'm not taking a Japanese minister's word that the use of FC radar is "highly unusual behaviour" for the PLAN. I presume you need to point an FC radar at something to fire a warning shot at it. I wouldn't even fire a warning shot in this situation. A missed shot could be mis-construed as a hostile action and provoke a counter attack. And then after that, it's literally WWIII. In that situation, I'd rather go off to war than sit home all day without the internet (which will surely be under constant disruption/attack from China).
|
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2013 17:14
|
|
|
I think some countries may equate being lit up by fire control radar as an act of war because it's really announcing an intention to shoot you. How are you supposed to react if you are on a vessel that's being locked on? Evasive maneuvers and fire back probably.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2013 17:52
|
|
|
If a Chinese ship is sunk and people die, the government has to respond with force, otherwise they will be almost certainly be ousted. If the Japanese lose a ship, I don't feel that they will be compelled to start a war. If a war does start up, I think the US will side with the Japanese, as will Korea, and any countries within the "US sphere" in Asia. China will cripple the internet in America and disrupt electronic communications. America will send in robo-stealth bombers and just blow the gently caress out of everything in China. China and America will both suffer casualties, but China will be set back hundreds of years.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2013 23:14
|
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:Why are Chinese consumers so dumb about these luxury brands then, especially considering none of them are better than free breastmilk? Chinese consumers tend to be pretty price-conscious in other areas, to the point of being kinda stingy. For things that are non-conspicuous consumption like baby formula at least. Although I guess I don't know Hong Kongers and the southern nouveau riche very well. Parental guilt and paranoia will make you buy what you think is the best brand for our kid, whether it really is or not. That's true in all cultures, US included.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2013 03:26
|
|
|
TheBuilder posted:Well, you see rice porridge introduced pretty goddamned early in a lot of households as the primary baby food. What do you do in between when the baby is born and when it can eat and digest rice? That's got to be at least a month conservatively speaking. I mean if kids could start eating soup and hot dogs from birth, that's one thing, but their stomachs aren't even developed enough to handle that the instant they leave the mother's vagina. And the minute they leave the mother's vagina they will start getting hungry.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2013 19:22
|
|
|
Lien posted:Political Science. Honestly, my advice would be to go somewhere else unless you just want a piece of paper saying that you have a master's degree. Which is I guess ok for a terminal degree, but if you ever want to continue on to a PhD, I do not think you'll be well served by a Chinese Master's program. I wanted to do a master's because I really enjoy research, and I wanted to develop my research skills, as well as learning good statistical design. I can't say I feel like I've achieved that with the help of my institution. Any learning and progress I've made have been strictly outside of class on my own time. My adviser hasn't been terribly helpful either. Wouldn't there it look good on a CV if you are applying to a PhD (in something Asia related) in the US to have a Masters at a top three Chinese university? It would probably stand out in academia if you were a US citizen to have spent time at a top Chinese university.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 18, 2013 01:48
|
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:This made me laugh because it's just so true. Little stuff like your entire identity are blithely dismissed because the category "foreign" is just good enough for 70% of the people you meet. They're not trying to be mean they're just pig-ignorant when it comes to anything outside their little world like most Chinese. (For those of you with broken internet irony detectors: I know, it's a joke.) I dunno, the phrase "Laowai" doesn't even refer to a specific country or a region of the world. It's basically "Someone from any other place that's not China.". So I guess that's how they lump everyone that's not Chinese. Not the most precise thing in the world.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 19, 2013 21:03
|
|
|
pentyne posted:Really? I figure they'd just throw back the corruption in Japan and US as proof that China is better, or am I misunderstanding just how large the scope of corruption is? Corruption in China is not even in the same ballpark as the US and Japan.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 1, 2013 03:05
|
|
|
hitension posted:This is debatable but I see no real signs that the British or other European powers or Japan destroyed Chinese culture. They were mean to China, yeah, but they didn't cause massive social upheaval within Chinese society. Wouldn't you at least say that the British played a major indirect role in destroying Chinese culture? I mean the Chinese didn't undergo spasms of violently rejecting their own culture for no reason at all. The major driving force was that China could not stand up to the aggressions and/or culture of imperialist nations (especially the UK). So the thought was that China's culture needed to be remade for the modern world, or at least remade so that they wouldn't be hosed with.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2013 16:21
|
|
|
Fight the Qing, restore the Ming!
|
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2013 17:15
|
|
|
Throatwarbler posted:You guys understand that the Manchus aren't the Mongols and didn't live on the "steppes"? The Manchus had already ruled as a Sinicized kingdom in Beijing back in the 10th Century. The Manchu kingdom in the 17th Century was entirely organized along Chinese lines. The Manchu army that conquered China was mostly made up of Han Chinese. Was the Qing even that markedly different from previous administrators of the empire? I mean they kept the civil examination system and pretty much all of the cultural institutions. Crameltonian posted:I wouldn't blame it on something inherent to Manchu culture. They did a pretty drat good job of running their empire for the first 150 years or so so it's not like they were inherently unsuited to ruling a settled state. Almost every dynasty to rule China, be it Han or a 'conquest dynasty', underwent the same process of internal rot. I think what was different this time was that the Qing had to respond to highly competitive external pressures that were capable of toppling them and eating them up if they could not respond adequately.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2013 17:47
|
|
|
I don't know how much I believe that article. If China was really concerned about global warming they would be trying to get all countries on board with a carbon tax, not just supposedly themselves.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 19, 2013 01:49
|
|
|
So is restoring the air traffic controllers a step by step "put back" off parts of the sequester or is it going to lock everything in because they take away the most odious of the cuts?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 27, 2013 03:15
|
|
|
I'm pretty impressed with people's in depth academic knowledge on Chinese history and literature, and it's doubly impressive when applied to a topic like Chinese sexual morals. There's a lot of good thinking here, and I am duly impressed by both sides of the argument. BUT. Has anybody actually interacted in depth with Chinese individuals from China or their families? Do these people seem like the most enlightened or liberated people when talking about sex? If anything I've found that the typical person is really naive, and parents don't talk to their kids about sex. I think largely culturally, the society has a certain amount of conservatism about sex. Contrast that with people openly accepting that the rich and powerful(mostly men) have multiple mistresses. The picture I get is a mostly patriarchal society with double standards on sexuality and the typical lower or middle class not really that liberated. Kind of like the West before the sexual revolution.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 15, 2013 16:06
|
|
|
Natural sex rations at birth are not 1:1. However, natural sex ratios in the population should be appx. 1:1. Why? Statitically speaking, more boys are born than girls, something like 1:1.03. No one knows why this is, scientifically--it could have to do with the Y chromosome being lighter as someone mentioned. But as life progresses, the extra .03 of boys dies out naturally because boys are typically more reckless and therefore more prone to life threatening activities, keeping the population at about 1:1.
|
|
#
¿
May 9, 2013 16:22
|
|
|
What is 'American' cuisine anyway? It's basically a mish mash of contributions for whatever cultures landed here from the WASPS to the Irish to the Italians and now being heavily influenced by Mexicans and immigrants from Asia and all over the world. Maybe we selected the worst meals from all of these cultures?
|
|
#
¿
May 23, 2013 14:35
|
|
|
It's also probably their intense academic background. They may be smart, but immature because they did not have enough time yet to develop coping mechanisms or even a realistic view of the world. It happens to Americans who go overseas also, but it's probably worse for Chinese students because having to study 24/7 for all of their lives doesn't leave time to develop other important aspects of their personality.
|
|
#
¿
May 23, 2013 19:06
|
|
|
WarpedNaba posted:So what happens when it's evident to both populations that they're going to starve? Aside from the riots, anarchy and so forth - How will the governments increase their food sources? Maybe strike deals with third world countries who have arable land? I mean it's the same thing as any country that lacks a necessary resource. They will just try to get it by buying it or taking it.
|
|
#
¿
May 23, 2013 23:07
|
|
|
Wibbleman posted:Any sources for that? Not calling bullshit, but would be interested to read, as its pretty much textbook capitalism. I think it's textbook libertarianism. The government doesn't exercise many rules so people do whatever the gently caress they want. And people being who they are do the worst things they can think of to make money. In many ways China is a textbook example of libertarianism--the government can't or won't intervene in many matters and the average person suffers for it.
|
|
#
¿
May 24, 2013 02:46
|
|
|
It's interesting how the article conflates morality and dishonesty with poor customer service.
|
|
#
¿
May 27, 2013 17:29
|
|
|
WarpedNaba posted:Is Xi seriously trying to level a (admittedly lovely) Domestic order program against a covert attack on a sovereign nation? Holy poo poo, so much for diplomacy. If Xi attacks Obama over internal communications survailance then I fully expect this earth to implode with irony.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 7, 2013 12:55
|
|
|
cafel posted:I'm curious about this, are there any documented intrusion cases strongly linked to the US government you could point me too? I know everyone involved in these kind of things likes to keep it quit, no government or business likes to admit it's been compromised. Stuxnet proved that the United States has a robust cyber-warfare wing and isn't afraid to employ it, but for obvious reasons that kind of thing doesn't get played up much in the states. Are there any particular recent cases I should know about? My guess is that either the US is so good at it that its rarely caught or its program exists but is nowhere near as massive as China's. Otherwise, wouldn't China counter with its own instances of US hacking (which I'm sure happen)?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 7, 2013 20:57
|
|
|
In my experience most Chinese nationals refer to what we know as 'Communist China' as 'The New China' or 'Modern China'. My guess is that most of their education focuses on that period as one to stop being picked on by other countries and an attempt to regain its stature on the world stage rather than one defined by purely ideological cues. For example I doubt most people don't care about the finer points of full blown communism vs. socialism as defined by Marx. What they would care about is that they stopped bein massacred by the Japanese.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 9, 2013 16:48
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:My impression has always been that everyone spies on everyone, and it's just tacitly accepted as part of international diplomacy. Countries still flip at each other when they find out because they have to, but everyone knows it's part of the game. And every country specially targets ones that are relevant to their interests, like India targeting Pakistan or China targeting the US or the US targeting Russia or whatever. Countries even spy on their own allies. There are probably CIA agents running around in Canada right now bored off their asses. People only publicize it when they want to embarrass a country. Otherwise, yes, it's accepted that everyone spies on everyone, and a certain percentage of embassy staff are actually intelligence officers under cover.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 13, 2013 04:07
|
|
|
Bloodnose posted:Just when we thought all this locust business was over... The appearance of the old colonial money with Queen Elizabeth's likeness was both hilarious and nostalgic.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2013 15:35
|
|
|
I think economically/militarily, the US-China contest is a tossup. Culturally, I think in China's current incarnation won't top America for a multitude of reasons. First, because per capita GDP is so different, most people in the world won't look at the life of the average citizen and say "I want to be that". And that's not even counting all the awful bits of Chinese society right now like rampant corruption and baby formula poisoning. Even people in Hong Kong won't look at a typical Chinese citizen in aspirational terms. Compare and contrast with S. Korea and Japan, who have considerably higher standards of living and their relative cultural penetration. Second, the way that culture is being produced and obviously talented artists like Ai Wei Wei are being suppressed, it's difficult to imagine that what comes out in terms of movies, culture, music and anything requiring high levels of creativity would even have any artistic merit. It's just going to be bland bullshit that some people will like but never appeal to a mass worldwide audience like a Beatles, Bob Dylan, or even Kanye West.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2013 16:07
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 15:49 |
|
|
I agree with your geopolitical analysis, but China will be able push past a lot of barriers if they have money. If and when they become the world's largest economy and keep on growing, diplomacy will be easier for them. America's Cold War economic strategy was intimately tied with its economic alliances and ultimately its economic system. America was able to offer its allies not only cash payments and 'aid' (which China is currently limited to), but entry into an economic club and worldwide system that ensured that potential ally's future prosperity. Once China becomes the world's largest economy, that system will be China's system because it will be able to offer its allies so much more than it can now. You will see that a lot of doors that were otherwise closed will become open to China, and many of the problems you mentioned will be attenuated.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2013 17:26
|
|