One Chinese leader says (according to a diplomatic report) that China's GNP figures are only "indicative" and that he uses less falsifiable indices such as electricity production, paid railway cargo and so. Applying his criteria to the USA, one suspects that China is today (and not in the future) the world's largest economy. The USA, for example, consumes less electricity than China. Moreover, China's figures grow more than 10% a year while America's falls relatively and absolutely. Its worth noting that I had some difficulty to find the relevant American figures: the Dept.of Energy's webside provides abundant information on alternative energy but little hard figures. America seems to have been taken over by hippies and is fixated on wind power (obsolete already when Don Quixote battled the windmills of La Mancha), biomass power (burning dry grass and wood like the Indians) and other New Age fashions.
10 comments:
The signs of American decline and Chinese ascendancy are everywhere, but I'm not sure electricity consumption is the right metric. Not only to the Chinese have 5x as many people (so equal electricity consumption would mean 1/5 as much per capita) but also certain electricity intensive industries have relocated to China - an aluminum smelter uses far more electricity per $ of output than say a Google office campus.
In today's NYT, there is an article to the effect that international comparative testing of students puts Shanghai in the #1 spot, ahead of Singapore. US is #27 or so.
The Chinese people have always been hard working and intelligent but their leadership has often failed them. Their leaders now are not the worst they have had (not even close) but they are not the best that could be either - they are riding the tiger and holding on for dear life and don't dare let go of the reins. Only another failure of leadership can stop them and so far that is not in sight.
K
By your criteria the Soviet Union in the 50s and 60s with its record breaking hydroelectric dams and nuclear power plants had as large an economy as the US. Its possible that as Marxists the Chicom capitalists have managed to embody in their system whar Marx identified as the main engime of capitalistic accumulation, viz the extraction of surplus labour. This they accomplish by dangling the prospect of living in Shanghai or Peking, in front of a billion Chinese marathoners only a small fraction of whom will ever succeed in their goals. I've heard from a friend that the cost of a permit to live in Shanghai has gone up a hundred-fold in the last ten years. The Chinese are caught up in the frenzy to get rich, a sense of which one can get in the completely mercenary attitude of their women towards marriage. Its hard to be afraid of a nation of pricey hookers.
K, Shanghai is where the 'best and brightest' go, the average IQ in China is nowhere that high. Singapore's standing is boosted by the presence of a large number of foreign students many of whom happen to be Indians. Another side to the story is that the examiners here contrive to find ways to set fiendishly tough qustions to impress the ministry and outsiders.
The other day I was with a friend from the university who regaled us with the bellyaching that was going in the senate due to the decline in Singapore's university rankings.
The Soviet Union's figures were all invented, but Chinese electricity is real, Chinese export tonnage is real and measurable. Of course, China is bigger and per capita is poorer than the USA. Yet all I hear from my USA friends and relatives is that living standards have been static for a generation. GNP is a figure that has no real meaning - that is what the Chinese Communist mandarin was saying to the American Ambassador.
Addenda: For an engineer, American government websites present a surrealistic panorama of New Age hippies singing with John Lennon about love and peace.
The only real question with respect to the US Government, and the EU as well, is whether those responsible for their policies and propaganda are merely useful idiots, or whether they are consciously committed to the destruction of the West.
Anon.
'We will bury you...', though Khrushchev may have exaggerated a little, his blustering had some basis in fact.
J it depends on which website you access. Try the NASA portal, you can if you wish download the entire manual for the Apollo 10 flight. US governmant websites remain the most generous and informative by a huge margin.
Ivan,
Yes and no. American government websites are generous with old material, but have a tremendous emphasis on irrelevant political correctness issues like gender balance, wind energy, and so on.
Like when the NASA administrator recently said that NASA's #1 task was outreach to the Muslim world. I'm not making this up.
K
I am sure you arent. I am amazed only because this is a new century and I'm from the old one. I have to learn the new language.
I think living standards have gone up handsomely for millionaires here, just not for middle America. Left liberals spend hours decrying this, but low-potential immigrants are a significant cause.
Some of the GMU guys had threads on greece's GDP - from actually just looking at Greece, they thought the alleged numbers were way off.
I remember seeing a sharp guy or two claim in the reacto-o-sphere that GDP is worthless.
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