GothicGothicness
SasqWatch
- Joined
- October 25, 2006
- Messages
- 6,292
Up to now we have had a developed western country as a leader, what changes can we expect when we for the first time in history become number two?
Actually things are returning to a normal stage, china has been number one throughout history. It is only in very recent history there have been western leaders.
However I am not so sure they are taking over. There are lots of problems in China, well hidden sure. But they are still there. Which could prevent it from becoming number one. Still considering it has ~ 4 times the U.S. population, it wouldn't be surprising if it managed to pass in overall GDP.
The age pyramid is a good example of a chinese problem, one child is supposed to support 2 parents, and perhaps also grand parents, inflation is driving prices up, and most of them cannot afford to get by without support from their one child. This is all working fine as the income keeps rising, and jobs are there. But it is also a bit of a cardbox house, if suddenly jobs get fewer or salaries start to drop it risks tumbling down really fast. Same things goes for housing, there are already gigantic ghost cities where houses could not be sold, if the urbanization is halted, and house prices start to drop it could lead to panic.
Another thing is the central gouverment has borrowed huge amount of money to local ones, and not a little of it gets lost in corruption. At some point it might be payback time.
China has massive reserves to coup with a lot of these things sure, and also they've done something really smart, they've invested a lot in education, with a highly educated workforce they have good chances of keeping up the growth, as lots of peoples/companies are starting to move higher paying jobs and research to china.
On the other hand they also have other problems, people are starting to protest go on strikes, demand higher quality of living, and demand answers when gouverment projects go wrong. Some local places even started their own little democratic societies.
The best and brightest students, and a lot of the must succesfull chinese ( and movie stars etc ) don't want to keep their chinses citizenship, most of the ones who go to study abroad or gets jobs in other countries don't comeback. I mean if you are really rich, probably freedom is the thing you're going to want the most? instead of being locked to doing as the gouverment wishes?
On the other hand chinese gouverment keeps improving health care, schools, public service, transports, living standards and on top of that building a lot of beautiful and high-tech culture and entertainment, and so on, as long as people see these improvements they'd be relatively happy.
I think it is hard to predict which way it would go, perhaps if you take everything into account it might actually be a 50/50 % chance. Future will tell!
- Joined
- Oct 25, 2006
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- 6,292