China Looming

The threats of China have all kinds of people throwing their skirts over their head and running around the room ala Kung Po chicken little fashion decrying the death of the west or at least the U.S. of A.

In my office, someone sees a news report about the billions of people and their industrialization and start to fret. I'm a masterful fretter but not over competitive geopolitical matters.

Yes, China is industrializing. However, it's still a pre-industrial (close to Stone Age) nation. Remember that book I wrote? In it I wrote:

During the 1980s, Lee Iacocca made a reputation and fortune for himself by bashing the Japanese and their auto industry. His two best-selling books had the tone of World War II propaganda films. Bumper stickers were stuck to rusting out American cars that read “Unemployment: Made In Japan.”

For those that don't remember the economics of the 1980s, the US was to succumb to the planned manufacturing might of Germany and the worker bee industriousness of the Japanese. As I further wrote:

However, by the year 2000, Japan was in an economic malaise with its stock markets at a 17-year low and Germany had a case of endemic 10% unemployment.

China's not going to take us over economically just as Japan and Germany didn't. They were rigid inflexible systems. NO! we don't have a plan for dealing with them. There is no plan. That's our saving grace. Planning in those countries locks them into failed actions. They can't change. They have to follow the plan. Where an economic system is free there's room for flexibility. The market will punish those that choose poorly and reward those that chose well. A countries economic survival can be equated with Darwin.

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

Ok, don't believe me and want to feel a little schadenfraude toward China, then read the wonderful Mark Steyn's little blip. There’s a lot for China to worry about...however it seems like Chinese chicks may do ok.

Stay You.
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