China eases family planning policy

[Broomstick]

Ability to buy food is precisely what matters, unless you are some racist who thinks it is wrong to import goods from abroad. No country is fully self-sufficient, even North Korea. The US for instance has a well known dependence on oil imports. That does not mean that there is no oil available in the US!

Stop doing this shit where you talk about one thing as if it were another. You're talking about self-sufficiency in food then flip to oil like it's the same thing and it isn't.

In order for one country to import something another must produce that thing in excess, otherwise no amount of money will be sufficient. Hong Kong can afford to not be self-sufficient in food production because some other nation, like the US, produces an excess. The US can afford to not be self-sufficient in oil because some other nation, like Saudi Arabia, has an excess.

Where your argument about population breaks down is that at some point the planet can no longer produce sufficient food for all the people in it, at which point everyone is fucked because once you reach that point there isn't some other planet to import food from.

I blame them for having 15x less growth than Japan.

This is rather disturbingly like the followers of Saint Reagan who believe the poor “choose” to be poor. Are you a Tea Party Republican?

Quite, I'm a "libertard" who assumes that just because every country with a free market economy stopped having famines and doesn't need a state policy mass infaniticide to regulate the food supply, it may be more sensible to try having a free market economy before moving on to the mass infanticide.

The Chinese have NOT been committing infanticide and to describe what is properly referred to as China's family planning policy as “infanticide” is a dishonest distortion at best. In China contraceptives, including hormonal fertility control, is widely available over the counter, it's not like abortion is the sole alternative to celibacy there. But hey, it's not like you display any understanding of nuance anyhow.

Your statement that “infanticide” is somehow being used to regulate the food supply is simply yet another stupid-ass statement you make conflating two different subjects. The one-child policy is to regulate people supply, not food supply.

It would be much more sensible to ignore all experience and instead assume that a grossly immoral policy that has neither been tried nor worked anywhere else is the most sensible solution.

There's a long history in the Pacific Islands of cultures controlling population by controlling births – but why am I not surprised you are completely ignorant of them? Granted, quite a few of them did practice infanticide, but since they had no access to things like hormonal birth control – it hadn't been invented yet – their choices were sharply limited. Limiting births has worked to control population where food resources are strictly limited, like on island archipelagos. Some of these island cultures still practice population control, sometimes to a strict and specific number, and these days they avail themselves of things like condoms, oral contraceptives, and exporting their surplus populace to other places (much easier now that long-distance travel is considerably safer than in the past). I offer the example of Tikopia, which has long maintained a population of about 1,000 people through a combination of celibacy, encouragement of exploration, warfare, forced deportation, and yes, sometimes infanticide. The population is still held at around 1,200 people. With emigration being easier these days the more extreme population control measures are no longer needed but they most certainly do control their population, as they have for centuries.

So your assertion that this hasn't been tried elsewhere is demonstrably false, and your assertion that it isn't effective is likewise false.

Actually that's not entirely true. One country in history did respond to a food shortage caused by self-imposed trade restrictions with mass starvation of presumed less useful parts of the population: Nazi Germany.

What a bizarre interpretation of WWII... the large-scale slaughter of people under the rule of Nazi Germany was not prompted by food shortages but rather ideology. Yes, towards the end of the war simple lack of food was a factor, but slave labor was being worked to death on a starvation diet years before lack of resources required it.

But you asked if I provided my services to the US and I do.

An entirely unsubstantiated claim made by a poster with a long history of concealing his location and what he does for a living. Are you the coffee boy or mail clerk for a large multinational based in the US? Because such would fit what you describe as well as a claim to be a high-level executive in such a place.

The US has good economic institutions, about the best in the world, and the reason it is growing slower than PRC is only that developing new technologies is harder than adopting them from others.

What unadulterated horseshit! The only reason you make that claim about US economic institutions is because, in the recent past to the present, the US has been the richest country in the world. You ignore that that had more to do with European nations bombing and murdering the shit out of each other during WWI and WWII, setting them back via mass destruction of infrastructure and production capabilities, than the US suddenly leaping forward. The US is now slipping in the number one spot because of BAD economic choices, ass-backward thinking (or entire lack of thinking) on the part of the elected officials, and the selfish, short-sighted policies and attitudes of the ruling oligarchs.

The PRC's growth rate will reduce to the US level with a per capita GDP still susbtantially below that of the US (if you disagree, I'm willing to bet cash).

Sure – I'll need the money when the US economy crashes again. There's really nothing preventing a disaster (either natural or stupidity-generated) that kicks the US down to a lower GDP, standard of living, or quality of life than other nations (arguably, we already have a lower standard of living here by several measures).

If I had run China throughout the 20th century it would be much better off than it is. Not that I'm special, it's just not that hard to do better than the morons who ran China.

You clearly DO think you're special, more enlightened, and smarter than anyone else. Unfortunately for you, no one here believes that because we've yet to see evidence of it. You strike me as an uneducated, arrogant man-child with less grasp of history than the average US high school student – which is such a low bar mice have to stoop to walk under it.

No, this problem seems to be scale independent. US, which is a huge continental empire and the 3rd most populous country in the world, developed with very similar policies.

Just completely ignore that China has been densely postulated for centuries, if not millenia, and US still has more room for people. Just completely ignore the differences in arable land, mineral resources, and every other variable factor.

This is actually an artificial problem, caused or at least exacerbated by internal movement controls. Again the reasoning behind this is partly a fault economic belief (the state is better at planning where people should live than the market) and partly an attempt to solidify CPC rule (fear of riots if poor immigrants were able to move freely into the cities, as they were to the US East Coast in the 19th century).

You do realize that even in the free-for-all US the government DOES have regulations about where people can and can't live? This ranges from the small scale (developers can't build an apartment block in a part of the city zoned for industrial use, for example) to the large (huge tracts of land set aside as permanent wilderness – see places like Yellowstone National Park), from local governments to Federally owned land under military control where civilians are not permitted (training grounds and top secret project areas). The government has forcibly relocated civilians from flood-prone river zones, (occasionally relocating entire towns) and disaster areas (see the Centralia, Pennsylvania mine fire after effects).

Also – the US has experienced urban riots so it's not like there is no basis for fear of such. Just in the 20th Century there were the 1909 Greek Town riot in Nebraska, the 1917 East St. Louis, Illinois riot, the 1919 Chicago race riot, the 1921 Tulsa riot, the 1935 Harlem riot... this was all before we got to the 1960's and Civil Rights. There were urban riots in the 19th Century as well, particularly around the time of the Civil War. There are plenty of examples from other nations as well. Fear of rioting is not baseless or unfounded. As Stas Bush has pointed out, uncontrolled movement from rural areas to cities has had unpleasent to downright hellish consequences in other parts of the world. The Chinese solution to this may or may not be justifiable, effective, too extreme, not sufficient, or any number of other things but the fact the Chinese government actually considers such things shows that they are not as stupid as you are.

[Ralin]

I would understand Ralin to be a libertarian based on this quote. How does it feel to be defending the Chinese government? My brain would hurt from all the cognitive dissonance.

I would really like to know what sort of mental gymnastics you turned to get "libertarian" from "supports forced abortions for the good of the nation." I feel pretty great defending the Chinese government. I've been there several times and lived there for most of the past year.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

I would understand Ralin to be a libertarian based on this quote. How does it feel to be defending the Chinese government? My brain would hurt from all the cognitive dissonance.

I would really like to know what sort of mental gymnastics you turned to get "libertarian" from "supports forced abortions for the good of the nation." I feel pretty great defending the Chinese government. I've been there several times and lived there for most of the past year.

The phrase "my right to not support other people" is classic libertarian drivel, but apparently you arrive at your position via another route so I apologize for that.

[Ralin]

The phrase "my right to not support other people" is classic libertarian drivel, but apparently you arrive at your position via another route so I apologize for that.

S'cool, just seemed really funny to me.

[energiewende]

This is actually an artificial problem, caused or at least exacerbated by internal movement controls. Again the reasoning behind this is partly a fault economic belief (the state is better at planning where people should live than the market) and partly an attempt to solidify CPC rule (fear of riots if poor immigrants were able to move freely into the cities, as they were to the US East Coast in the 19th century).

The internal movement controls are a lot more relaxed now. The market could of course force the towns to become Sao Paulo or Mumbai-like hellholes within just several years as people rapidly emigrate and flood them, creating shantytowns and slums of enormous proportions, but why do this? Riots are not the problem (indeed, Sao Paulo's problem is crime first and foremost and slums are an endemic problem for India, Brazil and other nations which cannot stop a free flow of impoverished citizens to the overpopulated towns). You seem to be confusing reality with your imagination. US and the XIX century has absolutely nothing to do with current reality. We're living in a completely different world. Migration controls in China will be eased much like Japan and South Korea.

There's some problem of perspective. 40m people in the US are foreign born. Many of these live in what a US native could regard as slums. They're nonetheless better than where those people came from; they're palaces by comparison. There are two reasons for immigration controls: first, to maintain cohesion and public order, and second, for the established elite to keep smelly proles off their lawns.

...abortions that only take place at threat of criminal penalties and enforced destitution are not voluntary.

Really? Why so? In this case abiding by the law is not voluntary. It is involuntary since it is only possible under threat of criminal penalties and enforced destitution if you break the law. Does this mean that all human behaviour since the creation of the law is involuntary self-coercion from the unfettered pack murderer towards a "law-abiding citizen"?

No, since laws don't make all actions either mandatory or forbidden.

I blame them for having 15x less growth than Japan.

They were never allowed to steal half a trillion worth of newest technologies in the 1950-1980 age. Japan was. They were not given the ability to ignore self-defence (and thus cut down defence spending massively) and simply rely on America to defend them - Japan was. You can of course say that if you pit yourself against America, you deserve to be economically crushed. That is a position I have heard more than once on this forum and elsewhere - that anyone who chooses to oppose America should have extreme crushing consequences for economy, social welfare etc. inflicted on them. I have not really been able to seriously consider this a valid argument, but it has been put forward before.

Cut defence spending from like 3% of GDP to 1%, and I don't think Japan did indeed loot the US with its non-existent army, carrying back trillions of dollars of sand to manufacture into computer chips.

Quite, I'm a "libertard" who assumes that just because every country with a free market economy stopped having famines and doesn't need a state policy mass infaniticide to regulate the food supply

You mean like India stopped having famines after Britain forced laissez-faire on it for a century?

As I understand it Britain retained feudalism in India. This was an explicit policy as late as the 20th century - look up the Viceroyalty of Lord Curzon for instance.

Abortion is murder if done for any reason other than mother's choice. This is the case in every country where voluntary abortion is legal.

There are reasons like genetic diseases which, during the procedure of genetic screening, lead to the destruction of genetically damaged embryos. Is this murder? Why does a doctor have the right to make this call? Since he was empowered by the parents? Hardly sensible. Of course, voluntary abortion also means that the mother may choose to abort on a whim, or may even run post-pregnancy chemical abortions without consulting anybody. I think this is not murder. Could you expand a bit on this?

Agreed, there are also some eugenicist exceptions. But in general, forcing the death of a healthy fetus against a mother's wishes is murder in the US and other pro-abortion jurisdictions.

[energiewende]

I would understand Ralin to be a libertarian based on this quote. How does it feel to be defending the Chinese government? My brain would hurt from all the cognitive dissonance.

I would really like to know what sort of mental gymnastics you turned to get "libertarian" from "supports forced abortions for the good of the nation." I feel pretty great defending the Chinese government. I've been there several times and lived there for most of the past year.

The phrase "my right to not support other people" is classic libertarian drivel, but apparently you arrive at your position via another route so I apologize for that.

Do you think it's worse to be an advocate of libertarianism than eugenics, infaniticide, etc.? I can well appreciate people have problems with libertarianism but usually it's from the perspective of the ideology being too cold and harsh, not insufficiently cold and harsh.

[Broomstick]

There's some problem of perspective. 40m people in the US are foreign born. Many of these live in what a US native could regard as slums. They're nonetheless better than where those people came from; they're palaces by comparison. There are two reasons for immigration controls: first, to maintain cohesion and public order, and second, for the established elite to keep smelly proles off their lawns.

Actually, the "smelly proles" are the people used to keep the lawns looking good - once again you display ignorance of how the US actually works.

By the way, the reason US "slums" are relative "palaces" is due to government intervention. Local codes demand certain standards in regards to housing, even in slums. Failure to maintain these standards can result in criminal penalties being imposed on the owners. This is really the opposite of a free-market situation.

I should also point out that MOST of the people in the US living in either slums or squalor are actually native born citizens, it's not like they're exclusive to immigrants.

[energiewende]

The PRC's growth rate will reduce to the US level with a per capita GDP still susbtantially below that of the US (if you disagree, I'm willing to bet cash).

Sure – I'll need the money when the US economy crashes again. There's really nothing preventing a disaster (either natural or stupidity-generated) that kicks the US down to a lower GDP, standard of living, or quality of life than other nations (arguably, we already have a lower standard of living here by several measures).

Most of this post was long and uninteresting, but just to this - if you're serious, I propose the following terms:

The bet will end when the GDP per capita growth rate of the Peoples' Republic of China matches or drops below that of the United States. Broomstick will be judged to have won the bet if the GDP per capita of the Peoples' Republic of China is greater than or equal to that of the United States at this time; otherwise, energiewende will be judged to have won.

I offer to bet $1,000. Since you seem to believe the US economy will crash, I am also willing to bet in Euros, Swiss Francs, or a fixed mass of gold.

[mr friendly guy]

"The Western media" isn't a single entity. I doubt most of the Western media or people working in it ever had any strong opinion on whether PRC would weaken the One Child Policy or not.

Why the fuck should anyone give a shit if you doubt it, aside from using it as an opportunity to mock you that is. You demonstrated you are ignorant of the most basic facets of the subjects you are talking about.

The point is that the "voluntary" abortions are also mandatory. Even if there had been absolutely no cases of people being physically restrained while abortions are performed on them (I did not bring up those examples although I suspect that their "criminality" has more to do with how awful it made the PRC look than their deep concern for morality), abortions that only take place at threat of criminal penalties and enforced destitution are not voluntary.

So all fines are wrong then? So locking someone in jail is wrong (no matter what crime someone committed) because its not voluntary? God you are fucking stupid.

HA HA HA HA HA. ROTFL. Hong Kong can only produce 20% of its food and relies on imports from the mainland moron. Are you trolling? Good god you are embarrassing yourself aren't you?
I bet you are going to shift the goalposts and say well I was referring to ability to buy food rather than ability to "produce enough food."

Ability to buy food is precisely what matters, unless you are some racist who thinks it is wrong to import goods from abroad. No country is fully self-sufficient, even North Korea. The US for instance has a well known dependence on oil imports. That does not mean that there is no oil available in the US!

Yep. I predicted you will shift the goal posts and in the exact same manner you did. You talked about with you in charge adopting Hong Kong style policies China would be able to produce its own food in sufficient quantities. When it was pointed out HK can't produce enough to feed itself, you change the goalposts exactly as I predicted. I don't know why stupid people pretend they didn't say something on a message board when anyone can just look and see that were talking about producing food and not about buying it? Not the sharpest tool in the shed are you?

BTW - one who doesn't believe in buying from abroad believes in autarky rather than the superiority of their ethnic group. Especially since most nations are multi ethnic states. Just thought you should know.

I blame them for having 15x less growth than Japan.

I think Stas covered it quite well, but another thing to note was that the US put effort into rebuilding Japan after its defeat in WWII. No such effort was afforded to the PRC. Not only that, China still fought a civil war for a few more years after Japan got onto the business of rebuilding.

Quite, I'm a "libertard" who assumes that just because every country with a free market economy stopped having famines and doesn't need a state policy mass infaniticide to regulate the food supply, it may be more sensible to try having a free market economy before moving on to the mass infanticide.

Yes you are a retard who assumes that free market is the only factor in deciding whether a country can achieve adequate food supply and totally ignore the population for the amount of arable land. None of the free market countries had a combine population equivalent to China's idiot. Even today its population is bigger than the US, Canada, EU, Japan, Australia combined. The US alone has more arable land than China (the US is slightly bigger than China with 16.29% of arable land vs China's 11.62%).

It would be much more sensible to ignore all experience and instead assume that a grossly immoral policy that has neither been tried nor worked anywhere else is the most sensible solution.

But it would be much more sensible to try a policy of having massive population with a limited land area. That would totally work. Of course since China isn't having famines anymore, using your logic (which boils down to post hoc ergo propter hoc) the policy did work.

Abortion is murder if done for any reason other than mother's choice. This is the case in every country where voluntary abortion is legal.

I know you are scientifically illiterate, but a foetus before it develops enough of the brain isn't a person. Yeah I know, you being the perfect example of why abortion is good might be a bit sensitive to a topic about that.

It is unfair to blame the CPC for the country being poor in 1949 but not in 1976. My point was also not specifically directed at the CPC: China was badly governed before that too.

Why do people deny saying something on a message board when anyone reading it can see that you blamed China being poor because they were run by socialists.

I said the trend was downward, not that the population was already decreasing.

Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo stick.
http://www.eionet.europa.eu/gemet/concept?ns=1&cp=6528

population trend
Definition:
The direction of change in the total number of persons inhabiting a country, city, district or area.

For the trend to go downward, the population must already be decreasing by definition moron. Ergo your claim about the trend going downwards requires the population to have actually decreased. Which your own graph you produced to show it... displayed the opposite.

How many of generations of inbreeding did it take to produce you?

If you stop and think before expressing your child-like rage, you may learn something.

From you, I highly doubt it. Actually scratch that. I can learn how to make a fool of myself. How about I say something, link to a graph showing the opposite, and still insist I am correct. I hear that worked out so well for you.

Think about what you are saying: China could have adopted better policies, avoiding mass poverty and death, but it's unreasonable for me to say this since I cannot retroactively implement those policies personally. Is that in any way a reasonable criticism? Are you not rather agreeing with my point, that China is badly governed and that the One Child Policy was unnecessary if better choices had been made instead?

Your attempt to shift the goal posts from "I can do a better job than China's leaders without implement their family planning policy" to "but China is badly governed" isn't fooling anyone. What policies would you implement if you were in charge in 1979 that would have produced greater growth than they did without their family planning policy. BTW - saying their previous leaders suck isn't a plan.

I would be willing to work for them for a modest increase in salary. Let me know if they're interested.

Why aren't you looking to work for them since your ideas are apparently so great.

But you asked if I provided my services to the US and I do.

In terms of economic policies you dishonest twat. Since you were quite clearly referring to how you run things better than China's leaders, my retort could only imply economic or social policies.

I can't parse your point.

That's because you are stupid. Your replies aren't actually answering what's being asked, which is why I think you just have prepared talking points which you repeat when you see a question vaguely resembling what your talking points were designed to answer.

The US has good economic institutions, about the best in the world, and the reason it is growing slower than PRC is only that developing new technologies is harder than adopting them from others. The PRC's growth rate will reduce to the US level with a per capita GDP still susbtantially below that of the US (if you disagree, I'm willing to bet cash). The US cannot grow faster than the PRC; even if the US found some way of drastically increasing the rate of technological progress, the PRC's convergence growth would also be able to increase as it would then be able to adopt those technologies.

So you don't actually have an economic plan? But you had a great way to avoid the obvious implication to "since you are so smart, why aren't your helping the US do better economically"? Why the US doesn't need my help because its already perfect. The conceit is strong in this one.

No, this problem seems to be scale independent. US, which is a huge continental empire and the 3rd most populous country in the world, developed with very similar policies.

Yet strangely every time you are asked to show what you will do different than China's leaders which will lead to better standard of living, growth without limiting population you can only give the most vaguest of answers. You are like an English teacher who tells his student he can improve his essay scores by writing better. Nice sounding and utterly useless advice.

I don't see why that would make them want the country they are ruling to be weak. Even if they didn't care at all about the Han, they should still want higher tax revenues to farm.

Not only is this not relevant to the original point, ie you didn't even know China was ruled by foreigners 200 years ago (which is of course par for the course), that statement itself shows a lack of understanding of human behaviour.

I also find it amusing you attribute China's current leaders to limiting the population to better control (even though it delays reaching super power status), but won't even entertain that option to answer your own question on why they made decisions which left the country weak. And no I am not saying to maintain control is the correct answer, but it does amuse me how you sprout shit in one post and then forget about the implications of it in another.

People with nothing to lose are more dangerous. PRC has given up some power over the economy but very little over the police and military.

Except of course, the PRC citizens didn't start off with nothing to lose. So again I ask, how is it in your batshit crazy world where you a mind link to the PRC's politicians, the PRC has given its citizens more freedom, yet at the same time exert greater control, when those two terms are a contradiction. You are literally making shit up, with more bullshit after bullshit to explain your earlier bullshit aren't you?

[Broomstick]

Most of this post was long and uninteresting, but just to this - if you're serious, I propose the following terms:

Translation: I haven't any rebuttal so I'll just ignore what you say.

As for the bet - no, I wasn't serious. I don't have sufficient personal resources to fritter them away in a pissing contest with a basement-dwelling mouthbreather such as yourself.

[K. A. Pital]

There's some problem of perspective. 40m people in the US are foreign born. Many of these live in what a US native could regard as slums. They're nonetheless better than where those people came from; they're palaces by comparison. There are two reasons for immigration controls: first, to maintain cohesion and public order, and second, for the established elite to keep smelly proles off their lawns.

A Third World country slum is not a "slum" by US citizen standards. It is a true slum, a disease, crime and violence-ridden place where dirt, infection, death and rape run rampant, people dissappear without a trace and build houses from scraps. There are hardly worse places to live in than urban slums of Brazil, India, Indonesia and the like. Well, maybe African towns - those are simply giant slums, a certain hyper-slum if you will. The established elite in India is not threatened by the slums. In fact, there's a 700-meter high glittering India tower being erected right in front of one of the world's largest and most hideous slums. Only in a very remote sense slum dwellers will ever threaten those from the tower. Their paths may not even ever cross until slum dwellers die destitute while the tower people live out their retirement in walled-off settlements somewhere close to the coast.

No, since laws don't make all actions either mandatory or forbidden.

Laws forbid to steal even if you have nothing to eat.

Cut defence spending from like 3% of GDP to 1%, and I don't think Japan did indeed loot the US with its non-existent army, carrying back trillions of dollars of sand to manufacture into computer chips.

Japan looted the US semiconductor industry, stealing enormously valuable technologies. That is way more important than looting the US with a nonexistent army, although of course that was also true and there's no way around it.

As I understand it Britain retained feudalism in India. This was an explicit policy as late as the 20th century - look up the Viceroyalty of Lord Curzon for instance.

And yet without installing industry and properly industrial capitalism in India, Britain forced them to trade freely - which meant, without capitalistic industries of the age, to ransack and destroy their pre-capitalist economy. A totally different story when you compare it to many other places. So I wouldn't be so sure that free market equals industry and vice versa.

Agreed, there are also some eugenicist exceptions. But in general, forcing the death of a healthy fetus against a mother's wishes is murder in the US and other pro-abortion jurisdictions.

If you do it against the mother's wish, sure. If the mother wishes to dispose of the child to avoid being financially crippled, I don't see a reason between this and a poor person aborting the child due to financial pressures.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

I would really like to know what sort of mental gymnastics you turned to get "libertarian" from "supports forced abortions for the good of the nation." I feel pretty great defending the Chinese government. I've been there several times and lived there for most of the past year.

The phrase "my right to not support other people" is classic libertarian drivel, but apparently you arrive at your position via another route so I apologize for that.

Do you think it's worse to be an advocate of libertarianism than eugenics, infaniticide, etc.? I can well appreciate people have problems with libertarianism but usually it's from the perspective of the ideology being too cold and harsh, not insufficiently cold and harsh.

What kind of question is this? What the posts say is this: "Dude, are you a libertarian?" "No mate, where'd you get the idea from?" "Sorry, you just used their catch phrase." Only skimming the thread and making conjectures once again, right?

[PainRack]

I........... not supposed to dogpile a poster thanks to the rules so, I try NOT to talk about stuff others are discussing.

idk what is your point - my precise argument is that China's problem was systemic. Foreign intervention was only possible because China was already weak, crippled by its bad institutions, and even then foreign caused minimal damage relative to what Europeans were doing to one another. With forcing the government to at least realise a problem existed, it was probably a net benefit.

So, at WHAT point was her institutions weak?
Was it when it adopted entrepot trade?
State trade?
Colonial rule and imperialism?

Freedom? The Ming state was arguably less free than the Tang, but in terms of free trade, it was decidedly more freer than the Qing which conquered her. Yet, the Qing themselves fell to the European powers.
And again. As for 'minimal' damage, say what? The Opium wars alone destroyed every single modern arsenal China had, as well as wrecking her then nascent trade infrastructure.
And its not one war. Its a series of wars in which China routinely had her modern industry and infrastructure, as well as her modern military assets, painstakingly purchased with limited capital from overseas destroyed................. Do we have an example? OMG? We do! Great Britain,1914-1950. Except Great Britain didn't actually suffer occupation and homeland industry destroyed save during WW2.
I guess you're going to claim that Great Britain wasn't 'free' as well during this period, eh? (Although admittedly, as a devil advocate argument, one could argue that the Britain of 1914-1950 was less economically libertarian than the Victorian era.)

...a country that was just literally squashed by every power of note in the world, losing more than two million men, standing up a year later and saying, "Alright, who wants another?". Yet some people in this thread are arguing that losing Macao and HK is the cause of all China's problems.

And? France manpower, arms and cash was exhausted. The Battle of Waterloo is famous only because of Britain rar rar rar!, not because the French Empire suddenly resurrected and became the same threat of 1812.
As for people arguing Macao and Hk, just WHERE are they arguing this?

So what? My precise argument is that China was badly governed and that this, rather than external factors, caused its problems..

So what? You TRIED to claim that Cixi badly governed the state because she was a racist ultraconservative, WITHOUT bothering to examine exactly WHY she enacted said policies, and fucking ignored that she WAS right to do so because when the State DID adopt more inclusive policies , the Beiyang army was singlehandedly responsible for overthrowing the dynasty in a coup!

Or in other words. Cixi fears were TRUE AND VALID. You just........ ignored every single reason and argument she had about how the reforms demanded would destroy the Qing state, which ultimately, was an occupying power that had its legitimancy cast into doubt again after Kangxi died.

And By the way, since we are talking about governing policies, let me see, laissez faire policies and low tax? What does that remind me of. Oh right. Emperor Kangxi. Sure, we must ignore the levy of manpower and resources to re-open up the southern canals and waterways, but his economic policy of reducing taxation and trade reforms, rebuilding the damaged waterway infrastructure was responsible for restoring the battered Imperial treasury. Despite the reduced taxation, revenues soared, dipping only in the last years of his administration as more military campaigns, along with the ongoing corruption resulting from both increased revenue and war set in.


Oh wait, why wasn't this mentioned? Because you simply have no understanding of just WHAT the Qing dynasty, or earlier dynasties did, outside of a few books. I bet the only basis you have about China having bad insitutions is based solely off a single book which claims China had a resource extraction institution/market/philosophy, right? I leave it to Stas to actually rebut the conclusions from that series of economists but its laughable to think that this is true in modern times.

In ancient times, the so called 'market' insitutions was equally prevalent in the Ming, but that dynasty was defeated by the Qing, showing the truth that should had been obvious to any civilization player. Economic wealth, without the political and military might to defend it, is fragile.

this that the KMT was "capitalistic"? It's simply a right-nationalist movement, with about as much potential to produce a developed economy as Franco.

Lol. And you singlehandedly ignored the history of how Chiang let the bankers of Shanghai run amok?Of the promotion of industrialists via capitalism? Of how Shanghai, during the KMT era was in the same Gilded Age of the US? Look. Shang Hai Tang is literally one of the most popular icons of modern Chinese history, if you have no fucking idea what it is, you're NUTS.

An reaction in 1949 to win back popular support from the Communists is NOT proof that the KMT was anti capitalist.

Look.... China TFR is 1.4. The EXACT same rate as say, Japan, higher than Singapore 1.29, and lower than the US at 2.0.

Now, think what that actually means if only 1.6% of the population are exempted.

The rural 1.5-child policy is controlling here. Perhaps 1.5 is categorically vastly different to 1.[/quote]
And just WHAT does the TRF of 1.4 tells you motherfucker? It tells you that your argument that most of China had only 1 child is false. The large families of old are obviously not prevalent but the demographic distrubitions are equivalent to every single 1st world country save the US, a NUCLEAR family.
If only 2% was exempted, those motherfuckers must be fucking like RABBITS!

Again, I've got nothing really to disagree with here. China made serious attempts to develop modern military, and just failed due to lack of ability. This was an economic problem. That is my entire point!

Are you going to insist that the Beiyang Fleet was small and unmodernised? It was the fucking LARGEST FLEET IN ASIA. And modernity ignores the pace of technological advances during this period and when the Beiyang Fleet peaked in strength compared to the nascent growth of the IJN.

Stop trying to dodge the point! If this was an economic problem, just HOW did China manage to build the largest fleet in Asia, with one of its fleet almost equivalent to the smaller European powers?

Your arguments are tendentious and you sidestep the point, perhaps deliberately. So what if China made reforms that did not improve its rate of economic or technological development?

And how did you know it DIDN"T improve its rate of economic or technological development? I mean, only half of Peru silver flowed to Ming china during its era of free trade, right? The issue here is that you're WRONG. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

You claimed that they didn't adopt 'western' policies. They did.
You claimed that they weren't 'free' or 'prosperous'. They were.

[mr friendly guy]

Most of this post was long and uninteresting, but just to this - if you're serious, I propose the following terms:

Translation: I haven't any rebuttal so I'll just ignore what you say.

As for the bet - no, I wasn't serious. I don't have sufficient personal resources to fritter them away in a pissing contest with a basement-dwelling mouthbreather such as yourself.

By the time his conditions are met, ie when China's growth slows to the US rate, $1000 USD might not be worth a lot anyway. A testament to the fact its going to take time for this prediction to come to pass either way.