

Is China really blocking all the US search engines? - ereldon
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/is_china_attacking_us_search.php
The answer seems to be unclear!
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brk
The constant "concern" over China becoming some sort of significant world
super power/super economy really puzzles me.

There is nothing about the way China is acting, as a country, to indicate that
they have any real ability to scale.

It has been said, (and I happen to agree) that the thing that makes the US so
attractive from a standpoint of innovation is the government. I have a lot of
issues with the US Government (and I don't just mean in a me-too anti-Bush
sort of way), but overall in the US are not limited to the information you can
access, in your opportunity to create wealth, and in your ability to keep that
wealth and do with it what you please. At least as compared to the rest of the
world. I recognize the obvious problems with various FOIA requests, taxes,
patents, etc. But overall you are free in the US to design, develop and sell
any product or service that you feel will have a value.

Then you look at China, and the government of a few is trying to manage the
efforts of billions. This is like taking everything you should have learned
from "The Mythical Man Month", and extrapolating out to the worst possible
case.

It may take 20 years, but China is going to implode from their own lack of
management. OR, they will get smart and make massive changes to the way things
are done, so that they can become something other than just another lowest-
cost-bidder.

I cannot think of any case in history where their "model" has been successful.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I agree with you, but I'll play devil's advocate.

Right now 3 out of 4 of the world's super cranes are in China, constructing
new office towers. The Chinese are holding something like a trillion dollars
that we've traded them for TVs and such. The Chinese military is building a
deep-water navy, and China keeps making no-so-subtle threats against Taiwan.
In addition, the Chinese have a tendency to build up a lot of nationalistic
anger whenever they feel threatened, whether the threat is real or imagined.

Now the kicker is exactly as you describe: they cannot scale. Their system is
rotten and broken, and the only reason it's still working is that they "sold
out" to capitalism, effectively creating an oligarchy just like in the bad old
days.

But how would an implosion occur? There's good money that says that the worse
things get, the more China is going to be looking for somebody else to get
into a tangle with -- what better way to keep people's attention elsewhere.
The blame has to go somewhere, and it can't be the leadership. There's an easy
case to be made that China could blame it's impeding implosion on lack of
cheap resources, favored-trading status of Taiwan, Japanese hegemony, United
States imperialism -- pick your bad guy. In a pressure cooker the steam has to
go somewhere.

That's the worry.

~~~
gscott
The best thing that could happen to us if they end up like Japan. Japan was
buying everything in sight, then there banking system collapsed from all of
the bad loans (worse then our housing market I suppose) and they have yet to
recover. I know China is making bad loans, we can only hope they collapse
because they are eating our lunch right now, in fact we are giving them our
lunch they don't even have to take it.

