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Re. Western journalist claiming Shanghai a 'Ghost Town' faces backlash
Michael Yon is a garden variety b.s. artist. When W. Bush launched his Global War of Terror, Mr. Yon got his books published by agreeing that all Muslims should be exterminated. Today Yon bangs the drums against China, because that’s what sells. He sometimes gets invited to Japan to give talks vilifying China. The Japanese love it, since they have been terrified of China for centuries.
Mr. Yon reminds me of these fake UFO “whistleblowers” who claim that the U.S. government is hiding flying saucers from Planet X9 or wherever. These scammers admit that they have never seen anything themselves, or seen any photos, and they have zero evidence for any of their claims, but they heard about it from someone who heard rumors from someone. All of it is true because…Aliens!
Or in Yon’s case…China!
This is a hazard of being a scammer. If you get away with your b.s. long enough, you assume that everyone is gullible until one day you tell a minor lie and -- BOOM -- everyone suddenly wakes up and exposes you as a career bullshitter. What the -- where did that come from? People are not “offended” by you, like woke liberals are. It’s worse than that. People laugh at you. They make humorous memes about you.
There is no need to distort anything about China, which has all kinds of problems. For example, Chinese kids are becoming morbidly obese from eating Western food (McDonald’s etc). Parents in large cities are stressed-out and overworked. They leave their kids with grandparents, who spoil the kids by taking them to Burger King or whatever. Then parents have to spend a lot of money to enroll their kids in expensive “fat camps.”
Or how about this…China graduates fifty times as many engineers as does the USA, but right now those graduates are having difficulty finding jobs in some cities. They don’t carry a mountain of student loan debt, but they spent years coping with a hyper-competitive education system, only to have doors shut in their faces. If they don’t get hired young, and promoted to senior management level by age 35, they are purged by the system. It’s illegal, but it happens anyway. And in the tech industry you are expected to work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.
The point is that China has its own problems. There is no need to invent them.
ONE OTHER THING: One reason (among many) why the West is falling apart is that academic grades, performance evaluations, and skill-based hiring are all condemned as “racist.” In Democrat-run cities, you are hired and promoted for your (black) skin color.
China is at the opposite extreme. So are Taiwan and South Korea. There, academia and the job market are insanely competitive. I would not want to live in such a world, since promotion in bureaucracies is as much a product of luck and politics as is hard work.
Perhaps one day the East and West will find some way to meet in the middle.
It should be noted that the CCP is sitting on top of the largest real estate bubble in human history and said bubble holds the vast majority of the PRC's middle class savings. Oh dear...
It should be noted that the CCP is sitting on top of the largest real estate bubble in human history and said bubble holds the vast majority of the PRC's middle class savings. Oh dear...
Were residency requirements for urban workers the impetus for trying to become property owners? Much has been said about the residency issue affecting people who remain registered in rural areas despite working full-time in the city.
"Were residency requirements for urban workers the impetus for trying to become property owners? Much has been said about the residency issue affecting people who remain registered in rural areas despite working full-time in the city."
China is reportedly addressing this issue — finally. But it is a challenging issue to resolve. China is growing and changing very quickly and there is only so fast it can grow and change without stressing the system. So it is a high-wire balancing act.
6 comments:
Re. Western journalist claiming Shanghai a 'Ghost Town' faces backlash
Michael Yon is a garden variety b.s. artist. When W. Bush launched his Global War of Terror, Mr. Yon got his books published by agreeing that all Muslims should be exterminated. Today Yon bangs the drums against China, because that’s what sells. He sometimes gets invited to Japan to give talks vilifying China. The Japanese love it, since they have been terrified of China for centuries.
Mr. Yon reminds me of these fake UFO “whistleblowers” who claim that the U.S. government is hiding flying saucers from Planet X9 or wherever. These scammers admit that they have never seen anything themselves, or seen any photos, and they have zero evidence for any of their claims, but they heard about it from someone who heard rumors from someone. All of it is true because…Aliens!
Or in Yon’s case…China!
This is a hazard of being a scammer. If you get away with your b.s. long enough, you assume that everyone is gullible until one day you tell a minor lie and -- BOOM -- everyone suddenly wakes up and exposes you as a career bullshitter. What the -- where did that come from? People are not “offended” by you, like woke liberals are. It’s worse than that. People laugh at you. They make humorous memes about you.
There is no need to distort anything about China, which has all kinds of problems. For example, Chinese kids are becoming morbidly obese from eating Western food (McDonald’s etc). Parents in large cities are stressed-out and overworked. They leave their kids with grandparents, who spoil the kids by taking them to Burger King or whatever. Then parents have to spend a lot of money to enroll their kids in expensive “fat camps.”
Or how about this…China graduates fifty times as many engineers as does the USA, but right now those graduates are having difficulty finding jobs in some cities. They don’t carry a mountain of student loan debt, but they spent years coping with a hyper-competitive education system, only to have doors shut in their faces. If they don’t get hired young, and promoted to senior management level by age 35, they are purged by the system. It’s illegal, but it happens anyway. And in the tech industry you are expected to work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.
The point is that China has its own problems. There is no need to invent them.
ONE OTHER THING: One reason (among many) why the West is falling apart is that academic grades, performance evaluations, and skill-based hiring are all condemned as “racist.” In Democrat-run cities, you are hired and promoted for your (black) skin color.
China is at the opposite extreme. So are Taiwan and South Korea. There, academia and the job market are insanely competitive. I would not want to live in such a world, since promotion in bureaucracies is as much a product of luck and politics as is hard work.
Perhaps one day the East and West will find some way to meet in the middle.
It should be noted that the CCP is sitting on top of the largest real estate bubble in human history and said bubble holds the vast majority of the PRC's middle class savings. Oh dear...
"Today Yon bangs the drums against China"
Peter Zeihan
It should be noted that the CCP is sitting on top of the largest real estate bubble in human history and said bubble holds the vast majority of the PRC's middle class savings. Oh dear...
Were residency requirements for urban workers the impetus for trying to become property owners?
Much has been said about the residency issue affecting people who remain registered in rural areas despite working full-time in the city.
"Were residency requirements for urban workers the impetus for trying to become property owners?
Much has been said about the residency issue affecting people who remain registered in rural areas despite working full-time in the city."
China is reportedly addressing this issue — finally. But it is a challenging issue to resolve. China is growing and changing very quickly and there is only so fast it can grow and change without stressing the system. So it is a high-wire balancing act.
China’s Hukou Reform in 2022: Do They Mean it this Time?
@ mike norman
Peter Zeihan?
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