China is not in a position to export its ideology or overturn the current world order. This is because China’s sociopolitical system relies on two thousand years of tradition in combination with the revolutionary history of the communist party.
China’s one child policy has made perhaps the greatest impact of any policy in any part of the world. It has resulted in as many as four hundred million fewer people being born, a rapidly aging population, and pressure on society as two pairs of aging couples now often rely on one young couple to support their post retirement life.
Mao was extremely well-versed in Chinese history. Until his death, he kept stacks of history books alongside his bed. He drew inspiration from history for his most critical decisions.
A simple analogy for Taiwan and China: If the United States lost Hawaii to Japan during WW2. Until it could be reunited, this episode would never end.
Deng’s guiding concept was extremely simple: The founding mission of the Communist Party is to let people live better and to make the country more powerful. Thus, all of Deng’s policies aimed toward this end.
Chinese gasoline prices are among the lowest in the world, only slightly higher than those in the United States.
Whenever stock prices were extremely high during the past two decades, the People’s Daily published editorials urging investors to be cautious. Editorials like this would often be seen as counter signals for many investors that the market was hot and would remain hot.
In Beijing, McDonald’s restaurant are all state owned enterprises that have franchise agreements with the McDonald’s corporation.
In Western countries, children are limited subsidiaries of their parent companies, becoming spin-offs when they reach independence at 18. Chinese kids are lifetime unlimited subsidiaries of their parents, never spinning off from their parents’ balance sheet.
Because the future of students is determined by exams, parents usually do not allow their children enough time to play spots unless their kid can go pro. China does well in sports where talents can be easily identified early.
Just ten days of summer training in a Chinese math tutoring program can keep people at the top of their US math class for the next year
There are a ton of fees and limits on traditional, gas cars as well as subsidies on electric cars which is probably the reason why electric car companies have done so well in China.
Why China is not a bubble: market economy has taken root, average income is still only 20% of US, and yet average levels of education and health of population are similar to US, and the political regime enjoys popular support (even from the elites).
China has no overseas military bases in any conventional capacity.
China’s income inequality is at least as great as that of the United States, which is among the highest in the developed world.
Beijing is rich enough to afford making all buses free, but the mayor said he would never do that because it would set a bad example of pleasing the poor.
Confucianism has been the dominant sociopolitical philosophy in China for over two thousand years.
A democracy experiment in villages in 2000 quickly devolved into a brazen attempt by large families sharing the same last name to exploit minority families because Chinese villages had long been organized as kingships.
Chinese top decision makers have always put the utmost priority on grain security and have always been very concerned about inflation, since food shortage and inflation are likely causes of widespread discontent.
For many Chinese, the goal of going abroad is to return with fortune and glory instead of occupying foreign land and making it our home.