Most everyone I know thinks China is breathing down America’s neck economically and militarily. Many have been impressed by the opening day of the Olympics, the tremendous growth experienced in the last ten years, the cautionary military tales told by our pundits that China is closing ground on the USA and we better get cracking if we don’t want to be second fiddle.
Wait a minute. From what I have seen the communists in charge of their society are selling the world a bunch of populist propaganda. They are claiming they have a worker’s paradise yet 700 million people live on $2 a day – some paradise.
They spent $300 million on opening day of the Olympics to prove how wonderful their society works and 700,000 people a-year are dying from smog. They spent $2.5 billion on the airport alone to impress their arriving Olympic guests which tells me the Communist leaders care little about their “workers”.
As I sat there and watched the synchronized thousands beat drums and their costumed throngs do their routines I was struck with the thought of how the individual is revered in America and how the individual is just placed in a group on China’s collective plantation.
The gross national product of China is approximately $3.5 trillion this year whereas America is steaming along at $14 trillion. Their per capita GDP is $5,300 if we price their goods and services at what they go for in the United States. Americans are screaming along at $46,000 a year. When priced at the official exchange rate China’s GDP falls to $1,600 per person per year – under 4% of what Americans make.
Considering their 4% per capital GDP, one child per couple, their failure to institutionalize human rights, their paralyzing lack of natural resources, the command nature of all socialist constructs, the rise in the price of energy to fuel growth and their focus on conformity rather than individual innovation, it is hard to see how China ever catches the United States.
Unfortunately for them the communists have elevated the state to the highest power on Earth. Americans by and large believe the highest power resides in heaven. Americans shoot for the moon whereas communists are earth-bound totalitarians instructing their people what to do and what to think. America’s Founders let the people decide what they want to do and what to think. Therein lies the key to America’s success – FREEDOM. When that freedom comes to China maybe they will tackle the $2 a-day income of almost half their 1.3 billion people. In the meantime Americans should stop worrying.
