Do the Chinese believe China is a superpower?
Reading the most frequently emailed article list on The New York Times website is instructive these days. For days, China has ranked in the top three most popularly searched terms on the site.
Last weekend, four of the newspaper’s top ten most emailed articles were about China: the ongoing controversy over extreme Chinese parenting; a U.S. solar company’s decision to shut down its main operations in Massachusetts; an op-ed about the strength of Chinese education and the importance of Confucianism; and the opportunities for American architects to design and build, unfettered, in China.
Other Western media coverage of China has verged on hysteria: ranging from an entire Glenn Beck program last week devoted to the country (“Their kids are passing us!” “They’re grabbing more and more oil!”) to a bewildering piece in Foreign Policy magazine about not just the rise of China but the rise of the Han Chinese.
No wonder a poll last week found that nearly half of Americans surveyed say China is the world’s top economic power. And just what do the Chinese make of all this talk?
China might look like [it’s very powerful] from the outside,” said He Rui, a 24-year-old local government employee in Changchun, Jilin Province. “However, there are still a lot of serious problems [like] the environment or income inequality. If [our government] can address these problems and also keep [the country] improving and growing, then maybe it can become a very powerful nation.”
Challenges such as pollution and environmental degradation; managing a population of 1.3 billion – 350 million to 400 million of whom are expected to move to cities within 20 years; widespread political corruption; a yawning gap between the haves and have-nots; a rapidly ageing population; a vociferous need for energy to keep the economy going – all these and more tend to offset any inclination for self-congratulation.
Only 12 percent of Chinese surveyed last month in an annual poll believe their country is a “superpower.” And that was a drop from the year before.
“I think when we look at our own country, we can be more critical and see the flaws or weaknesses,” said Mandy Wu, a 22-year-old resident of Beijing who is preparing to sit for a graduate school exam to study history or politics. “Maybe Americans look at certain areas where they think they are weak and then compare it to China, where those areas are strengths for China.”
Jim Rogers is an expert on Investing in China. If you would like to learn more information on this topic from a real genius go to http://www.jimrogers.com.
In this video, Glenn Beck calls Jim Rogers a genius. I think he might be right!!
Jim Rogers is truly a genius! I had the honor of interviewing him a few years ago and he is one of the most modest and brilliant business leaders I have ever met!
We love all of your books Jim, especially “A Bull In China”.
compare cialis levitra viagra 194 viagra %D pharmacy tech buy tramadol =-O accutane buy 377216 accutane 8-(((