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07/10/2012

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Anywhere But Here Is Better

Boy, did I get it wrong. For 10 years, I've been boring the pants off strangers and especially young people, advising them to learn Mandarin if they wanted to make a good living in the post-Chinese takeover of the global economy (not to be confused with the tasty Chinese takeaway in every town).

My analysis was based on what the Chinese were doing all over Africa - inserting Chinese managers in state enterprises and quietly stripping out natural resources.

Little did I know that this tiger would be imbued with the same thinkless thinking as promulgated by Wall Street's finest. Just as the US Empire rose and fell faster than the British Empire, and the British Empire faster than the Roman Empire, so the Chinese Empire is falling faster than the American variation on the theme. The stony faced power elite in Beijing must be beginning to ruminate on why ever did they bother waking up from their 2,500 year slumber, for all the good it has done for the country in the long run. (Except for the handful who've become ridiculously rich at the expense of 800 million peasants.)

Watch now as the various regions in China start to kick off violent secessionist movements Tibet-style, with the ebbing away of the Chinese 'miracle'. Few in the West seem to know or understand that China has never been all that cohesive below the surface. Just one example of inane central bureaucracy: there is only one official time zone in a country spanning five world time zones. This must be a royal pain in the ass for many of the 1.3+ billion. And there are dozens of religious and ethnic minorities bubbling away with deep injustices.

Of course, witnessing this latest in the long line of Homo unsapient cliff-falls presupposes that internet and TV broadcasting will still be functioning in the near future. This is far from certain.

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