Why is Taiwan lagging behind South Korea?

[globetrotter]

The UK is No. 15 or No. 19 on GDP PPP; they used to be Number One. I seriously doubt that the USA will decline as gracefully. Just look at the past 8 years for a hint.

The difference between the U.K. and the U.S. is huge though. I can't think of anything England can do now that the developing and developed world can't do but the U.S. still has quite a strong comparative advantage when it comes to corporate branding, heavy industrial, and military tech. Not to mention that overall U.S. industry, infrastructure, and resources availability is still quite good.

Eisenhower was correct when he said that America had to beware that the industrial military complex would govern a lot of America's foreign policy. Look at who the biggest arm's traffickers in the world is..http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_deali ... _exporters
Is that list any surprise?

There's a reason U.S. led foreign policy has this paranoid bent and why countries are always eager to exploit non-aligned political stalemates like the China/Taiwan, India/Pakistan, or S. Korea/N. Korea rift.

I am, actually, a BIG rah-rah Go USA type of guy. My family has been in NA since 1630, fought in all the wars, blah blah blah.

Yet, even I can see the blind bias that so many Americans indulge in.

What you have posted is EXACTLY what has been written and said about all empires. The British simply could NOT envision a world where the British Empire was not supreme, even up to 1941 when they fought the Germans to a stalemate and saved civilisation from a horror beyond compare. Yet fall and contract it did from 1945 to 1960 as the Empire all became independent. Britain had the navy, the industry, the reserve currency, the immensely strong currency (look up the 1928 value of the Pound Sterling...), the financial sector, the publishing, the media, the language, the universities...on and on and on.

Like all citizens of all Empires past and present, and I am willing to concede that the USA is empire-like, not a true Empire, you cannot imagine a world where your/our country is NOT "Number 1!".

We, you and I, right now, today, this moment, 2000-2010, are living through the peak and initial gradual decline of USA influence as a unilateral global force. It behooves you to adjust your outlook accordingly.

[momopi]

What you witnessed between the 80's up until the 00's are the consequences from decades of failed collectivist farming policy, stunted mental/cultural growth (cultural revolution), and traumatic events that wiped out numerous intellectuals and productive members of China's society. If you think about it Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and the rest of the overseas Chinese population who emigrated prior to the 1950's have the preserved traditional Chinese culture and weren't conditioned into uncouth slack-jawed yokels like the people that resulted from Mao's various social experiments. Unfortunately, this "backwards" image of China's population is what sticks internationally these days (including in the minds of overseas Chinese) and it'll be long while yet before they catch up.

Yea, Mao did a real number on China and the Chinese Communist Party. He and Stalin must have made some sort of pact with the devil. His ideology and social projects were contagious too. Pol Pot’s ‘experiment’ in Cambodia from 75-79 was inspired both by the ‘Great Leap Forward’ and ‘Cultural Revolution’ and managed to wipe out an estimated 25% of the country’s population and virtually all the elite (educated, wealthy, professional, civil servants).

The Soviet communist leadership, then Chinese, then Cambodian, loved to use propagandas about lowly peasants who were suddenly inspired by greatness of the revolution and found practical solutions to problems. To this day China still use this, "documentaries" on CCTV show old aging female revolutionary peasant farmer finding solutions by "digging deeper" and plating trees. In Soviet Russia they had "barefoot scientists" and in China they had "barefoot doctors".

These communist regimes bought into an Ukrainian "barefoot scientist" Trofim Lysenko's amazing claims of increased agricultural production. The problem is that the increased yields were either non-repeatable, or exaggerated state propaganda. Production figures were manipulated beyond reality. The Soviets wised up and dropped Lysenko, but the Chinese were dumb enough to adopt it. An estimated 36 million Chinese starved to death in 1958-1961, when grains were kept in storage to fulfill state quotas. Cambodia, well, ya'll know the rest.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko

We, you and I, right now, today, this moment, 2000-2010, are living through the peak and initial gradual decline of USA influence as a unilateral global force. It behooves you to adjust your outlook accordingly.

As an opinion, I don't believe the US has reached its peak in terms of economic power. Let me clearify that I don't mean peak as in GNP/PPP per capita, in which I don't believe the US can take and hold #1 spot against small wealthy countries. By mean, I mean the total sum in comparsion to other economies.

From 2000 to 2050, I think China will gain ~250 million in population, and a large % of its population will be aging. The USA, will gain an estimated ~140 million people in the same period. In terms of income per capita, the US will still far out-pace China in 2050, and the combined sum will be even greater. In terms of population growth in %, the US will be higher than China.

People talk about amazing transformation in China over the past 20 years, turning farms into cities. Well, I live in a city in South Orange County that went from farmland to a city of over 200,000 people in the same period. But nobody would say it's an economic miracle. @_@;;