China, Cont.

For years now, I've wondered how we've so easily & quickly gotten lulled into the idea that China is a precision machine of hyper-productive wolverines who own our ass and are about to take over the world, including HERE:

Yesterday while a guest on The David Magee Show I made an offhand remark re: us being terrified of China somehow taking over America via buying Google that went something like "China just bought it's first KFC three years ago; they're not buying Google tomorrow."

So of course my Chinatown Bus breaks down on the way back to NYC and we sit on the side of the highway for three hours. Why?

Ran out of gas.

Hmm.

On one hand, I feel the Universe spanked me a little. On the other, I feel our incessant demand to panic about what an amazing machine of monstrous efficiency China is needs to end. Turns out they might be as dumb as we are.

This morning Matt Yglesias respectfully concurs, pointing out that when all is said and done, China is still a poor country:

A strange illness has overtaken the world over the past ten years in which elites in wealthy countries argue that prosperous societies ought to emulate the economic model of much poorer places simply because those places are growing richer at a more rapid rate. Now rates matter a lot in life. But so do levels. As we've seen, "basketcase" Greece is much richer than China and the challenge for China over the next two decades will be to see if it can develop institutions of governance that are up to the Greek standard. Rapid increases in Chinese wealth over the past thirty years are less about the excellence of Chinese policy than about how bad Chinese policy used to be. 

"But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from those soap commercials (RIP), "wasn't this entire post just an excuse to re-post your photoshop brilliance for the 7000th time?"

Sigh. Of COURSE it was!!!!!!