Californians: Take note of China’s rise

June 25, 2013

By John Seiler

Back in 1978, California was surging on the new wave of brilliant capitalist computer companies, led by Apple Computer. China remained a poor communist backwater, just two years after the death of Chairman Mao and his murderous Cultural Revolution. And it was only 17 years from 1958-61, when his socialist Great Leap Forward starved to death up to 46 million Chinese.

In 1978, the entire Chinese economy totaled only $216 billion for 1 billion people, for a per capita income of just $216. California’s GDP then was about $300 billion.

Then in 1978 China began moving from socialism to capitalism.

Thirty-five years later, in 2012, California still leads in computer design — but not manufacturing, which mostly is in China. And we still have better weather.

Mainly, both California and the United States, heedless of the Chinese experience, have been diving down into socialism, even as China has been ditching it.

And here’s more about how China has risen:

“China (population 1.35 billion) overtook America (population 320 million) as the biggest consumer of steel in 1999. That was the beginning. China overtook America as the world’s main exporter in 2007, as the biggest user of the internet in 2008, and as the world’s greatest manufacturer in 2010 (the first time America has been supplanted in this role since the 1880s, when the USA overtook the UK).

“2010 was also the year China overtook America as the world’s largest car market, as the world’s largest retail market, and as the world’s greatest producer of patents. A year later China became the globe’s greatest user of energy. In 2012 China became the world’s biggest market for PCs, and the primary source of global trade. Just three days ago China unveiled the world’s most powerful computer. As for Chinese forex reserves, they total $3.4 trillion. That is to say, the loose change in China’s pockets, from all those foreign hols, is equivalent to the entire economy of Germany.

“China is therefore, in many ways, already the most important country in the world – by a distance. It will also, on present trends, finally surpass the USA in overall GDP sometime between 2015 and 2025.”

Now 58, I never though I’d live to see the day when America would be No. 2. But soon that’s what we’ll be, thanks to Mao Bush, Mao Obama, Mao Bernanke, Mao Schwarzenegger and Mao Brown.

Now I’ll have to get used to it.

My suggestion for young people: forget Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Foucault, Derrida and all the other socialist, multicultural nonsense they forced on you in college and start learning Mandarin.

Here’s a first lesson: