Did Obama Just Lose The Election?

It's lost in the Veep hype for now. Down the stretch that won't be the case. After he is softened up and a growing number of Americans are given reasons for concern over Obama's Leftism - there's this and some pertinent facts on China below.

"Their ports, their train systems, their airports are vastly superior to us now, which means if you are a corporation deciding where to do business you’re starting to think, “Beijing looks like a pretty good option. Why aren't we doing the same thing?”

Obama is either incredibly naive, terribly misinformed, a communist, just flat out dumb or all of the above to be caught on tape making a statement like that.

I can just imagine the voice over now. It wouldn't even require half of this:

In all this activity it greatly helps to have a secretive planning bureaucracy and a government that brooks little dissent. In Britain it took as long to conduct a public inquiry into the proposed construction of Heathrow's Terminal Five as it took to build Beijing's new airport terminal from scratch.

There was no consultation with the public on the terminal. Nor was there any public debate about the construction of Beijing's third runway, notwithstanding the noise pollution already suffered by thousands of nearby residents.

Chinese official Xu Li said, Once a plan is made, it is executed. “Democracy”, she says, “sacrifices efficiency.”

For Beijing's airport expansion, 15 villages were flattened and 10,000 residents resettled. They were barred from unemployment benefits and other welfare privileges though their farmland had been grabbed. Officials threatened them with violence if they refused to leave.

The World Bank says that roads are sometimes built only to convert countryside into revenue-generating urban land. Combined with a lack of adequate public transport, Beijing's polluted air and congested streets, to which 1,000 cars are added daily, are evidence of the problem.

Chinese official Xu Li said, Once a plan is made, it is executed. “Democracy”, she says, “sacrifices efficiency.”

The government wants to build a new mag Lev train line. Residents along the route are fearful of noise and radiation from the trains.

Complaints still abound about the way things work. Highways—both expressways and other intercity roads—are studded with traffic-slowing toll booths. China reportedly has 70% of the world's tolled roads and its tolls are the highest in the world (using exchange rates adjusted according to currencies' purchasing power). To cut costs, lorries routinely overload. This helps to make the roads among the most dangerous in the world (89,000 deaths in 2006 by official reckoning; the actual number may be much higher). And it pushes up the cost of maintaining them. 

Chinese official Xu Li said, Once a plan is made, it is executed. “Democracy”, she says, “sacrifices efficiency.”

In China, many laborers are lucky to make the equivalent of $8,000 a year. And for that they often work 16 hour days, seven days a week.

And Barack Obama wants America to be more like China? You are kidding me, right?

Well, it is change, I guess. But does Barack Obama really represent the kind of change that America wants? Or maybe he and some of his radical friends should simply move to Beijing.

Comments

[Bod]

A very relevant point, MP. The fact is that I work for a firm that is trying to run a real estate funds in China, and it's tough to turn a nickel.

The real 'bargains' of 2 or 3 years ago were bargains because the 'smart money' spent all their time chattering about how the urban centers would be economic dynamoes. Just ain't happening. City dwellings, no problem. As soon as you move outside to what we might want to call exurbs, nothing. Why? Because the infrstructure isn't there, and let's face it, the infrastructure required to support commuters isn't particularly hard to do, nor is it frightfully expensive.

It's just like all the hype about the Asian Tigers of the 90's. Pablum.

[Jim]

It's possible that a nation run by capitalists for profit will be very successful. The British trade companies acted like governments and were quite profitable. Communism and socialism failed because their economic system stinks. But a nation that uses free market capitalism to maximize GDP? We shouldn't be too quick to dismiss this model as doomed to fail—not that we should emulate it, only that we should be prepared to compete with it, instead of running and hiding (using protectionism) like Obama wants.

Potemkin villages maybe, but mostly it is because a lot of their infrastructure is less than 20 years old, and of that, much has been built in the past 10 years. It is difficult to find a dead zone in mobile phone coverage, the highways are pretty good (where they have them, travel out west and there are still dirt highways), and the new airports and subways are clean and efficient.

I think a more accurate comparison would be to say that the Chinese government does what it takes to make business successful. Americans do not want to see their individual rights sacrificed for national GDP, but on the other hand, we have one whole party dedicated to bashing Big Oil, Big Pharma, etc. China wants bigger oil, bigger pharma, and they will do what it takes to get it. I don't think Obama means that, so I don't know what he means.

[Roger Godby]

I'm in Japan. There are occasional stories about how Japanese corporations who moved their low-tech plants to China (keeping the high-tech (and better-paying ones here)), except now those China factories are starting to move to Vietnam and elsewhere. As coastal China grows, labor becomes more expensive (as, I expect, does the paperwork and bribery).

Although the following DeutscheWelle article begins about Steiff, it includes a figure that 1 in 5 German companies in China are planning to relocate, some back to Germany:
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3462948,00.html

China is overrated. Like Japan, it has no children but lots of old and aging people; it probably has even less money to pay pensions and medical care promised. That means tax increases, which means less becoming less competitive in some areas. I wish the best for China and the Chinese, but their future isn't as shiny as many would have us believe. The (Muslim) Uighurs are unhappy, Tibetans are unhappy, occasional rural villages revolt against local Party cadres, pollution gone wild, a growing AIDS problem. Yikes.

Obama's an ignorant "progressive" elitist snob, an "ugly American," if you will.

[Spartan112]

Taking quotes and using them out of context is SOP for the GOP.

[James]

Hey - let's raise the minimum wage to $10+ / hour. That will make companies rush to move jobs back from China.

[Philippe]

I am a European but I have lived in US a long time and know it rather well .
I must say that most people interested with politics are looking on the upcoming US Campaign with a mixture of horror , hope and unbelief .

Is it REALLY possible that a country with 300 000 000 people who has to pick up only 2 candidates for one of the most important functions in the world - the president - came up with a dogmatic lowbrow Hussein Obama and a McCain decades beyond his freshness limit ?
Did those 300 000 000 really think that this appaling duo was the best choice for their country and their future ?
That in itself shows that there must be something horribly wrong in the process .

But I digress .
There has been an interesting article in an important european journal written by a political analyst explaining why it was in the interest of most countries (US excepted) that Obama becomes US president .
Basically what he was showing was that Obama was an ignorant with no clue about economy and most importantly geopolitics .
Quotes like the one about the "superiority of the chinese infrastructure" clearly support the thesis that Obama is indeed an ignorant with no clue about most things that matter .
And that is good news for all countries who have interest to have much less competition from US on the world's markets (or in the world's geopolitics for that matter) .
If Obama is elected , he will cause such a mess in the US by tinkering with things he doesn't understand that it will take decades to restore the US competitiveness again .
And in the meantime all other countries (Japan , Russia , China , Europe) will be able to improve theirs what is good news for them .

[PA]

China invests in concrete while we invest in stacks of impact studies.

[James]

I don't think he meant we should be more like China and become communist. I think he meant we have a lot to learn from the Chinese, but we can do many of those things our own way while respecting human freedoms. Why is it unpatriotic to be a realist and see that others are making progress, we don't have a monopoly on human progress, but we can compete and show the world that we can achieve great heights while maintaining respect for human dignity. China might be taking shortcuts and compromising on good values to achieve those ends, but in the long run we can show ourselves and the world that we can do it better the right way. But in the process, why do we need to fool ourselves and pretend that if its not American progress, it doesn't exist. And God forbid we observe and admit that some things might be superior to us, so what? Why do we get so jealous? Our arrogance will destroy our otherwise noble values.

[Gina]

Obama's lip stick / pig remark ... and, Biden's unsavory children with special needs remarks show us what a couple of creeps these two candidates are. In lieu of Sarah Palin's comment about hockey moms, pit bulls and lip stick, Obama's lip stick/ pig remark was extremely demeaning. Even though I am not an Obama supporter, at least I thought he had some degree of class and sophistication. He can try to cover his tracks by saying that the lip stick remark was not directed towards Governor Palin, but anyone with half a brain knows that's exactly what he meant. I think Obama knows his campaign is in real trouble, and that's why he's stooping to such desperate, insulting and distasteful attacks. Obama is definitely not Presidential material.

[Gina]

Obama's lip stick / pig remark ... and, Biden's unsavory children with special needs remarks show us what a couple of creeps these two candidates are. In lieu of Sarah Palin's comment about hockey moms, pit bulls and lip stick, Obama's lip stick/ pig remark was extremely demeaning. Even though I am not an Obama supporter, at least I thought he had some degree of class and sophistication. He can try to cover his tracks by saying that the lip stick remark was not directed towards Governor Palin, but anyone with half a brain knows that's exactly what he meant. I think Obama knows his campaign is in real trouble, and that's why he's stooping to such desperate, insulting and distasteful attacks. Obama is definitely not Presidential material.