Saturday, April 28, 2007

Why China will stay the world leader (and not India)

The news is real - from none less than Reuters - but my title is tongue-in-cheek (so do not send me rants on my inability to see through 'deep underlying issues')

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese tourism authorities are seeking investment to build a novel concept attraction -- the world's first "women's town", where men get punished for disobedience, an official said on Thursday. The 2.3-square-km Longshuihu village in the Shuangqiao district of Chongqing municipality, also known as "women's town", was based on the local traditional concept of "women rule and men obey", a tourism official told Reuters.

An interesting perspective on the tradition/modernity debate. Here is the full story


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why can't we have this in India? We have so many powerful women

Anonymous said...

Are you going to write more on the piece? I would love to hear what you have to say

Unknown said...

Or you could go along with the REAL reason. China's average IQ of 100 (which will rise to the Oriental norm of 106 with better health and nutrition), versus India's average IQ of 81. There is a .73 correlation between a nations average IQ and its GDP. China's ethnic homogeneity is an advantage as well.

Ananya Mukherjee Reed said...

Dear Omar, I agree that the real reason is the AVERAGE level of skills in a country, and not the extremes skewness we see everywhere in the world. In fact, China, South Korea, Japan and Europe in its "golden age' were all built on the pillar of universal access to education.

I do not agree however, that ethnic homegeniety is necessarily a contributing factor. Skills/IQ (barring the genius) are a matter of nurture, not nature in my opinion. If Asian kids are good at math, that is because of the way it is drilled into us from birth, the way it is taught in a very structured way, and the way we are amde to believe that math skills are indeed the ultimate indicater of our intellect.

Anonymous said...

I may well agree that China might become world leader before India, however, we cannot ignore the fact that Communist Russia was once world leader. World have witness how easy it was to collapse from the roots in a communist empire. One day China might face a similar situtation. Also, it is very hard to see what is really happening in china and what price the country is paying to generate such a booming economy. The communist curtain may cover them today but it will open someday.