Position A: China is being exploited by the West and is suffering for it.
Position B: China is being exploited by the West and is better off for it.
I am reminded of a parable in a novel or biography that I can't remember - but I remember the parable and it goes like this.
A man on holiday is walking along the seashore. The previous night there was a storm and the waves picked up all the starfish - thousands and thousands of them - and dumped them past the high tide mark. There they now sit, a whole heaven of stars, helplessly and inexorably dying in the sun.
The man sees a young girl who is picking up handfuls of starfish and tossing them back into the see. He walks up to her and asks "Why do you bother? You can't save them all?"
To which she replies "I can save these ones. I can make a difference to them".
I related this parable to another friend. He suggested this instead:
A rich business man is on holiday in a tropical paradise. The previous night there was a storm and the waves picked up all the starfish - thousands and thousands of them - and dumped them past the high tide mark. There they now sit, a whole heaven of stars, helplessly and inexorably dying in the sun.
The sea is now calm - so calm that he thinks he could skim stones across it. But there are no stones, only dying starfish.
So he picks up a starfish and tries to skim it over the water. It sort of works but the arms dig into the water as you would expect. After twelve attempted skims he changes the game to seeing how far into the sea he can throw a starfish. After fifteen minutes a young girl comes up to him. She is crying because all these starfish are dying because nature is uncaring.
So, which of the above characters owns the factory in China?
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8 comments:
The starfish.
Position C: Poor Chinese people are being exploited by the Chinese ruling class and Communist Party, with the West increasingly irrelevant as a market.
Not sure how the starfish would fit in---except on the flag.
Surely if people were doing that badly they could eat the starfish. I believe some people do that because they LIKE to!
I think the proper analogy is the prince in his starfish-dyed robes deigns to put his foot upon the beach, discovers that it is covered with starfish, and has one of his under-overseers whip his uber-underminions until they pull the legs off all the starfish and sell them to the demons of hell. Then they (the prince) take 99% of the profits and buy a solid gold cigarette boat, which promptly sinks because gold makes shite boats, which anyone with an ounce of sense could have told them from the outset.
We, in case you missed the subtle nuances of my cunning metaphor, are the demons of hell. That happens a lot in my metaphors for some reason.
A man on holiday is walking along the seashore. The previous night there was a storm and the waves picked up all the starfish - thousands and thousands of them - and dumped them past the high tide mark. There they now sit, a whole heaven of stars, helplessly and inexorably dying in the sun.
The man sees a young girl who is picking up handfuls of starfish and tossing them back into the see. He walks up to her and says, "I'll pay you and all your friends 2 renminbi per dozen if you put them into these boxes instead"
He then sells the boxes of starfish to gullible westerners as "traditional Imperial star snacks", makes a million, and dies of Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning.
The biggest mall in the world, but the starfish don't like it:
http://www.pbs.org/pov/utopia/
re: biggest mall in world.
A case of "If you build it, they won't actually come if they can't get there."
wow, that mall, what an enormous waste of everything. the farming land underneath, time, money, energy... they've certainly managed to outdo the best of America there.
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