Jack Wang's ranting house

Miss my family, miss my hometown....

2011-12-28T20:36:00.001-08:00

Never been so nostalgic.....

It's been 9 years since the worst 6 months of my life

2011-12-24T19:26:00.000-08:00

now my life is getting shitty again.

For the first time, I actually feel jealous of a TV character.

2011-12-18T22:33:00.002-08:00

Seriously, that ain't funny. Make me question who I am and what I want out of my life.

Kinda disappointed, kinda relieved, kinda regretful and above all tired.

2011-12-18T22:07:00.001-08:00

Don't even remember why the heck I chose this profession, never been so disappointed with myself, hello, you're smart, you're hard-working and you know your shit around stuff you're supposed to be expert of. Yet, somehow, others will find fault with you and the whole system will judge you based on some juvenile tests. It's so ridiculous. Maybe I'm getting a little bit anti-social lately, but I find it harder and harder to feel sympathy toward this whole system, maybe the 2008 collapse hasn't done its work of cleansing the system of the sheer ridiculousness. Or better, maybe I should have just picked another profession whose path to normalcy might be more difficult but at least more sensible. God, never have been so tired with the system, I'd have heeded my advisor's advice regarding picking your career path, at least in my old line of work, your work is valued by people you work with and people you want to work with.

reality, harsh reality

2011-02-07T21:01:00.001-08:00

whenever you feel good about yourself, something awful would come out of nowhere to kick you down a few notch.

I've finished the final test

2011-02-04T13:23:00.000-08:00

not sure if I passed or not. I've done my best and I do feel that I at least performed as well as my preparation allowed. So there is nothing left for me to do at this moment except waiting.

I've been working hard, indeed, I'd say

2011-02-01T00:13:00.000-08:00

as far as I can see, no one I know has ever worked as hard as I did over the last couple of weeks. I don't know what all these would ultimately lead to, hopefully it's gonna be something I can build on. But what's been done is done, I guess there is nothing left for me to do except for hoping for the best, and of course plan for the worst.

If I were 10 years younger, I probably would be psyched

2011-01-23T21:10:00.000-08:00

Now I'm like "meh, not funny". You can manipulate the media, including the stupidest one of them all, the NYT, as much as you can to help you create controversy. It ain't gonna work on me cuz I'm too old.

seriously, if I'm not working hard enough, I seriously don't know who else is

2011-01-21T00:26:00.000-08:00

Never say never. That said, it'd be not too far from truth to say

2011-01-19T19:11:00.001-08:00

that I've never been so tired. Dont know if all my work would actually lead to anything or not. Guess this is life: you do what you can and just hope for the best.

Working like insane, I'll do everything

2011-01-19T10:55:00.000-08:00

cover every corner. If that's not enough, then I'm out.

Now the make-or-break time finally comes

2011-01-14T15:13:00.001-08:00

I've been preparing for this for pretty much a whole year, don't know how I'd fare when the crunch time actually comes. I do know , however, I'll do whatever it takes to be as well-prepared as I could in the following few weeks.

Man, this thing better be the last one

2011-01-08T15:33:00.001-08:00

cuz I'm seriously sick of it and the fact that no matter how hard I work, it's always gonna be something surprising for me. Damn,
I'm getting numb already, seriously, I'm mentally numb, is this the so called "life"?

if you don't have something meaningful to say, you should just shut the hell up

2011-01-06T21:25:00.000-08:00

repeating the same old tripe days after days isn't really endearing, especially to those who you think you can impress with all your cliche-filled rhetorics. Seriously, you can't see that? It's a wonder of Pyramid scale to see you have the nerve to babble about how other people are talking shit.

it's kinda petty, but sometimes one can't avoid pettiness

2011-01-06T20:56:00.000-08:00

after all, it's all part of human nature and it's ingrained in every one of us. those who act all moralizing should get off their high horses and start examining themselves, I can guarantee they can and will find substantial number of cases in which they acted exactly the same as those of us who occasionally get accused of pettiness.

I've been more widely travelled in the US than I was in China!!!!

2011-01-03T22:58:00.000-08:00

Seriously, I'm not really a travel bug myself, at least not before I turn my interest from reading stuff to actually seeing and doing stuff. Now I'm in the action phase I feel more and more the need to see with my own eyes and touch with my own hands, even if it means I have to shell out big buck for it. Anyhow, now I'm officially more familiar with America than with my home nation. Bizarre? Probably on the surface as some idiots would think of me as either some sort of Chinese version of deep south redneck. But don't you feel the same, I mean, it's hard to be as interested in stuff and places you're or at least think you're familiar with. No, I'm not as interested in China as I am interested in America because I came from China and I'd like to think I know fairly well about China. Now as the fourth anniversary of my date with Uncle Sam approaches, I feel that America's appeal has dramatically diminished in my eyes, familiarity comes with boredom, it's maxim. I'm not even that much interested in Europe nowadays even though I haven't yet got the chance to immerse myself deeply in the old continent (I do feel I have got the feel, not much, just a little bit, but nonetheless some feel, of what Europe is really like and how much it could offer during my brieft stay in Sweden.). Now even raw charm of America and mystique of South America and Middle East are much more likely to make me high, especially America. Would it be awesome for me to take an safari on the continent where Homo sapiens first appeared and the continent where up to now still retains the rawest charm of mother nature? Man, what a turn-on!!! Even the thought of strolling along with lions and chasing zebras make my heart beat fast.

fuck, I fucking just can't get even a moment off!!!

2011-01-01T20:12:00.000-08:00

Seriously, why the fuck does everybody have to give me a hard time when my time is already fucking hard enough? No, I'm not gonna bend over and let them dictate whatever I do, I'm gonna do my own thing and be my own man, regardless what they say or think, I've been controlled long enough, fuck all the traditions!!!! Fuck all the "supposedly I should do" things!!!! Fuck everybody whose highest ideal is to be a meager piece of meat spawning more meager pieces of meat.

should I feel nervous? Maybe I should

2010-12-18T19:32:00.000-08:00

but as far as I can see, rules of engagement have changed completely, been upended totally since, well, I don't know exactly when, but I'm pretty sure it's sometime during the last few years. Anyhow, the bottom line is I don't know what to feel any more and I surely as hell can't think of a way to force myself to feel something, regardless what it is. I guess the only course of action left for me to pursue is to do what I can and hope for the best.

maybe it's luck, maybe it's fate, I dunno

2010-12-17T19:42:00.001-08:00

I do know, however, that things ain't really in my hands.

NYT is such an steaming pile of bullshit!!!!

2010-12-16T07:16:00.000-08:00

I swear if I saw another "creative type", "funky bar", I'd throw my laptop out of the window.

Am I ready? I fucking don't know.

2010-12-10T19:35:00.000-08:00

I feel like I am and my brain certainly behaves like it is (not by acting like an all-knowing wiseman, no, it behaves as if it's totally full.)

FUCK!!!!

2010-12-09T20:11:00.000-08:00

My brain is ruined by caffeine and booze. I'm like, you know, trying really really hard to concentrate on stuff I need to master before my big moment next Tuesday, but damn, I just can't find the old vigor I used to feel when I was preparing GRE. You know, the kind of vigor that enables you to work day and night, none-stop even though it's terribly boring and not at all fulfilling? I fucking lost it, I used to be the king of cramming tests, college entrance exam, grad school entrance exam, GRE, you name it. But this ime, I don't know, I just can't understand why I can muster the strength to go all the way, not to mention the fact that my adviser is abandoning me and leaving me in the cold, granted, he promised me to provide support for me for another semester, but damn, it isn't supposed to end like this, this is only the end of my 4th year, I should have been able to pursue other options, but no, I can't and worse, I guess because of my supposedly record, I wasn't even offered a chance to move to this new place along with him, that's just insulting, granted, I wouldn't have said yes even if he asked, most likely, you know, I'm kinda sick of the stuff I've been doing since i came here, but still, I know I'm not as productive as these other two guys, and i didn't publish IEEE transaction papers, but hey, before her big break, I was actually the most productive member of the team, who knows what's gonna happen if more time were given. Anywho, I don't want to rant too much, but this whole not asking thing is just pure insulting. I guess, like always, I'd have to rely on myself. no help, no support from anywhere. hey, I made it this far, I'll make it to my next goal.

If you ever wanna step up to the plate, now it's the time

2010-12-07T05:13:00.000-08:00

work hard, work hard, work hard. you can do it, I'm telling you, you did it before and you can do it again.

Boring......

2010-12-05T19:56:00.000-08:00

Nice to get together with other kids, even to talk about bullsh*t subjects like graph algorithms. Seriously, I'm NOT intellectual at all, at least far far far far from where I think I should be, I used to live reading, not so much any more, now it actually, physically repels me every time I see a newspaper article. I guess finishing 500 pages of novels in 4 days can really burn you out. Man, I wanna move on to the next stage of my life, an stage, allow me to dream, would constitue fat paycheck and plenty of trips to exotic places. I so hope in the not too distant future, my prayers to all the gods/deities up above would bear fruit, in the mean time, I'd still have to live with the sucky life I have right now. Man, I can't say I'm not unlucky in my life, but I really really think fate is testing my patience here. God, please, let me finish my PhD on time AND find a good job. Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese!!!!

what is life all about? I'm confused

2010-11-27T15:00:00.000-08:00

You know, at this moment, all I want is a graduation, a PhD and a nice cushy job that pays a bills with enough leftover to allow me to indulge my whims. Still, on a deeper, more philosophical level, I have absolutely no idea what I'm gonna do once all the novelty wears off, you know, once I get used to the better freer and more extravagant life style, which means that all the goodies my extra income brings don't elicit as much positive response from me as all the sure-to-come problems my newly acquired, cash-minting job will have. Then what? I don't know cuz I don't know exactly what I want out of life. Man, let's just overcome the current set of hurdles in front of me before I can think about anything else, that's my attitude, still, sooner or later, I'd have to deal with this fundamental problem one way or another: one way being keep chasing things lying beyond you until you drop dead or figure out something concrete, some goals, to make sure my life is actually worth something.

Breakfast at Tiffany's, Holly Golightly, Audrey Hepburn.

2010-11-22T23:29:00.000-08:00

Literature is often prettier than art cuz art talks to your eyes, to your ears, to your brain or even to your heart, but it doesn't talk to your soul, literature does. That said, I never consider myself a big fan of literature, much less stereotypical girlie-girlie romantic novel. Yet I must say I feel something after reading Breakfast at Tiffany's, the novella classic by Truman Capote. Like most people, I saw the movie adaptation before actually having my hands on the original novel. And like most people, I was thoroughly impressed artistically and deeply enthralled aesthetically, not to mention, as a teenage boy, crazily attracted by Audrey Hepburn's Holly Golightly. As an actress, she's classic, she's beautiful, she had a certain kind of angelic charm to her, even though the character she portrayed was hinted, abundantly clear, to be a high-class call girl. In the book, she's pretty much the same (I get to admit that beside all the unnecessary backstory for the male protagonist and a hollywood happy ending, the movie adaptation largely stays true to the original) yet the nature of literature means that we are afforded more sideway glimpses into Holly's world: her affection for her brother, her powder business, her life in hollywood, all of her "ideas" and her successful scheme to steal a Brazilian rich husband for herself. She's indeed more or less morally degenerate yet unlike most such people we see in real life, she touches you on a far deeper level that there is no way you can hate her, despise her, pity her or even NOT attracted by her, her story and what's really going on beneath all the pretty appearance and immaculate make-ups. Master work of literature I must say.

Information overload

2010-11-15T18:46:00.000-08:00

or more precisely: nastiness overload and ignorance overload. Never could I imagine the so called "democratization of information" could unleash such a large tsunami of stupidity. Apple is right, we need walled garden. This whole concept of wisdom of crowd is such a flawed proposition, I mean, just open your eyes and look around, can't you see it? Ignorance abounds everywhere. Not to mention to counter the break-down of traditional one-way information flow, the government and their poodles have been engaging in increasingly blatant manipulation of people's minds. Just open New York Times, Washington Post, or turn your TV to CNN or Fox. What the fuck are all these junk?

Depressed...........

2010-11-12T18:25:00.000-08:00

People all around me are making progress, graduation, internship, full-time job, etc. They all have much more fulfilling lives than I do. What did I do wrong? Am I too lazy? Probably. Am I not aggressive in enough in figuring out what I want and going after it? Quite likely. Am I still too much stick in adolescence? Well, it's certainly not a unfair accusation. But, do I really deserve the sucky shithole I find myself in right now? I don't think so. I'm not good, I'm not that hard-working. But I'm not asking much either. I don't know what to do beside following the flow and just letting life take wherever I deserve. This is the second darkest year of my life. And Unlike the darkest year of my life, I don't have a backup plan, nor do I have families and friends around me to lean on. What should I do? What will I end up becoming? I don't know, I don't know, I don't know...

Since when did New York Times become Paul Krugman's personal mouthpiece?

2010-11-03T19:40:00.000-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/business/04leonhardt.html?hp

Disgraceful!!!!

No inflation, are you friggin' kidding? Do these people actually go out and do grocery shopping? Everything, I mean every fu*king thing has seen price rise over the past year. And you still tell me there is no inflation. Liar. Liar. Liar.

A stinging rebuke to Obama

2010-11-02T19:46:00.000-07:00

which he well deserves. I'm sorry, but the economy blows and there is little hope for improvement. I don't know what exactly his agenda was, I surely didn't expect an stagnation, right, you hear me: a friggin' stagnation. Haven't you all noticed that everything, here everything means everything you actually need, gets more expensive lately? With the coming of at least another trillion in printed money, the only way for such essential items such as food and gas to go is up. I'm no economist. But I simply don't see these extra money leaking into financial sector and create so called wealth effect, something the Fed desperately tries to stimulate, I do, however, see increasing upward pressure on every imaginable commodity, and as a result, upward pressure on everything people actually need to buy to survive, you can survive by not buying a house, but you can't survive without food or gas. Damn, why didn't he spend more time and more of his hope and dream political capital on passing a bigger stimulus? Why all the focus on that stupid health care bill? Too much income distribution when people with income are getting increasingly less out of it. I don't expect Republicans to do much more, I do hope that by simply being present and saying no, less attention be paid to increasing taxes.

everybody else takes the market share, Apple takes the profit

2010-11-01T01:16:00.001-07:00

Steve Jobs is indeed a meaning SOB genius. I guess his phoenix rising rebirth story is indeed one of the most remarkable business turn-around over the past few decades. Man, this man knows what customers, average customers, not you average glasses-wearing nerd crowd. Vertical integration is indeed a viable business strategy. The whole environment is so clean and use is so effortless. No wonder people flock to Apple stores to have their hands on ipod, iphone, mac and ipad. They're so much easier to deal with, even for a CS professional like me, It'd be much easier to not have to deal with all the viruses and incompatibilities that abound Windows (linux is excellent in safety, but its ecosystem is simply too limited to warrant serious attention on desktop)

I'm not as liberal as I think, after all.

2010-11-01T01:09:00.001-07:00

Now I understand why I used to have such deep antipathy toward Hollywood activist celebrities. I'm still liberal, one might say, ultra-liberal, when it comes to social and so called "moral" policies, but I'm sick of all the brain-dead economic policies coming out of Washington and major liberal think-tanks. The system needs cleansing and more likely than not, your union sponsors will be the ones being cleansed out, wasting trillions on them won't bring the economy back to life, it'll only prolong the suffering and set the stage for the eventual, much painful fall.

I guess I haven't lost my English prolificacy after all.

2010-11-01T00:54:00.000-07:00

Judging how easy it was for me to write up a rant piece here. I've been worrying about leaving the US with my English in worse shape than when I first came here. It's not really a big deal cuz evidently I don't need to be proficient in English while living in China, an eventuality I also think I'd end up pursuing, however, I did spend a great deal of money, time and more importantly energy on acquiring all the language skills I have. It'd be a pity of epic proportions, at least epic to me personally, if I'd allow my decade long investment to simply lapse into mediocrity. On the other hand, after spending 4 years in the US, there is really not much left to excite me any more, sure, there must be a great deal of unseen sceneries and unvisited natural/historical wonders out there and I'd love to vist them one by one. That said, I just don't feel the US is the US I thought I knew and I wished could be real in real life. The unbelievably amount of bigotry, ignorance, arrogance and more importantly greed, hypocrisy and selfishness in this country really starts to dawn on me after time wore off the new-comer excitement. I don't know how they really see themselves after being force-fed with all the Kool-aid for so long, I just know I don't want to be one of them and I'm surely having less and less interest in American culture and pretty much everything American. Maybe I'm shallow for thinking they're shallow, but the only thing I can feel after living here for 4 years is they're the most damn shallow and hypocritical people I've ever seen. No wonder they can still think they could print their way out of the doldrum they get stuck in right now. Even the self-ascribed God economist, Paul Krugman, with all his sense of intellectual superiority, could bear to accept the law of nature: people get old, nations too, when they get old, giving them Viagra won't make them studs again.

Man, what a year!!!

2010-11-01T00:44:00.000-07:00

Must be the second worst year of the decade. Or maybe I only feel like this because I'm too spoiled? I don't know, I'll admit I have absolutely no real problem with anything up until I graduated from college and had my firs taste of just how the "real world" worked: I've been living under the shelter of my parents and my sister my entire life, they're capable and successful enough to provide me with admittedly not luxurious but more than modest amount of pretty much everything I want or need growing up. Now I'm all on my own, I don't know how I'm gonna fare, maybe I'll crash and burn and the resulting mess will financially reveal to, more than anybody, myself, how utterly unprepared I am for the ugly, distressing and sometimes meaningless and hopeless slog called life. I don't know. Maybe my customary good luck will eventually prevail, there is no telling, after all, I've been enjoying a pretty good streak of good fortunes ever since I remembered things. Anyway, man, it's not a good year for me. Hopefully, indeed, I pray to God, Allan, Buddha and whoever up there peeking down: please, please let me sail through this, I've been a good boy my entire life.

JUNK!!!!

2010-04-01T13:14:00.001-07:00

Everything is junk.

What am I supposed to do?

2010-03-26T16:55:00.000-07:00

Directionless.

Sometimes, I just wonder if I'm smart enough for what I want.

2010-03-21T11:36:00.000-07:00

I mean, it's pretty discouraging.

I won't rest until I get what I want.

2010-03-20T08:47:00.000-07:00

I'll do anything and everything to achieve my goal. Nothing is off the limit.

Lesson learned and I'm even more invigorated

2010-03-16T20:36:00.001-07:00

I won't give up, never, ever.

I tried my best...

2010-03-14T17:07:00.000-07:00

so if it meant to be me, good, if not, well, at least I won't regret it cuz I truly invested all I have into it. So whatever the end result is, I can live with it.

Life is a marathon.

2010-03-12T19:48:00.000-08:00

Grab every opportunity that presents itself, but don't fret about lost chances, cuz there is always bigger and better ones out there. Myself is a living testament.

Hopefully it's not an second chance.

2010-03-11T18:39:00.000-08:00

cuz being given an second chance is always worse than being at the receiving end of a customary 2nd interview. The former meant you bungled the 1st one, the latter meant it's a closer examination.

God helps me.

A new slog begins in earnest.........

2010-03-11T06:44:00.001-08:00

No other choice but to face it head on. Nothing else to be afraid of, after all, experience teaches things, and my experience over the past week taught me that what I have right now isn't terribly bad. So hope for the best, plan for the worst, and enjoy the rest.

in an surprisingly calm mood..

2010-03-08T19:28:00.001-08:00

one can't take up all the time one has wasted. But one can grab present and do his best to seize the opportunity. I've done my best given the limited time frame. Whatever happens next is beyond my control. So bring it on, I'm ready to take it.

working hard, hard working, working harder, harder working.

2010-03-06T20:33:00.000-08:00

The only hope I have right now is my work won't end up doing nothing for my future, no, I don't expect my immediate future to be changed, what I want is something, anything that could enable me to live a decent life relatively free of poverty, instability, and too much stress, more importantly, I want a life in which what I do actually count for something for somebody. God helps me.....

Korea VS Vietnam

2010-02-07T14:13:00.001-08:00

Because Korean war was essentially amalgamation of civil war, US attempts to push back Communism expansion and Chinese war against US military advancing toward its border. It's a civil war means that there was a red line that both Koreans would not allow the other side to cross, but both sides also had their supporters among the population and land to develop from in the absence of armed conflicts, in another word, both side had something to lose, something to gain and something to keep, which created incentive to resort to war to grab what you want, but also incentive to settle with status quo once it's clear you can't get what you want via force.

For the US, the primary objective was to protect South Korea; For the Chinese, the primary objective was to protect North Korea. There was really no point for either side to fight to death over the unification of Korea. They got involved in the war primarily to protect their own geopolitical interest, not to help North Korea or South Korea realize their dream of unification. Sure, both side overreached, the US didn't heed Chinese warning against crossing the 38th parallel, as a result, Chinese forces intervened and pushed the US back. Chinese didn't realize they overran their supply line after they pushed US back deep into South Korea and occupied Seoul, they got pushed back too. At that moment, both sides realized that it's not worth the price to keep fighting over something that really didn't concern their strategic objective, sure, it's nice to have total victory, but it's also smart to reach an settlement with what you had (which was good enough for both sides.) Hence the eventual negotiation and ceasefire. Since Chinese and the US forces were the main fighting force, whatever gripe South and North Korea had against an settlement would not fundamentally derail the negotiating process after the two big boys decided to stop. And they also realized it's not in their interests to keep fighting. So they accepted it. (Nonetheless, the less than satisfactory result of Korean War, from North Korean perspective, forever sowed mistrust and schism between China&Soviet Union and North Korea, Kim believed he was betrayed by China&Soviet Union, which led him to eventually develop the "self-reliance" theory.)

Vietnam war, on the other hand, was not seen by Vietnamese as a civil war, it's essentially a continuation of struggle against French colonialism. It's different form Korean War in nature (if Korean war were Japanese forces fighting against North Korea, the legitimacy of whatever Korean government siding with the Japanese would be fatally weakened.). It's a zero-sum game with Vietnamese forces not willing to settle for anything but full unification under their terms.(and despite large sum of aid from Soviet Union and China, Ho Chi Minh was his own man, not anybody's pawn and it's his forces that did the most fighting. And he would be the man deciding if or when to stop fighting and settle for less, not outside powers.) For the US, this time was no different from Korean war strategically, it's still a war to prevent against spread of Communism influence. Only this time, there was no corresponding great power on the other side to plot out a compromise, so the US had to strive for win or leave in disarray, it couldn't win so it left in defeat. It's as simple as that, I don't think the nature of battle field tactics is determining factor here. It's conventional warfare for Korean war, but if the nature of the opposing sides changed, even if the US could defeat North Korea in conventional warfare, unconventional warfare would have commenced the second the US declared "mission accomplished".

Fundamentally, it's about politics, for Korea war, there was room for the US to compromise that wouldn't leave the US in a position to have to choose between total victory and total loss. For Vietnam war, there was no such room, so the US fought as hard as politics allowed, but eventually had to concede.

Difference in music taste.

2010-02-07T01:04:00.000-08:00

Chinese does have a more "traditional" taste in music, the enduring popularity of Carpenters' songs, in particular, Yesterday Once More, IMHO, has more to do with difference in taste than anything else. More traditional rock bands like Beatles, Eagles are popular and always popular in China ever since China opened up even though they have long passed their time in the West. Loads of modern rocks in the states sound to Chinese more like a bunch of guys screaming for the sake of screaming than anything remotely resembling music. New age, Classic, Euro-dance are three subgenres that are much more popular in China that they're in the US, Disco is probably still more liked by Chinese than what replaced it in the US. I always feel that taste in music wise, China is much closer to Europe than to the US. I'm not sure why. But I find the majority of my itune library consists of songs done by female artists or older time male artists, modern American music scene, in particular music of male artists/bands, is often too loud ( (I like a bunch of songs of Nickelback, but I just can't stand listening to them live, one concert, only one, I felt like my eardrum was pierced. Seriously, why do they all have to be so loud?) too chaotic, too short of rhythmic beauty and too much weird voice (hard to explain, just a feeling.). Austin is considered live music capital of the world, yet when I was bar-hopping there, I couldn't find even one band I enjoy, even though American and European friends of mine as well as people in the bar all looked like they were thoroughly enjoying themselves and the music. Strange.

Judge Dee, Chinese or English Version?

2010-02-04T03:08:00.001-08:00

I'm not sure, I think at least one of them was originally written in English, it was later translated into Chinese by Robert van Gulik himself, so in certain sense, you can say the Chinese version is "original" as its involves far more than literal translation to fully capture all the cultural and linguistic nuances. I read the whole series in Chinese and felt it looked more like works of modern Chinese writers than those of a foreigner. I also read English versions of some novels of this series, my overall feeling was that it doesn't matter if the series were originally written in English or not, English version of the novels I read felt extremely weird. Maybe because there is such a huge difference between China and the West and Chinese and English, for example, in English version, the word "torture" was repeatedly used, we all know "torture" carries quite a negative connotation; in Chinese version, however, a more or less literal translation of "torture" was used，namely, the phrase "用刑“, ”用大刑“ or some other similar terms, I'm no expert, but I don't feel in China, especially in Chinese literature dealing with law and order, in particular law and order of ancient times, these terms give out any negative vibes, they're more or less neutral terms utilized to describe a means to an end.

So yeah, personally, I think these novels, I mean Chinese version, are better reflections of what Robert van Gulik knew about China, Chinese culture, Chinese history, his attempts to inject Western ideals about hero into a series set in ancient China and what he really wanted to express as a writer. Another analogy I think applies here is that the Chinese version feels like a depiction of ancient times written by people living in modern society, it's a hugely distorted picture that I'm sure has nothing to do with how things really worked back in Tang Dynasty, nonetheless, it's a work done by a Chinese writer using Chinese perspective trying to express modern Chinese values. Not value of ancient times, yet still Chinese enough to feel it belongs (Judge Dee, in Chinese version, is humorous, smart, athletic, principled yet flexible human being as opposed to a personification of justice so often seen in traditional Chinese detective novels. He's strictly a follower of traditional Confucius value yet having lots of traits more commonly associated with people not bound by traditions, basically, a guy I don't mind working for or having a beer with.) The English version, however, feels like it's an show about ancient China done with an all white crew, maybe it's more original, maybe in certain sense, it's a better reflection of how ancient times should feel to a guy living in 21st century, it just feels really weird. (Judge Dee, in English version, feels like he's rigid, ruthless, aloof, etc. Not a guy I wanna hang out with.)

Just my personal 2 cents, please take it with a big big big grain of salt as my problems with the English version and my appreciation for the Chinese versions may simply a reflection of the fact that Chinese is my 1st language while English isn't.

If Tianya or Kaidi went away, I'd worry about Chinese internet

2010-02-03T14:11:00.001-08:00

Absence of google is regrettable but not really that important. The primary role of monitoring the government is played by internet forums like Tianya and Kaidi, though nuttiness abounds in both places, their presence and longevity are enough evidence to refute any suggestions that Chinese internet is government controlled or even worse, government mouth piece. Again, I think most IDs on these two websites are either nuts or filled up with stupidity, but they're different and they challenge the government, however stupidly. I don't think they're go away as both have backings within the establishment, though.

well, if you look at the number, Chinese labor

2010-02-03T12:15:00.000-08:00

cost is much more expensive than that of Indonesia, if you take into consideration the fact that Chinese currency is grossly undervalued, the cost advantage Indonesia has over China is even higher. Yet they still can't compete, which hacks to the heart of the whole brouhaha about Chinese currency in the West. Remember, between 06 and 08, Chinese currency gained 20% against the dollar while at the same time Chinese surplus against the US also increased 20%. That's why I don't buy the popular narrative thrown around by the mainstream media and that's why I don't expect significant change in the trade balance even after China appreciates its currency. China's more expensive than many countries, yet those countries still can't compete, the way I see it, the economics of scale plays dominant role in China's competitiveness, and now and in the foreseeable future, nobody can match China in scale.

Consolidation in Chinese agriculture is a long term trend as urbanization accelerates. I've been to Chinese countryside, at least those places I've been to, the only people who are still farming their own land are old people even though Chinese agriculture is actually quite profitable if you could financially handle the impact of natural disaster when it strikes. (Government purchases the crop at pre-set price with guaranteed profit for peasants , meaning market fluctuation has no impact on farmer's livelihood.)

Mao Zedong once said (whatever you may see him, he's extremely incisive in his analysis about China, and that's why he could lead his ragtag peasant army to defeat a much bigger military supported by the US.) that China's problem is the problem of peasants, if you could solve it, nothing else matters. The current prime minster of China, Wen Jiabao, primarily dealt with rural economy before he assumed his current position, even now his personal portfolio is still agriculture and rural economy with his lieutenants focusing more on other parts of the economy. He went from being adored by tens of millions of people to being widely ridiculed on Chinese internet in a few years mainly because of the steep rise of housing prices, but it's also true that under his tenure that agriculture tax has been eliminated, primary and secondary education in rural area became free and he established and extended health care system to rural areas (nothing fancy, but now average peasant could expect public health care system pay for 70% of cost of going to see a doctor, tremendous improvement over no health care for peasants as it was the case before.), understandably, his popularity in rural area is quite high even though his name has become butt of jokes on Chinese internet which is dominated by urban dwellers. The jury is still out as most of his administration policies hasn't reached all of China yet and the implementation is filled up with problems, but if urbanization could be successfully finished, Chinese economy would be of monstrous size. (because of urbanization, I don't expect the widely cited aging population problem would seriously impact for quite a few decades as the influx of peasants into cities due to urbanization would continue to supply ample labor to Chinese manufacturing industry for quite some time.) So for any keen observer of Chinese economy, focusing only on Chinese cities and manufacturing industry while ignoring the social change and its economic impact is bound to produce at best incomplete view, at worst wildly off the base analysis/predictions.

They don't want what you think they want.

2010-02-01T12:59:00.001-08:00

Finally, somebody came up with something at least close to reality on the ground. The whole brouhaha about Google has been blown way out of proportion, typical of mainstream media's tendency to project what it imagines in its mind as what actually happens on the ground. Google has an significant presence in China, but by all means, it's a distant second behind Baidu, and out of Google's Chinese market share, the percentage of usage of Google.cn, Googlge's Chinese search engine, is minuscule. Basically, most people don't use Google, and those who use Google uses Google.com, which will be there regardless whether or not Google has any physical presence in China. So Google's threat to "exit" China indeed sounds almost comical since most people don't care, and those who care already use the Google that exists outside of China, which won't be affected by Google's exit. Aside from the proliferation of choices in Chinese internet that are far more adept at providing information and services that people actually want, the very fact that this is internet we're talking about already makes any threat to physically "withdraw" almost meaningless. There is a great fire wall, but it only takes a chat with neighborhood geek for anybody to learn to scale it. Even among those people, I can assure the majority of them seek to scale the wall for porn rather than any kind of information the West thinks they want. Trust me, they don't want what you think they want. The more you waste your time babbling about what they don't want, the more people will be driven from merely "don't want it" to "what the f***!!! Why are you so friggin' annoying? Go to hell!!!". People ain't stupid, they know their stuff, including stuff you think would drive them to the opposite side of government. They didn't do what you think they should do because they didn't really want it, and the more you force yourself on them, the less support you will get. There is a reason the West's reputation has been stuck in the ditch for the past 10 years. Do some introspection, please!!!

The future of NASA should take a cue from Soviet's old vision.

2010-02-01T00:25:00.001-08:00

the development of shuttle, which started immediately after the demise of Apollo program, sucked in too much resources and produced too meager result. Shuttle was supposed to be a very cheap and very safe way to get to the space, it turned out to be neither cheap nor safe and it basically had humans, Americans at least, stuck on near earth orbit. I personally believe Soviet got far bigger ambition and far clearer vision when it came to space exploration. The development and successful mission of Mir space station was far more important with regard to further human space exploration than Shuttle was, of course what happened on earth derailed Soviet vision. But the fundamental principle of Soviet Union's space vision still resonates today: the goal of space exploration is to expand human PRESENCE beyond our planet, it should not have vacation-style exploration, "been there, done that" as primary objectives. If you could spend as much time on how to stay there as on how to go there.

My nationalistic rants.

2010-02-01T00:19:00.000-08:00

I'm a pragmatist, not a nationalist. It's just that sometimes the media really rubs my patience the wrong way with all the incredibly shallow assessment of everything. Here is my not-thought-out response. Take it with a big big big big big grain of salt.

It's kinda amusing to see both the post and commentators here have absolutely no clue regarding China, Chinese economy in particular, and any other non-American issues in general. The articles and comments here are nothing more than a bunch of rehashed sound bites stolen from hacks on TV and wrapped around in seemly thoughtful phrases. The whole emphasis on Hong Kong and stock market indicated how off base the whole article, they have no clue what China is, what kind of system China has. And they apply the set of American economic bench mark on China and try to make sense of it.
1. China has 1.3 billion people, Japan had 120 million people.
2. Japan sank into crisis after pretty much elevating per capital GDP to 3rd highest in the world and pretty much exhausted reachable domestic and foreign market. China still has lots of room to grow even if China rely 100% on now still far from full potential domestic market.
3. China is not dependent on the US politically or militarily. The trick played by US on Japan will not work on China.
4. No country has ever grown double digit for 20-30 years, the most often repeated trite on political talk heads. It's true, but no country has ever had 1.3 billion people before. Rely on absolute numbers from the past doesn't apply here because there is no precedent in economic history that is comparable to the size of Chinese market. China has more internet users than the whole population of the US.

Most people, indeed most economists have no clue why US became the dominant economic power post WWII and why the US is losing that position now. Why European nations chose to unite against all odds, why Japan grew so fast while stagnated so long. They'll have no clue about China's emergence because they don't look at real underlying issues that propel a nation's growth and stagnate the growth of another nation. It's not inflation number or investment figures, it's not the whole "rule of law", "democracy" trite, it's definitely not rise or fall of the stock market. Unless they study some history and stop dwelling so much on ideology, they'll never understand it.

BTW, the whole article reeks of sour grape sentiment.

Smart man should at least start to prepare to extricate himself out of Afghanistain

2010-02-01T00:16:00.000-08:00

The US is essentially building an informal empire, which I don't really object to, at least not on some abstract simplistic moral ground. Kudos to US if it could successfully build an empire and actually grow stronger as a result, Britain didn't leave such a deep mark on history and on the world by being Switzerland. That being said, the problem I see is not how many insurgents are killed each day, or this or that leader of this or that group is bombed into pieces, or even whether or not Iraq or Afghanistan become Jeffersonian democracies or not. The problem
I think the US should worry about is if the US itself might actually benefit from whatever potential successes in Iraq or Afghanistan, given the precarious state of fiscal situation in this country and the fact that it's unlikely that the US could regain the kind of economic dominance it enjoyed immediately after WWII or make the hard political decision to reverse the slid into even deeper fiscal black hole, I suspect that even if the US could successfully curtain Taliban, which is far far far far far from certain, the end result might still be what Boer war did to Britain: tactical success but strategic retreat, indeed, after Boer war, it was very clear that Britain could not afford going out acquiring colonies any more, Britain must give up splendid isolation and reconcile its conflict with its European neighbors, as a result, Britain was drawn into an alliance with France and Russia (I consider Britain's alliance with France and Russia was more a result of fear of France and Russia than any fear of Germany. France and Russia, instead of Germany, posed real threat to what Britain's real interest lied: her vast oversea colonial empire.), which led to British participation in the great war and the end of British empire along with Britain's global power status.

Why are liberals disappointed by Obama?

2010-02-01T00:13:00.001-08:00

OK, I guess now the Democrats could finally see some virtues on Bush. He was uncompromising and he only cared about his base. But in today's political environment, his governing style is the only way you can get something, anything done. Otherwise, everything you try will be diluted to the point that it's little different from the status quo. Bush might be stupid, he did speak worse English like an illiterate, and the invasion of Iraq is a colossal failure, but he did get something done. Obama, on the other hand, seems to cringe at even the suggestion of him being socialist. If he had any gut, he could pronounce to the world: yes, I'm an socialist, why am I an socialist? Because socialist countries have safer street and better healthcare. Without gusto like that, he can say goodbye to his campaign rhetoric of change, however lofty it might sound.

Why so much talk about sanctions?

2010-02-01T00:10:00.001-08:00

sanctions NEVER work. Don't even bother. The US has been sanctioning Cuba for 40 years, attempted god how many times on Castro's life, now even the youngest brother of Castro's original nemesis is dead, he's still alive and well. The whole obsession with sanction baffles me, some of the most spectacular diplomatic break-through in US diplomatic history: namely, detente between US and China, Camp David peace accord, were not conducted under the threat of sanctions. Instead, it involved with careful examination of mutual interests and timely exploitation of these mutual interests. I guess in today's increasingly acrimonious political environment and with cable TV indoctrinated electorates, it's pretty much impossible to pull off grand bargain like what some of the top diplomats did before. It's sad and unfortunate, and probably why so many people waste so much time on something that has been proven again and again to be especially ineffective.

A realistic assessment of Chinese position on Iran.

2010-01-31T23:54:00.000-08:00

I must say, it's pretty pathetic for Clinton to use the "Israel attacks Iran" card against China, why should China care about if Israel attacks Iran or not? Oil route disruption? there has been more 3 much bigger much more entrenched wars in the middle east over the past 3 decades, you don't see anything more than a temp disruption in oil supply (not to mention if anybody, the US should be the first one to be alarmed by Israel's purposed plan to attack Iran and proceed to stop it, after all, Chinese don't need to drive everyday to go to work, Americans do, thank to the humongously stupid suburban sprawl.), the first country that will not tolerate real disruption of oil supply is the US, in another world, it's not China's problem. Iran's own supply? Well, even the hawkest hawk only dare to believe Israel bomb Iran's nuclear facility, it has nothing to do with Iran's oil export, Iran still needs to export oil, and China still has the money to buy oil, end of story, the link between China's oil need and Israel's supposedly plan to attack Iran is flimsy at best. As for the so called arm's race, well, again, what's the problem for China? China isn't enemy of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel or any other country in the middle east, why should China be alarmed by how much and what kind of weapon these country possess? The US has nukes, much more nukes, China goes by its own business; Russia has nukes, much more nukes, China goes by its business, many other countries have nukes, CHina goes by its business. Why do you think China would be alarmed by countries that it neither borders nor has anything other than pure business to do with possessing or trying to possess nukes? why should China be upset about a by-all-account imaginary arm race among nations that don't threaten China in any realistic way?

And BTW, the brouhaha about "Israel attacks Iran" has been blown way out of proportion. There will be NO attack because Israel and other countries, including the US, know that Israel simply is incapable of dealing anything but an at best, if everything goes according to the plan, temporary blow to whatever nuclear program Iran has. It's not gonna happen. Mark my words here.

Mongol Empire

2010-01-27T14:07:00.001-08:00

Well, it's true that military force couldn't sustain a political entity for long. But you couldn't say the Mongol Empire didn't last long, after all, Russia, at least large piece of it, by no means an small piece of land was still essentially under Mongol rule as late as 1500s, several hundreds years after their rule was established. Mongol Empire had only lasted as a unified political entity for a relatively short period of time, the empire was simply too big to be truly unified under technological sophistication of its time (without the means to effectively communicate with local authority and transport troops to the border, the empire would have to delegate pretty much all of the authority to local governors, including such vital power as the power to collect and spend taxes, raise and command a military and the power to appoint local officials, with these power in hand and huge distance between them and the central authority, it's just a matter of time before the local governors started to think funny and transform themselves into de facto or real independence, depending if they wanna go through the messy business of fighting a war against the central government), Kublai Khan and his descendants were still officially recognized as the great Khan of all Mongols, but in reality, they were nothing more than emperors of Yuan Dynasty in China and their authority extended no further than the dynasty they established. All the other Mongol khanates only paid lip service to their authority. They didn't come to their official Khan's aid while his government was being pounded first by Chinese rebellious forces, then after their retreat back to Mongolia proper, by Ming Dynasty of China (their capital was sacked by Ming forces in 1380 when most of the original land occupied by Mongol empire was still under some sort of Mongol rule, again, no help.) I don't know if Genghis Khan himself realized it, but his decision to carve up his empire to be distributed among his four sons reflected the very realistic difficulty of governing a large and continuously expanding empire that's beyond anybody's ability to control.

Mongolia and China

2010-01-27T13:39:00.001-08:00

Because when Mongolia got its independence, China was all messed up with all the civil wars, with all the outside threat (namely, Japan) and domestic political instability (all kind of warlords, Chiang never managed to extend his influence beyond the few provinces around Shanghai, you can say he's nothing more than the strongest warlord.), Mongolia was an afterthought. Tibet, at that time, was de facto independent too. That was before Mao Zedong led the communist forces to a reunification of the nation, again, Mao faced with a rather unfriendly environment at that time, he wasn't much of a fan of Soviet Union himself, as evidenced by the late break-up in relations between these two nations, and his strong aversion to Soviet style centrally controlled economy (China never had a centrally planned economy like the one Soviet Union used to have, Chinese central government in Beijing, before Deng's reform, only managed to control an significant, but nonetheless, minor portion of the economy, local government at the provincial, municipality, even village/city block level, all had their own companies of various sizes. There was no private enterprise, but the government-controlled economy was highly fragmented and decentralized with governments from the very top to the very down all have their own independently managed companies which local authority controlled the revenue/profit as well as appointed management.The back and forth between central government and local government regarding economic development is always very fun to watch, even today.), but he had to stake a choice in order to win China diplomatic room to maneuver in a world dominated by the US and Soviet Union, and at that time, alliance with Soviet Union was the only game in town, for obvious reasons (it was said that Mao was pretty interested in building up some kind of relationship with the US to counterbalance Soviet Union, we all know what political atmosphere was like back in the 50s in the states, obviously, it wasn't realistic.). So it's unlikely that Mao or China could realistically ask Soviet Union to hand back Mongolia (Back then, Mongolia was essentially an Soviet 16th republic, with probably less independence than countries like Poland or Hungary.) or they could do anything about if Soviet Union rejected their request. 10 years later, after the open spat China had with Soviet Union, Mao indeed indicated that he considered Mongolia's independence as one of the historical grievances that China wanted to settle. But back then, China was obviously the weak side in its competition against Soviet Union, not to mention China also had to deal with an similarly hostile US. So the energy was spent on fending off threat from Soviet Union. After Deng Xiaoping became Chinese leader, the overwhelming focus was on economic development, creating too much fuss along the border didn't really fit into the grand strategy, to this day, it's still the guiding principle behind Chinese diplomacy. Yeah, deep down, I don't think this whole thing has been completely settled, but China, for the past 100 years also, always had too much in hands to deal with. Independence of Mongolia was unfortunate from Chinese perspective, nonetheless, it's something that could be tolerated. (unlike Taiwan, which is a political and strategical must-have.). In any case, historically, China practiced a much different game than the kind of nation state based diplomatic game we see today, even when Mongolia was fully under Qing Dynasty's rule, Mongolia was largely autonomous, there was an separate government entity specifically set up with deal with issues between the empire and Mongolia, in essence, Mongolia and China proper, at that time, operated as two largely separate entities under the same empire, of course, with the same authority in military, diplomatic affairs, but other more mundane business was largely left to local tribe-based rule. The relationship was more analogous to the current relationships between Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China than the relationships between Tibet and Beijing. Anyway, China established a tributary system with itself at the center, this system grew and shrank over time, depending on how China itself was managed, it had expanded its reach deep into central Asia (China directly fought Arab empire over some small central Asian state), and it had reached all countries of South east Asia. These countries were independent in name and in practice, but recognized China's role as sort of an supreme overlord. Basically, these countries largely govern themselves, have their own military and everything, but one order from the emperor could result in the sacking of very important local politician. Sometimes, China directly incorporate these political entities, sometimes, China let these countries go their own way, all depend on the political environment and personal ambition of the emperor and China's own well-being. For Chinese elite well versed in history, such as Mao Zedong himself, the expanding and shrinking of the border itself ain't particularly new, it happened all the time and had been going on for thousands of years, in exchange for vital support, recognizing Mongolia's independence is well worth the price, in any case, things could change in the future and presently, there was nothing China could do in the face of overwhelming strength of Soviet Union.

financial services provide for over half of GE's profit

2010-01-25T18:26:00.000-08:00

you can imagine the proportion of financial service in other far less iconic industrial/tech companies. Indeed, I remember reading an article on-line a few years ago, way before the subprime crisis, let alone the whole total blown-out financial crisis, became apparent,about the financialization about US companies, the point of the article was regardless what kind of reputation it has in the public conscience, or what kind of shiny product they produce, a lot of, if not the majority of major US companies rely a lot, if not the majority of their profit, on financial engineering, back then, most people only know big three were essential car mortgage companies. It corresponds to another comment I heard from another guy this year about US economy as a whole, he said that the US economy has reached its full potential for the most part under the current technological and global environment, in the absence of major technological revolution on par with IT revolution, the only real source of growth for US economy is to rely on outsourcing to keep inflation and interest rate low so that excessive consumption along with industries that come along with excessive consumption in a mature economy, namely, real state and finances, could grow. I believe them. It's the only way forward at this stage, all the populist rage so expressively expressed in this forum do and will undermine the biggest pillar of US growth, namely globalization.

China's politics

2010-01-20T13:33:00.000-08:00

Well, first of all, China is China, China is not Europe, not the US and certainly not some other countries. China is a country/civilization that has the least contact (aside from whatever civilizations existed on American continent before Europeans colonized it.) with Europeans civilization (if you, like me, didn't view the whole democracy thing as some sort of 20th/21st century religion, I think we can agree that it's primarily a product of European civilization and aren't and probably can't be that compatible with other civilizations. Even the poster boy of ardent-ideologue: Japan, isn't a democracy in Western sense if you look beneath the veneer of trappings of Democracy, Japan has been ruled pretty much continuously by one party for 60 years, even the one party that has consistently won elections for decades had little influence on how Japan is governed in the real world, any Japanese observers would tell you that career bureaucrats are the real deal in Japan while politicians aren't that much different from puppets whose main jobs are to sign on policies devised by bureaucrats. In rural Japan, the most important institution, the postal office which functions as bank, social security agency, etc, is often run and controlled by a family in a hereditary manner, hardly democratic.) For 2500 years, China has its own set of political philosophy (so called "mandate of heaven") that provides legitimacy for the rulers when time is good and legitimacy for the rebels when time is bad, in another word, fundamentally speaking in term of political philosophy, a prosperous country with happy population was considered an stamp of approval from the heaven, while famine, drought, unbearable corruption, basically general conditions that made lives for the average people unbearable were considered signs that the heaven had revoked its mandate granted to the current dynasty and those with the ambition and capability to rise up and replace the current crop of rulers.

In another word, in China, shaped by its history and philosophy, people have a different historical and political perspective that emphasize result over procedure and circular view of history over views that see the history as an straight line. Most people ain't aware of it themselves, but the basic view toward government is as long as it's doing its jobs, namely, strong economy, improving standard of living and reasonably comfortable life for most people, etc, (of course, there are temporary ups and downs as always, but the view is like if the government could hold power, it means the government still has mandate from the heaven and things will improve eventually; if the mandate of heaven were gone, the government would NOT be able to hold power no matter what and before the actual fall could happen, trust me, there will be unmistakable signs and you WILL know.), there is no need to replace it, as for the exact political system, it's actually not important because if there were one thing that Chinese doesn't believe, it's eternity of anything, since political system, like human being, regardless its virtue or vice, always dies and always gets reborn, why changes it if the current one works acceptable well?(no perfectly well because anther thing Chinese doesn't believe is absolutism.) People will whine about, will attack, will become cynical about, will discuss politics enthusiastically, but it's more of a mind game most of the time, a lot of the Western reporters, blindsided by their wishful thinking, seem to have problems telling the difference between political gossiping hostile to the government that serves primarily as amusement for the gossips and real interest in politics that will lead to real political actions (I complain about the laptop doesn't mean I'm going to shell out another $1000 for another one, I'm just venting my frustration that I'm sure users of the $10000 laptop also has, I'm still using and going to continue using the same laptop for quite some time, until it breaks. I know I will know when the time comes.). So no, I don't think China will be the kind of "democracy" the west seems to blissfully ignorantly assume everybody will ultimately become, at least not for a long time because there is simply no popular demand. There are lots of protests and generally venting of grievances against various problems China has, but that's different from demanding a change of system, just like the tea bagger's problem with Obama doesn't mean they will grab their rifle and try to overthrow the system. There is an severely misleading tendency by Western reporters to generalize about a lot of the "oppositions" in China, I can assure, 99% of the time, the people protesting against the government did it because they want a more generous severance package after losing their jobs or something else earthly benefit. It has nothing to do what the reporters wishfully want the protest to be about. The 1989 protest against the government was fundamentally an student movement, in scale, and in influence more comparable to anti-war protest in the US during the Vietnam era, the real pillars of the society, the average workers, the peasants, the average joes walking on the street, stood on the sideline and could be similarly described as the "silent majority" who may have this or that issues with government policies or even government itself, but nonetheless don't really want a change of government, much less political system. That's why the final crackdown could succeed, if the government really lost support of the majority, no amount of bullets could save itself from falling, there were ample examples in Chinese history, both average Chinese and Chinese government know it. That's why the English dude, I forget his name, the guy who wrote a book recently about China, asserted that even though no vote has been cast for Chinese government, Chinese government enjoys much more legitimacy than governments like Italian government which has always been voted for or against by Italians.

On more practical notes, how long can this Chinese government last? China considers its history goes back 5000 years, with good times and bad times and dozens of dynasties. Change of dynasty in Chinese political philosophy is more comparable to change of administration in the US than to birth and death of a country. That's why if you ask Chinese if he considers the China under the rule of Han Dynasty 2000 years ago and the China under the rule of People Republic of China now the same China, the answer you will get is a resounding yes. Government is different, system is different, time is different, but it's still the same country and same civilization. There is no comparable case in Western civilization unless you think Italians and Greeks of today still consider themselves citizens of Roman Empire. Nobody can give a precise answer cuz nobody has a crystal ball. But by looking back at history, you'll notice that unified dynasties of China, usually (not always, but usually) lasted between 250 years to 400 years. The current PRC just celebrated its 60th birthday last year. So chances are that nobody current living can see the end of PRC in his/her life time. I don't know what will happen tomorrow to me, much less what will happen 50 years from now to China, but I think people who are serious about issues about China should stop looking at this whole thing as Communism vs Capitalism or authoritarianism vs democracy (these things only became issues to be concerned with in 20th century, merely 100 years ago, a blip on human history, should we be really so arrogant to think that these issues totally define who we are and what we'll become in the future while 5000 years of previous history doesn't count or count not as much?), China is bigger than those, there is a reason China still can claim a pretty much unbroken political, ,cultural and linguistic linkage to the political entity existed on this particular piece of land 3000 years ago while similar political entities existed in other parts of the world during the same time have long gone.

I personally have extensively experience with both China and West, honestly to God, Allah, Buddha or whoever up there, I don't feel there are fundamental differences in term of personal freedom living in China and the West, at least not during the past 30 years. Personal political talk is even freer in China than in the West because there is pretty much zero constraint of political correctness, people can comment, talk, berate and be verbally nasty toward the government or whoever in power however they want, even internet is far less controlled as a lot of people might think, many of the political BBS existed within the jurisdiction of China and within the firewall talk about the government and the system with such hostility and nastiness that could only be compared to the sentiment expressed by tea baggers toward Obama.(Sure, there are lots of controls, the firewall is real and effective, but there are myriad ways to get around it, contrary to what a lot of people in the west might think, if a guy were using some tools to get around the firewall, chances are he's looking for porn rather than politically sensitive stuff.). Of course, in mainstream media, directly criticizing the government is still a taboo but in term of the actual issues, it's still by no means a wild west, but it's quite liberal in both the criticism and praise. It's by no means a perfect world, but I, a fierce critic of lots of things about Chinese government and the system itself, still consider the picture painted by New York Time (I have been reading it for 10 years, I consider it the best media outlet in America in term of quality of reporting.) wildly off the base, not to mention the more tabloid-like more agenda-driven part of main stream media (especially Fox News, admittedly, I'm more of a liberal politically in the context of this country's politics, I won't argue if the stuff reported by Fox News were news worthy or if the quality of the reporting were good or not, but I can be sure of this: if Fox News were fair and balanced, there would hardly be any fairness and balance in the world. I grew up watching party's mouth piece, I know it when I see it, Fox News IS a party's mouth piece, and it doesn't even have the decency to admit it like the many mouthpieces I have read before.) A lot of people aren't satisfied with a lot of things about Chinese government, less but still fairly significant amount of people aren't satisfied with a lot of things with the system itself. But the vast majority of people are content with the benefits brought by the system enough to not let whatever dissatisfaction they have interfere with their personal lives, much less running the risk of losing a good enough life to pursue some more or less ideologue-driven crusade against the government. (anther thing to remember, Chinese are probably the least ideological population in the world.) Not to mention as I said before, there are ample room for personal freedom, you're gay, there are gay bars; you're horny, chances are there are enough hookers of every ethnicity (white, black, Asian and others, you name it.) to serve every imaginable whim of yours; you ain't satisfied with the government, you can talk to your colleagues, your boss, your friends, you family, for students, even your teachers to vent your anger in the most vile language (I were in the presence of such venting several times along with many other people, there is absolutely no secret police listening, heck, I vented to my police friend, he did it too. Nobody cares cuz everybody knows words don't kill, action kills but action can also kill yourself so very very very very few people are interested enough or dissatisfied enough to bother with actions.); You want career? You can start your own business, or go work for private business or state owned business or directly for the government or even the military, of course, with no guarantee of success; You don't like the government, I mean really don't like it, there are plenty of ways for you to emigrate to US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, or the closest one, Hong Kong, it's really not that hard. Sure, there are no votes, but how much does your vote REALLY count even if there were a vote? Even if you can vote as you please, would it make fundamentally better change to your life in any meaningful way? Lot of people think the answer is yes, but out of 1.3 billion people, they're still a very very small minority.

恐有屠龙术的嫌疑把

2010-01-19T23:06:00.001-08:00

通篇不谈经济发展科技发展，书斋里研究研究还好，真当回事情可要出麻烦，教授可一自信，可对于平民来说，事实上是平均生活水平不提高到至少和欧洲较为落后的国家的水平，西班牙，葡萄牙之类的，土鳖喜欢嘲笑这些国家觉得自己“国家”很牛，可事实上，至少我的经验是，这些国家的人没有一个是觉得美国很好打死也要来黑着也要留下的。没有这点，什么“文化自信”都是扯淡，中国以前很有自信，还不是被先进武器和巨大差距打成没自信的？什么理论，什么古老文化都要 deliver才行，不然就是文人放p，就算将来一定能deliver，在没deliver之前宣传什么“文化自信”还是扯淡。没有经济，没有科技，没有军事，尤其是没有生活水平，什么都是废话，你以为亿万中国人吃饱了撑了没事自己要彻底打倒几千年的传统？那是血粼粼的现实逼的，不是要否定儒家，事实是儒家有太多的机会表现而没有deliver哪怕基本的成果，事实是中国现在的成就也好没有发生在中体西用时期，却发生在全面学习西方时期。没有成绩不要指望人们能真心相信，想让人民信儒家，等儒家出几个工程师再说把。就算儒家要抬头也等中国人不偷渡到美国中国女人不去巴基斯坦去搞不健康活动再说把。文人就是天生觉得自己牛b ,八字还没一撇就谈开自信复兴什么的了，不是要彻底打倒传统，但是脸是老二的传人自己丢的，想重新当“文明的中心”得自己先把脸找回来，那得靠真金白银的发展，没办法再那方面有所建树，还是老实点学人家西方把

Google and Baidu

2010-01-18T13:26:00.001-08:00

There is no other way around Baidu in China. Google simply doesn't have a chance, not with the long leash extended from Silicon valley. As Google China's founder, Kai-Fu Lee wasn't stranger to the intricacies of Chinese market, after all, it's him who built from ground up a thriving research center in Beijing for MS back in late 90s, yet even he could not operate smoothly against the seemly insurmountable lead Baidu commands, an suspicious government and a headquarter not convinced by his localization strategy, so he quit in September, promoted a wild swirl of rumors about the imminent withdrawal from China by Google, apparently, these ain't entirely rumors.
Baidu built its early lead largely by offering the MP3 search thing, it's a killer app, if you had ever been in China during that period, you'd know just how hopelessly the cards were stacked against Google and Yahoo when Baidu was armed with an super-efficient MP3 search engine that could give you instant access to pretty much any song without ever leaving Baidu. Now, however, with Baidu fully grown with wide ranging products, from IM to on-line encyclopedia , from stream video to online forum, I honestly don't see there is a way for Google to catch, not with the current strategy and current crop of leadership. The whole obviously PR thing Google is engaging right now doesn't tell the full story, because Google has been playing by the rules for 3 years, only to see the gap between it and Baidu grew bigger and bigger. To succeed in China requires thorough localization, government relation is only one aspect of it, even if there weren't the whole censorship thing, I highly doubt Google would fair better, after all, Ebay lost its commanding (90% market share) lead in China against a upstart in merely three years, and Ebay and Alibaba (the company that founded the company that slaughtered Ebay) operate in purely on-line business, with politics or censorship as no issues, now Ebay simply doesn't exist in China any more. All in all, google is making a big mistake, and it WILL come back to China's market in the future, the only difference is Google would have wasted years standing on the sidelines rather than spending time immersing in the market. It's their money and it's their strategy, but they will regret it. Eric Schmidt probably already did, if he were ever on it in the first place.

Recent scandals in Japanese politics.

2010-01-18T13:02:00.001-08:00

I'd not jump to any premature conclusion. It's a well-known fact that Japan is largely governed by career bureaucrats for at least half a century, in Japanese system, the commanders, aka the politicians are at best figure-heads whose job mainly consist of placing signatures on policies devised and will be implemented by career bureaucrats who are the true elites and governing class of Japan. The upheaval wrought to the old system as a result of the victory by the Democratic Party of Japan shook the system, is bound to evoke resistance from the old guards, both passive and aggressive. It's also no secret that Ichiro Ozawa himself, as probably the most important Japanese politician over the last 20 years, has long been seeking to end the predominance of career bureaucrats in nation's affairs, it'd surprise no one to see him and his party become the target of a bureaucracy they seek to rein in. I'm not saying he's clean, Japan's black gold politics is also legendary, few people who are as high-ranking as Ichiro Ozawa is could keep themselves strictly hewed to the law, but the primary cause of whatever shady dealing he and his party may or may not have done, blowing up at this moment, I believe, have more to do with the struggles between the reformers and the old guards.

Quality of Jet Li's early education.

2010-01-17T11:52:00.001-08:00

calligraphy may or may not be in the curriculum, personally, I highly doubt it is as calligraphy is, in Chinese education system, usually considered an extra-curricular activity that belongs to after hour study. As for Wushu school, you're terribly wrong, achievement in sports in general are not highly regarded in Chinese society, unless you reach the very top, like winning Olympic gold medal or becoming a big star. Had he not become an international movie star, Jet Li's achievement in Wushu, namely, his multiple national championships, at best, can only win him a regular nobody job as a coach after he retires. The bottom line is, Chinese parents encourage their kids to be academic overachievers while achievement in sports are not that much appreciated (it's nice to have it of course, but between No.1 in your class and core member of the soccer/basketball/volleyball/ping pang/swimming/chess/go/wushu/, if they had to choose, 10 out of 10 Chinese parents would choose the former and ten out of ten Chinese teachers would favor the former). Usually those who enroll in Wushu school are trouble-makers who can't make it in regular school, I personally know a bunch and quality of academic in Wushu school is bad at best. I'm sure Jet Li went to the best Wushu school, so maybe it's different. But to my best knowledge, the vast majority of Wushu school are for "bad" students, they're vocational school using advertising such as "guaranteed job as security guards" to attract interest from lower and working class parents fretting about their kids' bad performance in regular school.

Answer to certain poster's confusion regarding Empress Dowager Cixi's rise to power in a male-dominated society.

2010-01-17T11:50:00.000-08:00

Well, you don't know China. True, like all countries, China was very sexist in 19th century. But unlike most countries, traditional Chinese morality also determines that son is required to be almost unconditionally deferential toward his parents. Empress Dowager Cixi was certainly very cunning politically and strong willed and ambitious to be able to actually take advantage of her unique role as the biological mother of the ONLY son of her husband, emperor xian feng. She wasn't the empress (the emperor could have as many women as he wanted, as many concubine as he wanted, but he could only have one wife, who was legally the head of imperial palace, responsible for all the family business going on inside the forbidden city.

The emperor could divorce the empress, but it's a very messy business for even the emperor, and if the empress didn't make any serious mistake, any attempt by the emperor to dismiss the empress would surely invite criticism from governmental officials and damage his reputation.), her ranking among all the concubines of the emperor wasn't that high either. But she produced the only male heir to the throne, which led to her instant rise in ranking and political power.

Anyway, because of sexism, if Emperor Xian Feng were still alive, no way would Cixi have become the top political master in China, no matter how cunning and strong-willed she was. But, Emperor Xian Feng died, and his and Empress Dowager Cixi's son took over the throne, which meant that sexism simply stopped working with regard to Empress Dowager Cixi any more. For an average woman, she's just a woman, and in the eyes of most people, should never be allowed to have political power, but to her son, she is the subject of unconditional love and deference, any real or perceived slight by her son against her would result in her son being universally condemned. For Empress Dowager Cixi, the difference was her son was the emperor, which meant that nobody, not even her son, could openly defy her, that's the foundation of her political power. If her son were cunning and strong-willed politically, he could have easily got around his mother as Empress Dowager Cixi wasn't legally allowed to involve herself in politics (but even so, he would have to beg for forgiveness if he didn't do what she wanted him to do, if only to show the world that he's a loving son.). However, her son wasn't a natural politician (he was only a kid when he assumed the throne), so her political base was almost unassailable, unless her opponents wanted to launch a open coup, the best they could do was to sideline her, in a very respecting way, rather than politically and physically eliminating her.

In sum, your assumption wasn't correct because "son's deference to mother" trumps "women's deference to men".

Well, politics is a dangerous game for anybody to play. That being said, you'd be surprised to see how many women took advantage of their motherly role as the woman giving birth to the emperor to grab political power in Chinese history. She's not the only one, not the first one, not even one of few. Empress Dowager Cixi was only the most recent one, as a result, she was being talked more than most other power-grabbing Empress Dowager. If you wanna talk about female politician, you should study more of Wu Zetian, her rise was also the result of her role as the mother of emperor. But unlike Empress Dowager Cixi, Wu Zetian didn't just stop herself at merely being the puppet master, the behind-scene power center. She stepped right into the limelight, declared herself the reigning Emperor of China (in English, she was often called Empress, but in Chinese, these two words carry totally different meanings. Empress is the mother/wife/grandmother of the emperor. Legitimate speaking, the Emperor is the real supreme head of the dynasty, and Emperor is always a man except in one single case.) and founded her own dynasty. Empress Dowager Cixi was just one of the many behind-scene female politicians openly yet still vicariously exercising their supreme power. Only Wu Zetian, as a woman managed to openly and DIRECTLY exercise the supreme power. She's a female emperor rather than an empress and the only female emperor in Chinese history, it's a HUGE and much bigger deal and a demonstration of much bigger ambition, much more cunning political instinct and frankly, her gut to openly and unabashedly defy thousands of years of tradition. Yet even she would not have achieved what she had achieved had she not been the mother of the emperor at first.

Mongol Empire, desinted to spinter

2010-01-17T11:49:00.001-08:00

Given the technological sophistication of ancient times, Mongol empire simply could not remain united as a giant empire, there was no way to effective govern it, the rapid splintering of Mongol empire seemed to be the result of Ghengis Khan's decision to carving up the empire among his four sons, it's also an inevitable result of the sheer impossibility of governing such a large piece of land with only horses/pigeons as communication tools an horses/carriages as transportation tools, to effective defend it and govern it, the central authority would have to delegate so much that such vital power (power to appoint and dismiss lower level officials, power to collect and spend tax.) would have to be given to local governors which, given time, would almost inevitably result in secession. I don't know if Ghengis Khan realized it, he probably didn't, but his divide-and-govern policy eventually resulted in longer life for the empire as a whole (Mongol empire didn't last that long in China, but it did last much much longer in Middle East, central Asia and Russia.)

Come back to your question, even if there were no such system that dictated the immediate return of commanders and princes to elect the next Khan upon the death of the previous Khan, the fact that Mongol Empire was already so big meant that whatever military campaign conducted out of the empire's innate need to expand and conquer, regardless of the result of the campaign, would most likely not result in permanent political conquest. As somebody else said, they came, they pillaged, but they simply could not stay and rule because they already had an empire too big and too messy for any one or a group of individuals to rule.

How cultural revolutino is viewed in China?

2010-01-17T11:46:00.001-08:00

well, official Chinese government and those who are accepted by the West as political dissidents all agree the cultural revolution is a complete disaster. They only disagree on how much culpability should be assigned to Mao personally ,even on that, the difference only exists in public political discourse, it's no secret that Mao was the primary force behind cultural revolution, Deng Xiaoping himself could barely hide his contempt for Mao in many of his published speeches , but for the overall political stability, he and other top leaders of his generation, who knew Mao since they were 20 somethings (in another word, they knew each other inside out, personally and politically.), decided to keep Mao on the pedestal despite the fact that pretty much all of them, to various degrees, were victims of Mao's political maneuvering, as a result, Mao's political lapdogs were blamed for cultural revolution, nonetheless, it's no secret to anybody with half an shred of brain that Mao was behind cultural revolution. On the other hand, one must remember that, however, significant number of people in China, a lot of them average joes who were old enough to have suffered personally during the cultural revolution, still viewed Mao with utmost admiration and respect, even though they know perfectly well the damage done by cultural revolution and the role played by Mao. It's hard to explain it, basically, Chinese cultural places the collective well-being, often manifests itself as the well-being of China as a national state, above the well-being of individuals. In their view, yes, unspeakable horror happened during cultural revolution, yes, Mao was primarily responsible for the chaos, but the fact that Mao united China after decades of war and humiliation, and the fact that Mao established China as a totally independent power politically not reliant on any one of the two superpowers, outweighs any damages he later did to consolidate his power and implement his own version, call it cultural difference, call it rationalization, it's the genuine feeling of, if not majority, at least very very significant portion of Chinese population. In certain sense, it's kinda like the how "conservatives" in the US feel about George W.Bush, they know under Bush's watch, two wars turned out to be two quagmires, New Orleans was left to rot in the flooded ditch after Katrina, the economy collapsed, surplus became deficit, Bush even betrayed the core conservative mantra by expanding the size and role of government more than any previous administration since LBJ, yet more than once, I heard self-professed conservatives access Bush by starting off with "he's not perfect, he made a lot of mistakes" and ending the assessment with conclusion like "nonetheless, he's a good guy and overall a good president."

The bottom line is right now people in China, regardless of political orientation, aren't terribly interested in the whole cultural revolution business for the most part. Those who still talk about it are doing it either to push for their own political agenda or getting too hung up on the political intrigue before, during and after cultural revolution (maybe in the distant future, somebody could shoot a political thriller based on cultural revolution. Set aside politics, the maneuverings by Mao and his allies and opponents before, during and after cultural revolution are excellent material for very engaging and very suspenseful movies.) Immediately after the end of cultural revolution, there was lots of retrospection, lots of books written, movies shot about cultural the events happened during and effects of cultural revolution, nonetheless, after a while, the government wanted people to move on, and people did move on, Chinese economy is exploding in all directions, very few people choose to dwell on the past when faced with, for some, the temptation of the present, and for yet some others, the confusion and dislocation of dealing with a rapidly changing society and economy.

deflation will not be allowed to work

2010-01-17T11:42:00.000-08:00

because deflation equals stagnation/recession. Anybody who doesn't at least pretend to fight deflation will see himself/herself voted out of office sooner than horny teenagers f*ck each other. The only way for the US to have a positive growth rate is to continue to outsource to keep price/inflation in check while at the same time encouraging financial speculation and excessive growth of both liquidity and financial industry. It's inherently unstable, the frequency of financial crisis since late 70s speaks more about the innate instability of the model than anything else. But it's the only way to grow and it's the only way for the politician to claim success and avoid losing in elections. That's why Obama and Bush all opted to save the banking industry, despite the massive ire it obviously generates from both left and right wing electorate. This system may or may not survive for another 20 to 30 years, but it's currently the only realistic game in town and people should learn to take advantage of it rather than bashing it.

For perspective China travelers.

2010-01-17T11:41:00.001-08:00

Beijing and Shanghai are the must go
as the political and economic center of China, even though they are the most westernized (in another word, least China in the traditional sense.) cities in China. Beijing has tons of history, so there are still lots of historical and cultural stuff to see, Shanghai can't be compared to Beijing in history, but Shanghai has its unique culture, and as probably the most important city of China in the 1st half of 20th century, it's still a place one must go.

Beside these two obvious destinations, I suggest you go to Xi'an, culturally and historically speaking, even Beijing can't be compared to Xi'an, and if you went there either before or after you go to Shanghai, you'll probably notice the huge cultural gap between different regions of China.

Guangdong province is one of the centers of China's economy and home to one of the most influential traditions of Chinese cuisine. You probably should go there if only for the food (or you can pay a visit to Hong kong, where it shares the same culinary, linguistic and cultural tradition.)

South western China is very diverse ethically and has beautiful mountains and rivers. You should not miss it if you had time.

North estern China, or Manchuria, especially the northern most province of China, also deserves a visit, especially during the winter, it'd be cold, but the ice sculpture festival in Harbin is a one of a kind cultural/art event that WILL wow you. The scale, complexity and sophistication of these ice sculptures are world-class and definitely should not be missed if you decide to go to China during the winter.

30 rocks is good but not as good as it was

2010-01-17T11:39:00.000-08:00

especially Alex Baldwin's character has become way too nice since 1st season. And I don't agree with the assertion that somehow arrested development is the yardstick against which all supposedly smart comedies would be measured. I didn't see all of AD's episodes, but I saw enough to know that they tried way too hard, way too obvious to be smart, it ended up coming off as pretentious without substance to back up.

google is smoking some serious weeds

2010-01-13T08:50:00.000-08:00

it has been pushing out mediocre also-ran products for quite some time, despite fan's raving, these products fare poorly with users.
Now it threatens to exit the largest internet market? They've been drinking their own Kool-aid far too long. If a business thinks it's too cool to follow business rules, sooner or later, it'd either have to cease to be a business or cease to consider itself cool.
My biggest gripe against google is not too many silly ideas, it's too many imitated products that nobody pay attention. Google tries to have a wikipedia killer, a facebook killer, a youtube killer before youtube was brought by google, a MS office killer, now an iphone killer and potentionally a windows killer. Its track record on these "killers" is abysmal at best. We still use wikipedia, facebook, youtube, MS office, iphone and windows, not the supposedly revolutionary google replacement. All these also-ran products reek of a company short of innovative ideas (so it has to turn to established brand in the hope and delusion that its coolness alone would pull users from the established brands.)
Fact of matter is none of these side way errands google did upended in any serious way the niche market they were supposed to upend, against many fanboy's wish.

As for google and China, if google think it's in a position to bargain with Chinese government, it's in even bigger delusion than I thought, China flatly blocked google back in early 2000s. Any western company deluding itself into believing that it doesn't need to play by China's rules in China would find itself on the receiving end of an serious, fatal ass-kick.

and Kai-fu Lee's sudden leave wasn't an accident in-hindsight. remember the big battle over him fought by Google and MS. He abruptly left google in September, I'm no conspiracy theorist. But connecting these dots can't help but making me wonder just how much the whole brouhaha is about supposedly "freedom" as opposed to pure business interest (google is losing badly in China. Pulling out is an short-sighted decision for that, but it at least shows that google isn't delusional.)

RMB appreciation in 2010?

2010-01-10T22:37:00.000-08:00

Well, if people could stop for a few seconds assigning themselves tasks they have neither the intellectual aptitude nor the organizational prowess to complete, tasks such as worrying about future macro economic trend in countries as big and as complex as China and the US, they might have more time to contemplate ways to take advantage of whatever conclusions they reach based on whatever amount of info they have access to.

Anyway, based on the info I have access to, I'd say the most immediate and most useful conclusion anyone can draw from this as well as other pieces of information presented to us recently is:
RMB will appreciate in 2010. Not by much as gradualism is always preferred by the Chinese when dealing with these kind of stuff, nonetheless, judging by the media reports, the actual number released, the political posturing by major politicians as well as the overall issues clearly identified by the government needing to be dealt with, it's pretty clear to me that RMB appreciation is an step Chinese government intends to take to:
1. slow down the inflow of speculative capital to curb (curb, not pop) the real estate bubble developed in a few key cities.
2. help the so called "economic structural transformation", namely, gradually outsource low-cost manufacturing industry to lower cost countries (labor cost wise, China isn't that low any more, yet, because of the economy of scale and Chinese advantage in infrastructure and labor, right now, there is no realistic alternative for Made-in-China either, overall cost remains higher in many countries despite the fact that average salary of these countries only measure up to at most half of average salary of Chinese workers. That's why despite 20% appreciation in value by RMB between 2006 and 2008, China still registered record after record of trade surplus in these years.), the whole thing was in planning and implementation back in 07 at least, with legislation passed to ensure minimal wage, all the health insurance reform initiatives and obviously the gradual but steady appreciation of RMB, of course, the whole "great recession" thing temporarily put an stop to the plan, with RMB again being pegged to the dollar the most obvious sign, now with export in clear rebound and domestic market filled up with liquidity, time for moderation is there again. All the economists calling for appreciation that seem to pop out of nowhere lately, tim geithner telling congress that he's confident that China will start to appreciate RMB in mid-2010 and Chinese premier's seemly pretty resolute rhetoric against further appreciation of RMB all tell us that there is indeed a plan to appreciate the RMB, it's in the interests of both China and the US. (For China, obviously it's a way to deflect the protectionism creeping up in US and EU, and for the US, obviously, it's a political cover for the Obama administration. Both sides know that the deficit and the surplus are all structural and unlikely to change soon, yet for tactical reasons, the RMB needs to appreciate if only to curb liquidity in China and cover the administration politically in the US.) all these guys are just doing their parts to prepare and manage the appreciation.
3. Obviously, at least providing some covers for Western governments in the face of rising protectionism, China and Western governments share the same interests here.

Of course, that's all grand plans, if it would work is anybody's guess, everything depends on implementation, after all, the devils are in the details. One thing one needs to remember is that, despite the fear of conspiracy theorist, the fact of matter is, government is nothing more than a giant collection of bureaucrats who are on the one hands, provide the info for the few who consider themselves smart enough to draw up a overall plan and are responsible for the implementation of whatever plan drawn up by the politicians and their aids, and on the other hand, these bureaucrats are
just like you and me, we all know them as relatives, friends or neighbors, we all know just how smart or capable they are. And by extension, we all have some idea of just how smart the entity so ominously dubbed "big brother" is. Whatever plan, including the plan described above, they have might very well not work. And everything will be moot as a result. Nonetheless, as humans, we need plan and we need prediction, that's the only prediction I can make based on the info I have and you can draw whatever conclusion you want to draw from it and hopefully, it will help you plan your next move.

what a change!!!

2010-01-02T22:02:00.001-08:00

Merely 6 years ago, ICBC (Industrial and Commercial Bank of China) was widely ridiculed by its peers as the slumbering giants that seemed to be utterly incapable of pulling itself out of piles of bad loans, beset by low morals, envious of the successes and higher pay of its smaller and nimbler peers and in awe of the supposedly "modern" banking practice epitomized by, in the minds of hordes of relatively uneducated bank associates, Citi group, ICBC looked and felt like a hopelessly outdated machine, a pool of backwater so backward that even the injection of tens of billions of dollars worth of fresh capital only managed to produce a collective yawn in response. Who can imagine back in 2003 that at the end of 2009, Citi group remains stuck in de facto bankruptcy, even after hundreds of billions of dollars in capital injection by the treasury and the Fed while ICBC, the old peasant with no fashion sense, emerges out of the collapse of world economy as the largest and most profitable bank in the world? Indeed a wonder worthy of serious study.

My review of Atatar

2009-12-19T17:39:00.001-08:00

Just came back from watching it on 3d screen, head still swirling, on average, not bad, but it's far below my expectation. I'm fully aware he's primarily a visual guy whose achievement we can remember are stunning visual innovations. But he's also a director, and as a director, in particular, as a famous director directing such a hyped flick, he should have at least tried not to write a plot so much similar to, in essence, to that of Dance with the wolves and last samurai. Even Titanic, as much a gaudy monstrosity as it was, had some dialogue surprises that looked refreshing, not to mention the whole tear-jerking nature of the plot was cliched yet effective. Avatar,on the other hand, could only make me yawn. Maybe too much happened to me since Titanic came out that made me more cynical than I was, but I just didn't feel it, not too much sympathy for the greens and not too adverse emotion against the humans either. Basically a big shrug-off. The chick sitting next to me was in tears when the "tree" came down, honestly, I spent more time sneak peeking at her teary face/eyes during the missling-down of the tree than looking at the big screen. And some of the clear snide at Bush administration and its whole conduct of foreign policy sounded a bit comical considering (no big fan of George Bush, but there are only so much fun you can make of "use terror to fight terror" before the whole thing wears off.), what I believe, a weary public on that particular topic.

Myths and Misunderstandings about China

2009-12-18T10:03:00.001-08:00

I want to start off by making clear that I'm just an average Chinese guy with experience in both China and the US, and a bunch of other countries in Asia and Europe. I have no access to any data not on the internet (so I can't provide concrete data to back up my claim as we all know just how credible internet resources are, it's just a view born out of experience and anecdotal stories, though I will try to limit the data I use to those provided by major, reputable media outlets.), I have no training in either finance or economics (so don't mumble jumble me with all the jargon, I don't know, I don't understand and I can't and won't play the game with you), I have no crystal ball (so I don't know if China would conquer the world or collapse overnight, don't bother to ask, I don't know and my honest suggestion is don't even think about it, nobody knows, if somebody knows, nobody, including himself, knows he knows.)

1. Chinese government is filled to the brim with cash

It's the biggest myth of all, due mainly to China's humongous foreign currency reserve and aggressive investment drive throughout the world. True, Chinese government is very rich if you just look at the numbers, but you also need to consider the kind of financial commitment the government is taking on: building the largest high speed rail network in the world(China has 79,000 kilometers of high speed rail at the end of 2008 and is planning to increase the number to 120,000 kilometers by the year 2012, which is more than half of the world high speed rail.), building the second largest highway network in the world (60,300 kilometers, second only to the US), massive investment in bridges, tunnels, metro systems, etc. Not to mention investment in military, R&D, credit extended to companies for oversea M&A, energy deals with Russia, central Asia, middle east (mainly Iran), Africa and Latin America, any one of these deals runs up to tens of billions of dollars, put in some extra funding for social security, health care reform, tax cut to spur domestic consumption, and don't forget the whole clean energy thing. You know the deal. I don't have a number, but by looking at the scale of what Chinese government has taken on, you'd get an sense that these are monster projects that require monster amount of cash. Due to financial crisis, Chinese government budget, like budgets of all other countries, are under stress (I know, from anecdotal stories told my people I know who work for the government, that this year Chinese tax authority is much more forcible than before in enforcing tax laws and taxing gray income previously was not taxed. It's an sign of the pressure on government budget.)

This is the first installment of what I'd hope an series of articles on what I consider fundamental and serious problem of understanding by the West regarding China's strength and China's weakness. (again my honest suggestion, lots of articles you see regarding China, both "pro and anti-China" should be read with a very heavy grain of salt as they're primarily an sly way to push the author's own agenda.) I'm no expert, but I promise you that I'll be as honest and truthful as I can when I write.
If you want, you can ask me what you are not sure about China, I'll try to give you an straight, best-I-know, answer.

movie idea

2009-11-26T01:01:00.001-08:00

Truman show marries the Terminator.
Every time I see the terminator, I always can't help wondering what if John connor's father (forget his name) were really a deranged insane person imaging all the stuff in his head, you know, nuclear war, killer machines, time travel, terminators, etc. Normal people would have laughed her/his ass off if somebody just came to your face and spew out a bunch of fantasy-like theories on why you should come with them to save yourself, your future unborn son and the world. But Sarah Connor bought his story because there was an seemly indestructible killing machine on her trail blasting away everybody and everything. What if all of these were just a gigantic hoax like what Truman was living in in the Truman show? Could it be done with today's technology? Somebody with lots of money and all the tech money can buy decides to play an elaborate prank (like the kind of prank you see in The Game) on somebody by conjuring up a "save yourself, save the world" story? Could some major media company pull it off as a reality show? Sure, they would have their ass handed to them on a plate in the ensuing lawsuit, but could the show made so realistic that it could actually convince a person with normal intelligence/education that he/she is actually being pursued by a killer machine from the future?

less children, less population, it's not just ecological, it's also responsible

2009-11-24T09:20:00.000-08:00

It is obviously a financial burden and more importantly it is also a moral burden. Some people who urge you to have children probably are so self-centered that they never stop to consider the fact that children are part of the game too. You know, if you can't provide them with food, housing, clothing and most importantly, education, you might as well just not have them in the first place. Otherwise, it'd be a hugely irresponsible thing to do. It's not just about YOUR personal craving to see a little puppy crawling on your bed, he/she needs to live in this world for 70 to 90 years for crying out loud. If you as a parent, for whatever reason, can't equip him/her with the necessary tools/skills BEFORE he/she becomes strong and mature enough to stand on his/her own feet, having them anyway is irresponsible and burdensome not only to you but also to this society. Popping out multiple kids while refusing to educate them to their maximum capacity is immoral and irresponsible, whatever bullsh*t excuses you might use ("he/she needs to be independent so I'll not pay for their education", "he/she needs to be independent so I'll choose to force them into, like you, heavy debt load before they even get a chance to make their own money.") to justify it.

What will happen if every house has a supercomputer insted of a PC ?

2009-11-24T09:18:00.000-08:00

Nothing, because very few people know how to use an supercomputer (BTW, mainframe is NOT supercomputer.), or linux would have slaughtered Windows on PC market by now as it is the predominant OS on supercomputers nowadays. And those who know how to use it use it to do stuff even fewer people understand: particle physics, nuclear simulation, DNA sequencing or hurricane prediction, there are no office suite on supercomputer, nor are there Turbo tax on Bluegene. Last but not the least, most people don't have the physical space to house an supercomputer, nor do they have the cash to pay for the humongous electricity bill.

The existing computing paradigm is sort of coming to a dead end as clearly the push to increase performance of individual processor has reached physics limit while increasing parallelism sounds good, the difficulty in programming under highly parallel environment will undoubtedly pose serious challenge down the road, you can brag about your machine's linpack performance all you want, but to do real work, there are still way too many hurdles ahead of us. Not to mention the push to e-scale machine will probably push the number of processors in a machine to hundreds of millions, which, barring some breakthrough in energy conservation technology, will really really test electricity supply, maybe in the future, we need to first build a nuclear reactor before we can install an supercomputer.

Price and priority

2009-11-22T14:09:00.001-08:00

Difference in price between product available both in the US and China can mainly be attributed to the different cost in brand, transportation, handling, tax and extra overhead associated with retailing.

Take clothing as an example, in large Chinese cities, at current exchange rate, jacket that costs $45-$60 and similar priced shoes are enough for a young guy to not feel ashamed of himself in front of most trendy materialistic girls, if he's not in a mating mood, $30 to $50 is enough for a young guy to not stand out in a bad way among his peers. If he's poor, unemployed or cheap, he can make do with $20 or so clothing, in summer, less than $10.

New car sells for $7000 to $10000 from domestic manufacturers, brand new small car can be brought with as low as $5000 from domestic manufacturers. International brand costs a lot more and are usually out of range for most 20 somethings.

The whole "slave wage" debate is quite misleading (not totally off the base because absolute pay is still much lower than regular American salary even taken into consideration undervalued Chinese currency.) because you and many Americans look at the whole issue through a wrong perspective. It's not really about absolute pay scale or even pay scale adjusted for purchasing power. It's the social and economic structure of China that makes these seemly slave wage much more of a "living wage" than pure number, absolute number or purchasing power adjusted number, suggests.

The most obvious example would be the extra cost one pretty much has to assume in the US: car, gas and all the money associated with maintaining the car. Without a car, outside of a few major cities, it is extremely difficult if not impossible for anybody to hold a job in the US, whether you're doing a minimal wage job or CEO job. For China, indeed, for most countries, public transportation is perfectly adequate in meeting the basic transportation demands. Here lies the core problem for low wage earners in the US: even though you're technically making much more than your counterparts in China, but he doesn't need to have a car to go to work, to buy grocery or to go out for date, drink or something else. But you have to, or you'd have a hard time going to work on time, to buy grocery, etc. As a result, your discretionary income is several hundreds dollars lower than the number on your pay check (gas, insurance, + the money for maintenance and initial purchase of the car), even though your expense on car doesn't increase your standard of living in any obvious way. (well, some people might feel that driving to work/grocery shopping is in itself an sign of increased standard of living. I don't think so, I don't think walking/taking bus/biking/taking metro to work renders my life less "livable".) Also because of cultural reasons, few Chinese college students have to assume crushing debt to finish their education, their families will usually pay for it (which introduces a major cause of China's high saving rate, parents need to save early on for their kids' education and other needs. The argument often employed by American parents such as "we have our own life to live", "he should pay for his own education since he's an adult" simply won't fly in China. Giving him the highest education he could attain and helping him lay the foundation for his own family are considered parental responsibilities as important as feeding and clothing your kids. Sure, not every parents can fulfill all the responsibilities expected of them, but that's the social expectation and usually they will try as hard as they can to pay for all the thing mentioned above. Chinese, indeed, Asian parents are often willing to make sacrifice for their kids few Americans can imagine.), which means that Chinese educated young adults often don't have to deal with a major expense American young adults often have to deal with, when both groups are at the early and poorest stage of their career. There are few other expenses that Americans have to pay for while Chinese don't have to. You get the gist. I won't list all of them here.

On a macro level, current Chinese growth model hinges on two factors: high growth to absorb extra labor (domestic investment in infrastructure and, obviously, export are the twin engines off growth); low domestic price for essential goods to make a "slave wage" in American economic context an acceptable wage, not a good wage, a very low wage, a wage many people would gladly ditch if other opportunities arise, but nonetheless a "livable" wage. People ain't stupid, if it's not "livable", nobody is going to work for it. America built an infrastructure for "American dream", but if you can't afford American dream, you often still have to pay for many expensive elements of American dream because there is no other way around it, as a result, the "living wage" in America and "slave wage" in America only apply to, America.

Of course, current Chinese growth model isn't sustainable over the long run because of resource limit, inevitable rise in labor cost and how much upgrade you can do to your infrastructure (during Asian financial crisis, China relied on stimulus, especially stimulus invested in upgrading highway network, this time, the stimulus went to upgrading railway network.) Chinese government knows it and they know eventually they will have to let their currency appreciate if only to increase standard of living and reduce their foreign currency reserve. But now is not the time, certainly not in the middle of a crisis when export still accounts for many jobs, yes, jobs that pay not so well, but nonetheless, jobs. That's why Obama didn't get what he wanted during his visit to China. What they were doing over the past few years such as pushing rural residents to buy cars, gradually establishing a national heath care system, scraping tuition for primary and secondary education, massive investment in renewable energy, global scourging for resources are either designed to stimulate domestic demand, which is the ultimate solution to over-reliance on export, or securing access to resources to buy time so that their export engine will have some sort of cushion against what seems like an inevitable rise in commodity price. Of course, these policies may or may not work. hope of Obama's and many others, both for and against him politically, that China would somehow turn outward to help the US achieve its agenda is wishful thinking at best. Chinese economy is at the crux of another major transformation whose success is crucial to China's future. Domestic and international stability are paramount for China. To expect China to divert attention to help out the US shows an startling lack of understanding about what China's priority is. Chinese leadership uniformly brushed aside the whole G-2 suggestion as absurd clearly showed that they're in no mood to get themselves involved in trouble abroad regardless what American agenda is.

There'd be no war

2009-11-22T00:24:00.001-08:00

You guys are making much ado about nothing. Comparing to the US, China
still has to deal with much more serious domestic problem, especially
now China has reached or about to reach the limit on export-led growth
and Chinese domestic infrastructure is already upgraded to the point
where room for further infrastructure investment led growth is also
limited, not to mention the cap placed on China's future growth by
natural resource and what's bound to be serious conflict on trade with
major Chinese trading partners, starting with the US. In sum, China
and Chinese leadership know the biggest problem facing them: how to
untie the ugly messy knot of domestic employment vs limit on resource
vs massive unsustainable trade surplus without tipping the balance
underpinning China's growth: largely stable domestic political
environment and essentially enemyless external environment. Pushing
for urbanization, establishing nation-wide health care system, massive
international scourging for resources, massive investment in
alternative energy and R&D are all taken either to buy more time or as
means to, hopefully, untie the unsustainable path China is trekking on
right now.
The whole process is fraught with risk and is by now means assured of
success, any external instability poses risk to the plan, even
assuming everything goes well and every plan works out as intended,
it'd take decades at the very least to rebalance domestic Chinese
environment and domestic Chinese economy to the point that China is in
a position to assume the risk of engaging in major confrontation
against other major powers. China's political move internationally
since the end of cold war is very clear: do whatever it can to avoid
conflict, do whatever it can to avoid instability that China must deal
with at all cost. For politically reasons, Taiwan is the only place
where if certain turn of event really occurs, China'd have to
intervene whether it's ready or not. For all the political provocation
and push for independence during the 8 years when pro-independence
party was in power in Taiwan, China didn't make any really serious
move against Taiwan, economic exchange went on without much
interruption; lots of acrimonious back and forth, but nothing of any
consequence actually happened; militarily, yeah, China is upgrading
its military, clearly to prepare to fight a war against Taiwan and the
US, but I firmly believe it's more a defensive move, a prepare-for-the-
worst move, it's a measure taken to ensure that if Chinese political
leadership were to be pushed into the corner in the even of formal
declaration of independence by Taiwan, Chinese military'd be at least
somewhat prepared.
For the foreseeable future, China would not do anything to disrupt the
status quo across the Taiwan strait because they're fully aware of the
enormity, severity and potential risk of massive economic, political,
social, regional of in China. China as a country, Chinese government
as a government, Chinese leadership for their own political legacy and
survival, can't afford any distraction. In the foreseeable future,
the ball is in Taiwan's court, as long as Taiwan refrains from formal
declaration of independence, there would be no break out of
hostilities across Taiwan street. China's hands are too full to risk
an external war which even if China wins, would ruin the equilibrium
China must have to move forward.

China and the US

2009-11-19T08:50:00.001-08:00

A lot of them already do, in China, Microsoft pays fresh graduate about 170000 yuan a year, which at current exchange rate, translates to $25000 a year. Barely scratch poverty line if you just look at the number. But taken into consideration the actual purchasing power of Chinese currency, the RMB (example, you can easily pay 10 to 15 RMB for a meal in China that will cost you 10 to 15 dollars in the US, $120 is enough to pay food expense in China for a month for a guy who eats out everyday and all three meals a day at regular non-fast food restaurant.) The salary is actually quite decent. While China is overall certainly not as rich as the US at this moment. You can't just look at the number and call the salary paid by foreign companies slave salary.
The kind of social and economic structure China has is totally different from what the US is familiar with. You can't even judging actual living standard by looking at the purchasing power adjusted salary. I'm not enough an expert to analyze the cause of whatever discrepancy existed between reality and news report. But I have enough experience with both China and the US to know that quite often it's really really hard to compare these two countries. One crude analogy I can come up with would be right now China is an Motorola Razr while the US is an iphone. The latter is a lot flashier and more functional in many ways, but in term of the core functionality, the former does its job perfectly well, might not be as good as iphone does, but quite adequate. A lot, if not most people, prefer the iphone but can perfectly well live with a Razr. The dynamic between China and US going down the road would be very interesting to watch. But I'd not jump to conclusions based purely on the media's often sensational and ideology-charged report.

2009-11-18T22:19:00.000-08:00

Well, that's the inevitable side effect of turning college education from what used to be reserved for elite (elite in the sense of intelligence and being extremely hard-working) to now essentially a mass market product. China has a oversupply of workers at every level: oversupply of relatively cheap labor, oversupply of college grads, oversupply of master degree holders, oversupply of domestic PhDs and oversupply of PhDs gotten from overseas. And more and more people are getting college degrees, masters and PhD. That's the reality of China, and that's why Chinese chooses to grow at least 8% a year, it's determined that's the minimal growth rate needed to absorb all the new graduate entering into the labor force as well as all the peasants leaving their fields. Chinese government needs industry of all level of sophistication to absorb and adequately provide for all these people, that's why Chinese investment in R&D has been growing at 30% annual rate, that's why China opts to massively invest in green tech, heavy industry, auto industry while still maintaining very favorable policy to promote export of cheap products. IMHO, It's not just purely for the sake of investing in science and technology, after all, all these bachelor, masters and PhDs need and want jobs that correspond to their level of education, but all these peasants with only middle school/ high school /vocational school education also need jobs that correspond to their level of education.

Basically, China practices the rawest capitalism in large segment of its economy while still has big elements of its economy operating more or less like "national champaign" of France and Germany, yet another part of the economy, namely the part related to military and industrial complex, operates like a mixture of "national champaign" and Soviet design bureau, branches of foreign companies conduct their business in very western manner, while government bureaucracy manages everything from the 2 trillion foreign currency reserve to making sure agriculture is sufficiently profitable to ensure self-sufficiency in food supply, you throw in sufficient percentage of underground economy such as prostitution, bootleg CD/DVD/Software, etc and two Western style cities with their own separate economic, political, judiciary and monetary systems : Hong Kong and Macau, the former operates as a financial center, the later is the biggest gambling city in the world, China even has it own, albeit at much smaller scale, illegal immigration problem (this year, there was even a protest organized by illegal immigrants from Africa against Chinese police brutality in its sweep against undocumented workers), you have a view of Chinese economy. Coupled with the portrait of Chinese labor market, now you know why you hear so many often completely contradictory stories about China: economically, it's a centralized economy and a wild west simultaneously; politically, it's an authoritarian system with people regularly chatting with each other in the most extreme terms against the government on the street and in broad daylight; Culturally,, it's a relatively conservative society overall but peppered by every imaginable sins accessible to anybody with cash and surrounded by a outer ring of very and getting increasingly more western clusters of cities. It's a monstrously complex system created after 3 decades of experiment and reform with the only guiding principle being absolute pragmatism.

Soviet vs the US. Misunderstanding led to misplacement of resources.

2009-11-15T15:53:00.000-08:00

Pure military wise, it's true. I doubt the nuclear capabilities of America, at that time, could make real difference had there been a blow-up between US and USSR at 1945. At that time, it was still incredibly difficult to manufacture nuclear weapon and US still lacked effective means of delivery that could realistically survive Soviet Union's defense system to deliver a nuclear strike, not to mention frankly speaking, the US didn't have nearly enough nukes to really make much of a difference on battlefield, especially against an adversary so battle-hardened who was not physically and psychologically under siege like Japan was.

That being said, even though Red Army as a military force was clearly the strongest army the world had ever seen at 1945 in the sense that they had the biggest, most experienced group of soldiers, mid-level officers as well as senior generals armed with the most advanced and most numerous land weapon systems at that time augmented by a highly perfected military doctrine, namely deep battle. It'd be indeed hard for anybody to effectively resist an Soviet advance at 1945 if war were purely a battle between two militaries. Nonetheless, war is not and has never been a pure exercise of military power, back then, Soviet Union as a nation, after 4 years of ferocious battles with Nazi Germany, suffered horrendous losses to both its economic and human resources, whenever you lost 25 millions of your people, it's bound to have serious effect on your ability to wage more prolonged battle against another major power, namely, the US. (That's why it was purely fantasy to suggest an Soviet post-1945 operation against western Europe. Soviet Union was exhausted, so were all other participants of WWII, nobody wanted another war at that time.). Highly ideology-charged atmosphere during the cold war and deep ignorance affected both sides when it came to assessment of the other side convinced both sides that the other side was out to get them and was in preparation to militarily take over, which in hindsight, was proven to be completely wrong.

Cold war was actually quite interesting if you examine tactical and strategic postures of both sides. Military wise, Soviet tactical doctrine was highly aggressive while its strategic doctrine was largely defensive (given its history, Soviet Union suspected, with good historical precedents to back up , that the west would invade Soviet Union.) On the other hand, military doctrine of the west, both tactical and strategic, were largely defensive due to, for several decades, lopsided conventional advantage Soviet Union enjoyed over the west. Yet both sides, fair or not, suspected that the other sides harbored the intention of launching direct military attack even though in hindsight, it was quite clear that neither sides, whatever plan their general staff might develop, never really intend to put it into practice, due to MAD as well as the unique advantages enjoyed by both sides, which rendered a full-scale war, even full-scale conventional war, even a full-scale conventional war with limited objectives, highly unpredictable, in another word, if Soviet Union couldn't push NATO forces into the sea in a relatively short time frame, the tide could turn against the red army; but if it could, there would not be much else the US could do, without a beachhead on continental Europe, against an Soviet Union controlling half of Eurasia continent. Soviet Union's conventional advantage over NATO gave it the capabilities but no assurance of any kind to accomplish their goals. A lot will depend on how the war actually goes, which couldn't be planned ahead and could conceivably go anywhere since there are so many variables that could tip the eventual outcome. Nobody is willing to bet their own fate on something that couldn't be planned or predicted. So the peace reigned despite deep suspicions and numerous close calls.

Overall strategy wise, however, both the west and Soviet Union were highly aggressive, which, coupled with defensive mindset of both sides, gave us the cold war we witnessed in real life, it was cold not hot because for various reasons, neither sides was seriously thinking about going military; it was cold war not cold peace or cold something else because both side was highly aggressive in their political and economic push against each other, against the backdrop of a crumbling colonial system and most of the other parts world's yearning for political and economic independence after centuries of domination by colonial and other powers.

Initially, Soviet Union was highly successful in their push against the West because the West, due to their role as the reigning power of the old order, stood on the opposing side of local population's desire for independence. The west suffered some humiliating defeats during this period mainly because of historical baggage and the US's inability to see past Capitalism vs Communism (For Vietnam, it was about war AGAINST colonial power, the France was the colonial power, the US was the power supporting the colonial powers. So they fought against France, US and US's puppets despite huge casualties and numerous tactical defeats. The US, however, considered Vietnam was fighting FOR Communism, so it decided to insert itself in support of the old order, which eventually led to a decade long quagmire and humiliating defeats.).

However, after the complete crumbling of old colonial system and US's involuntary decision to not so aggressively push against local population's desire for political independence, the Soviet Union found itself the target of local population's wrath because it's now the power that was pushing to impose its own will on local population. (Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to prop up its own political puppet despite the overwhelming opposition to imposition of Communism on a very religious society. Soon after, it found itself standing against an entire people who couldn't be defeated by inflicting tactical losses, which eventually led to Soviet Union's own humiliating defeats.)

In sum, the history of cold war was strewn with failures by both sides to understand each other and other nations, their own self-centered assumption about smaller third world countries, in the case of the US, the assumption about the drive against American allies who was seen by America as allies but seen by local population as oppressors was about communism; in the case of Soviet Union, the assumption that these countries really wanted to adopt Soviet-style communism, led to serious defeats on both sides. Their biggest scores against each other was achieved on political front whenever they consciously or unconsciously stood for the tide of history, their respective massive hugely expensive military, was largely kept inside the barrack. Interesting.

I prefer working in academia

2009-11-15T14:36:00.000-08:00

mainly because I don't want to waste my time on going over the good old algorithm, C++ and data structure again. You know, I've been in this field for over 10 years, even though I'm not some super genius programer who can write OS kernel, nor am I some technology freaks who spend every breathing moment of their lives working and reading technology. I think I'm still good enough for any developer job at any company. Why do I have to read these old stuff to be considered qualified? Screw them, I'm far too advanced to succumb to their ignorance any more. I'll stay in academia.

what if Napoleon won in Russia?

2009-11-13T08:59:00.000-08:00

Well, there'd always be another piece of spoils he'd like to have his hands on. Most successful conquerers, failed conquerers, conquerers wannabes didn't start out as conquerers, their appetite were fed by the series of successes, as a result of their talent, or simple dumb luck, they encountered in their career. If Napoleon could really conquer Russia, he'd set his sight on middle east, india or even China, until he overreached himself and France so much that the empire collapsed, the way most ancient and modern empires collapsed. But that probably wouldn't happen even if he won the war against Russia as he never really "conquered" anybody really important. He defeated most of its opponents and under the threat of brute force, forced them to obey his orders. But he didn't conquer them as these countries, Austria and Prussia were two biggest examples, still controlled their own source of wealth and military strength and they hated him to his gut, that's why despite repeated defeats, Britain could still organize one after another "coalition" to fight France. He was not much more than a big bully as he could neither make the countries he defeated become truly loyal to him nor could he forcibly eliminate ability of countries he defeated to rise up and fight him again. His authority was built on the threat of exerting another crushing defeat on his opponents, he didn't eliminate his opponents as independent entities without their own ability to raise and feed an army, nor did he build up enough common bond common interests with other countries that they could fight with him when he was strong and when he was weak. He essentially cowed everybody into silence and obedience but the second he showed his weakness, these countries would rise up and fight him again. It happened to Austria, it happened to Prussia and if he won against Russia, it'd happen to Russia, which meant that Russia would crawl under his feet for a few years, until some opportunities present itself to convince Russia to fight France again.

tenure

2009-11-12T23:50:00.001-08:00

Tenure has been accused of giving incentive to laziness, irresponsibility, among other sins that are quite commonly seen among professors. Even among professors, not all believe the virtue of tenure still warrants its continued existence. But if we were to abolish tenure and introduce serious competition into academia, well, maybe just the prized corner reserved for tenured professors where vicious competition for everything has not yet been in full swing, what alternative system could we use to ensure academic freedom, promote long-term research, and most importantly, attract enough smart people into academia?

Considering the years of schooling required for PhD, brutal pressure for publication, getting grants, etc. the responsibilities of managing essentially an small business (managing money, establishing and maintaining business relationships, managing students, and promote your research/brand, etc), even the 200 to 300 K some of the grant-rich professors I know make a year seem like a very meager financial return. Conversations with current and potential professors repeatedly reveal that the biggest attraction of research jobs is the possibility of getting tenure along with the iron-clad job security and professional freedom which are the hallmarks of tenured positions.

Absent of these two perks, I'm not sure most people would even bother to get into academia, except for the very few with die-hard interests in academia. Even with all the goodies offered by tenure, professors are often some of the oldest looking professionals I've ever seen, a phenomenon I believe in no small part owing to the enormous pressure they operate under, at least before they get tenure. But the negative side of life-long job security is indisputable and many professors practically cease to work on research after the get their tenure, essentially satisfy themselves with muddling through the rest of their lives, a decision I probably would have made considering the work and sacrifice I have made during my PhD year.

Basically, tenure is, IMHO, the only real benefit in academia that's worthy of the work one must put into to get into academia, so removing it would mean removing the only incentive to attract talent people into university. But the current status of tenure is also obviously flawed. So if there would be reform, what would it look like and what it SHOULD look like?Tenure has been accused of giving incentive to laziness, irresponsibility, among other sins that are quite commonly seen among professors. Even among professors, not all believe the virtue of tenure still warrants its continued existence. But if we were to abolish tenure and introduce serious competition into academia, well, maybe just the prized corner reserved for tenured professors where vicious competition for everything has not yet been in full swing, what alternative system could we use to ensure academic freedom, promote long-term research, and most importantly, attract enough smart people into academia?

Considering the years of schooling required for PhD, brutal pressure for publication, getting grants, etc. the responsibilities of managing essentially an small business (managing money, establishing and maintaining business relationships, managing students, and promote your research/brand, etc), even the 200 to 300 K some of the grant-rich professors I know make a year seem like a very meager financial return. Conversations with current and potential professors repeatedly reveal that the biggest attraction of research jobs is the possibility of getting tenure along with the iron-clad job security and professional freedom which are the hallmarks of tenured positions.

Absent of these two perks, I'm not sure most people would even bother to get into academia, except for the very few with die-hard interests in academia. Even with all the goodies offered by tenure, professors are often some of the oldest looking professionals I've ever seen, a phenomenon I believe in no small part owing to the enormous pressure they operate under, at least before they get tenure. But the negative side of life-long job security is indisputable and many professors practically cease to work on research after the get their tenure, essentially satisfy themselves with muddling through the rest of their lives, a decision I probably would have made considering the work and sacrifice I have made during my PhD year.

Basically, tenure is, IMHO, the only real benefit in academia that's worthy of the work one must put into to get into academia, so removing it would mean removing the only incentive to attract talent people into university. But the current status of tenure is also obviously flawed. So if there would be reform, what would it look like and what it SHOULD look like?

I passed my proposal defense. Still feel like crap, though

2009-11-03T23:06:00.000-08:00

Apparently I'm the only one who had to fend of such a large amount of questionings thrown at me from all directions. I don't blame them, they're just doing their jobs.

theoretical cosmology is the most mind-boggling discipline

2009-11-03T23:02:00.000-08:00

out there. I can be described as "highly educated", admittedly, I'm more of an engineer than a scientist. Still, the only science books that give me the feeling that I'm reading books explaining Buddhism (not books of any other religion, in particular, not any Abrahamic religion, Buddhism is the religion with the most complete sets of theories explaining everything from the origin of universe to life itself without resorting to assuming there is a omnipotent presence.) are books dealing with theoretical cosmology.

There will be no war on Korean peninsula

2009-11-01T20:36:00.001-08:00

Well, certainly you can't absolutely rule out anything. Maybe the earth will be hit by a meteor and we'll all be incinerated; maybe tomorrow alien fleet will attack earth and enslave us all; maybe some blackholes will grow so powerful that it'd reverse the expansion of universe and suck everything back into singularity. Who knows? Nonetheless, assuming there is no out of blue changes than blows all assumptions and everything we know out of the window. There will be no 2nd Korean war in the foreseeable future. To explain the conclusion, I need to first explain some assumption/logical ground rules:
1. North Korea is led by a rational leadership pursuing a rational foreign and defense policy. The biggest problem I see with US media and its portrait of the world is its gross, almost cartoonish simplification of everything and everybody into at best schoolyard brawl, at worst, batman style fantasy. If you carefully examine the evidence, you'd see all of the current boogymen demonized by the US media: Iran, North Korea, even Bin Laden, are all more or less rational players in a game that has been played by different players at different stage of history ever since there was human beings. They might be your enemies, you certainly don't have to agree with their design, plan and priorities. But it'd be terribly unhelpful or even downright ignorant to assume your opponents are guided by some cartoonishly juvenile reasoning. In short, one must understand there is a reason behind the decision they make and there is a cause for what they do before a rational examination of evidence could start.
2. The world is NOT governed by some Wilson style international institution, certainly it's not governed by some idealistic moral framework. The world simply doesn't work that way, it never did, and it never will. Not to mention neither Wilson nor the currently moral framework, as understood by people in the west, are as noble as many of their believers would like to believe. Any history book can give you at least 100 grossly grotesque crimes from ancient times to yesterday committed by the people admired and held as role models by many other less informed people. Again, this is politics, not Jedi vs Sith. (even Jedi vs Sith is much more complicated than its name suggests) So stick to the fact and reason, not imagination and hyperbole.

Now, let's examine some history:
1. Korean war at the 50s didn't happen in a vacuum. It was but it was not all about a strongly nationalistic people yearning for political unification (it's a big deal with both North and the South, the only difference was and still is what system to adopt and who'd be in charge.). It happened in the larger capitalism vs communism context. In another word, the larger cause of the war can be attributed to Washington, Moscow, Beijing rather than Seoul and Pyongyang. In particular, US and Soviet Union's mixed signals toward each other and misunderstanding of each other played much bigger role in causing the war than any plan by Kim. US's misunderstanding of China's historical geopolitical interest on Korean peninsula contributed to the later escalation and subsequent Chinese intervention. To put it simply, without wrong signal from the US, Soviet Union would have vetoed Kim's plan for war; without Stalin's greenlight, there'd not have been a war; without Truman's dismissal of Chinese warning, the war would not have lasted 4 years.

2. North Korea didn't invade South Korea out of pure ideological fever. It did so with a substantial chance of actually winning the war. That's why the war broke out in 50, not 49 or 48. Chinese decision to release substantial number of highly experienced battle-hardened ethnical Korean soldiers serving in Chinese military as well as Soviet decision to provide large amount of heavy weapons to North Korea built up a formidable force with the capability to carry out a Blitzkrieg style war against the South. The establishment of People's Republic of China with jurisdiction spanning pretty much all of territory of the previously anti-Communism Republic of China removed threat to North Korea's back and replaced it with a large, friendly and powerful neighbor that directly bordered Soviet Union. (means that North Korea could access Soviet and Chinese support without going through 3rd country) In short, North Korea invaded with a pretty substantial military advantage that offered pretty reasonable chance of success and two big nations behind its back that could directly supply and support North Korea in case of failure on the battlefield.

3. The result of the war, namely millions of death, large amount of money spent, in exchange for almost exactly the same political and military situation as it was before the war eventually made all sides realize the futility of their respective attempt to unify Korea by force. On the other hand, the war reinforced and institutionalized US support for South Korea, as evidenced by US military presence in South Korea; And it drove a wedge between North Korea and its great power supporters, namely, China and Russia, North Korea felt somewhat betrayed by China and Russia for their decision to seek negotiated settlement and basically agreed to return Korean peninsula to pre-war status quo, as evidenced by North Korea's latter political estrangement from both powers and its emphasis on self-reliance. In short, the war's hard result taught all the players on both sides that a military solution to the unification problem is not likely to succeed while the war's soft impact changed, subtly but quite decisively, the political alignment among all players involved.

Fast forward to 2009, we still pretty much have the same players involved, albeit Japan played much more important roles now than it was then. But the conditions which precipitated the Korean war in the 50s are long gone and not likely to come back in the foreseeable future:

1. There is no more common ideological bond among China, Russia and North Korea any more. And there is no more ideological confrontation any more. Politically speaking, economically speaking and militarily speaking, China and Russia won't gain anything out of a new war on Korean peninsula. The strategic interests of China and Russia are perfectly served by a divided but peaceful Korea peninsula with occasional flare-up in tension.(China wants a buffer and a peaceful border. Russia wants a venue to politically annoy the US if necessary and strategically distract the US if possible.) The genuine help and strong support from China and Soviet Union back then which was in no small part the result of shared ideology simply isn't there any more for North Korea. The US, on the other hand, is firmly, unambiguously and institutionally committed to coming to South Korea's aid if war broke out, though anybody can change and these kind of promise historically are never as reliable as it was advertised, it did remove ambiguity which at its worst, resulted in the very damaging signal sent by the US regarding if it'd support South Korea militarily in case of a war immediately before Korean war broke out.

2. Make no mistake, North Korea's military and economy are in shambles. With the cold war gone, so are gone the larger economic system North Korea relied on. China is willing to provide certain support to prop up North Korea economy. But its intention is clearly more about keeping everything from falling down rather than beefing up the North and allowing it to if not prosper, at least function normally, like it was before the end of cold war. Comparing to the 50s, the substantive advantage North enjoyed economically and militarily are long gone. On the other hand, the same geopolitical interest China and Russia have in keeping North Korea alive, and North Korea's substantial ability, even if you didn't take the nukes into consideration, to wreck havoc on the South and Japan in any kind of military conflict still serve as powerful deterrents against any funny thoughts on the side of the US regarding regime change.
Basically, it's a stalemate. North is too weak to attack anybody or even defend itself in a drawn-out war but still more than capable enough to inflicting devastating damage on both South Korea and Japan, even without any help from China and Russia. That, coupled with the vital strategic interest China and Russia, in particular China, has in keeping alive North Korea, are enough of a defense to keep the North Korea from really collapsing or being attacked, as envisioned and predicated by many less than savvy commentators in the US, in the foreseeable future.

3. On a personal level, if you were Kim, why'd you start a war? You know you're pretty much without real ally. You know your military is not in a good shape. And you know US probably will come to South Korea's aid if there were a war. Why attack when the odds are stacked up so heavily against you? On the other hand, you also know you have nukes which are more than enough to dissuade even the looniest warmongers in Washington from even suggesting pulling a "regime change" trick against you like what they did to Saddam Hussein; You also know your deployed missiles and artillery pieces can devastate South and Japan and will convince them to vote against any real attempt to militarily attack you by the US; You also know that China has a history of intervening in Korean peninsula against intrusion by other powers that goes back centuries and transcends ideology, why would you attack since there is clearly no danger to you or your regime? Trust me, he knows ALL of these and judging by the political maneuvers he pulled off and all the assessments provided by people who had talked to him, he's very savvy, knows reality of himself, his country, his pseudo-allies and his opponents and very much on top of his game, he's weak but by no means desperate.

To sum it up, all the conditions that contributed to the break-out of Korean war simply aren't there today. There is a stalemate and a strategic balance in place right now that may not satisfy anybody but is good enough to be tolerated by everybody. To put it bluntly, nobody, including Kim and North Korea, can gain anything out of a new war and everybody, including Kim and North Korea, runs the risk of losing A LOT if there were a new war. So, there WON'T be a war.

I'm glad I grew up in China.

2009-11-01T13:31:00.001-08:00

As logically inconsistent as it might sound:

I thank God for growing up in a country that for 3 thousands years, has always had secular authority predominate. I didn't realize how significant it is before, now after living in Louisiana for 3 years, I realize just how lucky China is.

As politically unpalatable as it might sound to most people where I live:

I thank God for growing up in a country that has no strict ideological antipathy toward society and nature. Yeah, by their standard, I'm a socialist, a liberal, a peacenik or even an immoral. Well, I guess I'm just that lucky.

Quote

2009-11-01T11:56:00.000-08:00

Generals will rarely tell you they can’t do something. This is a complex damn operation, and I haven’t forgotten the old saying from my Pentagon days that in the military, anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”

Why did Napoleon invade Russia?

2009-11-01T11:09:00.000-08:00

The immediate cause of invasion of Russia was Russia's increasing unwillingness to remain in the continental system, the pan-European blockade against Britain. Several wars against other smaller European countries by France and French allies were the direct result of refusal to comply with the continental system. Portugal was invaded by France mainly because Portugal refused to join the continental system. Sweden was invaded by Russia for similar reason (Russia was France's main ally against Britain for very long period of time). As with any economic embargo, it's economically damaging to its enforcers as much as its targets, and as relation between Britain and Russia got improved, Russia eventually grew tired of embargo against Britain and decided to reopen trade with the UK in 1812, which was one of the main cause of Napoleon's decision to invade Russia. More broadly speaking, in an era marked by its emphasis on imperial conquest, however, it's just a matter of time before two neighbor great powers bump heads with each other, as shown by fights between France and Britain, France and Russia, France and Germany, Germany and Russia, and numerous battles among great powers in and outside Europe, both before and after Napoleonic wars. Nonetheless, the main goals of Napoleon were to compel Russia to remain in the continental system, and to keep Russia from invading Poland.

Russia was too big to swallow for anybody, despite his infamous galaxy-size ego, I highly doubt Napoleon didn't know that. But like many leaders who marched into hopeless wars before and after him, he didn't consider the possibility that what if his enemy refused to comply no matter how much damage they sustain themselves? The US got involved in Vietnam based on the domino theory, it eventually found out that it's become the roadblock to Vietnamese aspiration for independence and the war ostensibly fought against Communism became war of independence for the Vietnamese. Soviet Union invaded Afghanistain to prop up its puppet ally with no real intention of occupying the country, but soon after, the red army found itself the target of the wrath of 1 billion Muslims and a jihad. The US invaded Afghanistain ostensibly to get Bin Laden and revenge for 911, yet 8 years later, it became a tool of its Afghan ally, a rallying call for Taliban and the fundamental distablizing factor in Pakistain.

Great powers almost inevitably get infected with great power hubris. They almost eventually always get to believe mere push from them would be sufficient to "deal with" their opponents and finish the "limited goal" they set out for themselves. But hubris means that they never consider the possbility that what if your push weren't powerful enough to force your opponents to the ground or more likely after they were hit to the ground, they got up and fought you again, again and again? The same "unexpected resistence", unexpected only if you refuse to read history, which all of the leaders of great powers stop reading sometimes in their life time, happened to Russia, to Soviet Union, to Nazi Germany, to the US and is happening to the US again right now.

My problem with the mass media is not about knowledge per se

2009-10-24T12:01:00.001-07:00

most of the info, view, knowledge, whatever you may call it, being disseminated by this country's mass media, especially those concerning anything outside the US, can be best described by Wolfgang Pauli's famous quote "That's not right. It's not even wrong". They simply can't even figure out the right question to ask. They look at the wrong problem through the wrong angle at the wrong time based on wrong understanding of the circumstance. Whatever knowledge they apply, whatever conclusion they draw, are often beyond the point and totally useless.

An analogy would be parents debating with themselves whether or not they should sign the consent/foot the bill so that the hospital could operate on their son critically injured in a DWI wreck, with the father insisting on "teach him a lesson", "not reward irresponsibility", etc. Whatever "moral judgement" he might have, whatever knowledge he might, however deeply he think he understands human nature, he's still an idiot because he's dwelling on the wrong question at the wrong time, without timely operation, his son will die. All the supposedly good-for-him-over-the-long-run lessons he want to teach his son are moot, after all, there is nothing to teach to worm food.

My thoughts on John Brown

2009-10-23T22:19:00.000-07:00

“Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life, for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and MINGLE MY BLOOD FURTHER WITH THE BLOOD OF MY CHILDREN, and with the blood of millions in this Slave country, whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments — I say LET IT BE DONE.”

radical social change usually happens through radical actions against the old system. And radical actions WILL be brutal, quite often indiscriminate and bloody. It has been repeated over and over and over again. It's rooted in human nature. Human's instrasigence against change is only matched by human's stubbornness to demand change. Collisions are bound to happen, and when it happens, persuasion and negotiation can only go so far (when was the last time negotiation succeeded in solving conflicts?), when everything else fails, as they often do, the only way out is to duke it out in war, and in war, stuff happens. Sometimes, they succeed, sometimes, they fail. But people will always try and it's those people who shape the world and bend the history, for good or for bad. It's the same people, their thinking process, their conviction, their course of action and their parting words that give the dour history the shinning glow that we all love to observe. Conviction is always more interesting than conversation, emotion is always loftier than reasoning. History is guided by nature's rules, it is also colored by human's rules.

Argentina's fall from rich

2009-10-23T20:38:00.000-07:00

A few points:

1. Argentina is not isolated, you can find most of Argentina's gifts in most Latin American countries, and you can find most of Argentina's ills in most Latin American countries. The same thing can be said about the US, to a lesser extent. So you need to find a deeper explanation for the very similar problem infesting almost all Latin American countries.

2. As pointed out by previous posts, most of Latin Americans, though nominally enjoyed independence, nonetheless became de facto economic colonies of European powers during the 18th and 19th century. They all had the same problem: few oligarchies in control of the economy, economy heavily concentrated in the production of one or few commodity items, frequent political turmoil as a result of the conflicts between the greedy&callous elite and restive&disenfranchised masses.

3. And (I don't want to veer into cultural mysticism, though I do think it's important personally) unlike another, much much much more successful developing region, namely, East Asia, Latin America has no political, cultural and social identity that extends back millenniums. The two biggest success stories in Asia, Japan and China, were both independent, proud and powerful nations before the colonial era, and their status as laggard during the 19th century produced national obsession to catch up with the west on every front. Some of their attempts failed, like Japanese militarism, Chinese great leap forward, but through these failures, you can see two nations that weren't still aren't satisfied to be second class citizens, even rich second class citizens of the world. Japanese imperial army swept Asia pacific nation. Chairman Mao sent army into Korea to fight the most powerful nation in the world, detonated nuclear weapon. You can call these actions foolhardy endeavors of some egoistical dictators. But it's precisely these kind of actions that solidify the position of China and Japan among nations. And it's precisely these kind of actions that represent a political class that might be dictatorial, that might be crazy, that might be not very careful when it comes to human lives, but nonetheless a political class that wants more that just their own personal fat bank account and their own personal luxurious lives (nuclear bomb can't make profit and it can't make you a billionaire, but it's important to have it to make yourself totally independent). It's the same kind of attitude and obsession that used to give bloody nose to British and Americans in WWII, Americans in Korean war, detonate nuclear weapon, later refocused on economic development that produced spectacular result.
Latin America is cursed with a political class that's too rich in wealth but too poor in ambition. Therefore, their existence can only produce conflict and instability with the poor masses which further inhibits the development of their country that naturally leads to more political extremes on both side, thus creating a vicious circle. While elite of successful developing nation, though rich as well, nevertheless want and do produce something that can satisfy the desire of the masses materially or psychologically, such as Japan's imperial expansion and China's status as one of super elite nuclear club, that smooth the relations between ruling class and masses (both Japan and China, back then, were far poorer than Argentina, but they had far less social instability and violent confrontations among classes.) which further empowers the ruling class to pursue other projects that benefit those on the top AND those at the bottom, namely, economic growth.

Persian Empire couldn't have amassed the troop claimed by 300, and Chinese Empire didn't have such large scale civil war.

2009-10-23T20:37:00.001-07:00

Don't trust those numbers. For the purpose of psychological warfare against the other side as well as boosting their own soldiers' moral, Chinese generals in ancient times frequently greatly exaggerated the size of their troops, everybody did it and everybody knew everybody else did it. The period of Three Kingdoms was probably the most militaristic period in Chinese history since the First Emperor united China, due to frequent wars among multiple warlords over extended period of time (more than 100 years). By the ratio of soldier to population, warlords back then probably did possess the largest military in Chinese history. But because of many years of relentless fighting among warlords, there was no way anybody in that period could amass a 1,600,000 army. Indeed, modern historians tend to agree that Cao Cao, the most powerful warlord that controlled the most popular and economically developed part of China, at most had 1,600,000 under his rule, that included every breathing soul, from toddlers to people on the death beds. Modern historians estimates that population of the entire China during that period ranged from 2 to 2.5 million people. The smallest and most militaristic kingdom out of three, the Shu kingdom founded by Yubi, had a population about 300,000 to 400,000, smaller than the population under the jurisdiction of many county governments in modern China. But that's the world ancient people lived in. I think a lot of people severely underestimated just how sparsely populated the world was thousands of years ago and how untrustworthy most of the numbers cited by ancient emperors/commanders regarding size of their own military.

Han Dynasty in China, which existed about the same time frame was Roman Empire did, had about 60 to 65 millions people under its rule at the height of its power. Roman Empire, at its height, ruled land and population about the same size (Historians believes that the particular size was probably the maximum size a unified political entity could rule under technological sophistication of that era, anything bigger would inevitably demand the central government to delegate large amount of power to local governors and commanders for defense and various other purposes, which, over the long run, would inevitably lead to political fragmentation and division).

I'm not sure the exact size of Persian Empire, my impression is it's roughly the same as that of Roman Empire and Chinese empire. Anyway, at the height of Han Dynasty, the emperor Wu Di launched an serious of long distance assault against the nomads that spanned thousands of miles , mainly Hun tribes, and scored an series of big victories. Even taken into consideration the tendency of claim much bigger force that he actually commanded, historical material of China indicated that each time, the troop sent by China to battle the Huns never exceeded a few hundreds thousands soldiers. Even with what appeared to very modest troop number, the series of long distance power projection drained the coffer of one of the the richest and biggest empire of that era. So exhausted financially the empire was at the end Wu Di's reign that the emperor himself had to issue apology to the people to engaging in what appeared to be highly successful but also somewhat unnecessary (if all you want is defense of the border) wars. Judging by the actual size of the troop employed by another empire similar in power and size of Persian empire and the financial strain it caused to the empire, it's unlikely that 2.5 million people could be used in ancient times, no matter what kind of war we're talking about.

Another factor that needs to be considered is the much bigger capability of modern industrial economy to support the fielding of troops. Modern machinery, automation and more importantly, superior political, social and economic organization, mean that theoretically under a total war scenario, a country with tens of millions of people could field a military close to ten million people (Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan both did it). But for ancient empires, you literally need so much hands to tender crops so that not only average joes, but the elite and the troop themselves could be adequately fed. In another word, a potentially much large percentage of the people must not be allowed to leave their land for extended period of time, otherwise the whole country could collapse into famine. True, political and social factors during ancient time meant that the emperor and king could order every man in fighting age to join the military, but it'd be impossible for them to actual fight anything other than a very short war. (Even today, the US, the world's biggest economy, felt serious budgetary strain maintaining less than 200 thousands troops on battle field for extended period of time. )

no commercial exploration in the foreseeable future

2009-10-23T20:32:00.001-07:00

because at this point, the capabilities of commercial companies are
limited to only strike one or two success at "technically" reaching
the space, even those feats came amid much uncertainty and many
failures. They haven't even got to technology stage when Yuri Ggagarin
got into space. Rely on them to service space station and manage all
the might be mundane but still highly risky and technologically
advanced activities related to earth orbit flights are not something
I'd bet my money on happening over the next few decades. Not to
mention the astronomical level of investment, high failure rate and to
say the least, extremely modest projected profit. Nobody has solved
the cost problem, America didn't, Russia didn't, Chinese didn't,
commercial companies didn't, how many people have the financial
wherewithal to fork out 20 M for a trip to "real space"? History told
us that while boutique companies catering to niche market can survive,
the biggest profit has always been earned by companies that could
spread their product and service to every men and women on this
planet. In the special case of space travel, boutique companies
wouldn't get a chance like Porsche does in the auto business as one
failure could lop tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of
cash off its balance book. Unless the cost and safety problem were
solved, there will be no real space industry, let alone the kind of
rapid space of innovation you see in Silicon Valley as the extremely
high start-up cost and even higher rate of failure (venue capitalists
could potentially start a Google by investing just a few million
dollars in an start-up, in space exploration, a few millions probably
aren't even enough to buy enough titanium to build up the thing called
spaceship, not to mention in IT, testing and failure don't cost lives
and hundreds of millions of cash). Private investors simply don't
have the cash needed for and the stomach to live with the risk
associated with space exploration at this stage.

My dismay with media outlets.

2009-10-23T20:31:00.000-07:00

I'll be honest with you, after reading NY times and Washington Post
for about 10 years, arguably two of the best, highest quality
newspapers in America, and countless other news papers from around the
world. I find it hard to take anything written by a journalist
seriously. Journalists, especially those who have a tendency to veer
into areas they clearly aren't trained for, look and feel like a bunch
of half-literate with an obsessive tendency to open their month on
anything and everything. Their articles are shallower than a creek,
their "research" are filled up to the brim with ideological bias,
knowledge gaps and pure lack of common sense, it feels as if before
they write anything, they have already made up their mind, then they
set out to collect, interpret or bend evidence anyway they want to fit
their predetermined conclusion. I don't know what newspaper was like
before the mass-media dumbed down the whole populace, thus forcing
newspaper to pursue ever lowering lowest common denominator, but the
current print media is stuck in an state as sad as what cable news
networks find themselves in: they have nothing but ideology-driven,
cliche-filled dribbles. Indeed, I can tell the gist just by looking at
the subject the article covers. It's always exactly the same empty
piece stuffed bottom to top with agenda-driven "evidence" and
backalley-wide "perspective". It's sad sad sad state of affairs. And
I'll not take any books written by journalists at its face value, not
when it's full of nonsensical rumor/internet theory/big strategy
developed by armchair strategist who have never learned another
language.

with or without European war, colonies in Asian were still toast for Japan

2009-10-23T20:29:00.002-07:00

British and colonial armies didn't perform so well in our time line,
given that whatever advantage European powers may have over Japan in
whatever time line would still be same the advantage Soviet Union or
Germany would have had over Japan: more steels. But as the battle in
our time line indicated, South East Asia wasn't a very suitable place
for what happened between Soviet Union and Germany, not to mention
tank wise, France and Britain were lagging far far far behind Germany
and Soviet Union in our time line, without European war, they would
lag even further. Japanese army was like its navy at 1941: a very good
fighting force, what's different was for lack of resources as well as
forward-looking doctrine, they were only good at fighting a WWI style
war, which was precisely what British and French forces were preparing
for, they didn't have the experience Japan had and fearless dedication
Japanese soldiers had. I don't think they would have performed any
better against Japanese soldiers in a jungle environment, whatever
advantage they had with tanks wouldn't mean much because of their own
lack of proper understanding of how to use it as well as the
unsuitable environment these tanks were supposed to operate under.
Without decisive victory over Japanese navy, I truly don't see how any
European powers with the obvious exception of Soviet Union, could stop
Japan from just going there and picking up their colonies piece by
piece.