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China 'to overtake US on science' in two years

I agree. While China's rise might be unsettling for those who truly believe the world is unipolar (the Krauthammer thesis) and fear that U.S. preeminence is slipping away, it is less unsettling for those who understand that it has been and is likely to remain multipolar. Understanding that large shared interests exist between China and the U.S. is also recognition that there is vast opportunity for a non-confrontational, mutually beneficial long-term relationship. A world in which China is counted among the world's great powers need not be a world of confrontation, Cold War, or worse. Among other things, precisely because its economic miracle has been made possible by East Asian stability, a continuation of that stability is as much in China's interest as it is in the United States'.

To be sure, risks exist. But at this point in time, if those risks evolve to the extent that the U.S. and China are in confrontation, that outcome will more reflect bad policy choices/decisions than some immutable historic outcome.

Actually I would say that the world is unipolar and China will ultimately rise to be the superpower, but it is not going to be for decades and the progress of reform in China will be substantial by then. I honestly do not see China as a potential enemy any time in our future. Russia is the country I have been looking at for some time, but really my concern is not for some bizarre notion that either country is out to harm us. World War I happened not because anyone wanted it to happen but due to the circumstances and entangling alliances prompting it. People may make political hay out of China's ties to Iran, but those are largely economic and rooted in financial gain as opposed to some geopolitical maneuvering. However, India and Russia have more extensive strategic military ties with Iran and with each other.

Those sorts of ties can become extremely complicated for the West that aligns itself against Iran.
 
I am kind of curious how socialist China is, and what the DP socialists think of China... It seems like they have been opening the economy up a little bit, so I am not sure where they stand.

China is relatively mid level when it comes to government ownership of business. It has sold large stakes in most banks (and it has a lot of different banks) Its two largest oil and gas companies are government owned, and Sinopec (I believe) also has signficant business operations outside of the oil and gas business (it is China's amoung Chinas largest chemical companies)

Overall the largest companies(industrial and telecom) in China are generally either state owned or controlled. It does have a signifcant number companies that are privately owned and operated. Those companies are growing extremely fast and making massive improvements in Quality Control. BYD which is a large battery maker is moving into the auto busines and doing well at it. It has at least two large interent companies that are privately owned and doing quite well.

It definately has more government ownership of the economy then the US, if I had to guess I would put them around the french level of government ownership of the economy
 
This isn't really surprising, seeing as how China is investing its money in its people, in things like education, public transportation, internet, and so forth. How does the US expect to compete when we are going to be cutting education and not doing much about rising college tuition rates, it may soon be to the point where only a privileged few can actually afford a college education.



Source.

Edit: Also look here

I don't share the same feeling. Americans have historically spent far more proportionately on education in comparison with many of its European friends. There is also some contention that the amount of money various US states spent in education is difficult to provide examples of student excellence in regards to output. Americans have had a long history of egalitarianism with regard to education in comparison with the incredibly long history of Europeans which was to give welfare benefits to their lower class citizens but keep only vocational education in play for them, allowing for the higher class citizens to go to university. Things have changed for the Europeans in a great direction, but I do not share the doom and gloom regarding America.
 
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American cars don't even compete with European or Japanese IMO... and wouldn't have an auto industry if it weren't for the tax payers bailing most of them out. Imagine if that didn't happen..

Incorrect. Ford and GM are perfectly competitive in both the American and global marketplace technologically. The bailout came from mismanagement, not technological failures.
 
We are better off with excessively low taxes and not spending on science and research. Everything must be cut! Science must be cut, so America is will remain best country on Earth!

:2razz::2razz:

I agree, since 50% of the people pay practically no taxes.
 
In about 10 years, China will be, the new super, duper world power
 
So... China is excelling. Good for them. I can't help but like a country that's more interested in progressing than having big guns.

Don't kid yourself. China kills, Dude.
 
Meh. Still not scared. America has video gamers on the same level as South Park WoW parody + unmanned kill-drones. The next world war winner will be the first to militarize outer-space enough and whoever has the best information control. 100,000 missles in space could beat any combo of airstrips and aircraft.
 
China doesn't care about the rest of the world. It'll have to fundamentally change to become a world-power.
 
Meh. Still not scared. America has video gamers on the same level as South Park WoW parody + unmanned kill-drones. The next world war winner will be the first to militarize outer-space enough and whoever has the best information control. 100,000 missiles in space could beat any combo of airstrips and aircraft.


Hi-tech pro-programmers hackers are the god of war of the future.
 
I don't think anyone is realizing that this is just based on the number of published scientific research papers.

The quantity - not quality - is being measured and counted.

So it really should read "China will write more research papers than the US by the year 2013" - if they wrote it that way then no one would have noticed or given a crap.
 
Total horse****, we never cut education and never will. It's nothing but a leftist talking point. Show me where it was cut, even a dollar. What percentage of the Chinese budget goes toward entitlements?

Chinese entitlements??? Well, to begin with, China remains communist, by definition the whole system is one big entitlement. Of course, we know that China has had numerous reforms of its social programs, but they have not stripped things away anywhere near the level of crude safety that is the US. Moreover, they are increasing social spending. Sorry, you can't attribute China's ability to spend money on itself on its lack of social spending.

China to boost spending on welfare, education, health care
 
I can kinda believe this. The sad thing is that in the US we are seeing less and less people go to college and obtain graduate degrees. For an economy and nation to technologically advance education must also advance. We have high high school drop out rates, low college graduation rates, and lower grad school rates. I would say the problem largely lies in culture and many individuals who are lazy/not driven, education is also very expensive and is increasing in price very rapidly (this may be the largest problem when it comes to college attendance). It also lies with a lack of spending when it comes to college and inefficient spending when it comes to public education. America is in serious need of education reform.
 
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A college education should be free to anyone who wants it. Even if we lost lots of money on idiots trying to get a degree beyond their capacity to attain, I think we'd still come out ahead. Making people less stupid by itself would be worth it, even if we didn't recoup the tax money from more higher paying jobs and new businesses.

I've always thought that the US is completely ****ing retarded for not throwing at education every last penny would could beg, borrow or steal. I blame our short-sighted plutocrats for selling out the future for short-term profits.
 
One problem with this country is that so many people think that education spending makes people smarter. If that were true, we'd be topping the world education rankings. After all, we spend more on education than almost every other country.

Instead of preparing students to ace those sorts of tests, we have incessent whining about how unfair they are worry that they might be boring our students. While students in poorer nations spend 60% of the day working on math and reading from 15 year old textbooks, we provide fifth graders with laptops so that they can play educational video games and chat with their "e-pals." While students in other countries are taught the value of hard work, we teach our children the value of an inflated ego and a bloated sense of self worth. When their students perform poorly, their parents push them to work harder. When our students perform poorly, we buy new textbooks, blame the school system, or concede that the student is just too bright and is bored with regular schoolwork.
 
I agree. While China's rise might be unsettling for those who truly believe the world is unipolar (the Krauthammer thesis) and fear that U.S. preeminence is slipping away, it is less unsettling for those who understand that it has been and is likely to remain multipolar. Understanding that large shared interests exist between China and the U.S. is also recognition that there is vast opportunity for a non-confrontational, mutually beneficial long-term relationship. A world in which China is counted among the world's great powers need not be a world of confrontation, Cold War, or worse. Among other things, precisely because its economic miracle has been made possible by East Asian stability, a continuation of that stability is as much in China's interest as it is in the United States'.

To be sure, risks exist. But at this point in time, if those risks evolve to the extent that the U.S. and China are in confrontation, that outcome will more reflect bad policy choices/decisions than some immutable historic outcome.

The Unipolar paradigm is a myth. The last attempt at it was by PNAC, when they reasoned that the US could become the world's only superpower, now that a power vacuum existed (at that time). Needless to say, it didn't work out. China has a sphere of power, so do the South American nations, and so do a couple of other areas of the world. True, the US is still the most powerful nation in the world, but it does not have the power to influence the entire world, as PNAC had hoped. In fact, the US is now experiencing a decline of it's influence in the world.

NOTE: In a Biblical sense, America's decline in power and influence is a very good thing, as the Bible sees the Beast as, not only the world's greatest military power ever, but also the world's greatest economic power ever. To those who believe in the Bible, it has to be a very good thing if the Beast of Revelations turns out not to be America. Let the Antichrist come from someplace else.
 
I can kinda believe this. The sad thing is that in the US we are seeing less and less people go to college and obtain graduate degrees.
Quite the opposite. We are at historical highs in college attendance:

ted_20100428.png


Graduate student enrollment grew 67% during the 97-2007 decade:

College Student Enrollment Facts And Figures | Chillicious | All About Finance
 
This isn't really surprising, seeing as how China is investing its money in its people, in things like education, public transportation, internet, and so forth. How does the US expect to compete when we are going to be cutting education and not doing much about rising college tuition rates, it may soon be to the point where only a privileged few can actually afford a college education.



Source.

Edit: Also look here

:prof Throwing more money at education, does not make people more educated.
 
Quite the opposite. We are at historical highs in college attendance:

College attendance isn't really the problem in the U.S. College completion is. A look at 1995 and 2008 OECD statistics shows that college graduation rates have flattened in the U.S. even as those in other OECD countries have pushed higher than the U.S. In 1995, the U.S. ranked 1st in the OECD. In 2008, it had fallen to 14th.

Highlights from Education at a Glance 2010 - Statistics - OECD iLibrary (Figure 1-7 in the 4th .pdf under "Education Levels and Student Numbers").

From Crossing the Finish Line (Princeton University Press, 2009):

The failure of educational attainment to continue to increase steadily is the result of problems at all stages of education, starting with pre-school and then moving through primary and secondary levels of education and on into college…

This is not a pretty picture when looked at through the lens of America’s history of educational accomplishments during the first 75 years of the 20th century. It is an equally disturbing picture when juxtaposed with the remarkable gains in educational attainment in other countries. As is increasingly recognized, the United States can no longer claim that it is “first-in-class” in terms of continuing progress in building human capital. The 2008 annual stock-taking document produced by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reported that the 2006 higher education attainment rate for 25- to 34-year olds in the United States is nearly identical to that of 55- to 64-year olds, a group 30 years their senior. In 2006, the United States ranked 10th among the members of the OECD in its tertiary attainment rate. This is a large drop from preceding years: the United States ranked 5th in 2001 and 3rd in 1998. Moreover, in the United States only 56 percent of entering students finished college, an outcome that placed this country second to the bottom of the rank-ordering of countries by completion rate.


Source: William G. Bowen, Mathew M. Chingos, and Michael S. McPherson, Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America’s Public Universities, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009, pp.3-4.

In recent years, some pundits have suggested that education take on a more vocational orientation. In the short-term, that might have appeal, as it costs less and might fill certain jobs. In the long-run, such an outcome would be destructive. It would undercut innovation and, in the long-run, continual innovation is what keeps societies advancing. Without continual innovation, societies become less competitive relative to others, and that development has broad adverse economic, fiscal, and social implications.
 
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This can be avoided it we get rid of Obama and replace him with someone who is intelligent and a Statesman.

Obama has shown himself to be as worthless piece of garbage at everything he's done. and failed at.
 
There is way too much fear-mongering about China. People hear China is building an aircraft carrier and start losing their **** even though the French already got one, the Russians too with more on the way for them, India will have two by the time China has its one, and even Brazil has an aircraft carrier. So, in fact, all this fear about China is overblown. Certainly it is a rising power that will play a significant role in the world, but even if we had reason to be afraid of China becoming a major military player it is still not something likely in this decade. Keep in mind that the U.S. is right now capable of matching the rest of the world's carrier force 1:1 and no other country's are supercarriers of the Nimitz tonnage.

If you lived in Taiwan or any number of other regional states that feel threatened by China's rising military, you may feel differently. Of course, once again leave it to you to take the side of a totalitarian dictatorship...
 
That will be the point at which we're really ****ed. We gave up our industrial capabilities and focused on technology; but to do that you have to remain on the forefront of science and engineering. If you don't, you won't have anything left at all. Sad that we don't really want to be #1 anymore.

Wanting to be #1 is never an issue, many want to be #1. Bobby Knight the basketball coach had a phrase that seems to fit here:

"The will to win is not nearly as important as the will to prepare to win".
 
that's the real question.

they spend money educating their people
we spend money enabling ours

Ummm... you know Chinese students need to pay tuition to attend even elementary school, right??? China spends far less on medical care, welfare and other such expenditures than the United States does...
 
I am kind of curious how socialist China is, and what the DP socialists think of China... It seems like they have been opening the economy up a little bit, so I am not sure where they stand.

Economically, China is more neo-mercantilist today. Their basic economic goal is to store up as much foreign reserve currency as possible through manipulating their own currency, using non-tarriff barriers to make it difficult for foreign competitors to compete in China, and the most insidious is that they require most foreign enterprises operating inside China to share technology with Chinese companies through joint ventures or other cooperative agreements. Western companies have been GIVING China the technology over the past 15 years and everyone has just stood there letting them do it...
 
China is not only advancing in science, it is only leading the world in investment in alternative energy. Such leadership is consistent with its growing prowess in science and reflects the reality that China will need to greatly expand its supply of energy (a factor challenge in economic parlance) if it is to sustain its remarkable economic growth. Rather than remaining captive to today's energy realities, it is, in effect, taking measures to chart its own energy destiny.

By addressing its own factor challenge, China is also positioning itself for leadership in what will almost certainly be one of the more important industries of the future. The growing need for energy alternatives is not confined to China, alone. Fossil fuels are a finite resource. At some point in time, a demand imbalance will make excessive reliance on such non-renewable energy sources impractical (cost and access issues). That such resources are disproportionately located in geopolitically-risky regions (a significant share of the world's proved oil reserves are located in the Mideast and up to a third of the world's natural gas reserves are in Russia) will amplify the risk of supply shocks, especially if national interests clash with market needs. As a result, as resource scarcity becomes a greater issue, one can likely expect resource nationalism to play out. Russia took such an approach during a payments dispute over natural gas. China is slowing the growth in rare earth mineral exports, some of which have significant military and technology applications.

A "think small" approach or status quo orientation will lead to reduced strategic energy flexibility and greater vulnerability to supply shocks. Utilizing one's own resources (when possible) and developing alternatives are essential to mitigating or overcoming those risks. With insufficient domestic energy resources, China is aggressively pursuing the latter course. The BBC reported:

China remains the world's leading investor in low-carbon energy technology, a global study has shown...

While the US saw investment increase by 51% to $34bn, it still slipped from 2nd to 3rd in the ranking, behind Germany's $41.2bn.


The larger point is that investment in human capital (education) is one crucial underpinning of future innovation and competitiveness. Coupling that human capital with financial investment is necessary to try to build sustainable competitive advantages. In that context, China's growing economic and military might is only part of the story. If one drills down beneath the general headlines, one finds that China is also seeking to position itself for leadership in industries that will likely play a much more prominent role in the future. Such activity increases the prospects that China could gain a qualitative edge in at least some critical high-growth economic sectors of the future, and that qualitative edge, could further augment its economic and military power.
 
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