Daniel M. Harrison is a business journalist who has written for publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Newswires, and Forbes.com. In 2007, Harrison initiated Asian market coverage for TheStreet.com, reporting from New York and Hong Kong. He also served for a while as Opening... More
If ever there's a sign of a lacking innovative spirit to Chinese financial evolution, this is it. Rather than erect a statue of a dragon, or something innately Chinese (which would have been original, and quite possibly, dazzling), they have merely copied the ML bull. It's sad to see, in a culture which was once so innovative.
Retired, 48, been making my own financial decision since I was 17. Every day, for the rest of my life, I will be a recovering Merrill Lynch customer. Proudest Financial Moments: Personal Best return on equity: 20/1, Leap Puts on Citi & GE, closed in late 2008 Personal best adjusted for... More
> I must have missed them, but what innovations have the Chinese contributed > in the last 100 years or so? >
Institutionalized insanity - the cultural revolution, copied by all the up and coming despots; Cambodia, Burma, N Korea, Iran. I suppose it could be argued that this was just a rip off of Stalin's successful use of collectivization to kill his own people. But Mao deliberately targeted intellectuals whereas Stalin was non discriminatory - he killed whoever got in his way.
And let us not forget their innovative use of history in diplomacy - claiming Tibet as Chinese even though the people are of different ethnicity, and have a completely different culture and language, based on a specious claim from several centuries ago. By this logic, China should immediately give their sovereignty to Mongolia for the Mongols ruled China for centuries. Actually, this is just another application of Mao's dictum, political power comes from the barrel of a gun. Tibet had the misfortune to have resources that China coveted with no major power protecting them.
Actually, China has been a very stagnant and insular society since around the end of Mongol rule - it is arguable they might have dominated/ruled the world if there hadn't been a mad emperor that burned their navy and put them on that withdrawn course, thus giving Europe time to rise. They were there first on important inventions (gunpowder, paper), and didn't exploit them, at least not fully, because of their societal structure.
Their form of top down (the communism they espouse has a striking resemblance to imperial rule of centuries past to me) rule is not friendly to innovation. They have begun to do real research, but at some point they will run into this conflict again. Innovation creates turbulence, and that creates threats to ruling hierarchies - if they want to be a power in innovation, the communist hierarchy will have to go or at least drastically change. I don't think they have it in them to allow that.
We'll see.
Having said all that, I agree with Daniel that a dragon would have been far more appropriate.
Nathan W Martin: Chanos may be both right and wrong. R/E may drop and stocks may correct but over the year I expect the CSI to be up in $ terms.
Long CAF
about 1 hour ago
Bill S. Friend: Find out if your representatives are voting for an audit of the most powerful institution on the planet, the FED. http://bit.ly/5aAulk/
This news story has 7 comments:
On Jul 05 02:32 PM Daniel Harrison wrote:
>> It's sad to see, in a culture which was once so innovative.<<
On Jul 05 02:42 PM spald_fr wrote:
> I must have missed them, but what innovations have the Chinese contributed
> in the last 100 years or so?
>
Institutionalized insanity - the cultural revolution, copied by all the up and coming despots; Cambodia, Burma, N Korea, Iran. I suppose it could be argued that this was just a rip off of Stalin's successful use of collectivization to kill his own people. But Mao deliberately targeted intellectuals whereas Stalin was non discriminatory - he killed whoever got in his way.
And let us not forget their innovative use of history in diplomacy - claiming Tibet as Chinese even though the people are of different ethnicity, and have a completely different culture and language, based on a specious claim from several centuries ago. By this logic, China should immediately give their sovereignty to Mongolia for the Mongols ruled China for centuries. Actually, this is just another application of Mao's dictum, political power comes from the barrel of a gun. Tibet had the misfortune to have resources that China coveted with no major power protecting them.
Actually, China has been a very stagnant and insular society since around the end of Mongol rule - it is arguable they might have dominated/ruled the world if there hadn't been a mad emperor that burned their navy and put them on that withdrawn course, thus giving Europe time to rise. They were there first on important inventions (gunpowder, paper), and didn't exploit them, at least not fully, because of their societal structure.
Their form of top down (the communism they espouse has a striking resemblance to imperial rule of centuries past to me) rule is not friendly to innovation. They have begun to do real research, but at some point they will run into this conflict again. Innovation creates turbulence, and that creates threats to ruling hierarchies - if they want to be a power in innovation, the communist hierarchy will have to go or at least drastically change. I don't think they have it in them to allow that.
We'll see.
Having said all that, I agree with Daniel that a dragon would have been far more appropriate.