Shanghaiist: Hans Rosling on the rise of China

NannyState

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:41:54 +0800

He's like this really weird old guy who got his politics from watching StarTrek. Every industrializing nation has suffered immense pollution. That China has at a time when the more mature industrialized countries are cleaning up their messes says more about them and their expectations than China.

applecourt

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 08:06:48 +0800

This video had no value. He mentions per capita pollution, why not pollution per $ of GDP produced (where US would be a fraction of China). He mentions the potential of China using the $1b per day earnings for the environment and helping the poor. The fact is, they don't use it this way. The $1b daily is being taken from countries who do somewhat use it for helping the poor and the environment worldwide, and being given to China who does not.

pug_ster

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 05:14:07 +0800

Yes China is sitting on 2 trillion dollars in reserves, but their soverign fund can't buy any foreign companies because they are not allowed to. Let China buy into some foreign companies and maybe some of the countries can be 'bailed' out

Buck Rogerz

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 22:53:59 +0800

Yeah, well, if you make enough predictions, eventually some will be correct, and if you position your business, policy, etc in alignment with the right trends you can be a winner. So I agree with your point about academics and their crystal balls (no pun intended), but I also see the point of it (again, no pun intended). :)

taihanasie

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 20:25:46 +0800

There is a whole subculture of forecasting among academics and media types. They love to predict things and tell us how the world will be in X years. I don't think there is anythin special about another "China is rising" forecast. Most forecasts are wrong. It is not that China is not rising. It is that nobody knows how the rise will happen. So it is pointless to listen to academics speculate on things that they really can't foresee. Then again, if he were trying to predict something that nobody had ever considered before, I might give him more credit.

Buck Rogerz

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 19:14:49 +0800

The only thing that makes his statements so dramatic is that Rosling chooses for scales financial numbers that people consider to be "large," such as the monthly sum spent on the Iraq war and then compares them to the Chinese reserves, which are on a different order of magnitude. If he compared the the currency that China has accumulated to, say, the annual revenues of other governments or even more appropriately to the reserves of other east Asian countries as a percentage of GDP, it really wouldn't be so exciting. He's comparing an F22 to an Impala, which gives you a sense of scale, but not in a very meaningful way.

liliac

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 17:16:55 +0800

I havent watch it yet, but let me guess...."oh China on the rise..thats something new, don't compare China to USA two very very distinct countries, period. the bigger and more fame you have the more you get hammered by the lesser. This guy is little bit late to "realize" it.

eastman

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 10:27:24 +0800

nanheyangrouchuan boy, it's absolutely not necessary to feel so piised off with your world cop whom nobody is afraid of now because of its empty wallet. comfort yourself with chinese saying: a skinny camal is still bigger than a horse, ok? give usa another 100 years, it will bully again.

nanheyangrouchuan

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 08:47:37 +0800

Another dumbass panda licker who missed the "1 billion customers" bus by a few years.