Some thoughts on China from a possible US President
The Democratic Presidential candidate speaks about China:
Everybody’s watching what’s going on in Beijing right now with the Olympics. Think about the amount of money that China has spent on infrastructure. Their ports, their train systems, their airports are vastly the superior to us now…
“Their ports, their train systems, their airports are vastly the superior to us now” — huh? China’s infrastructure in many areas is primitive, not superior. Let’s take just one example: the US has 20,000 airports, with 5,000 for commercial use; China has 150 or so airports for civilian use. 150 civilian airports in a country of 1.3 billion people — that’s “vastly the superior”?
One measure of the state of a country’s infrastructure is environmental pollution. In this, China flunks some basic tests. China has serious deficiencies of safe drinking water, dangerously polluted rivers, and often poor quality control in its exports and industrial processes. We are great admirers of the strides that China has made in lifting its population out of the hardscrabble life that the Chinese people have endured, but that country has a long way to go. Hundreds of millions of rural Chinese still appear to live on less than $1000 a year.
It is interesting to note the left turn of mind that has Senator Obama praising China’s government spending in such grand terms. The logic of Senator Obama’s thinking would appear to be that China is now vastly superior to the US in infrastructure because it has embraced its version of the New Deal. This recalls to us Senator Clinton’s attributing American prosperity to the progressive movement. These are fantasies of the left that come from university life and never leave — particularly in those people who have never worked in the private sector in their lives. Senator Obama’s ignorant fantasy about the wonders of government spending in China not only provides an insight into how he might govern, but also suggests that he possibly has no clue about how the United States became the most prosperous nation on earth.
August 22nd, 2008 at 9:54 pm
How did such a fool become 50% of the options for presidient of the most powerful nation on earth. Democrats, is this the best we could find in a country of 300 million, really?
August 23rd, 2008 at 11:26 am
Obama’s pronouncements often sound like a well-intentioned but ignorant college sophomore, or even a high school sophomore. At times, it appears that all he has to do is to speak without the teleprompter to show his ignorance. His knowledge of policy issues appears abysmal.