Sunday, August 24, 2008

Chinese Roads

A few images of Chinese roads:





Recently Barack Obama said, “everybody's watching what's going on in Beijing right now and the Olympics. Think about the amount of money that China has spent on infrastructure. Their ports, their train systems, their airports are all vastly superior to us now, which means if you're a corporation deciding where to do business, you're starting to think, Beijing looks like a pretty good option.”

Certainly China is growing. And of course, you have to have a good infrastructure if you're going to grow. Also, the Chinese government was determined to show the world all the good things it was -- and fake the rest if necessary. Perhaps Obama never heard of the Soviet Potemkin villages. After all, it's clear that what he learned about Marxism is the sanitized version -- you know, the version where the only reason Marxism never worked is because the right people didn't try it. Is Beijing a Potemkin village? To the extent that it is a facade put up to distract people from the way much of the rest of non-urban China is, it is.

I'm guessing Obama didn't look to closely at how they achieved the incredible infrastructure of Beijing in such a few short years -- or perhaps he did. Perhaps borderline forced labor is what he approves of. With the tax increases he would like to impose on us all, the effect would be the same.

I am impressed by how far toward free markets China has moved. They need to continue that move if they wish to sustain economic growth. Where's Obama's praise for that? If we're going to emulate China, shouldn't it be in moving more and more toward having a free market economy?

Please note the people and countries Obama praises. There is a disturbing pattern there.

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