China's seams

I like the NPR stories about China. They went there five years ago to get a base line. The story yesterday was particularly telling. Some of the seams are showing strain apparently.

The commentator mentioned that the building with the consulate looked brand new, if grey and drab, five years ago. It still looked grey and drab, but now, five long years later, the building looked 35 years old. Five years ago he deliberately got off on a couple wrong floors and found a wasteland. The same thing happened this time, except there were no elevator call buttons to get back on the car and continue his journey. They had to bleep his response to that.

Good journalism, and front NPR no less.

China is huge. China is gargantuan. China is on the move. China builds everything. China has many mouths to feed. China has a government that insists on controlling its people to the Nth degree. China is is full of people who are just as smart and just a curious as you. China is full of people who are not aloud to complain.

I've been talking a lot about China lately. They are no longer this strange block of a billion plus people across the ocean any more. They are now a more familiar block of a billion plus people across the ocean. The more I learn about china and the Chinese people, the more I recognize that they are not only human, but have the same crap going on in their lives as we do. This does not really make me empathise with their government. I do not want to live under the Chinese government.

Every time I hear about the great firewall of China, I think how much our government would love to do the same thing. Trust me, our government would love to only let people have access to web pages that they control and that we pay for.

Are we indeed on our way to a world government? China is getting more like the U. S.. The U. S. is getting more like Europe. Europe is getting more like the middle east. The middle east is getting ... more like every other part of the world. I don't think it will all lead to a world government so much as a more homogeneous population who are all sick of their governments.