5 Things the U.S. Can Learn from China

By Bill Powell / Shanghai
Thursday, Nov. 12, 2009

China's schools are adding more creative and practical topics to their notoriously rigid curriculum.

China is experimenting with eco-friendly technologies, from electric cars to urban wind turbines like this one in southeastern Shanghai.

Masons at work in front of the China Pavilion at the future site of Expo 2010 in Shanghai.

Most Chinese seniors live with and are cared for by their relatives.

On the evening of Nov. 15, President Barack Obama, the youthful leader of one of the world's youngest countries, begins his first visit to China, among the world's most ancient societies. Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, have much to discuss. Nukes in Iran and North Korea. China's surging military spending. Trade imbalances. Climate change.

But the visit comes at an awkward moment for the U.S. China, despite its 5,000-year burden of history, has emerged as a dynamo of optimism, experimentation and growth. It has defied the global economic slump, and the sense that it's the world's ascendant power has never been stronger. The U.S., by contrast, seems suddenly older and frailer. America's national mood is still in a funk, its economy foundering, its red-vs.-blue politics as rancorous as ever. The U.S. may be one of the world's oldest capitalist countries and China one of the youngest, but you couldn't blame Obama if he leaned over to Hu at some point and asked, "What are you guys doing right?"

Could the world's lone but weary superpower actually learn something from China? It's a politically incorrect question, of course. China is an authoritarian nation; its ruling Communist Party deals ruthlessly with any challenge to its hegemony. It remains, relatively speaking, a poor, developing country with huge problems to confront, massive corruption and environmental degradation being Nos. 1 and 1a. Still, this is a moment of humility for the U.S., and China is doing some important things right. If the U.S. were to ask the Chinese what it could learn from their example, it might gain some insight into what it's doing right and wrong. Here are five lessons from China's success story:

1. Be Ambitious
One day this summer, Sean Maloney, an executive vice president at Intel, was bouncing from one appointment to another in northeastern China, speeding along in a van traversing newly built highways. He gazed out at one of the world's biggest construction projects: a network of high-speed train lines — covering 10,000 miles (16,000 km) nationwide — that China is building. As far as the eye could see, there sat vast concrete support struts, one after another, exactly 246 ft. (75 m) apart. Each was full of steel cables and weighed about 800 tons. "We used to build stuff too," Maloney mused, unprompted. "But now it's NIMBY [not in my backyard] every time you try to do something. Here," he joked, "it's more like IMBY. There's stuff happening here, everywhere and always."

It's not just NIMBYism that constrains the U.S. these days, of course. America is close to tapped out financially, with budget deficits this year and next exceeding $1 trillion and forecast to remain above $500 billion through 2019. But sometimes the country seems tapped out in terms of vision and investment for the future.

Some economists believe that given its stage of development, China spends too much on expensive items like high-speed rail lines. But step back from the individual infrastructure projects and the debates about whether a given investment is necessary, and what's palpable in China is the sense of forward motion, of energy. No foreigner — at least not one I've met in five years of living here — even bothers denying it. And the Chinese take it for granted. When a brand-new six-lane highway opened in suburban Shanghai in October, Zhong Li Ping, who shuttles migrant workers to the city and back to their hometowns, said, "I don't know what took them so long." In truth, it took about two years — roughly the time it would take to get the environmental and other regulatory permits for a new highway in the U.S. If, that is, you could get them at all.

There's no direct translation into Chinese of the phrase can-do spirit. But yong wang zhi qian probably suffices. Literally, it means "march forward courageously." China has — and has had for years now — a can-do spirit that's unmistakable. Americans know the phrase well. They invented it. It used to define them.

Critics of the authoritarian Chinese government would say it's a system more accurately called "can do — or else." And they have a point. No one in the U.S. would argue that it should adopt China's dictatorial style of government. America doesn't need to displace tens of thousands of people in order to build a massive dam, as China did in Hubei province from 1994 to 2006. (The value of checks and balances is, in fact, among the many things China could learn from the U.S.) But you don't have to be a card-carrying communist to wonder how effectively the U.S. develops and executes ambitious projects. Ask James McGregor. He's a former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China and now a business consultant who divides his time between the two countries. "One key thing we can learn from China is setting goals, making plans and focusing on moving the country ahead as a nation," he says. "These guys have taken the old five-year plans and stood them on their head. Instead of deciding which factory gets which raw materials, which products are made, how they are priced and where they are sold, their planning now consists of 'How do we build a world-class silicon-chip industry in five years? How do we become a global player in car-manufacturing?'"

Some of this is the natural arc of a huge, fast-growing country in the process of modernization. The U.S. in the late 19th century was nothing if not what Intel's Maloney would call an IMBY country. America was ambitious. There's no secret formula to help the nation get back its zeal for what it used to enthusiastically and sincerely call progress. But even though the U.S. is a mature, developed country, many economists believe it has shortchanged infrastructure investment for decades. It possibly did so again in this year's stimulus package. Just $144 billion of the $787 billion stimulus bill Congress passed earlier this year went to direct infrastructure spending. According to IHS Global Insight, an economic-consulting firm, U.S. spending on transportation infrastructure will actually decline overall in 2009 when state budgets are factored in — this at a time when the American Society of Civil Engineers contends that the U.S. should invest $1.6 trillion to upgrade its aging infrastructure over the next five years.

When the economic crisis hit China late last year, by contrast, almost half of the emergency spending Beijing approved — $585 billion spread over two years — was directed at projects that accelerated China's massive infrastructure build-out. "That money went into the real economy very quickly," says economist Albert Keidel of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

But it's not just emergency spending on bridges, roads and high-speed rail networks that's helping growth in China. Patrick Tam, general partner at Tsing Capital, a venture-capital firm in Beijing, says the government is aggressively helping seed the development of new green-tech industries. An example: 13 of China's biggest cities will have all-electric bus fleets within five years. "China is eventually going to dominate the industry for electric vehicles," Tam says, "in part because the central government has both the vision and the financial wherewithal to make that happen." Tam, a graduate of MIT and the University of California, Berkeley, says he does deals in Beijing rather than Silicon Valley these days "because I believe this is where these new industries will really take shape. China's got the energy, the drive and the market to do it." Isn't that the sort of thing venture capitalists used to say about the U.S.?

2. Education Matters
On a recent Saturday afternoon, at a nice restaurant in central Shanghai, Liu Zhi-he sat fidgeting at the table, knowing that it was about time for him to leave. All around him sat relatives from an extended family that had gathered for a momentous occasion: the 90th birthday of Liu's great-grandmother Ling Shu Zhen, the still spry and elegant matriarch of a sprawling clan. But Liu had to leave because it was time for him to go to school. This Saturday, as he does every Saturday, Liu was attending two special classes. He takes a math tutorial, and he studies English.

Liu is 7 years old.

A lot of foreigners — and, indeed, a fair number of Chinese — believe that the obsession (and that's the right word) with education in China is overdone. The system stresses rote memorization. It drives kids crazy - aren't 7-year-olds supposed to have fun on Saturday afternoons? - and doesn't necessarily prepare them, economically speaking, for the job market or, emotionally speaking, for adulthood. Add to that the fact that the system, while incredibly competitive, has become corrupt.

All true — and all, for the most part, beside the point. After decades of investment in an educational system that reaches the remotest peasant villages, the literacy rate in China is now over 90%. (The U.S.'s is 86%.) And in urban China, in particular, students don't just learn to read. They learn math. They learn science. As William McCahill, a former deputy chief of mission in the U.S. embassy in Beijing, says, "Fundamentally, they are getting the basics right, particularly in math and science. We need to do the same. Their kids are often ahead of ours."

What the Chinese can teach are verities, home truths that have started to make a comeback in the U.S. but that could still use a push. The Chinese understand that there is no substitute for putting in the hours and doing the work. And more than anything else, the kids in China do lots of work. In the U.S., according to a 2007 survey by the Department of Education, 37% of 10th-graders in 2002 spent more than 10 hours on homework each week. That's not bad; in fact, it's much better than it used to be (in 1980 a mere 7% of kids did that much work at home each week). But Chinese students, according to a 2006 report by the Asia Society, spend twice as many hours doing homework as do their U.S. peers.

Part of the reason is family involvement. Consider Liu, the 7-year-old who had to leave the birthday party to go to Saturday school. Both his parents work, so when he goes home each day, his grandparents are there to greet him and put him through his after-school paces. His mother says simply, "This is normal. All his classmates work like this after school."

Yes, big corporate employers in China will tell you the best students coming out of U.S. universities are just as bright as and, generally speaking, far more creative than their counterparts from China's élite universities. But the big hump in the bell curve — the majority of the school-age population — matters a lot for the economic health of countries. Simply put, the more smart, well-educated people there are — of the sort that hard work creates — the more economies (and companies) benefit. Remember what venture capitalist Tam said about China and the electric-vehicle industry. A single, relatively new company working on developing an electric-car battery — BYD Co. — employs an astounding 10,000 engineers.

China, critics will point out, doesn't produce (at least not yet) many Nobel Prize winners. But don't think the basic educational competence of the workforce isn't a key factor in its having become the manufacturing workshop of the world. It isn't just about cheap labor; it's about smart labor. "Whether it's line workers or engineers, we're finding the candlepower of our employees here as good as or better than anywhere in the world," says Nick Reilly, a top executive at General Motors in Shanghai. "It all starts with the emphasis families put on the importance of education. That puts pressure on the government to deliver a decent system."

And the Chinese government responds to that pressure in some intriguing ways. It insists that primary-school teachers in math and science have degrees in those subjects. (Less than half of eighth-grade math teachers in the U.S. majored in math.) There is a "master teacher" program nationwide that provides mentoring for younger teachers. Zhang Dianzhou, a professor emeritus of mathematics at East China Normal University in Shanghai who co-chaired a committee charged with redesigning high school mathematics programs across the country, says recent changes have begun to reflect more of a "real-world emphasis." Computer-science courses, for example, have been integrated into the math curriculum for high school students. And China is placing even more importance on teaching young students English and other foreign languages. If you think China's willingness to constantly fine-tune its educational system is not going to have much of an impact 20 years from now, there's a 7-year-old boy in Shanghai who'd be happy to discuss the issue with you. In English.

3. Look After the Elderly
it's hard to imagine two societies that deal with their elderly as differently as the U.S. and China. And I can vouch for that firsthand. My wife Junling is a Shanghai native, and last month for the first time we visited my father at a nursing home in the U.S. She was shaken by the experience and later told me, "You know, in China, it's a great shame to put a parent into a nursing home." In China the social contract has been straightforward for centuries: parents raise children; then the children care for the parents as they reach their dotage. When, for example, real estate developer Jiang Xiao Li and his wife recently bought a new, larger apartment in Shanghai, they did so in part because they know that in a few years, his parents will move in with them. Jiang's parents will help take care of Jiang's daughter, and as they age, Jiang and his wife will help take care of them. As China slowly develops a better-funded and more reliable social-security system for retirees — which it has begun — the economic necessity of generations living together will diminish a bit. But no one believes that as China gets richer, the cultural norm will shift too significantly.

To a degree, of course, three generations living under one roof has long happened in the U.S., but in the 20th century, America became a particularly mobile and rootless society. It is hard to care for one's parents when they live three time zones away.

Home care for the elderly will most likely make a comeback in the U.S. out of sheer economic necessity, however. The number of elderly Americans will soar from 38.6 million in 2007 to 71.5 million in 2030. But, says Arnold Eppel, who recently retired as head of the department of aging in Baltimore County, Maryland, "There won't be enough spots for them" in the country's overwhelmed nursing-home system. Appreciating the magnitude of the coming crisis, the U.S. government has begun to respond. Two new initiatives — Nursing Home Diversion and Money Follows the Person — expand subsidies for home elder care, and the Veterans Health Administration has just put in effect its own similar initiative. "The whole trend will be into home care, because nursing homes are too expensive," Eppel says, noting that nursing-home care in the U.S. costs about $85,000 annually per resident.

In China, senior-care costs are, for the most part, borne by families. For millions of poor Chinese, that's a burden as well as a responsibility, and it unquestionably skews both spending and saving patterns in ways that China needs to change (see Save More, below). For middle-class and rich Chinese, those costs are a more manageable responsibility but one that nonetheless ripples through their economic decision-making. Still, there are benefits that balance the financial hardship: grandparents tutor young children while Mom and Dad work; they acculturate the youngest generation to the values of family and nation; they provide a sense of cultural continuity that helps bind a society. China needs to make obvious changes to its elder-care system as it becomes a wealthier society, but as millions of U.S. families make the brutal decision about whether to send aging parents into nursing homes, a bigger dose of the Chinese ethos may well be returning to America.

4. Save More
You've now heard it so many times, you can probably repeat it in your sleep. President Obama will no doubt make the point publicly when he gets to Beijing: the Chinese need to spend more; they need to consume more; they need — believe it or not — to become more like Americans, for the sake of the global economy.

And it's all true. But the other side of that equation is that the U.S. needs to save more. For the moment, American households actually are doing so. After the personal-savings rate dipped to zero in 2005, the shock of the economic crisis last year prompted people to snap shut their wallets. Now that it's pouring, in other words, American households have decided to save for a rainy day. The savings rate is currently about 4% and has gone as high as 6% this year.

In China, the household-savings rate exceeds 20%. It is partly for straightforward policy reasons. As we've seen, wage earners are expected to care for not only their children but also their aging parents. And there is, to date, only the flimsiest of publicly funded health care and pension systems, which increases incentives for individuals to save while they are working. But China, like many other East Asian countries, is a society that has esteemed personal financial prudence for centuries. There is no chance that will change anytime soon, even if the government creates a better social safety net and successfully encourages greater consumer spending.

Why does the U.S. need to learn a little frugality? Because healthy savings rates, including government and business savings, are one of the surest indicators of a country's long-term financial health. High savings lead, over time, to increased investment, which in turn generates productivity gains, innovation and job growth. In short, savings are the seed corn of a good economic harvest.

The U.S. government thus needs to get in on the act as well. By running perennial deficits, it is dis-saving, even as households save more. Peter Orszag, Obama's Budget Director, recently called the U.S. budget deficits unsustainable — this year's is $1.4 trillion — and he's right. To date, the U.S. has seemed unable to have what Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels has called an "adult conversation" about the consequences of spending so much more than is taken in. That needs to change. And though Hu Jintao and the rest of the Chinese leadership aren't inclined to lecture visiting Presidents, he might gently hint that Beijing is getting a little nervous about the value of the dollar — which has fallen 15% since March, in large part because of increasing fears that America's debt load is becoming unmanageable.

That's what happens when you're the world's biggest creditor: you get to drop hints like that, which would be enough by themselves to create international economic havoc if they were ever leaked. (Every time any official in Beijing muses publicly about seeking an alternative to the U.S. dollar for the $2.1 trillion China holds in reserve, currency traders have a heart attack.) If Americans became a bit more like the Chinese — if they saved more and spent less, consistently over time — they wouldn't have to worry about all that.

5. Look over the Horizon
The energy that so many outsiders feel when they are in China and that President Obama may see when he is there comes not just from the frenetic activity that is visible everywhere. It comes also from a sense that it's harnessed to something bigger. The government isn't frantically building all this infrastructure just to create make-work jobs. And kids aren't studying themselves sleepless because it's a lot of fun. A few years ago, I interviewed Zhang Xin, a young man from a deeply poor agricultural province in central China. His parents were wheat farmers and lived in a tiny one-room house next to the fields. He had graduated from Tsinghua University — China's MIT — and gotten a job as a software engineer at Huawei, the Cisco of China. His success, Zhang told me one day, had changed his family forever. None of his descendants would "ever work in the wheat fields again. Not my children. Not their children. That life is over." (And neither would his parents. They moved to prosperous Shenzhen, just north of Hong Kong, soon after he started his new job.)

Multiply that young man's story by millions, and you get a sense of what a forward-looking country this once very backward society has become. A smart American who lived in China for years and who wants to avoid being identified publicly (perhaps because he'd be labeled a "panda hugger," the timeworn epithet tossed at anyone who has anything good to say about China) puts it this way: "China is striving to become what it has not yet become. It is upwardly mobile, consciously, avowedly and — as its track record continues to strengthen — proudly so."

Proudly so, because as Zhang understood, hard work today means a much better life decades from now for those who will inherit what he helped create. And if that sounds familiar to Americans — marooned, for the moment, in the deepest recession in 26 years — it should.

Work hard, work smart, live strong. Don't enable weakness and reward failure. Let people simply get what they deserve. Quit whining and get your job done. And quit playa-hatin' on China. Got that, Amer-I-can'ts???

Skin & Bone!

So, it's only natural to assume that penis size is proportional to body size. Often, feet, nose or height are used as measuring sticks for...well, the meatstick.

(Ok, I've obviously been reading too much MAXIM here.) :)

But while this tacit assumption might seem "logical" at face value - it is often sooo not the case with Asia men, in particular...

Here are but a few examples of this. For illustrative purposes, this is a small assortment with many of your downright scrawny, manorexic Asian men! But if you click on each (NSFW!) pic, you will notice where all that hot meat went!!!









Surprised, anyone? :)

Anyhow, I'm really not obsessed with big, hard, lusciousssly smooth Asian cocks...really...

Asian Cack Appreciation Week!
Big Bananarama!
Asian Vs Caucasian Penis

Errr ok...well maybe just a wittle. ;)


Thanks to BAC for pixxx!

Asian Cack Appreciation Week!

In honor of Asian Cack Appreciation week...and in continuation of my ongoing "series" here...

*drumroll* =P~~~~ *drool*

Here are some very plump, juicy (NSFW) eggrolls for all ma hungry sistahs out there! Bottoms UP, girls! Time to celebrate!

Is Hoang Vietnamese for HUNG?
Doogystyle. NOW!
I christen that Aiya!
Can I play?
Can I worship that for you?
Could you stare deeply into my eyes like that as you stick that thing deeply into me?
Domo arigato, Mr. Moto!
Hey cutie, I see you!
Now, that's what I call a joystick!
Uh, you could split me with that banana!
I found Nessie!
May I have a seat, Mr. Lee?
Strike a pose, Jeffrey!
Go Jeffrey, go Jeffrey!
Yea, I might need some KY for that!
Wow, where'd that come from?

PS - More submissions always welcome, fellas! So, don't be shy.. Show 'em what you got! ;)

My New Hero! =)

Frank Yang, has anyone told you that you are my HERROOOO???!!

You sexxxay...

Gifted

Virtuoso

Diesel

MOFO!!!

...can I have your baybies?

PWEEEAASSEEEE!!! :D

Azn Bois In My Head <3

All

Day

...

All

Night

24/7

365

Long

!!!

The Problem With Dating White Girl Rejects...

I only date white guys. Is that wrong?

Well hun, if you want to avoid your following problems...then, YES!

His penis is so small the condom came off me during sex!

What do u when u go home with a guy and he can't get it up?

Remember sistas, the primary reason why some White guys specialize in Asian women is because frankly, they suck in bed (too small, ED, creepy weirdos, etc.) and can't satisfy White women. So, they seek us out because they believe we are easier targets with lower standards. Same reason why some guys are pedos or drive huge-ass Hummers. Trust me, I learned this the hard way!

There's *ahem* a REASON why White girls REJECTED them! And I can guarantee you, these guys were ALL painfully rejected, at some point. Probably laughed out of bed a few good times... So, do you really want THEIR irregular leftovers??? SERIOUSLY now GIRLS, STAY AWAY FROM these WHITE RICE HOUNDS, they are the WORST GUYS IN BED EVAHHH!!!!!

SORRY BOYS...but we're ON TO YOU and your secret's OUT now! Now leave us alone!

Luv & Kisses!
Rebecca

Are East Asians Just Too Smart?

Why did Chinese-American Jian Li, a Middle Class student who got a perfect 2400 on his SAT...still get rejected by Harvard, Princeton, UPenn, Stanford & MIT?

"I so good at math and science ... I the super smart Asian. Princeton the super dumb college, not accept me ... My dad from Kung Pao province. I united 500 years of Rice Wars ... I love Yale. Lots of bulldogs here for me to eat." - racist joke mocking Jian Li published in Daily Princeton

Is Admissions Bar Higher for Asians At Elite Schools?

based on their outstanding grades and test scores, Asian-Americans increasingly say their enrollment should be much higher -- a contention backed by a growing body of evidence.

Whether elite colleges give Asian-American students a fair shake is becoming a big concern in college-admissions offices. Federal civil-rights officials are investigating charges by a top Chinese-American student that he was rejected by Princeton University last spring because of his race and national origin.

research indicating colleges give less weight to high test scores of Asian-American applicants -- may push schools to boost Asian enrollment

His complaint seeks to suspend federal financial assistance to Princeton until the university "discontinues discrimination against Asian-Americans in all forms by eliminating race preferences, legacy preferences, and athlete preferences."

Mr. Li, who emigrated to the U.S. from China as a 4-year-old and graduated from a public high school in Livingston, N.J., said he hopes his action will set a precedent for other Asian-American students. He wants to "send a message to the admissions committee to be more cognizant of possible bias, and that the way they're conducting admissions is not really equitable," he said.

In 1990, a federal investigation concluded that Harvard University admitted Asian-American applicants at a lower rate than white students despite the Asians' slightly stronger test scores and grades. Federal investigators also found that Harvard admissions staff had stereotyped Asian-American candidates as quiet, shy and oriented toward math and science. The government didn't bring charges because it concluded it was Harvard's preferences for athletes and alumni children -- few of whom were Asian -- that accounted for the admissions gap.

In 1989, as the federal government was investigating alleged Asian-American quotas at UC's Berkeley campus, Berkeley's chancellor apologized for a drop in Asian enrollment. The next year, federal investigators found that the mathematics department at UCLA had discriminated against Asian-American graduate school applicants. In 1992, Berkeley's law school agreed under federal pressure to drop a policy that limited Asian enrollment by comparing Asian applicants against each other rather than the entire applicant pool.

Asian-American enrollment at Berkeley has increased since California voters banned affirmative action in college admissions. Berkeley accepted 4,122 Asian-American applicants for this fall's freshman class -- nearly 42% of the total admitted. That is up from 2,925 in 1997, or 34.6%, the last year before the ban took effect. Similarly, Asian-American undergraduate enrollment at the University of Washington rose to 25.4% in 2004 from 22.1% in 1998, when voters in that state prohibited affirmative action in college admissions.

The University of Michigan may be poised for a similar leap in Asian-American enrollment, now that voters in that state have banned affirmative action. The Center for Equal Opportunity study found that, among applicants with a 1240 SAT score and 3.2 grade point average in 2005, the university admitted 10% of Asian-Americans, 14% of whites, 88% of Hispanics and 92% of blacks. Asian applicants to the university's medical school also faced a higher admissions bar than any other group.

Mr. Reider, a former Stanford admissions official, said Stanford staffers were dismayed 20 years ago when an internal study showed they were less likely to admit Asian applicants than comparable whites. As a result, he said, Stanford strived to eliminate unconscious bias and repeated the study every year until Asians no longer faced a disadvantage.

Last month, Mr. Reider participated in a panel discussion at a college-admissions conference. It was titled, "Too Asian?" and explored whether colleges treat Asian applicants differently.

he is hearing more complaints "from Asian-American parents about how their children have excellent grades and scores but are being rejected by the most selective colleges. It appears to be an open secret."

Mr. Li, who said he was in the top 1% of his high-school class and took five advanced placement courses in his senior year, left blank the questions on college applications about his ethnicity and place of birth. "It seemed very irrelevant to me, if not offensive," he said. Mr. Li, who has permanent resident status in the U.S., did note that his citizenship, first language and language spoken at home were Chinese.

Along with Yale, he won admission to the California Institute of Technology, Rutgers University and the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. He said four schools -- Princeton, Harvard, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania -- placed him on their waiting lists before rejecting him. "I was very close to being accepted at these schools," he said. "I was thinking, had my ethnicity been different, it would have put me over the top. Even if race had just a marginal effect, it may have disadvantaged me."

He ultimately focused his complaint against Princeton after reading a 2004 study by three Princeton researchers concluding that an Asian-American applicant needed to score 50 points higher on the SAT than other applicants to have the same change of admission to an elite university.

"As an Asian-American and a native of China, my chances of admission were drastically reduced," Mr. Li claims in his complaint.

Just at the moment when Harvard, Yale, and Princeton have presidents named Rudenstine, Levin, and Shapiro, those institutions are widely suspected of having informal ceilings on Asian admissions, of the kind that were imposed on Jews two generations ago.