actually,history buff, there are more speakers of Chinese languages then English. For that, matter, you claim to be a history buff and boast of American power being used to keep the world free. Please explain how funding a military revolt against a legitimate-and DEMOCRATIC-election Chile advanced the cause of freedom. For that matter, please explain why we occupied Nicarauga for twelve years, why we wound up with colonies in the Phillipines, Cuba, Guam, The Virgin Islands, Samoa and Puerto Rico; why we looked the other way as various dictators like Mobuto,Marcos and Somoza looted their countires and tortured their own citizens or why we sent american agents to South America to teach better torutre techniques to the police. Or why we can see pictures of Donald Rumsfield and Dick Chney next to Saddam Hussein when he was willing to go after Iran with our blessing or how we trained and armed the Islamic militias in Afghanistan when they fought the Soviet Union-that's right we armed and trained the Taliban and their good friend, Osama Bin Laden. Well we did perfect the Atomic Bomb. Technoloical innovations are made all over the world, you self-righteous chauvinist. Try actually reading a history book and making statements that sound like a fifth grader.
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China’s Secret Growth Engine
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Zhejiang's lack of centralized meddling has sucked in a fat share of China's wealth. Zhejiang ranks 11th in population among China's 33 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, but fourth in total trade. Since 1978 its economy has grown at an annual rate of more than 13 percent, three points higher than the nation as a whole, and it is expected to expand by 14.7 percent this year. According to a recent analysis by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, bank deposits in Wenzhou have recently swollen with heavy remittances, apparently from locals pulling money out of overheated stock markets in Beijing and Shanghai.
They're also pulling out of Zhejiang, however. Wang Ji, a clothingmaker in Wenzhou, says his profit margin has fallen from 10 percent to zero in the last year, and worries that "if there's no profit soon we'll have to retool our whole line or move it abroad." Faced with rising wage inflation, Zhejiang industrialists are already moving factories to more remote areas like southern Jiangxi and central Sichuan, or overseas to Indonesia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Africa or Central Asia. Foreign direct investment from Zheijiang has doubled since 2005 to $1 billion, making it the most aggressive investor of any Chinese province. "We've taken the lead in relocating overseas," says Wang. "And wherever Zhejiang goes, the rest of China follows."
Zhejiang entrepreneurs have also been cutting mergers-and-aquisitions deals in the West. While Asia accounts for nearly 40 percent of Zhejiang's outbound investment, Europe and North America follow closely behind with 37 percent and 27 percent, respectively. Last year Hangzhou Machine Tool Group Co. bought a 60 percent share in Germany's aba z&b Schleifmaschinen GmbH, a leading producer of high-tech grinding machines, for an undisclosed sum; like many Zhejiang entrepreneurs, the group hopes to leverage the Western company's R&D back home and abroad. In September last year, a company called Zhejiang Huaye Logistics Co. set up an office in Dubai specifically to identify investment opportunities in the burgeoning Gulf entrepôt.
Zhejiang's success as an outsourcing and M&A center has made it an asset for aspiring politicians. Xi assumed the pole position to succeed party boss Hu Jintao in no small part because of his record as a former Zhejiang governor and his association with the region's grass-roots free-marketeering. A province that once prospered from the state's neglect has now become an officially approved model for how to prosper. And with Xi cheering it on, the signs in Zhejiang point to aggressive westward and foreign expansion.
© 2007
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