We set out to find out which of these cities are safe for women – and which need to do more to ensure women are not at risk of sexual violence and harassment and harmful cultural practices and have access to healthcare, finance and education.
In each of the 19 megacities, we contacted 20 experts focused on women’s issues including academics, non-government organisation workers, healthcare staff, policy-makers, and social commentators.
Here is what they found:
Safety from “cultural practices”
Safety from sexual violence
In an earlier post I noted that Moscow is the last and only megacity in the world where Europeans remain a solid majority.
Why does Lagos have such a good rating regarding sexual assault? Wouldn’t have expected that, have the Nigerians made some special effort there?
How about the female murder rate?
https://altright.com/2017/10/17/bike-sharing-leads-directly-to-complete-societal-collapse/
Anatoly Karlin’s primary aim in life seems to be to insist that Russia is great.
In reality, it is a country that has everything (vast natural resources, intelligent people, tons of land), yet still cannot achieve anything close to first world status. It is the poster-country of “How to accomplish so little with so much”.
Most Russians who come to the West admit this (to their credit). They are among the only immigrants from poor countries who admit that they came from a place that is undesirable.
Karlin can’t seem to evolve to that level of maturity.
Girl, 17, was sexually assaulted three times in one hour in east London
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/oct/13/girl-17-was-sexually-assaulted-three-times-in-one-hour-in-east-london
As an immigrant to Russia from a so-called first world country, I would say that there are advantages and disadvantages to living in Russia. Although there are still serious problems (for example relatively high levels of drug and alcohol abuse), by most measures life has been getting better and better over the last fifteen years. What will be interesting to see is how long this improvement can be sustained. I suspect to see an even greater “coming apart” between those who are successful and those who are not.
London is basically Karachi with more “financial engineering” and a Science Museum hosting a reproduction of Babbage’s Difference Engine.
That’s nonsense. Here is a clear (albeit greatly simplified) explanation http://akarlin.com/2009/08/reconsidering-parshev/
What rubbish. Why does Dickie publish so much trash on his site?
London Is Actually The World’s Real Capital City:
http://uk.businessinsider.com/sorry-new-york-london-is-the-world-capital-city-2014-10
Since this was a survey of expert opinion, I am unsure what to make of it. In particular, I am surprised that Moscow does so well on expert opinion, given that a typical “expert” in Russia is of the opinion that Russia is shit.
(This is a national characteristic. Quick! Think of any famous Russian tune! Is it in a minor key? I thought so.)
While I would not simply dimiss expert opinion on such matters, one would want to compare the opinions of women themselves and of their families, as well as statistics on rape, harassment, prostitution, the various degrees of FGM (let’s not repeat that conversation), and so on. Unfortunately, it seems that polling agencies prefer to do half-baked phone surveys rather than serious analysis.
Thanks for the link. If Мистер Карлин takes requests, I’d recommend more along those lines. (Snark about the poz could be worked into parenthetical comments if he finds geography yawn-inducing.)
How can a woman tell what her situation is relative to that of women in other cities..?
Europeans (taken together) are still a majority in London, just not British people
Is Seoul not a megacity?
Most women are unlikely to be able to compare, and this is probahly only slightly better for “experts” who wouldn’t know a bell curve if it bumped them in the arse. I simply mean that you should try to take a representative example of women, for different social classes and regions, and ask them about their personal experiences. Experts in abused women are likely to think abuse is common for the same reason that psyschiatrists are likely to think that mental illness is common. But psychiatrists, at least, will have been bumped in the arse by the bell curve as part of their education.
well, the murder rate in Moscow is equal or lower than the murder rate in most of the USA’s major cities…so I would assume the same applies for female murder rate.
Yes Seoul,Roma,Madrid,maybe Barcelona,Berlin,Johannesburg maybe…..I don’t know why it would be so hard to just turn it into a “25 megacity “poll………..though Moscow would still be around top position
Melodie Andante in E Major by Rachmaninov?
There’s a lot of female infanticide in China but almost none in Shanghai so I think its relatively poor ranking for cultural practices isn’t appropriate. The experts on the panel are possibly not very good experts. It’s very hard of course to be an expert on so many different cities. I wouldn’t make too much of this ranking.
Well, the world needs optimists. I, however, prefer Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C sharp minor.
Rome, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Johannesburg all have I think less than 5 million inhabitants.
Seoul, on the other hands, has 10 million inside the city borders and another 15 million in the suburbs, altogether housing half of South Korea’s population. It’s the world’s sixth largest metropolitan area by population (that is, including the suburbs), or the third largest by another definition, and the sixteenth largest if you only count population within the administrative boundaries. It’s one of the cities that comes to my mind if I think about “megacity”, that’s why I didn’t understand why it wasn’t included.
I have a question for Karlin, you have written about the liberal areas in Moscow and how these people are morphing into full SJWs like every other place, have you ever personally had direct conversations with these people and what the end result of their wishes will be? I am talking about things like bluntly asking them how importing millions of Sub Saharan African into Moscow would be a good thing, are they not aware of what happens in real world black cities as opposed to how Hollywood depicts it?
You clearly have not read much of what he writes, he writes at times very conflicting views on the state of Russia.
You on the other hand are just your typical stupid cuckservative that thinks that turning everything non white is not an issue at all.
Here is an interesting link on this topic:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-27/mapping-worlds-20-most-populous-cities-2100
If current trends continue than most of the megacities will be in Africa, the rest will be Asian. Megacities will be regarded exactly like they are depicted in the Judge Dredd comics**, dystopian nightmares. All the future well to dos will probably not want to be living in megacities, even if they could live in well protected bubbles within the cities, megacities will simply become known as the worst places to live.
**I must note that in the Judge Dredd world the megacities are still mostly white, the real world future megacities will be way worse than anything depicted in the comics.
You are simply describing the problem of Bolshevism, that got Russia off track. Russia was about at the level of southern Europe prior to Bolshevism, and improving rapidly. After a disastrous decade following Bolshevism’s collapse it is back on track.
North Korea, China prior to the 1980s reforms, are also poster children of “how to accomplish so little with so much.”
I’m not so sure. Going from Bolshevism to a state run capitalism (a truncated form of the free market) highlighted by a political and cultural phenomena known as Putinism (a subordination of clan rule) seems to have gone about as far as is possible, in my estimation. Let’s call a spade a spade, what Russia has today is an authoritarian form of government that is driving much of its more intelligent and imaginative people out of the country. This cannot bode well for its future prospects. There is much truth in the proposition that Russia’s economic growth in the 2,000’s was almost exclusively fueled by the export of energy stocks, not through economic activity linked to manufacture. The energy arena has already changed much to Russia’s disadvantage, and is continuing to change with the new Trump administration. It’ll be interesting to see how advantageous Russia’s new drive to expand and develop its agricultural base will effect its future economic prospects, but I don’t think that it alone will be enough to turn things around sufficiently. And finally, the sanctions placed on Russia really aren’t helping things much either…
This is not at all Mr. Karlin’s goal, as could be implied by his commentary on Russian hate laws and disappointments in the Putlerreich of nonexistence.
The current system, not being a Bolshevik one, has seen Russia achieve high growth post 2000; in terms of per capita GDP PPP it has eclipsed the European-settled countries of South America (Argentina, Uruguay). It has yet to catch up to southern European countries that were its peers prior to Bolshevism but is moving into their position.
Russia has adjusted to the sanctions and will have modest growth in 2017.
I’m not idealizing the Russian political system. I think I described it accurately here:
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/russian-liberals-are-the-nomenklaturas-children/#comment-2006244
Such a system is simply pragmatic enough not to be the trainwreck that Bolshevism was.
Largely, but not almost exclusively. The collapse in oil price caused a drop in Russia’s economy, but not a catastrophic one. Russia isn’t Venezuela.
AK produced a chart of Russian auto production, by year, for example:
http://akarlin.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/russia-automobile-production.jpg
Is Berlin even close to becoming a majority non-white city? I realize there are lots of foreigners, but a big chunk of them are other Europeans. And the biggest non-European segment is Turkish, which I would think is a lot less frightening than some other non-European people groups.
Unfortunately, for Russia and its economy, Kholmogorov nailed down the problem quite poignantly:
I don’t know whether or not the ‘Zaporozhets’ is exclusively made in Ukraine, or in Russia too? But the point is well made. Perhaps, automobiles manufactured in Russia are really just imported Korean or Western models, not really a home grown innovations? The point is the same.
How the hell is New York so anti-women? I thought they didn’t have a lot of muslims
Eric Carmen liked Rachmaninov so much that he ripped off Piano Concerto No. 2 for All by Myself and Symphony No. 2 for Never Going to Fall in Love Again.
Shouldn’t it be Gospodin Karlin?
Very droll, Mr Jones. The Business Insider writer does rather make El Dato’s points, but the writer, as is usual with these sorts, is purblind to the consequences of his statements.
3m out of 8m London inhabitants were born abroad. How many are 3rd world immigrants and how many Muslims? The vast majority.
Over 40% of Foreign Currency transactions are made in London. But foreign finance can quickly move elsewhere, particularly as the political, economic and social situation deteriorates. If the number of 3rd worlders continue to increase, foreign finance will flee elsewhere.
So? Take it a step further, then.
Even India, today, is at the prosperity level of Eastern Europe in the 1990s. Plus, in 1700, India had a larger economy than all of Europe, and was richer per capita as well.
But that doesn’t help India at this particular moment, does it?
The point is, Russia of today has very little prosperity, and cannot seem to diversity its economy beyond oil and gas. It experiences massive brain drain to the West to this day.
Yawn….
As a White Trashionalist, you have a Negro IQ. WNs are to proper whites what a chihuahua is to a German Shepherd.
This is nonsense. Take Fernand Braudel’s “Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Centuries”, and read the for purposes of education
my hometown https://imgur.com/a/ROC8E
oil and gas – about 13% of GDP
St. Petersburg?
True in the 1990s, not so today.
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aunz.com%2Fakarlin+brain+drain
Honestly, this is one of the dumbest and contradictory narratives one can come up with to try discredit white nationalists. If you are trying to argue that I have a “Negro IQ”, then you are basically admitting blacks are inferior, that being the case then you can hardly make the claim that only someone with a high IQ is aware of the irrefutable fact that all races are in fact equal.
Why bother though, you are too much of a dim wit to understand yourself.
This has been explained by me before many times. You obviously are incapable of grasping it. But nonetheless :
White variance is very high. Much higher than any other race. Hence, the median white income/talent/character/looks indicates very little.
Therefore, if one splits the smart whites (80%) and the untalented whites (20%) into two groups, the ranking is :
Smart, talented whites
Asians (East and South)
Hispanics
Blacks
Wastematter whites (the men are WNs, the women are fat feminists).
The production of smart/talented/good looking whites generates a certain amount of genetic waste matter. That waste matter has to be dumped somewhere, where it can be eliminated with the least possible disruption. The lower whites act as those wastebaskets. The males of this group become individuals like you. The females become the fat, bluehaired feminists. In the past, you two would be married to each other. Now, you are not (and at least cannot reproduce anymore).
That is why the variance among whites is so high, and a WN wastebasket like you has no business taking credit for the accomplishment of proper whites.
Maybe, they all left for Germany.
At the moment (well, 2006-10), Russia’s net emigration rate to the US is higher, in proportion to the original country’s population, than either China or India.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5e/2006-2010_imm_rate.PNG/1280px-2006-2010_imm_rate.PNG
Plus, net emigraton out of Russia (to all countries, not just the US), after declining for many years, is rising again :
https://imrussia.org/images/stories/Society/New_Emigration/emigration_graph_en.png
It appears your claim is not correct. The exodus out of Russia, while in decline during the 2000s, has started rising again as of 2012. It probably rose even faster after the price of oil declined in 2014.
There is no evidence of high white variance.
Oh, this chart is even better. It completely and totally proves Anatoly Karlin wrong, even though this is his own chart. It seems Karlin of 2016 disagrees with Karlin of 2017,
https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/russian-emigration-by-destination-country-1997-2015.png
Russians are leaving even to go to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
What a stunning change this is from 2011.
Okay, troll or retard confirmed.
Why? That chart above, a chart you have included in your own articles before, indicates that since 2011, many Russians are leaving for Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Even excluding those, the net emigration of Russians out of Russia is evident, both from your own chart, as well as the others I linked.
Are you arguing otherwise?
Once again :
You wrote an article in Jan 2016 using this very chart. This chart shows how emigration out of Russia, particularly to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, has risen sharply since 2011.
Perhaps this simpler chart (also made by you) is more to your liking :
https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/russian-emigration-1997-2015.png
Emigration out of Russia is rising again, contrary to what you said in Comment 41.
What is your explanation?
It’s pretty clear at this point that the commenter Thomm is willfully misrepresenting the content of my article.
Whereas I do not generally care to address trolls, I will quote what I actually wrote in that article for the benefit of other readers:
https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/russian-emigration-immigration-1997-2015.png
It is not about the content of the original article. It is about a chart from that article, that refutes a claim you made here, which is that there is less emigration from Russia now vs. recently. You cite a ‘banal change in bureaucratic definitions’ and then link to a Russian-language site (just so that Steve Sailer can’t verify if you are being truthful).
Even if we take you at your word that Russian immigration to the US is less now vs. in the 90s, it is still very high relative to other large sending countries, which means the brain drain is ongoing. We can examine US data about immigrants coming in in proportion to the size of the sending country. From this we see that Russian emigration to the US is, proportional to the sending country’s population, higher than it is for either China or India (even if lower than for Poland and Ukraine).
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5e/2006-2010_imm_rate.PNG/1280px-2006-2010_imm_rate.PNG
This points to an ongoing brain-drain.
Why is that so hard for you to understand?
There exists Google Translate. In any case the contents of that article are summarized in my post.
WTF are you on about. Your own map shows shows Russian emigration to the US is perfectly in line with the global and West European average.
Even if you only count the ‘far abroad countries’ (red and pink in your chart), the totals are clearly more than in 2006-2010. This is plainly visible from your chart :
https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/russian-emigration-by-destination-country-1997-2015.png
Again, I am talking of ‘far abroad countries’ only. The red and pink that comprise Germany, the UK, US, and other far abroads.
It has risen from the 2006-10 level, indicating a new wave of brain drain that stopped from 2006-10.
Yes, and it is lower than that of India and China, which is what I said before.
As Putin states in the Stone interviews and elsewhere, sanctions are inconvenient but tend to make a nation more self-sufficient in the long run by the development and improvement of local industry. Anyway, having sanctions placed by a few countries but still having the ability to trade with the overwhelming majority of others, including China, is really just an inconvenience, especially in a market based economy.
With a closed economy, you just get to blame everyone else, as is the case with Cuba, who could trade with every country in the world except one but have blamed US trade sanctions for 50 years as being the reason the country is in abject poverty.
As Putin states in the Stone interviews and elsewhere, sanctions are inconvenient but tend to make a nation more self-sufficient in the long run by the development and improvement of local industry. Anyway, having sanctions placed by a few countries but still having the ability to trade with the overwhelming majority of others, including China, is really just an inconvenience, especially in a market based economy. Plus of course, Russia is highly advanced technologically.
With a closed economy, you just get to blame everyone else, as is the case with Cuba, who could trade with every country in the world except one but have blamed US trade sanctions for 50 years as being the reason the country is in abject poverty.
Zelenogorsk (near St. Petersburg)
Again you stupid dim wit, get your illogical and contradictory narrative in order. You are preaching both hardcore eugenics and then at the same time you are preaching racial equality, thats simply not going be some kind of counter to white nationalism. No sane liberal would ever argue these points because they are absolutely ridiculous to argue.
I also need to add that I have been called many things, but stupid is not one of them. Or perhaps I got my degrees in maths and computer science by accident, or the fact that I competed in the national school chess championship of my country. You on the other hand concocted a ludicrous argument that you clearly have no idea how stupid it makes you look.
According to this: https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/nov/30/new-york-crime-free-day-deadliest-cities-worldwide
Megacities murder rates (as of 2009) per 100,000 people:
Tokyo 0.4
Cairo 0.6
Mumbai 1.3
London 1.6
Seoul 2.4
Moscow 4.6
NYC 5.6
Mexico City 8.4
Sao Paolo 10.8
However, the methodological problem here is that, in general, murder victims are men (something like 80%, I think). But this must vary from city to city. I don’t know of a convenient site that lists the female murder rate only. Seeing as females typically don’t die from random bar brawls and, to the extent they are murdered, are likely to be so from targeted reasons (reasons of passion, rape, etc.), I think female murder rate might warrant a look, rather than some nebulous “potentially harmful… cultural practices” that sound much too social justice-y.
I am guessing you haven’t been to Shanghai let alone Tokyo or Seoul.
People in the U.S. often equate big cities with crime and squalor, and tend to live in suburbs if affluent (as I do), but this is not often the case in East Asia. East Asian cities tend to have crime rates of small towns in North America, which is to say that they are usually extremely safe (at least from an interpersonal crime context). If you have money, you live in the big cities there. Indeed, you are more likely to be hurt by over-stressed, drunk-driving sararimen in East Asia than you are to be hurt in a violent crime. The only Judge Dredd-type characters you see will be people in comic book costumes.
North Korea had pretty poor human development prior to the 1960’s and even fewer natural resources worth mentioning. There was no “so much” there – and that’s not even counting the utter destruction, during the Korean War, of what infrastructure the Japanese erected during their occupation.
South Korea, of course, was even more agrarian and corrupt prior to the Korean War and likely had even worse literacy and education level outside Seoul compared to the North. Until the 1970’s, it looked like North Korea was ahead in industrial and human development.
At the dawn of the 20th Century, the noted writer Jack London said, “The Korean is the perfect type of inefficiency — of utter worthlessness.” He also described Koreans as being cowardly, contrasting them with the capable and dashing Japanese and industrious Chinese, the combination of whom, he thought, would constitute the Yellow Peril against the white man (he also described Korea as “empty” and devoid of any worthwhile resource).
This description now seems rather odd and quaint, given that Koreans today are sometimes cited as having the highest IQ among East Asians (or the world among nation-states) as well as being the most athletic and/or toughest of the lot (the reputation for which seems to originate from their valorized participation in the Vietnam War or the L.A. Riots depending on audiences).
Twinkie:
Regarding the Koreans’ “valorized participation in the Vietnam War.” I understand that they exerted absolute and total control in their assigned sectors. Their operational performances were quite drastic but very effective.
Rearding their role in the L.A. Riots. After all these years I still have the mental picture of chain smoking Koreans on rooftops bandishing their rifles. At that time my family’s jewish doctor in NYC told me that his Korean colleagues were devastated about what was happening to their their West Coast compatriots who were abandonded by the authorities and left on their own to defend their property.
No, the rise is almost entirely due to recent immigrants going back after Russia implemented tighter immigration restrictions. (The sharp rise on the graph after 2011 is composed Central Asians.)
Why is Seoul so violent?
“Most Russians who come to the West admit this (to their credit). They are among the only immigrants from poor countries who admit that they came from a place that is undesirable. ”
That’s because it’s a Russian national trait to be negative, complain, and critique themselves, as opposed to (for example) the American national trait to believe in fresh starts and never admit to any personal mistake.
A lot of those Russians in the West that you talk about either
1) haven’t been back in decades, and don’t know how good it is there now
2) are disappointed with their lives and badly need to believe that Russia is a shithole to justify to themselves why they immigrated
3) haven’t been in the West for very long yet
The smarter and more honest Russians emigrants, like Solzhenitsyn, figured out what was what, became disillusioned with the West, and went back to Russia once they were able and things over there stabilized a bit.
Thanks for the corrections, Asia has not been a focus of my interests. If you’ll indulge my dilettantism:
I had thought the Japanese, like the pre-World War I Germans, pursued an investment strategy towards their colonies rather than the predatory/exploitative approach favored by the Western powers.
http://countrystudies.us/south-korea/46.htm
“Following the annexation of Korea in 1910, Japan thrust a modern blend of industrial capitalism onto a feudal agrarian society. By the end of the colonial period, Japan had built an extensive infrastructure of roads, railroads, ports, electrical power, and government buildings that facilitated both the modernization of Korea’s economy and Japan’s control over the modernization process. The Japanese located various heavy industries–steel, chemicals, and hydroelectric power–across Korea, but mainly in the north. ”
The wiki page demonstrates a high level of industrial growth under Japan. It was all owned by the Japanese of course, but still seemingly provided a industrial base.
This, combined with the natural God-given talents of the Korean people, suggest that North Korea has been underperforming very badly.
Would people please stop doing this! You can’t just borrow the semantic unit “most” from the word “dumbest” to modify contradictory. You have to actually write “most contradictory.” When did this start? I never noticed anyone doing this before the internet. Apologies if you aren’t a native English speaker, but they are doing it as well, and it drives me crazy.
It’s a Russian national trait to say what the other person wants to hear. When a Westerner believes that Russia is a shithole, a Russian will not want to disappoint him.
Another Russian trait is to mindlessly repeat what others say or write (including ‘liberal’ Russophobic stuff).
Quite lovely, thank you for sharing.
I agree, but it’s difficult to know how much of that is due to its inability to trade with the outside world, or the cost of developing and maintaining nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles. On the other hand, South Korea has had access to US markets for over half a century now, and only maintained conventional forces.
It’s interesting that they include “female infanticide” among the cultural practices but not abortion rate.
And according to this
https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/abortion-around-the-world-where-are-rates-highest/
Russia and Eastern Europe have a very high rate of abortion.
… about 43 abortions per 1,000 women, the highest in the world.
So, Moscow can’t be the safest for women.
A real objective measurement is to place 100 women in random locations throughout each city, measure their physical safety (from physical assault, random car accidents, potholes, etc…), verbal and mental abuses and harassment, degree of freedom to move around. Those are more objective criteria.
They were extremely thorough in combing through their assigned sectors – multiple units would sweep the same areas separately to ensure nothing was missed. They also prepared for combat extensively and studied the terrain in detail – indeed, it was not uncommon for the ROK units to ambush the Vietnamese on their own turf. Furthermore, they were unafraid to close with the enemy and engage in close-quarters combat instead of relying on firepower from a distance. On top of that, there was significant anti-communist indoctrination and extreme discipline that led to a high degree of cohesion and morale.
All these made the ROK units very effective – they recorded very impressive kill ratios often at times on par with American special forces, and the North Vietnamese generally advised the Vietcong to avoid contact with ROK units. So much so that it was common for American liaison officers to pronounce Koreans AORs “completely safe” or “free from Vietcong activity.”
For all that effectiveness, there were, predictably, many accusations of war crimes – massacres of civilians – that were attributed to the ROK contingent in Vietnam.
They couldn’t walk away, because many of them had no insurance for their businesses. Thousands, indeed, did lose their livelihood and had to re-start their lives with nothing or in debt (roughly half of the total damage suffered in the riots was among the Koreans – Koreatown essentially absorbed the bulk of the riot’s impact and served as the barrier for nicer – that is, white – areas that were largely unaffected). Curiously, when the federal government pumped re-development money into the area, the Koreans received virtually nothing, which led to lasting bitterness among them. But you know, no political power = no cheddar as kids would say.
This is true.
But the Russians I am seeing here now are often very pretty and well-educated single women. They have only negative things to say about Russia. They are seeking non-Russian husbands here.
It’s not. It’s not exactly Tokyo, but it’s safer than NYC or Moscow, let alone the likes of Mexico City or San Salvador.
Also, that was a particularly bad year, near the peak in 2010. Seoul’s 2014 homicide rate was 1.55 per 100,000 (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DwxsuTXVVHtK8LQj1IOJrJF9LxxCDpcofiVVsEBga7s/htmlview), which is lower than the homicide rate of, say, the entire state of Iowa, a substantially rural, mostly white region of the United States or, say, Seattle, WA, a city with a highly affluent and educated population that is mostly white and Asian.
Having stated that, the Koreans are apparently about twice as homicidal as the Japanese – their national homicide rate is almost always roughly twice that of Japan (usually around 0.6-0.8 vs. 0.3-0.4). Of course, compared to most parts of the world, those are negligible differences.
Russia’s GDP, at the moment, is growing at under 2%/year, which is in fact slower than either the US or the Eurozone :
https://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/640-width/20171021_INT103.png
Russia’s economy is simply not doing well.
They did (and furthermore, their colonial policies, at least in Korea, was assimilative, not exterminationist*), but it was still fairly extractive.
Southern Korea contained most of the farmlands, so it was designated as an agricultural zone to supply grains to the Japanese homelands and the Kwantung Army in Manchuria. Northern Korea was designated for greater industrialization.
“Extensive infrastructure” is overstating the case. Among the major powers of the time, Japan was by far the least industrialized and developed, and it would be unrealistic to think that development of their Korean colony would be a priority over building their own, still backward, homeland. It would be more accurate to say that the Japanese essentially built all or most of what modern infrastructure there was in Korea by 1945.
*The Japanese authorities did engage in massive land expropriation, and encouraged the pauperized Korean landowners and farmers to colonize Manchuria while Japanese settlers took the best of the seized Korean lands, so that “assimilative” policy was always intended to make Koreans second-class citizens and cannon-fodder (even with Japanese names and Japanese language use), rather than ordinary Japanese.
Prior to the Japanese occupation, and even decades after the occupation ended, Koreans had high illiteracy and low human development. It would have been laughable to speak of “natural God-given talents of the Korean” in those days. As I wrote earlier, Jack London, who traveled the region in the early 20th century, considered Koreans to be worthless people.
The Flynn Effect was operating rather strongly in 1970-1990, with the South Koreans experiencing per decade IQ gain of 7.7! See: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886911001437
No one is denying that the North Koreans have underperformed badly (obviously the comparison to South Korea makes that easy to say), but my objection was the “so much” part in “have done so little with so much.”
In 1945, upon liberation from Japan, North Korea had little in the way of natural resources and its human development level was middling to low. It did not start its modern life with “so much.”
As a practicing Roman Catholic, I find that appalling, but to the extent that this is self-victimization, I don’t think it’s useful to include it in a “safety for women” index. As horrible as it is, abortion is more indicative of a spiritual and cultural rot than it is about safety… unless, of course, we are talking about selective female infanticide, in which case, yes, it would be directly relevant to the question at hand.
I agree.
That is why the ‘Did so little with so much’ designation really puts Russia in a class by itself.
Intelligent people, pretty women, vast land, unmatched natural resources.
Yet it has a per-capita GDP that is lower than that of Mexico. It is growing at a rate slower than the World Average, to boot, meaning that it is continuing to shrink as a share of the world economy.
The USA’s population is growing at 0.8% per year, so GDP growth of 2.2% is per capita growth of only 1.4%.
The Eurozone’s current growth rate is an aberration: From 2000-2016 it averaged only 1.3% growth (1.1% since 2010). Russia will probably average at least 2-3% growth over the next 5 years, maybe more (its average from 2000-2014 was over 4%).
https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=ny_gdp_pcap_kd&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:RUS:MEX&ifdim=region&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false
Russia has underperformed, but it is certainly richer than Mexico. Also, per capita growth rates matter and Mexico is growing at about 1% YoY in that sense. Russia is just coming out of a recession. It should be able to accelerate in the coming years. I don’t take too much stock in IMF forecasts. They missed every single major economic event of great importance in the last 25 years. They have also been very bearish on Russia and again they have been forced to revise their past forecasts very aggressively, and to the upside.
Russia will likely skate along the current path of soft convergence. Looking at total GDP growth is meaningless, it’s per capita growth that counts.
Well, that makes Ukraine’s 2.3% growth in 2016 a little more impressive…
Twinkie,
For some reason the “Agree” button is not operational so let me take this opportunity to thank you for providing very important background information on the valorous role of Koreans both in Vietnam and in the L.A. riots.
I understand that the Koreans have been given the appellation of being the Irish of Asia due to their shared work and drinking habits. I don’t know if that’s true but it is very interesting. If so, it reflects well on both the Koreans and the Irish!
Since 1860, the Koreans moved to Russia, and Russian officials unanimously noted the industriousness of Koreans and their love of education.
In the USSR the proportion of Koreans with higher education (relative to the total number of Koreans) was twice the national average (without any influence of the Japanese). That is, the success of South (and North) Korea due to the peculiarities of the Koreans, not Japanese influence
I am sorry to say I cannot agree. Mr. Karlin elaborated many of the constraints Russia faced in the past (from the link another commenter provided).
To that I’d add another factor (since we are on a geographical determinism kick). It seems to me that there is much innovation and human material improvement when there are enough barriers to prevent easy movement of troops (so as to increase political fragmentation, and hence competition), but not too much barrier that it stops the spread of technology and information. I think Europe is a classic example of this kind of favorable geography – lots of mountains and rivers as barriers for easy conquest, but also the Mediterranean (and, again, rivers) that aids in the spread of technology.
The result is lots of conflict – competition – that increases demand for advantages and hence innovation.
Conversely, areas with little in the way of physical barriers tend to experience rapid centralization and may even accumulate early advantages via the economy of scale. But eventually such centralization retards competition and innovation. I think a classic case of this is China, especially North China. And I think Russia belongs in this category as well in that, on top of the unfavorable climate and remoteness, it also suffered the long-term problem of easy centralization.
Or, to think another way, imagine what kind of a country St. Petersburg and the surrounding region would be (say with a population of 10 million) if it were detached from Russia and attached to Denmark or coastal Poland. I think it would do quite well. In any case, history is not quite over yet. We shall see how Russia does in the next 30-50 years. Nothing is set in stone, and there are still many contingencies that determine how it will do in the future.
By the way, I think the United States is very unique in that it is a vast country without a competitor nearby that did not suffer the same problems of centralization as China, Russia or Brazil. I think the credit is due to the Founding Fathers who created a genius of a political system with multiple checks and balances, including somewhat sovereign states.
Thank you.
P. J. O’Rourke, after visiting South Korea, said about the Koreans, “They don’t like anyone who isn’t Korean, and they don’t like each other all that much, either. They’re hardheaded, hard-drinking, tough little bastards, ‘the Irish of Asia.'” He likened them to his Ulster-Irish cousins elsewhere.
I think “peak” Korean was c. 1992 around the time of the L. A. Riots.
Despite their outstanding performance in the Vietnam War as a part of the Free World forces, their younger counterparts were quite skittish in Iraq (they contributed a sizable contingent to Irbil for “reconstruction”). Unlike their kick-ass forebears, they just buttoned down and refrained from any combat. Of course, that was a political decision, with the war being extremely unpopular in South Korea, but still the current generation of young adults in South Korea are not what their elders were in 1970 or even 1980. Life has been easy and gentle (if competitive), and they don’t seem to have the do-or-die spirit of the earlier generations. At least that’s my particular observation.
Quite a few of the gun-toting Koreans in the L.A. Riots were ROK Marine Corps veterans, some with intense combat experiences in Vietnam. Although young Korean-Americans still punch above their weight in military affairs (the modal name at West Point graduations is frequently “Kim”), they seem headed to where many other educated and affluent young Americans are headed (albeit with a higher Christian religiosity).
Petersburg (per capita) of course poorer than Denmark, but obviously richer than Poland.
No it doesn’t. According to World Bank estimates, in 2000 Mexico’s per capita GDP was nearly 4x higher than Russia’s ($6720 vs. $1771), but in 2016 Russia’s was slightly higher than Mexico’s ($8746 vs. $8201). And that 2016 estimate is based on a ruble value of 67 to the dollar, while since then the ruble has strengthened to 57.
Anyway, nominal per capita GDP figures are not a good measure of a country’s actual living standard. Adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity, Russia’s 2016 per capita GDP was $23, 162 (55% of the Eurozone’s), vs. $17, 861 for Mexico.
Over the past five years, world GDP growth has averaged 2.6%. If that continues over the next five years, then at worst Russia will likely match it or come close.
From 2000-2016 Russia’s GDP increased 5x, while total world GDP increased only 2.5x.
You are right. Russia ranks #66 while Mexico ranks #72, out of 175 countries. I stand corrected.
But being #66 out of 175 is not good at all for a country that has everything. It is being surpassed by other emerging markets (notably Malaysia).
The table in my comment #76 indicates that Russia will grow 1.8% in 2017 and 2.0% in 2018. Frankly, Russia should have done everything that China did to grow so fast. Why couldn’t it? Everything ‘Made in China’ today should have been ‘Made in Russia’.
Even India has $100B/year in Software exports now. Russia does not.
That Eastern Europe lags behind even Southern Europe has always seemed mysterious to me. Based on performance in international math or computing competitions, countries like Russia seem like they have their fair share of high end talent. For instance at the IMO, I would guess that over the past 20 years or so, Russia has probably been the 3rd highest performing country behind China and the United States.
We can certainly see the destructive effects of ideology when we look at North Korea today or China for instance under Mao, especially during the Cultural Revolution. But over the past 30 years or so China has been making tremendous strides both economically and scientifically, so at least they’re moving in the right direction.
If not for its military and natural resources, Russia would mostly be irrelevant globally, no? I agree with you that the economic and scientific/technological stagnation of both Russia and the rest of Eastern Europe is a bit surprising given the underlying human capital. Mexico, Japan, and Russia are three countries that are roughly the same size population wise, at 123, 126, and 146 million respectively. Pretty surprising that by so many metrics Russia seems to be a lot closer to Mexico than to Japan.
If you look at the IMO for instance, Russia has vastly outperformed Mexico over the past 20 years.
They were similar prior to and until Communism. Now they are catching up.