Analysis Of China’s PISA 2009 Results

This about HBD, tagged , , was written by for on August 13, 2012 .31 Comments

As human capital is so important for prosperity, it behoves us to know China’s in detail to assess whether it will continue converging on developed countries. Until recently the best data we had were disparate IQ tests (on the basis of which Richard Lynn’s latest estimate is an IQ of 105.8 in his 2012 book […]

Chinese Netizens Praise Russian Democracy, Accountability

This about Society, tagged , , , , was written by for on July 27, 2012 .5 Comments

Typically when Westerners write about Chinese and Russians they stress the negative aspects of the relationship. Russians are invariably racist towards the Chinese and fear them in xenophobic reaction to their (non-existent) swamping of Siberia. The Chinese for their part laugh at the alcoholic, non-productive Russkies. And quite likely they will soon invade and take […]

China’s True Nuclear Power

This about Geopolitics, tagged , , , was written by for on June 28, 2012 .5 Comments

I always thought it weird China had the smallest arsenal of the world’s five NPT nuclear-weapons states. In broad strategic terms, this would make it very vulnerable to the US, especially given the latter’s development of ABM technologies, which would potentially give it the choice of an annihilating first strike. In late 2009, China went […]

Actually China Is Probably Already Bigger

This about Geopolitics, tagged , , was written by for on June 19, 2012 .2 Comments

Despite the generally loathsome nature of The Economist, it does have its advantages most of which can be reduced to its Daily Charts blog which focuses on statistics as opposed to rhetoric. According to the chart above, as of 2012 ever more people, especially in the developed world, are starting to believe that the China is […]

Education as the Elixir of Growth III

This , about HBD, tagged , , , , was written by for on February 25, 2012 .20 Comments

Just in case you thought the correlation between human capital and economic development was an artifice of the post-socialist world, here is a similar graph (R2=0.4273) for all the world’s countries that have participated in the Math and Science portions of the PISA or TIMMS (8th grade) international standardized student assessments. The methodology is the […]

Why China Is Far Superior To India

This about Geopolitics, tagged , , , was written by for on February 4, 2012 .172 Comments

It is not a secret to longtime readers of this blog that I rate India’s prospects far more pessimistically than I do China’s. My main reason is I do not share the delusion that democracy is a panacea and that whatever advantage in this sphere India has is more than outweighed by China’s lead in any number […]

Putin The Peaceful?

This about Geopolitics, tagged , , , was written by for on November 15, 2011 .78 Comments

At least, surely more so than Obama, winner of 2009’s Nobel Peace Prize. Let’s do it by the numbers. Russia under Putin fought one war, in response to Georgian aggression against Ossetians with Russian citizenship and UN-mandated Russian peacekeepers. In contrast, Obama has participated in two wars of aggression: the Iraq War he inherited from G.W., […]

Book Review: Kenneth Pomeranz – The Great Divergence

This , about History, tagged , , , , , was written by for , on July 30, 2011 .71 Comments

Pomeranz, Kenneth – The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (2001) Category: economy, history, world systems; Rating: 5*/5 Summary: Brad DeLong’s review; The Bactra Review; Are Coal and Colonies Really Crucial? The Power Of Contingency: Why China Didn’t Rule The World It’s a rare book that not only vastly informs you on a […]

Top 10 Sinophobe Myths

This about Politics, tagged , , was written by for on July 10, 2011 .53 Comments

Just as with Russia, the Western media (beholden as it is to its power elite sponsors and anti-Rest ideology) peddles many tropes about China that cloud real understanding of this fascinating civilization-state. In the spirit of Sino Triumphalism, this is my attempt to set the record straight and overturn the lazy arguments used to dismiss, […]

Walled Off By Complexity: Did China Stagnate Because Of Its Writing System?

This about History, tagged , , , , was written by for on May 7, 2011 .62 Comments

One of the biggest questions in global history is why it was Western Europe that industrialized first, and ended up colonizing most of the rest of the world. As late as 1450, the possibility of such an outcome would have been ridiculed. By almost any metric, China was well in the lead through the medieval period […]

Tales From The Beijing Embassy

This about Science & Technology, tagged , , , was written by for on December 8, 2010 .7 Comments

Four cables from Cathay, courtesy of this excellent Cable Search tool. The first cable (Cable 1) is one of the last dispatches of Ambassador to the PRC Clark T. Randt, a long, analytical piece from January 2009. But it’s also perhaps the least interesting of the four.  This is because it is only a rehashing of […]

Why Russia And China Won’t Fight

This about Geopolitics, tagged , , , , was written by for on October 17, 2010 .50 Comments

Every so often there appear claims, not only in the Western press but the Russian one, that (rising but overpopulated) China is destined to fight an (ailing and creaking) Russia for possession of its resources in the Far East*. For reasons that should be obvious, this is almost completely implausible for the next few decades. But […]