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About a dozen years ago, there were less than 100 skyscrapers in Shanghai... when I went there last Fall, there were like 3,000 with cranes & construction everywhere. The PuDong district of Shanghai makes Manhattan look like Hartford, Connecticut. They don't have the culture of NYC yet... but they literally have a bank on every corner and I can see the day in the future when Shanghai passes NYC as a financial center. Not anytime soon, but in 15-20 years, maybe a bit longer.
Chinese are a patient people and see things long term, unlike us instant gratification Americans (and, this is on both sides of the aisle - Democrats & Republics)
That said, China does have a lot of problems to overcome: 1) massive bank debt and bad loans (similar to the US in the 20s); 2) the possibility of growing too fast; 3) major infrastructure problems, including traffic that makes NYC, Houston or Atlanta look like rural highways and 4) power grid problems; 5) too many males are still being born in the countryside in China, which is leading to a big surplus of males (the more modern Eastern China is much more progressive on this); 6) unemployment problems - several years back, the Chinese gov't undertook a program to graduate 1 million engineers and accountants per year. Now, these people are graduating and they do not have jobs for them. Additionally, millions from the countryside that journey to the cities for jobs often struggle to find them. 7) AIDS, pollution, lack of freedoms we take for granted (like the Internet), etc, etc.
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