To visit China today as an American is to compare and to be compared. And from the very opening session of this year’s World Economic Forum here in Tianjin, our Chinese hosts did not hesitate to do some comparing. China’s CCTV aired a skit showing four children ”” one wearing the Chinese flag, another the American, another the Indian, and another the Brazilian ”” getting ready to run a race. Before they take off, the American child, “Anthony,” boasts that he will win “because I always win,” and he jumps out to a big lead. But soon Anthony doubles over with cramps. “Now is our chance to overtake him for the first time!” shouts the Chinese child. “What’s wrong with Anthony?” asks another. “He is overweight and flabby,” says another child. “He ate too many hamburgers.”
That is how they see us.
My son has been in China for several years. He has remarked several times that Chinese kids, once NEVER fat, were getting fatter and fatter as MacD spread. Over weight and flabby is precisely how he has described the New Chinese Young. The Chinese ad therefore is balderdash. Score one more for MacDs and its ilk. Larry
Another thing–that’s how the Japanese saw us pre-WWII. The United States Marine Corps rather forcefully disabused them of their error of judgement.
Nos. 1 & 2, I think the better point Friedman was making is that we are a paralyzed nation right now because our political class can’t or won’t work together. Obama was supposed to change the atmosphere in DC. Seems he did – to make it more divisive. After 9/11 both parties came together to get things done for the good of the country. Why does it take a national catastrophe to cause a little bit of unity for the sake of our citizens? Could it be because our political and news media classes have become a bunch of elitests? This upcoming election may tell us a few things about the common citizens of our country.
Our political class is only what we let them be. We (still) have the power of the vote. If we do not know enough about the history of this country and its founding documents and prinicpals to elect people who will govern based on those then we will have elections that tend to resemble the outcomes of “American Idol” and suffer the consequences.
#3 Billy says:
I don’t see how your second sentence follows from your first. If the “political classes” were all a “bunch of elitists,” then one would think that Congress and the President would be all getting along famously, being all elitists together.
The reason that we can’t get a little bit of unity is that the country is deeply, deeply divided, and that split goes all the way from the “elite” classes (whoever they are) all the way down to the “common citizens of our country.” Congress is just reflecting the country’s split.
#1 – in fact there are several provinces in China where the PLA couldn’t make conscription quotas in recent years because the draftees were physically unfit, also due in part to the kids being sickly from the intense pollution there.
Thomas Friedman’s inordinate admiration of China has skewed his writing – which was never terribly good to begin with – far into the ridiculous.
larry morse that may be true but it will probably take years for them to catch up to us in obesity. it truly is disheartening to see the obese outnumber everyone else when i am in a crowd.
ross, you are so right, but i would also venture that they are reflecting the extremes of our country; most people are independent.
tridentine i don’t think he is being over the top in his admiration but i think any admiration of china is unwarranted. they have no qualms about poisoning their own people with pollution or toxic chems in their baby formula, and yet we have allowed them to ruin us financially. they will overtake us but i fear for the future as they seem to have no moral foundation. not having been there myself i am only going by a perception based on news reports and films.
Of course you are right, but the process is well begun.
As to the pollution, this exists to a degree that we could never begin to imagine. Larry