I’ve talked to enough Chinese to know that it’s a commonly held opinion that if the average American eats and raises children a certain way and the U.S. is the world’s only super power, then if the Chinese eat and act the same way, China will become a super power like the U.S.
This flawed belief may explain what my friend (in Part 1) wrote about the spoiled children of China’s middle class being “WAY fatter” and with a sense of entitlement.
It might also explain the exploding popularity of American fast food in China leading to an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer, which is parallel to what has happened and is still happening in the U.S. and the UK.
To see if the United States and China are showing signs of an impending collapse, I checked Wikipedia’s Fall of Civilizations where a summary of the opinions of twelve experts are available.
Here’s what three of the experts have to say:
- Edward Gibbons in The Decline of the Roman Empire wrote, “The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay…”
- Arnold J. Toynbee in his A study of History wrote, “The cause of the fall of a civilization occurred when the cultural elite became a parasitic elite.”
- Jeffrey A. McNeely suggested, “A review of historical evidence shows that past civilizations have tended to over-exploit their forests and that such abuse of important resources has been a significant factor in the decline of the over-exploiting society.”
After reading what all twelve experts said about the collapse of civilizations, it was obvious that there may be several causes that bring on a collapse.
However, when three of the twelve experts all have different opinions and all three of those opinions are happening in America and starting to happen in China, I think that is a good reason to be concerned.
One thing we can be sure of, lobbyists from the fast food and sugar industries will find a few so-called experts to disagree—a lot.
Return to or start with Part 1.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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When I came to Okinawa in early 1960 as a US Marine I was immediately taken by the wonders of the people and the culture.Since Okinawa had both Chinese and Japanese history I wanted to study the way that this came about.The chronicles of Japanese history seem to be more structured where Chinese history seemed to happen a bit more by chance because of the vast difference of its people and the background of its many emperor claimers.In reference of your present article,Remember most of the images of a smiling fat Buddha like person on printed calendars and statues.This symbolized wealth and happiness.Through the sixty’s and most of the seventy’s I would see some of these children.Their parents were proud that showed they had the money to have a fat child.As it stands now with the western fast food influence,one has to travel to outside the city s to see the difference.Fifty yeas ago If you pointed this obesity to the an Asian there could be a loss of face,but today they might just look around themselves at others and shrug their shoulders.
When almost everyone else looks the same, then people shrug and don’t bother to question it. The same thing is happening in the U.S. where 70% of the people are fat and more than a third are obese. In recent years there has even been pressure from politically correct groups of fat and obese people on the media to change the image of beauty in ads from slender to larger framed women who don’t look fat but still have an hour glass figure.