For nearly four decades, China has invested in roads, railways, and other infrastructure. But the most important of these investments was education. The United States has done none of this and is even regressing.
John Richard Schrock is Professor of Biology Emeritus at Emporia State University in Kansas. He is currently in China. While China is growing its universities, the U.S. is retreating from its historic commitment to make higher education accessible to all qualified students.
China’s University Expansion
In 1992, I looked down from a window in an old high-rise classroom building at East China Normal University in Shanghai. It was noon and rivers of students were streaming into the “canteen” with their water thermoses in one hand and eating utensils in the other. Food would be a limited selection of rice or noodles with vegetables. These were the elite of China’s academic elite, the very top students who scored A+ on the Chinese high school graduation exam. They had earned the privilege to attend university free.
But facilities were old and worn. They would hurry to their classes in unpainted classrooms because…
I enjoy reading historical fiction. I also watch movies and TV series based on history. For instance, I recently watched the BBC’s Season 2 for The Last Kingdom (this one doesn’t take place in China).
Back in 2008, I bought the first version of the TV series for The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (1995), an epic about China’s history that has 84 episodes (45 minutes each for 63-hours). Based on the classical novel by Luo Guanzhong, this epic series covers the end of the Han Dynasty.
This episode with English subtitles is from a remake (2010) of the TV series.
Don’t let the title fool you. This story is not about romance as Westerners define that word. This historical fiction, based on fact, is about the romance of politics, war, and conquest. But don’t be disappointed, because there’s even a love story that comes with the ultimate sacrifice.
The novel was written in the 14th century and was more than a thousand pages long with 120 chapters. The translated English version is longer. After the Han Dynasty collapsed (206 BC to 219 AD), China shattered into three warring kingdoms.
This story is about how China was reunified as one nation again a few decades after the collapse of the Han Dynasty (205 B.C. – 220 A.D. I’ve seen the entire series once and plan to watch it again. When Jesus Christ was born, the Han Dynasty was more than 200 years old and had more than two hundred years left before it came to an end.
Recode.net reported in May 2017, why manufacturing jobs are coming back to the U.S. – even as companies buy more robots. “In April, 12.4 million Americans worked in manufacturing, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s up by about 25,000 jobs from a year prior, and almost a million from early 2010. But it’s still down by about one third, or more than six million jobs, from 1980. …
“Last year, for the first time in decades, more manufacturing jobs came back to the United States than left, according to data compiled by the Reshoring Initiative, a firm that works to bring jobs back to the U.S. …
“Even though now both human jobs and robotic manufacturing are on the rise, in the end machines do take away jobs from humans. For every robot brought into the U.S. workforce between 1990 and 2007, six human jobs were lost,”
However, jobs coming back will not stop the popular political pass time in the United States to bash China for stealing jobs from US workers.
In addition, Smirking Chimp.com says, “The perception among some Americans is that immigrant labor and off shoring of jobs are the major causes of unemployment. Indeed, American corporations choose to utilize migrant labor and off shoring to India and China in order to pay out lower wages. Yet, studies have estimated that off shoring accounts for 10 percent of unemployment and would only affect two percent of employed Americans.”
Does that mean that 90% of jobs lost in America were to robots and computers and not to China or other countries with cheap labor?
No matter the facts reveal, it is a safe bet that if someone is out of work, it is easier to blame it on China or Japan or India or South Korea, or Bangladesh, for example, than on some machine probably made in America by another machine that caused the lost job.
And it isn’t just the United States that firing humans and replacing them with robots. China is also doing it. Quartz Media reports, “It’s not just the US: Chinese factories are turning to automation as wages rise. … In 2015, according to the International Federation of Robotics, factories in China bought 68,000 industrial robots, 20% more than the year before, and more than all European countries combined.”
Next time you hear someone curse China for stealing jobs from the United States, see if you can shut them up long enough to tell them what’s really happening. “It isn’t other countries that are stealing our jobs, Stupid, its robots.”
What will happen when there are no jobs left for humans because robots took them all? Will the robots become the consumers of the products they produce?
Early this year, Time Magazine reported How China Is Remaking the Global Film Industry. “Chinese companies have snapped up Hollywood studios, theaters and production companies. Last year Dalian Wanda Group, the Chinese real estate and entertainment conglomerate, announced it was buying Legendary Entertainment studio — producer of blockbusters like Jurassic World — for $3.5 billion …”
For instance, The Great Wall, starring William Dafoe, Matt Damon and Pedro Pascal and produced by China’s Zhang Yimou cost $150 million to make, but only made about $45 million in the United States while raking in more than $289 million outside of the U.S. The money for this film came from China. I saw the film, and I enjoyed it. If you know about China’s Great Wall, imagine what it must have been like when it was still being used long before it became a tourist attraction. This film gives us an idea of what that must have been like even if the film was based on fiction.
There are more videos on YouTube with other segments from the film.
It also appears that the Chinese government has done some forgiving. RealFilmCareer.com reports, “Zhang Zhao fled China for the U.S. soon after the crushing of the 1989 student democracy movement. But Mr. Zhang returned to China in 1998, and now he’s the man with the money: As head of Enlight Pictures, a unit of Enlight Media and one of the new film companies aspiring to tell Chinese stories to a rapidly expanding domestic audience, he has plans for an initial slate of 40 movies, and no problem with financing.”
Then there is Huayi Brothers Media, which the May issue of “The Hollywood Reporter” says raised $160 million in an IPO on the Zhenzhen stock exchange. The Huayi brothers have already released over 50 films, most of them huge box office hits in China.
“Five years ago,” Wang Zhongjun said, “we hoped (the Hollywood studios) could bring us support and investments. Now we’re helping them,” reports The Hollywood Reporter. In 2016, China’s box office total was $6.58 billion.
However, whenever I’m in Shanghai, I enjoy visiting this shopping area. Go early; it gets crowded.
The Huxinting Teahouse has been around for a long time, and the last time this pavilion was restored was in 1784. Then it was turned into the tea house in 1855.
The area in Shanghai around the Huxinting Teahouse is a good place to shop. Hint, do not pay asking prices. Be willing to bargain. Start low and meet in the middle. Don’t be too cheap either, because the business you are buying from has to earn enough money to survive too.
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse 
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