Thank God For Experts

Expert: China will not overtake U.S. in space

The fact that an "expert" has to come out to say something so obvious is evidence of a strange paranoia in the US.

I'm glad China's in space. It may spur NASA to make painful admissions (space shuttles are a waste of money) and important changes (the International Space Station is an expensive political gesture but a scientific yawn).

I'll add to the comments of the "expert:" China - as it currently stands - will not overtake the US in much of anything until its economic system is thoroughly reformed.

Americans have been slow to realize it: closed societies, with centralized command economies and secretive information exchanges, will never compete effectively with open democratic capitalist societies. The free flow of information and goods makes an economy hum.

China will be able to work its way out of poverty. But the Communist Party is increasingly going to be veiwed as an anachronism. It will either be overthrown by the newly-rich, information-hungry fresh leadership that will emerge, or it will transform itself into something that is communist in name only.

China has a future, but Communist China's day has long past. The creaking dinosaurs roaming around Beijing should be preserved in a museum somewhere.
- posted by total @ 10/17/2003 06:03:00 AM .