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So, more folks are blowing big wind about America’s Chinese future (there’s a no-registration-required link here).
Mr. New York Times Friedman writes:
I still believe that when the history of this era is written, the trend that historians will cite as the most significant will not be 9/11 and the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. It will be the rise of China and India. How the world accommodates itself to these rising powers, and how America manages the economic opportunities and challenges they pose, is still the most important global trend to watch.
It really hits you when you see the super-size buildings sprouting in Shanghai, or when you look at the world through non-American eyes. Kishore Mahbubani, the dean of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, told me the other day that Asia right now “is the most optimistic place in the world.”
He also opines that Our New Democratic Congress (sorry, I’m in a capitalization mood) is going to be paying a lot more attention to China, because they got elected on a stop-spending-time-with-Iraq-and-start-paying-attention-to-m-m-m-money platform. And China is the big economic spoiler in the global m-m-m-money race.
So, China’s going to be a THING in the news moreso than ever, either as the ostensible source of all our woes or else as our only real competition in the global m-m-m-marketplace.
China’s already been implicated in some problems with the dollar. I’m no economist, but words like “depreciation” and “inflation” make me nervous.
“The exchange rate of the U.S. dollar, which is the major reserve currency, is going lower, increasing the depreciation risk for East Asian reserve assets,” wrote Wu Xiaoling, deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, in an academic paper. Wu is ranked by Forbes as the 35th-most-powerful woman in the world.
Wu’s comments marked the second time this month that a Chinese central banker had made dollar-wary comments. On Nov. 9, the central bank governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, was quoted as saying that China has plans to diversify its assets into “many instruments,” presumably moving away from the dollar.
For traveling families, the exchange rate is getting lower and lower — sliding closer to 7 yuan to the dollar (thus making those cool squeaky shoes ever slightly more expensive for us). But it might go even farther….
The sudden weakness of the U.S. dollar began late last week, soon after Chinese officials suggested that holding a lot of dollars might be a losing investment strategy. Investors read that as a signal that the massive trade and financial imbalances between Asia and the U.S. may be about to unwind.
The chief worry is that if China’s central bank — the largest foreign holder of U.S. dollars — begins to unload its reserves, the dollar will plunge.
China’s also moving into the Middle East, sending love letters to Iran (doesn’t like America, has lots of oil) and Saudi Arabia (likes America, has lots of oil).
One thing that might help us Anglophones keep going in this Amazing New Easternized Future (capitals! love ‘em!) is Google. The big search engine company has a plan to use statistics to translate Mandarin automagically.
In other words, instead of trying to teach a computer grammar (which is the way translators usually ((don’t)) work), they tell the computer to compare texts with other translations and seeing which one matches the best. Matching things is something computers are pretty good at (and something Google is good at getting computers to do).
“We look for matches between texts and find several different translations,” Norvig says. “You take all these possibilities and ask, What is the most probable in terms of what’s been done in the past?”
Rather than checking every translated word against the rules and exceptions of the English language, the program begins with a blank slate and accumulates a more accurate view of the language as a whole. It “learns” the language as the language is used, not as the language is prescribed.
So there’s hope that we’ll still be talking.
Friedman has been writing a lot about China lately; three or four columns in a row.
In fact, it seems everywhere I turn, China is the topic of discussion. I’m not sure if it is hightend awareness or a real snowball coming down the mountain.
I just finished reading John Naisbitt’s ‘Mind Set!’ and Chris Anderson’s ‘The Long Tail’. (I have been loading up on the pop business books lately.) In any case, both authors spent a pile of words on China.
I’m not sure if I should be thrilled to be alive and able to watch such a huge shift in global power and influence or scared that my country of birth, America, is about to be washed away.
Well, maybe not washed away, but I certainly don’t think China is on the radar the way it should be.
Matt