Obama Compares the US and China and Prefers China

I this post I commented that Obama compares America unfavorably to China. It's common for Obama to criticize the US for what he perceives to be its failings.

Dan Riehl expands on that.

It's lost in the Veep hype for now. Down the stretch that won't be the case. After he is softened up and a growing number of Americans are given reasons for concern over Obama's Leftism - there's this and some pertinent facts on China below.

Obama is either incredibly naive, terribly misinformed, a communist, just flat out dumb or all of the above to be caught on tape making a statement like that.

I can just imagine the voice over now. It wouldn't even require half of this:

In all this activity it greatly helps to have a secretive planning bureaucracy and a government that brooks little dissent. In Britain it took as long to conduct a public inquiry into the proposed construction of Heathrow's Terminal Five as it took to build Beijing's new airport terminal from scratch.

There was no consultation with the public on the terminal. Nor was there any public debate about the construction of Beijing's third runway, notwithstanding the noise pollution already suffered by thousands of nearby residents.

Chinese official Xu Li said, Once a plan is made, it is executed. “Democracy”, she says, “sacrifices efficiency.”

For Beijing's airport expansion, 15 villages were flattened and 10,000 residents resettled. They were barred from unemployment benefits and other welfare privileges though their farmland had been grabbed. Officials threatened them with violence if they refused to leave.

The World Bank says that roads are sometimes built only to convert countryside into revenue-generating urban land. Combined with a lack of adequate public transport, Beijing's polluted air and congested streets, to which 1,000 cars are added daily, are evidence of the problem.

Chinese official Xu Li said, Once a plan is made, it is executed. “Democracy”, she says, “sacrifices efficiency.”

The government wants to build a new mag Lev train line. Residents along the route are fearful of noise and radiation from the trains.

Complaints still abound about the way things work. Highways—both expressways and other intercity roads—are studded with traffic-slowing toll booths. China reportedly has 70% of the world's tolled roads and its tolls are the highest in the world (using exchange rates adjusted according to currencies' purchasing power). To cut costs, lorries routinely overload. This helps to make the roads among the most dangerous in the world (89,000 deaths in 2006 by official reckoning; the actual number may be much higher). And it pushes up the cost of maintaining them.

Chinese official Xu Li said, Once a plan is made, it is executed. “Democracy”, she says, “sacrifices efficiency.”

In China, many laborers are lucky to make the equivalent of $8,000 a year. And for that they often work 16 hour days, seven days a week.

And Barack Obama wants America to be more like China? You are kidding me, right?

America has its faults. It is, after all, populated by human beings. We are less than angels. But to be compared to China and found wanting is the sort of thing that gets you votes from the Harvard faculty but nowhere else. Especially not from the "bitter clingers."

Dan Riehl asks:

Did Obama Just Lose The Election?

He's so far out of his depth that he could drown.