Misallocation of capital in China is a serious problem, but it's not as critical as most the doomsayers would have everyone believe. Capital can be created surprisingly quickly, it is human capital that is the hardest to develop and the most critical for successful societies. Postwar Germany and indeed most of Europe essentially had their entire productive capacities obliterated and a significant percentage of their most productive populations exterminated. Yet Germany rebuilt and recovered in a decade. China's capital misallocation will inevitably result in a sharp and painful correction. What all the idiots blithely assume is that history ends then and there and China's economy will mirror that of Japan's post 90's. Total factor productivity growth in China has been explosive, naturally give it's transition from an agricultural economy, but it still hasn't anywhere near approached it's theoretical peak. The latest data at the WHO organization has childhood malnutrition in India as severe. 19% of Indian children are three standard deviations or more below mean weights. China's is approximately an order of magnitude lower. To echo Razib, game, set, match.

Interesting. From my understanding it would appear that the Chinese and Japanese are as similarly related as relatively distinct European populations like the Finns and Swedes (whom despite being near physically indistinguishable are not so genetically). The Chinese themselves are near the same order of magnitude of closely related European peoples such as the Germans and the English but slightly more so. The Fst values for various Indian populations though seem to be quite distinctive with even relatively close Fst values being on the same scale as the variance between the Japanese and the Chinese. I do not see how such distinct population clusters were able to form in such close geographic proximity.

The Chinese are nothing if not consistent in their dislike of god botherers. 
 
55-20 in their unfavorable impression of Muslims, 55-20 in their unfavorable impression of Jews, 55-22 in their unfavorable impression of Christians. 
 
Doesn't look like China will be converted to the worship of any Mesopotamian sun diety anytime soon.

The manner in which foods are prepared are just as critical as the foods that are consumed. A lot of Indian staples are heavy in starches and oils. More importantly social and cultural patterns for Indian women limit even meager expressions of physical exertion. The surplus of unskilled labor means that for any traditional Indian woman of means, they will have servants do everything. Labor force participation rates for women in India are low, coupled with sedentary lives at home and unhealthy diets inevitably leads to the phenomenon you see in India. Obesity for the upper classes and emaciation for everyone else.

Bahumbug, Cameron simply plagiarized Poul Anderson's Call Me Joe.

ARGH! Razib, this reminds me of a data set I've been struggling to find for a long time now. Some time back, I found some place online that had much more detailed data than this post, but I have never been able to find it again. Not only did it list per capita meat consumption, but it also listed per capita caloric intake. More than that, it actually broke down the source of the calories into separate categories. You could compare how much chicken a person in the US ate to how much chicken a person in Canada ate. It wasn't only chicken too, it broke down meat consumption into pretty much all major subcategories including chicken, beef, pork, mutton, and seafood. Not only this, but it also listed the consumption of oils, sugars, starches, etc. and how much they contributed to individuals' diets. All of this was packaged and available in an easy to read radial chart that (drum roll please) allowed you to compare food consumption trends of one country to another or groups. How much seafood does Italy consume compared to the OECD average? It was all there. 
 
Unfortunately I've never been able to find this data again, but I know it's out there somewhere. My agony is nigh biblical, having tasted from the tree of knowledge only to be cast out and denied it forever. I would appreciate if anyone else could manage to locate it.

Ah this is where I part ways with you Razib. While the power of the Marxist school of historiography which attributes events to underlying socio-economic phenomenon is compelling, I have to admit it does have it's limitations. One of which is it's heavy handed reliance on inevitabilities and omittance of the importance of the individual. I don't think there was anything inevitable about the Anshi rebellion, but rather that it resulted from a series of glaringly obvious errors by emperor Xuanzong. An Lushan should have been executed for insubordination early in his career but for the emperor's clemency. Multiple reports from other officials that pointed out that An Lushan was planning sedition were ignored. An Lushan was given THREE simultaneous governorships in the heart of Northern China by the emperor despite the obvious concentration of power away from the court that this caused. The final draw was when Xuanzong actually dismissed a whole slew of generals and appointed a new group of non-Han all recommended by An Lushan. This had to have required a degree of obliviousness that seems nigh superhuman. An Lushan's power ultimately derived from what the Tang Court chose to give and not from his Sogdian connections. It was his political acumen and toadying that got him as far as it did, not military skill. If An Lushan had died from falling off his horse, then the An Shi rebellion would have never occurred. A decade of civil war would have been avoided, and subsequently the latter Tang's dependence on local gentry elites and foreign barbarians like the Uighurs to raise manpower would have never emerged.

The Li family claimed descent from Kings of the Western Liang and earlier as military men during the Han. While I wouldn't be surprised if they also claimed descent from Confucius, that wouldn't be there primary source of legitimacy. Icing on the cake as it were. While there were plenty of mixed Han/Nomadic states during the sixteen kingdoms era, the Western Liang wasn't one of them. That is not to say that genealogically speaking, the Li family did not include ancestry of foreign provenance, as they most certainly did (witness the diffusion of bloodlines in Europe with German nobles in Russia, Dutch Kings in England, French nobles ruling Sweden, German origin English descended monarchs everywhere), but I find it a stretch to describe them as culturally mixed barbarians when they themselves would most likely have been offended by such an utterance.  
 
Also I am poleaxed that you completely omit mention of the effects of An Lushan's rebellion on the subsequent decline of the Tang empire.

Beckwith's attitude that you describe is very similar to that of Robert E. Howard's. Conan the Cimmerian was the heroic (yet barbaric) foil to the perceived degeneracy of the modern age and the modern man. Both authors seem to share a similar contempt for the rule laden sedentary lifestyle of civilization as contrasted to the more dynamic societies of the nomads and otherwise semi-barbarous peoples. 
 
I on the other hand believe this to be nothing more than romanticist myth making. If the societies of the nomads were so superior, why were they constantly seeking to invade and plunder the "peripheries" of sedentary civilization and not the other way around. Why did the nomadic peoples keep wanting to migrate further and further into settled lands? The sounds of marching feet rings truer than the music of poets' verse.  
 
It probably really sucked to live on the Eurasian steppes, even more so than slaving away on a field of dirt as a peasant. Say what you will about farm life, but most people would probably consider it preferable to living under the tender mercies of some two kopeck chieftain whose duty is to protect you from the predations of another two kopeck warlord several hills over. I suspect the average person then as now did not find an existence subject to such random and prolific violence to be as admirable when alternatives existed.

Broward county is the second most Jewish county in the U.S. after Brooklyn!? 
 
I should have figured as much after the last time I caught a Saturday Matinee and the audience was entirely filled with Jews. It was an odd sight, a singular young Chinese man amidst a sea of Jewish retirees. Probably didn't hurt that I was watching a foreign language film involving Jews and the Holocaust.  
 
P.S. the Seinfeld Stereotypes. They are all true.

The singularity is a myth. Waiting for the Eschaton is more pointless than for Godot. Entropy is a harsh and merciless mistress. Heat death will occur before any such flowering.

Co-option doesn't work, at least not alone without demographic swamping and wholesale cultural assimilation/annihilation. The problem with co-opting is that it creates a temporary loyalty that only lasts as long as the state does. Many of the elites in the central Asian Stans were lukewarm about the dissolution of the Soviet at least compared to their counter parts in Eastern Europe. Yet in the end, they moved with the tide and sensing weakness at the center after the failed putsch decided to strike out on their own and form their own power blocks. Despite being heavily Sovietized or Russified to the extent that they barely spoke their own languages proficiently and whose thought patterns echoed their Russian counter-parts, as witnessed by their post-Soviet Russian style of autocracy, they none less decided on independence sensing the mood of their less Sovietized masses. Never forget, a co-opted elite are an opportunistic elite. Reliable only with someone looking over their shoulders. 
 
I suppose you can call me a Han nationalist. In a way, my intellectual journey mirrors that of none too few Jews of the Cold War. From Trotskyite left to the "unconventional" Right (I'm a fan of Steve Sailer). Only my metamorphoses was more accelerated and complete than theirs were. There are stranger people than a Han nationalist whose ideology synthesizes American Conservatism of the belle epoque (pre-FDR), with race realism and the undisguised advocacy of the interests of a very extended family. For example, the tens of millions of Americans who could delude themselves into thinking that Sarah Palin was the unheralded messiah of American Conservatism and the Republican Party. Or the anti-Chinese nationalists. People who can simultaneously attribute generalized phenotypes to the Chinese race while insisting that they their existence as a cohesive group is a myth! All the while quixotically championing the causes of failed ethnoses whom they are completely unrelated to or will ever have any contact with.

Demographic issues facing China and the West are not really comparable as the author of that article is extrapolating far too much from the US and Western Europe. The OECD states simply have far too many entitlement programs that cannot be sustained for an elderly population that is living far longer and a younger population that is no longer large enough to support them. The simple answer is to slash benefits, a task easier said than done given the attitude of baby boomers and their massive voting power.  
 
While China will also be seeing an increasingly larger share of retirees, but they are simply not a major drain on the fiscal position of the state. Only a fraction of the elderly are covered by any pension programs and where they are covered, the payouts are miniscule. The figures in the article aren't anywhere near representative. A $162 a month pension as mentioned by one interviewer is a luxurious rarity by Chinese standards, even the $50 a month if even paid out is very generous. Of course since the Chinese can't vote, the elderly can't vote to appropriate resources from workers.  
 
I simply don't see how this is a cause of instability in China. I have yet to see a revolution fostered by the 65+ demanding more welfare benefits and wider medical coverage. The people entering retirement within the coming decade will have grown up during the Great Leap Forward; compared to eating boiled tree bark, a lack of affordable health care is small potatoes. The greatest challenge for the Chinese state is, and will continue to be, finding gainful productive employment for the multitudes of aspiring young. 
 
Entering an era of demographic aging and decline with a shrinking productive worker base and massive future welfare obligations is different than entering it with a massive underutilized and increasingly productive worker base and no social security system to speak of. Chinese hospitals will literally (and I'm not being figurative this time!) throw people out on the street to die if they can't pay for treatment. Incredibly harsh but ultimately more sustainable and realistic than treating everyone who comes in with a tooth ache and leaving the taxpayer with the bill.

Razib, Im not sure how much more difficult it is for Han Chinese to live in Tibet than it is for Tibetans due to biological differences. Steve Sailer noted that Europeans were more prone to miscarriages in La Paz than the Amerindians as proof, but he didn't cite just mow much more prone to miscarriages they were and in any case it isn't immediately applicable to the Chinese, nor does a say a 50% rise in miscarriage incidents lead to a 50% decrease in total fertility.  
 
In any case, El Alto which is at an even higher altitude than La Paz has a population that is nearly 20% European according to wiki which depending on how you count is anywhere between 25% to 100% higher than the total relative European population of Bolivia.

Part of the problem of Americans like Ross Terrill attempting to use their version of history to counter the mainstream Communist Chinese interpretation of history in a bid to de-legitimize the contemporary Chinese state is that it is literally pissing into the wind. For one thing, those most critical people that need to be convinced cannot be convinced. The average Zhou six pack in Chengdu is no more interested in the political disintegration of the existing system anymore than the Standing Committee member in Zhong Nan Hai. The second factor is that undoing the manipulation of history (or remanipulating it) to serve the present circumstances does not necessarily change the present circumstances.  
 
Manchuria wasn't always an intrinsic part of the Chinese state as defined by the communist party. It is now; the Manchus are entirely assimilated and the population identify as Chinese. Inner Mongolia wasn't always an intrinsic part of the Chinese state (Forgetting for the moment the amusing notion of letting nomads define what is "their" land). Again, it is now; the Mongolians are mostly assimilated and the population identify as Chinese. Xinjiang wasn't always an intrinsic part of the Chinese state. It is now, with the Uighurs reduced to an ever shrinking marginalized minority. Tibet wasn't always an intrinsic part of China either... but it will be! 
 
The problem of course with all the knuckleheads chanting Free Tibet or Free Turkestan is the fact that they are not dissimilar to the more doctrinaire hard liners in China (forgoing for the moment the vast power disparity as to what either faction can effect on the ground; that is the difference between everything and nothing). Both are wedded to ideological pillars that limit their horizons. Chinese nationalism and Marxism/Leninism for one, vacuous Western Liberalism for the other. The Chinese can no more turn the Tibetans and Uighurs into happy singing and dancing minority ethnics than Westerners can actually turn them into viable independent nations. However, there is where the aforementioned power imbalance tilts the game in favor of the Chinese. While the Chinese state cannot demand their love, the power of the state can be used to command their obedience, weaken their relevance, or simply destroy them altogether. 
 
The contemporary Western liberal operates under the prettiest of delusions. Denial of HBD and that equality of opportunity doesn't equal equality of outcome is only one of their problems. This manifests itself actually plenty of times regarding Tibet in Xinjiang when they complain that the minorities are not as economically successful as the Han emigres, as if the Chinese state were actually responsible for the income disparities. If they aren't even willing to acknowledge reality in America, how could they do it in China. The second denial is that it assumes history is at an end and that the Chinese will fail in their attempts to inc
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Sichuanese, Cantonese, Shanghainese, and Hunanese are avidly advocating increased cultural nationalism and resistance to Beijing central control. Ethnic strife did not dismantle the former Soviet Union, but it did come apart along boundaries defined in large part by ethnic and national difference. 
 
Silly me, and here I was thinking that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics dissolved into it's component Soviet Socialist Republics. I have to make a greater effort to for more imprecision, redundancy, and obfuscation from now on. I must have also missed all those Hunanese Fengqing posting on the internet how their minority culture is being oppressed by the Han. I mean, it's not like the profusion of mass media and the internet is having a cultural homogenizing affect like it is everywhere else in the god damn world. 
 
Mandarin was imposed as the national language early in the 20th century and has become the lingua franca, but, like Swahili in Africa, it must often be learned in school and is rarely used in everyday life across much of China. 
 
Hey guys, stop speaking Mandarin! Don't you know it's rarely used in much of China? Bourgeois concepts such as dyglosia have no place in the People's Republic comrades! 
 
Indeed, one might even say it has become popular to be ?ethnic? in today?s China. Mongolian hot pot, Muslim noodle and Korean barbecue restaurants proliferate in every city, while minority clothing, artistic motifs and cultural styles adorn Chinese private homes. In Beijing, one of the most popular restaurants is the Tibetan chain Makye-ame. There, the nouveau riche of Beijing eat exotic foods such as yak kabobs served by beautiful waitresses in Tibetan clothing during Tibetan music and dance performances. 
 
As every red blooded Han will tell you, eating hotpot, Xinjiang style noodles, and Korean barbecue automatically makes you a filthy Han Jian race traitor. Eating Yak at a Tibetan establishment full of waitresses in Tibetan costumes (Han waitresses I might add, they are sneaky like that) demonstrates multiculturalism and ethnic identification with Tibetans. It has absolutely nothing, I repeat nothing at all, to do with demonstrating social status by eating exotic, expensive food and appropriating Tibetan"ness" and subjugating it in context of a dominant Han culture objectifying and disneyfying the "Other". Might I add that I also happen to have a fondness for fried chicken and watermelon, thus I identify culturally with the American black (down with whitey!). 
 
As any Mandarin-speaking Beijing resident will tell you, bargaining for vegetables or cellular telephones in Guangzhou or Shanghai markets is becoming more difficult for them due to growing pride in the local languages: Non-native speakers always pay a higher price. Rising self-awareness among the Cantonese is paralleled by the reassertion of identity amon
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