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I can't really say much about the Chinese issue of " keepiing up " but I know as a culture China has always HAD maintained a certain level of prosperity, enlightenment, education and social mobility that the rest of the world never had.  You have to remember that China as a country is the oldest civilization in existence and probably predates the Indian subcontinent civilization and social structure by at least 1000 years, but that's a conservative guess.  China has always been an easy target for invasions from barbaric tribes and peoples who looked at it as fertile ground to plunder and pillage at their will.  The Mongols, the Imperial Western powers in the 19th century, the Japanese in the 20th century during WWII... the point is the Chinese ALWAYS had the Jones mentality even before most of the Europeans did and they show it in their capacity for trade and commerce.  However, like Nicaragua qnd all class-based socieities it was concentrated among the wealthy few, the ruling families who made up the aristocracy and who kept the common people in virtual economic serfdom and slavery so that they kept everything for themselves and nobody else had access to the things that make one man hold a superior position to another one.

    Mao, Deng, and the Cultural Revolution changed all of that.  After Mao came to power he forcibly wiped out the elite class in bloody purges and instituted a system of widespread terror and murder that has been copied in every nation that has fallen to Communism before ( Russia ) and since ( Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua, etc. ) The Chinese have to keep with the Joneses because it's pretty much a cultural mandate of theirs going back 10,000 years when they were the dominant power in Asia, and since they have seen themselves as such and don't even acknowledge the other Asian peoples as even worth mentioning or treating as equals you'll see how they believe that through their money and their great zeal for learning and thirst for success how and why they are surpassing even Europe and America now and pretty soon will dominate the world.

     I've read here and I think you have stated that your wife is from the Phillipines... I know Asian cultures pretty well since I have grown up around many Asians, particularly Southern Asians like the Vietnamese and also the Koreans, and being from a Right-Wng family we have a great respect for the Japanese and acknowledge what the Chinese have done for the world.  I don't know if you have casual conversations with your wife about other Asian cultures but if you ever ask her point blank " Do Filipinos like Chinese? " she'll tell you " HELL NO! " in any way, shape or form she can.  The Chinese are seen as the Carpetbaggers of the world in any nation they go to, sometimes worse then the Jews themselves since they APPEAR to care about the country they're in, want to blend in, want to be a part of that society but they never are and always maintain their roots to the old country.  Idi Amin in Uganda realized this and it really doesn't matter how, but he kicked them out of Uganda and subsequently Uganda fell behind economically through his system of forced expulsions and the like of races that weren't exclusively African, even though the Chinese contribute vastly to the commerce of any nation they're in like I have already stated.

     The Koreans are very different than the Chinese in so much that their culture WAS almost based exclusively on isolationist racial ethnic policies that allowed them to keep their racial hegemony for many centuries, they even paid a tribute of 2000 lbs. ( i believe it was that amount, not sure but you can look it up ) of gold every year to the Mongols so that they wouldn't invade their homeland.  The Koreans were VERY, VERy opposed and still are to race mixing expcet that the younger generation that has emigrated to other parts of the world is caught up in the NWO mentality that everybody has to be one race, get along cos we're one united human family, eat the same foods and watch the same T.V. programs, worship the same gods irrespective of social, political and cultural differences cos in this new melting pot of the planet we call Earth we all have to think alike and look alike, talk alike and walk alike and just plain forget about the past cos it's all over, the injustices, the wars, the bad blood, everything that came before has been washed away.  You've seen how the wars are going in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, do you think it's any coincidence that the way the Afghanis kick the shit out of dvery empire that invades their homeland is a freak occurence of nature?  No, those people just want to keep their racial, ethnic, and social customs alive and don't care about money, power, worldview, etc.  They have no need for money and jewels and Mercedes Benzes and Rolex watches, those goatherders and sheperders from the rough, inhospitable mountains of Kandahar and Kazahkhistan and Uzbekistan.  It's all of us spoon-fed educated types from wherever we're from, golden cradles in Latin America or brick Tudor homes in Boston who care about that stuff.  Watch and see how the war is going to continue in Afghanistan and possibly even continue, Peter, watch and see.  If one Afghani sheperd even learns how to appreciate a Mercedes Benz I'll rest my case and march proudly into the new Oceania of Big Brother's new global empire.