Children of the Revolution(online.wsj.com)
online.wsj.com
Children of the Revolution
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904491704576572552793150470.html#printMode
4 comments
While I know this isn't the biggest case, sometimes the building are torn down because they can't be fixed. I've watched more than one where I used to live in NC be unable to be fixed for any reasonable amount of cost. Some of them on the order of 100 years old costing 400k+ to fix (while keeping the house historically intact) because of rotting beams and other termite damage.
Now even given that, I really doubt that this was the case with him.
Now even given that, I really doubt that this was the case with him.
>>The seemingly prevalent distaste for old things continues to frustrate me
Sigh, I need to say this about old buildings...
Sweden kept out of both world wars and that was an economic miracle for a previously very poor country.
But despite not getting the cities destroyed by bombing (or street-to-street fighting), lots of old building and whole city centers were torn down in the 1950s and 1960s, to build new buildings.
The whole country has sorely regretted it since then. Surviving old stone houses are generally really expensive.
Please learn from other's stupidity, instead of repeating it; that is partly why our brains evolved to be big.
Edit: Ah, that mansion wasn't even in China. Sorry for bothering.. :-)
Sigh, I need to say this about old buildings...
Sweden kept out of both world wars and that was an economic miracle for a previously very poor country.
But despite not getting the cities destroyed by bombing (or street-to-street fighting), lots of old building and whole city centers were torn down in the 1950s and 1960s, to build new buildings.
The whole country has sorely regretted it since then. Surviving old stone houses are generally really expensive.
Please learn from other's stupidity, instead of repeating it; that is partly why our brains evolved to be big.
Edit: Ah, that mansion wasn't even in China. Sorry for bothering.. :-)
If you want to preserve old buildings, buy them and hold on to them. Prices depends on supply and demand: if you reduce the supply of something and hold demand constant or increase it, that thing becomes valuable. The problem with preserving "old" buildings through legal means it that doing so prevents new supply (which usually means "more units for an acre of land") from coming online, thus increasing housing costs altogether. See: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/a-tale-o... and http://www.amazon.com/Gated-City-Kindle-Single-ebook/dp/B005... for more.
I regret not being able to live in places like Boston and L.A. because poorly conceived preservation laws remove building rights from owners and prevent them from constructing dwellings I and many others might actually be able to afford.
I regret not being able to live in places like Boston and L.A. because poorly conceived preservation laws remove building rights from owners and prevent them from constructing dwellings I and many others might actually be able to afford.
The point was, it is a bit late to preserve old buildings in Sweden... :-)
Re Boston/LA -- that is not relevant for Sweden either, since the biggest city is quite small (ca a million people), so there is space to be used, if it was handled well. (It isn't, but that is another story.)
Re Boston/LA -- that is not relevant for Sweden either, since the biggest city is quite small (ca a million people), so there is space to be used, if it was handled well. (It isn't, but that is another story.)
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"Mr. Bo went to Oxford University... The current cost of that is about £26,000 a
year. His current studies at Harvard's Kennedy School cost about $70,000 a year... A question raised by this prestigious overseas education... is how it was paid for."
I agree with the article's sentiment. That said, would the Wall Street Journal express similar outrage at the son of an American senator attending Oxford? What about the daughter of a German finance minister? Is it really surprising that a wealthy, well-connected Chinese kid went to school at Oxford? I have to wonder just how unbiased the author is.
I agree with the article's sentiment. That said, would the Wall Street Journal express similar outrage at the son of an American senator attending Oxford? What about the daughter of a German finance minister? Is it really surprising that a wealthy, well-connected Chinese kid went to school at Oxford? I have to wonder just how unbiased the author is.
The issue isn't about whether it's surprising that a wealthy, well-connected Chinese kid goes to a school like Harvard or Oxford. The question is, how did a leader within the Chinese Communist Party get wealthy to begin with?
But the American senator or German finance ministers aren't supposed communists who should only be earning around $22,000 per year from their positions. This is all what this article is about.
Chinese ministers barely even claim to be communist these days; anyone in the government who takes communism seriously is seen as left-fringe. It's true that they seem to be miraculously making more money than their official salaries, but that's also true in many countries, including Europe and the US. Some are shadier than others; it ranges from outright dirty stuff (taking bribes, insider trading) to gray-area stuff (accepting free trips and gifts) to semi-legit stuff (giving paid speeches and doing private-sector consulting on the side). US Senators get paid $174,000/year, for example, yet their average net worth is $14 million. Some of that is wealth accumulated before entering office, but a typical Senator also makes quite a bit more than their official salary when in office. Though I can certainly believe that the scale of shadiness is much higher in China.
As a matter of fact, in Europe and the US, when it becomes known that a public official spends much more money than what he/she should be able to afford, it is a scandal. I'm not saying that there is no corruption in the West, just that it is by no mean a double standard to talk about (alleged) corruption in Communist China, as it was said in the comment I was responding to...
Senators also tend to be high-status men who can marry into wealthy families, like Kerry, who married into the Heinz family.
"Do you think in 50 years, 100 years, the world will be any different? It'll always be kings, Mom, even if we don't call them that."
8:27 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZMWoR4oIc8
Just give us another 100 years, you'll see. :)
8:27 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZMWoR4oIc8
Just give us another 100 years, you'll see. :)
China makes Wall Street look like the Sisters of Charity. 'Serve the People' -- yeah right Lei Feng would be rolling in his grave.
This reads as a tongue in cheek reminder that Facebook is blocked in China.
< He applied for a permit to tear down the century-old mansion and to build a new villa...>
The seemingly prevalent distaste for old things continues to frustrate me. So much history and tradition cast aside.
I'm disappointed the article dwelled almost entirely on Bo GuaGua after an opening that suggested a more diverse article. While the hypocrisy is particularly striking in China (due to it's stated values and recent history), I think the privilege of children belonging to wealthy and powerful families is well known to be a worldwide phenomenon.
That said, the separation of rich and poor is painfully visible in China. Glowing shopping centers with carefully planned architecture and spotless windows stand directly across from tattered shops with merchants huddled amongst piles of cheap goods and street vendors selling stir fried noodles for less than 1 USD.