Billions of Entrepreneurs
February 5th, 2008
This is a new book that just came out that I would approve for one of your book reviews:
From the book’s description on Amazon, looks like this could be a relevant book to read following Dr. Bardhan’s excellent and very informative session with you last week.
Entry Filed under: Pre-Departure, China, India, Pre-Departure
1 Comment Add your own
1. Gary Chou | February 7th, 2008 at 12:30 am
Just bought this book tonight and plan to read it over the Atlantic Ocean this weekend.
Opening chapter:
Yale University’s President, Richard C Levin, lamented, “The Mayor of Shanghai asked me why…every schoolchild in China can identify the author and date of our Declaration of Independence and so few of ours can identify when the Qing Dynasty fell, when the Long March occurred, and when the Communists took power.”
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Since most people don’t know this, I just want to add:
Qing Dynasty failed when Sun Yat-Sen succeeded in his 11th revolution attempt (1911), and established Republic of China (now Taiwan).
ROC at inception encompassed the entire China, was one of the victorious powers of WWII, one of the five founding nations of United Nations.
ROC lost control of China as Communist party won various battles which resulted in the retreat of the government to Taiwan Island in 1949.
The China today that people know of is really not the China who took over Qing Dynasty, or the China that won WW2, or the China that founded UN. That was all Taiwan. The China people know of today was a communist party that gained popularity from support of low income farmers (like all communists governments grew).
I just want to make this clear because many people I spoke to thought Taiwan is just another Asian country, or related to Thailand. No, Taiwan is the Democratic half of China, just like West Germany was the democratic half of Germany and South Korea is the democratic half of Korea.
Also, all democratic countries in the world recognized ROC (Taiwan) as the real China until 1970s, when they switched to People Republic of China, because of their increasing international power. (The really sucked for us.)
That was when US military removed its permanent bases (7th fleet) and embassy from Taiwan. Now there is only unofficial relation between the two countries with pseudo embassies called “America in Taipei” in Taiwan and “Taipei Economic Culture Representative Office” in US.
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