Shanghai Tan

Did you know?

• By 2010, India will surpass Japan in purchasing power parity
• By 2020, China will surpass the U.S. in purchasing power parity
• By 2041, India’s economy will be twice as big as Japan’s
• By 2041, China will become the world’s largest economy
• Asians comprise only 5% of the U.S population, but …
  • 15% of the PhDs in engineering
  • 13% of PhDs in computer science
  • 13.3% of BS degrees in engineering
• 2002: Asian-Americans owned 27% of all minority-owned business in U.S. (1.1 million businesses, 49% of the total gross receipts, 46% of MBE employees)
• 2006: Median Asian-American household income over $64,200 (14K higher than any other race group)
• 1990 – 2011: Asian-American purchasing power will grow 434%

Based on these predictions from UN, I really feel good to have moved to Shanghai at this period. By the time of my retirement, Asia will be like North America, and vice-versa!

(Updated 2009/1/23) Oh! I forgot to mention about Canada… With an aging population of roughly 1/10th of USA’s, but owning a reasonably stable huge territory, we can only imagine that every Canadian (including me) will get a bigger share of the natural resources as the population is shrinking, and therefore automatically become richer and richer (ye!). Unfortunately, all the extra wealth are being used to feed a flock of incompetent and greedy politicians, including our beautiful but useless Governor General Michaëlle Jean, a troop of losers debating about pointless ideologies and fighting for power all year long!

For all my proudness that Canada is still an important member of the G8 as well as NATO, I can only imagine that, by the middle of the century, Canada’s role in world will be as important as Spain’s role in Asia… virtually nothing!

While the world has learned the concept of United We Stand long before modern history, a quarter of Canadian population, namely most of the Quebekers, have been fighting to separate this tiny population into smaller chunks, singing Divided We Win for the past four hundred years. This will lead to the inevitable loop of even greater division if they ever win their cause one day. Once all the Quebekers are grouped into one single entity (or nation as they prefer to call themselves), they will find other characteristics to divide themselves even further, such as by birth region, family name, ancestor ethnic, language accent, etc, until they finally find themselves in an entity so narrow that only one person belongs to it. And even that, they might continue to divide a single individual into something like “my body belongs to this entity, my mind belongs to that entity, but my past belongs to another entity” and so on.

For all the wonderful intellectuals that have populated Quebec for the past centuries, they should have learned that only diversity can flourish, only multi-ethnic states can last. More than 80% of the single-ethnic countries in the world will disappear within this century. This includes several small Nordic countries, and most tribes in Africa. They will disappear along with their languages, cultures, religions, heros and history. It’s so sad to see how vigourously an entire people seek such a dead end termination while they could embrace a multi-cultural continent with openness and humbleness. Vive le Québec libre!

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