and most of what you think you know is wrong. That’s the message of James Palmer’s article at Foreign Policy. Here’s a sample of some of the thing you don’t know about China. You don’t know:
- China’s GDP growth rate
- China’s population
- How China’s high-level politics works
- The extent of official corruption in China
- What the Chinese people really think about things
- The real Chinese defense budget
- How good (or bad) Chinese schools are
- How much crime there is in China
and, importantly, you don’t know what you don’t know. I would add one important thing to the list: you very likely don’t know Chinese history because most of what’s taught as ancient Chinese history not only in the West but in China itself is fiction and was consciously made up by Song Dynasty scholars.
You shouldn’t feel particularly left out or ignorant. I don’t know these things. The American government doesn’t know. The Chinese people don’t know. The Chinese government doesn’t know.
Well golly, that’s wonderful. That’s how the Free Enterprise is supposed to work, without all those nasty statistics liberals keep trying to compile. American politicians and economists must be drooling with envy.