funny you should say that im actually thinking about joining the Aus military for the min 4 years, as i want to serve my country. and as im pretty young at the moment im finding it somewhat hard to get solo jobs as a photographer and earn money. im hoping ill look like a real man when i come out of the army.

but as of now its just a thought, i have some previous arrangements for the rest of this year we will see how it goes. but who knows i may be a military man early 09 ><

You know they say that liberalisation of economies and markets precedes liberalisation of society. The theory also says that liberal societies don't attack each other because they have more to lose than to gain.

If anything China is becoming a superpower in the same way America did. Via a process of liberalisation.

China's economy is quite bubbling........if it ruins, several countries will be going through bad days....

What it stains its reputation is the harsh censorship towards media......

One country which contaminates the air as China has done cannot provide the world with benefits....

Anyway I'm planning to take Mandarin lessons for the next year...

That's pretty deep and I'll have to spend some time thinking about that to truly understand it. As I'm sure you've guessed, I'm not so keen to see any more liberalisation, but sei la vie. One of the first thing that comes to mind is, yeah, but they loose the will to protect themselves, too.

See, there you go ruining a perfectly good thread by throwing in something intelligent and thought provoking!:p

Man the f*** up Joshaussie!

The fellow Aussie started a new thread about China and the same thread hasn't been closed........yesterday I started one thread about Olympics and suddenly was closed....why?

Because Joshaussie is The Man!

Very funny...:mtongue:

Those are terrible examples... The one child policy thing mainly applies to Han Chinese, and was greatly influenced by what the Western governments wanted... If you have a better solution to controlling the worlds population, i'm sure China would listen.
Building dams that displace millions of people... hmm, I guess it's alright to complain about that because the west has moved on from doing that right? I'm pretty sure every single developed country in the world done things like this to reach the "developed" stage...:cool: Kinda hypocritical don't you think?
Fate of tibe??? I think you should read through the Tibet thread we had. It's simply a media exaguration. Tibetans are experiencing a much better life then they've ever had or could ever have with the Dalai Lama controlling it at 100%. Hence why he doesn't want Tibet to be an independent Country.
Fate of HK? I don't know what you're talking about here, but last time I checked, HK was doing well... Please clarify what you mean.
Safety of Taiwan? Same response as above. Please clarify.

EDIT; You know what this reminds me off. lol... Not tooooo long ago, the west were laughing at Japan for still prefering to use bikes over motorbikes, cars etc... And now, they're complaining at China for using them... hmmm... I guess it's always easy to complain when a country feels threatened.

I agree with Noodle.100%.