Besides, http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/sme/facts-figures-an...
Entrepreneurial attitudes in Europe compared to the US and Asia // Chinese people have the strongest preference for self-employment (71%), Japanese people the weakest (39%). Similarly, Chinese think it is quite possible to become one’s own boss (49%). In Japan only 12% consider this career option possible. // A higher ratio of Chinese (40%) than Americans (38%) declare that they have first-hand experiences in starting a business. In Europe and Japan these figures are rather low (22% and 20%), even lower than in South Korea (31%). In the US, entrepreneurs enjoy a good reputation. 73% of US citizens questioned in this survey said that they have a favourable image of entrepreneurs. In Europe, at least about half of the population (49%) has a favourable image of entrepreneurs. In China the ratio is only 40%, in Japan (32%) and Korea (30%) even lower.
The richest person in China did get sent to prison: 14 years for stock market manipulation (cant imagine how many hedge fund PMs will be there if people enforce this in every country. personally I think the punishment is severe). Nothing to brag about, but he went there himself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huang_Guangyu The "body double"-stuff is rare and can likely happen in those poor undeveloped regions in China, where money can buy you anything. In better developed regions, the officers won't risk it, unless you are exceptionally "connected" I guess. Medias and Internet are quite good at revealing such scandals in China nowadays, which is why the Chinese government is so afraid of them.
1) The survey was taken amongst urban inhabitants: "...this sample covered 115,000,000 of the 615,000,000 urban inhabitants..." Which of course leaves the roughly 704 million rural residents unsampled. I don't fault the survey process; it's clear what they're after and they were transparent with the process. But it's difficult for me to say that this is representative of a whole country when clearly the sample was taken of the urban side only. (Of course, urbanization is expanding in China but my point still stands). Also, note that the actual survey has a question asking about locality (metro/urban/rural)). I'm assuming this was skipped for the Chinese respondents. Rural respondents might have been even more enthusiastic in their response to these questions, but I doubt it; most folks that I meet from rural areas don't have that kind of mentality.
2) "Trying asking about it in a better Chinese university." This underlines my point. Many well known (i.e. "successful") startups in the US are founded by people that have went to Harvard, Stanford, Caltech, etc. but this isn't a pre-req for being a tech entrepreneur (or any type of entrepreneur for that matter). There's a number of notable entrepreneurs that didn't go to college or finish that have found success. Why should it matter that I go to a better Chinese university? Further, the better the Chinese university the less representative that individual is of the overall population; those individuals are highly selected based on their Gaokao test scores (and possibly their family connections).
I was overly optimistic with the assessment of my university (Ningda). It's not even in the third tier according to this standard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_985
(Edited for grammar.)
Most common rural guys I know want to be a boss deep in their hearts, but they are less likely to reveal that to a foreigner. Chinese people are quite shy about their dreams. On the other hand, it is probably better to ask this question in urban regions. If someone goes to a Texas farm and ask their opinions on founding Internet Startups, probably the answers won't be very encouraging as well.
One thing I like about the Gaokao (University Entrance Exam) system: it is good for one thing - the family connections matter less than in US for this matter. As long as your score is impressive enough, you are in Tsinghua / Peking.
And that's why I have some faith in China. China has this "Exam to Win" system for 1400 years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination which explains why the Chinese are so good at it.
Take a look at the President of China (Hu Jintao). He has no family background at all (surprise), and got into the best university by his own efforts. But we only heard media fussing about Obama being the American Dream.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hu_Jintao
"Though his father owned a small tea trading business in Taizhou, the family was relatively poor. His mother was a teacher and died when he was seven, and he was raised by an aunt. Hu's father was later denounced during the Cultural Revolution, an event that (together with his relatively humble origins) apparently had a deep effect upon Hu, who diligently tried to clear his father's name.[6]"
People who studied Chinese Politics 101 knows the de facto ruling authority of China is a group of 9 persons:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politburo_Standing_Committee_of...
and after Mao and Deng, no one has such power to overwhelm the other eight. Talk to a Chinese about Hu being a dictator and he wil laugh. (Yes, the Communist Party is dictating, but there are ~80 million people in it. No, I am not one of them. Actually I find it a bit scary that almost all of the smartest young people I know are now in it, and they are not naive teens - most of them are i-bankers / phds in top WallSt firms and US universities. Think about what will happen in 20 years).
Interesting enough, all of the 9 persons has no connections as well (except for the newly elected and soon-to-be-president Xi, who is the son of a former Vice-Premier. China is following the same path as every other developed country). What's more interesting: they are all Engineers. Shocking fact: China is a country running as a machine (at least at the highest level). Engineers couldn't care less about the people, but you can bet the country surely "move fast and break things". China = Crazy Startup (and yes, employees do suffer. No talk of democracy in companies). Consider this: if China is really so deeply corrupted, how come it is also developing so fast?
Eventually the lawyers and businessmen will take over and people will talk about China being the "largest democracy". Good thing for the people. I am not sure whether it will be good for the country. Aren't the people more important than the country? Or not? Tough question. I think it depends on the development stage.
TL;DR: The Chinese system is bad for the people. But it works well for the country. China is very corrupted in some sense, and highly effective in another sense.
I'm reminded of the Soviet counterpart to this. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes)
Speaking of China, they do have their problems (of course), but to have a moral right to criticize, other fellow countries should at least stop their oil-for-bombs and occupation-based-on-rumors politics (and we will see, how that will change the quality of life and corruption level).
But the resemblance is there, yeah ;)
Seems to be some evidence against that, such as: http://books.google.com/books/about/Poverty_in_the_Soviet_Un...
Speaking short and plain, everyone had at least enough to live a healthy life, and quite many had somewhat more.
It also ignores most colloquial usage of the terms America and American in English. While technically correct, it is unlikely to occur. Americans are citizens of the United States of America. Just as Mexicans are citizens of Estados Unidos Mexicanos. But we shorten them to Mexicans as well.
Its more useful in either case to just list your nationality in either case. Unless people seem to want to identify with an Italian name for both continents I don't see where getting all up in arms over Americans referring to a citizen of the US. USian is an alternative, but lets be honest, it rolls off the tongue horridly and is unlikely to catch on.
Also, it's an unsolvable problem, because there is no part of "United States of America" that is technically unique. It's not the only nation on the American continents, and it's not the only nation whose official name includes "United States" (Mexico does as well).
People seem to make a number of wrong assumptions on that, including 1) it can't also be the demonym for anyone else and 2) other countries can decide another countries demonym in their native language. Both of these things are patently false. If someone wants to use American to refer to a member of the Americas (continents) then they certainly can, but they should include enough context to disambiguate. Moreover, other nations don't decide what a nation gets to call itself in its native language. We call ourselves Americans -- so we are Americans. If other countries don't like that, well, tough for them.
It would be naïve to think that the USA (I'm picking on the USA because I am an American citizen) is the perfect country. I haven't lived in other countries long enough to be able to compare, but I /can/ compare the experience between China and the US and it makes me grateful to be a US citizen.
The truth is, there is no real comparison between China and the US: I get questions about corruption in the US all the time and I always answer that there /is/ corruption in the US but not in the endemic/pervasive way that we see it in China. The media is more open than in China, the government process is more transparent.
My business partner and I are in the middle of doing a training/internship (simple LAMP application development) for students at a local university. This isn't a top tier university: it's a third-tier university in the capital of one of the poorest regions in the country. There's a lot of potential here but when we asked people if they had any aspirations to entrepreneurship, we mostly get a 'no'. The lack of mobility for the common person is evident here.
No matter what the US's failures are what it has that the Chinese system (note that I didn't say government, because some of the issues here are cultural) doesn't have is "opportunity". There's a lot of unrealistic optimism here amongst college-age students (i.e. "I can do it if I try.") but there is a dark understanding that this is severely limited by what is available to them after they graduate. It's actually really sad: people here are in love with pieces of paper that 'qualify' you for a job. But with an overabundance of college graduates (in a system where cheating is normal), the value of a college degree is lessened. So you have a huge population of mid-20's that paid large sums of money for degrees that are largely worthless (i.e. the degrees didn't fulfill the better life that they promised).
China has aspirations to be the world's best, but it won't be until it can find a way to empower its own people.