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Friends Don’t Let Friends Become Chinese Billionaires (blogs.forbes.com)
28 points by rmah on July 26, 2011 | hide | past | favorite | 5 comments


according to Amnesty International

I had the honor of hearing and questioning the secretary general of AI in 2005. He started dodging my questions, couldn't provide logical answers, and overall competence was lacking - not a good reflection on any organization. Most people think what they're doing is a good thing because it seems morally accountable, and sign letters in the "name of freedom". If there wasn't such social stigma against objecting to AI, such an organization would not have such social impact.

China carries out the death penalty more than the rest of the world combined

This is a very anti-Chinese article, alluding to conclusions logical thinkers should not be making. Corruption is rampant in China, and some of these billionaires have gotten their money by exploiting millions of people and caused an ocean of pain and suffering - a debt they cannot possibly pay back in their lifetime. In such instances, I don't see why execution is wrong.

China also accounts of a significant portion of the world's population. This has nothing to do with anti-capitalism - it has to do with setting an example in a culture that leads by example. It's a country recovering from its own issues, and trying to create a more productive future.


I'd rather be a millionaire in singapore than a billionaire in china. Any wealthy person who stays in capital hostile places deserves what they get.


This already got flagged to death for being so grossly inaccurate:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2806250


According to the stats, your life expectancy once you become a billionaire is 13 years (9 deaths/yr for 115 billionaires). That's no so great.


This is factually misleading. By billionaires, they mean people that have 100 million yuan. The China Daily article references it. To put thing in perspective there are about 60,000 people with more than 100M RMB ( approx. $15M USD ).

In Chinese, big numbers are expressed as multiples of 10k, and 100M, e.g. 1 million is spoken as "one hundred ten-thousands" in Chinese. So I think someone incorectly translated 亿富翁 as billionaire, rather than 100 millionaire. It is worth noting that google translate also gets this wrong.




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