developing world vs developed nations

[lightbeam]

China shares same problems as other developing nations
By George Zhibin Gu


Throughout history, unequal development has been the norm: there has never been a time when different nations did not have radically different levels of development. But the economic forces causing a convergence of development levels have never been so powerful as they are today. The countries moving ahead most quickly, including India, China, Egypt, Brazil and Russia, might be called "late developing nations". It goes without saying that the late developers face many huge challenges. But they also have advantages. Many have leapfrogged transitional stages of development by adopting more advanced technologies.

For example, China has jumped directly to ATM cards, bypassing the cheque book stage. Since its ineffective legal and banking systems can hardly support the wide use of chequebooks, ATM technology has nicely covered up the holes. Another example is mobile phones being adopted before conventional landlines: China now has more handsets than wired phones, - 340 million versus 317 million - a direct result of developing late.

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http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3516

 

[Maciamo]

China also has the world's fastest and most technologically advanced train, the MagLev (for Magnteic Levitation, developed by a German company), without passing by regular TGV or even as good trains as in the developed world. It will soon have the world's highest tower too. All are results of developing later than other countries.

There are advantages to develop late, when technology has been tried and tested. For instance, Britain was the first country to have a railway and underground (subway) system, but both are now struggling to modernise, as tracks or infrastructure cannot be changed so easily when it's already developed on a national scale. Likewise, European cities typically lack skyscrapers or big shopping malls because there is no place for them in city centres (in London and Paris, such districts had to develop in the suburbs). Japan or China could more easily build epic projects by bulldozing slums that they didn't considered worth preserving (like the parts of East London that have been redeveloped).