Last Wednesday a video surfaced of a teacher in China abusing kintergarten aged children by pushing, shoving and slapping when they could not answer simple math equations. Although some argue about whether or not China is capable of becoming the world’s next superpower, even surpassing the United States, with such fundamental issues of human rights, China still has obstacles to overcome.
A few days after the video surfaced, more pictures surfaced of Chinese teachers abusing students, one in particular of a teacher holding up a child by his ears, while he winced in pain. According to Yahoo news, the teacher reportedly said she held the student in that position “just for fun.”
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[/media-credit]Preschools in China apparently lack “government spending and supervision” and have also decreased by 60 percent over the past 15 years. With not as many schools to chose from, this results in parents’ lowered expectations. Coupled with the lack of funding, the abuse has revealed clear cracks in China’s schooling system.
Ironically, for the past few years Americans have been faced with the idea of China becoming the world’s greatest superpower. A study released in 2010 reinforced those fears when American students lagged behind Chinese students in standardized testing. Although the issue of the economy may be a different story, is a country struggling with issues of human rights ever capable of becoming a greater super power than America?
It is no doubt that China is improving, but that does not necessarily equate to them ruling the world in six years. According to a blog on the Huffington Post, author Lyric Hughes Hale said the idea of China surpassing America does not make sense.
“China might be a rich state, but its people remain poor. China may become the world’s largest economy in 2016 according to optimistic estimates by the IMF, but that simply means that total output will be larger than in the US. A country with 1.3 billion people should have an economy larger than one with .3 billion in absolute numbers: China’s population is more than four times larger.”
Furthermore, according to a column in The Journal Tribute, while China’s economy may be increasing, they still have a long way to go:
“Last year, American wealth per person was $49,000, compared with $8,500 in China. Even worse, for the Chinese, their country experiences huge income gaps with rural people having tiny incomes – less than $1,000. Meanwhile, the urban professionals prosper.”
China’s recent economy boom may be very real, but likely makes sense because of their population of one billion people. However, the issues with human rights and poverty, to name a few, indicate that while they may becoming better off than 20 years ago, there is still some much needed improvement before they can truly compete with America.
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