"As for raising living standards in Asia, you must be referring...

"As for raising living standards in Asia, you must be referring to those poor parts of southeast asia. China lags behind the north of asia in terms of eduction, skills, technology and economic development and will be playing catch up with that region for at least a couple more decades..."

well that's a pretty archaic view,likely an opinion form some 20years ago. China lags behind north of Asia, last I check, there is no much north of Asia to China. It is pretty north. Education lagging, did u check the last measure of educational performance, Shanghai is pretty and Australia was way behind in that comparison, skills,which sets of skills do u want? China has skills tradesman in any area you care to mention, technology,yes perhaps in terms of high end cars but anything else, they are not far behind US or Germany though at the lower end they do put out some crappy stuff. On the higher end, friend of mine just bought a 5k CD player from China, pretty impressive....perhaps time to reformulate your thought process...