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# Charles Springer: Writing from Harbin, China, where a dollar goes far
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/from-20030113/
- Published: 2003-01-13T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T01:18:27.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import, Homeless

*THE STREET America has a lot to learn from China and communism*

*By Charles Springer*

I am writing to you from Harbing about 500 miles from Siberia. I am helping a friend of mine’s employer with English speaking clients here for his company. He is paying for our whole trip, plus a nice amount of cash for working for him. The people here are very friendly and helpful with all that I need. My host family has arranged a lot for us, but as I explore on my off time I find that the people are this way naturally.

Their economy is where ours was at the turn of the century. Industrialization is booming and the information trend is taking off like their space program, fast! I have about $1,000 in American cash, which works out to $8,000 — I’m rich in China and poor in America.

Things like food, clothing, entertainment are about a tenth what it costs in the states, so I am pretty much living like a king. Pretty good for a homeless person, huh? They have a lot of things that I foresee as passing up the U.S. in the coming decade. They are far ahead of us in agricultural ways and all of their food is natural and grown like an assembly line. They plant, grow and harvest all in one fell swoop.

Their progress is fast in all ways Western and they are eating up everything in all areas of the economic arena. Their attitude is one of progress through community. The homeless population is almost non-existent and this is because they provide work! They feel embarrassed for not taking care of their own. Even the families are very close with the parents, taking responsibility for their children until they die, and the children do the same for their elderly. This is what we as a nation have lost. This is what they have that will surpass us in the coming decade. They are a sleeping giant economically and militarily. They have a military the size of our whole population. They are now looking to solve the ecological problems that industrialization causes with common sense — aerating the water that has become polluted, taking out the things that cause pollution and moving it to non-populated areas, etc.

And by 2008, they will have the tallest building and Ferris wheel in Shanghai. They have all that we as a nation and a community have lost in the last 20 to 30 years. The funny thing is that they learned it FROM us when they opened their doors to the world. We as a nation have a lot to re-learn from this sleeping giant. The word “communism,” if you break it down to its roots, commune-ism, commune-ity, I hope you get the point. And it is melding well by working WITH the capitalistic system that they are implementing.

I am telling the nation that I live in that they should beware of this sleeping giant to the east and learn from our mistakes, as they have been doing, to build what could be better than what we ever had. In the coming months I may decide to take on dual citizenship in order to teach English here. They pay for housing and a salary. Not bad for a teacher. In the States, our teacher are underpaid and overworked.

I hope the city that is my home in the USA will heed what I am saying about this vast nation. We face its shores and they look our way with the rising sun. They are going to be there sooner or later. (Charles Springer is homeless and is living in Santa Monica...but vacationing in China.)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 13, 2003.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/011303.pdf?ref=smdp.com)