[Ridiculous]Mexico Demands U.S. Allow More Immigration

100m is not small, but China's population is still 12x larger than Mexico. That is an enormous difference. It doesn't matter if Mexico can make plastic combs for 20 cents/unit, if China can make them for 19/unit - then people will buy them from China.

Hell, India has trouble competing with China in laabor intensive industries- and India has 1 billion of its own.

I don't think China's tremendous economic growth over the last decade would have been the same with only 400m - it depends on how much labor costs would increase, inter alia. OF course, with anything there are tradeoffs - China's huge population is a blessing and a curse.

One thing China HAS been good at historically, no matter what the economic system, is mobilizing large groups of people and encouraging large scale, country-wide initiatives (due in no small part to a traditionally strong central authority - save for the periods when there wasn't one) - whether it is huge public works projects like the Great Wall, or the 3 Gorges Dam, or massive economic programs like the Great Leap Forward, or various cultural movements - the governemnt is and has always been good at mobilizing people. And in a country so large, once momentum on a project builds it is hard to stop (which will work against them in terms of the serious environmental crises on the horizon, unless they can move the pendulum back). So the transition to a market economy via strong central authority may have been difficult in one sense as far as philosophy goes, but really a lot of tools were in place.

EDIT: I should also say that despite China's rapid fire economic growth of the last few years, Chinese continue to immigrate to the US and other countries, both legally and illegally, as they have for thousands of years. So it's not all about GDP growth (Mexicos hasn't been that bad recently).

 

There's also a sizable proportion of 2nd Gen Latino Americans who share similar views upon anti-immigration.

I guess that's how someone can tell when a person is Americanized...