Movies made for China

The last three big budget Bruce Willis movies have all had their biggest foreign box office in China
3/28/13 G.I. Joe: Retaliation (67% foreign)
2/14/13 A Good Day to Die Hard (78% foreign)
9/28/12 Looper (62% foreign)

Bruce Willis's beautiful wife in Looper was a Chinese woman, along with the utopian vision of China's future compared to a gangster ridden America



China last year surpassed Japan as the world's No. 2 market behind the U.S. with box office revenues of $2.7 billion.

But if you look at top 21 in films in Japan, the market is 70% Japanese films, and only 30% western films.

Umizaru 4
Terumae romae
Odoru Daisôsasen the Final: Aratanaru kibô
One Piece Film Z (anime)
Les Miserables
Evangelion Shin Gekijôban: Kyu
Okami kodomo no ame to yuki
Resident Evil: Retribution
The Avengers
Eiga Doraemon: Nobita to kiseki no shima - Animaru adobenchâ
Gekijouban Pokketo monsutâ Besuto wisshu 2012
Detective Conan: The Eleventh Striker
One Piece Film Zchôme no yûhi '64
The Amazing Spider-Man
MIB 3
Rurôni Kenshin: Meiji kenkaku roman tan
Skyfall
Nobô no shiro (The Floating Castle)
Spec Ten
Bokura ga ita (We Were Here Part 1)
Dark Shadows

Given the language and culture similarities, the UK has traditionally been the biggest foreign market for films.

But with 10 theaters a day opening in China, probably within 5 years an American movie will sell more tickets in China than in the USA.

Willis has Red2 opening very soon (this weekend?) with a
stellar cast an international espionage story, which will
surely be a hit in China. What a coincidence.

China is much more like the US than Japan is.
People in the diplomatic corps say they'd rather
be stationed in China than EU or Japan because
the Chinese have a laid back attitude and a great
sense of humor. They say the EU in particular has
the centuries old stick up their butts and have no
sense of humor about anything.

Quote: Evenbob

Willis has Red2 opening very soon (this weekend?) with a
stellar cast an international espionage story, which will
surely be a hit in China. What a coincidence.

China is much more like the US than Japan is.
People in the diplomatic corps say they'd rather
be stationed in China than EU or Japan because
the Chinese have a laid back attitude and a great
sense of humor. They say the EU in particular has
the centuries old stick up their butts and have no
sense of humor about anything.

Japan is far more Xenophobic than China. China is off-and-on a unified country and some parts historically preferred being dominated by foreigners than by Peeking. The communist government has been pushing english lessons for over 30 years and allowed USA and western products in far before the USSR did.

The EU is a rotting, dying culture. In 50 years they will be culturally gone.

Quote: AZDuffman

The EU is a rotting, dying culture. In 50 years they will be culturally gone.

The diplomats say the Chinese have a good humor
about themselves. EU does not, they take themselves
very seriously and are hard to get along with and
live around. There's a dark cloud over Europe thats been
there for centuries. I'm sure it has something to do
with the Church's thousand year stranglehold on the
major countries there.

Quote: AZDuffman

The EU is a rotting, dying culture. In 50 years they will be culturally gone.

The US census International Division predicts that births outnumber deaths in the EU (27 countries) this year by 1%, but it is the last year that births will be larger than deaths.

These are the EU countries where births still outnumber deaths (in order by percentage)
Ireland
Cyprus
France
Luxembourg
United Kingdom
Netherlands
Malta
Spain
Slovakia
Sweden


By the year 2027 deaths will outnumber births by a million.

In 2027 these are the EU countries where births still outnumber deaths (in order by percentage) according to predictions
Ireland
Luxembourg
Cyprus
United Kingdom
France
Netherlands


By 2037 by deaths will outnumber births by 1.6 million in the EU , and population will be only 22% larger than that of Nigeria.

So 50 years from now by the year 2063, what will EU be in the world scheme?

NOTE: I did forget to include Croatia in the EU, as they just joined three days ago.

Outside of the EU, the population of Ukraine is down to it's level 50 years ago and still dropping like a stone.
It does look like in another 50 years, Ukrainian culture will essentially only exist in history books.

Quote: Pacomartin

The US census International Division predicts that births outnumber deaths in the EU (27 countries) this year by 1%, but it is the last year that births will be larger than deaths.

By 2100 this will be the case almost everywhere, the EU is just getting there first. It begs many questions. Russia is in very steep decline as well. What happens to all that empty land in Russia and Ukraine? Will 1.5 Billion Chinese packed together like rats not look at all that open space and try to expand? As their cities die off and empty out like Detroit do they invite people from any and every third-World place in to live?

And the real big question--why have people of European Decent stopped having kids as a group?

Quote: AZDuffman

Russia is in very steep decline as well. What happens to all that empty land in Russia and Ukraine? Will 1.5 Billion Chinese packed together like rats not look at all that open space and try to expand? As their cities die off and empty out like Detroit do they invite people from any and every third-World place in to live?

And the real big question--why have people of European Decent stopped having kids as a group?

Russia is down to the same population as 30 years ago, not quite as steep as the Ukraine which is down to 50 years ago. But as conditions improved in Russia population decline virtually stopped for about 4 years, but has been dropping again in the last two.

China will never reach 1.5 billion. It's population is only predicted to increase another few percent. Much of urban China has some of the lowest fertility rates ever measured. As it continues the greatest urbanization ever recorded in mankind's history, it's population will continue to decline. India, however, will reach 1.5 billion in 20 years.

Marx may have predicted class warfare between the haves and the have-nots, then what will happen between vast aging cultures with lots of infrastructure, and massively growing countries where survival to adulthood is questionable. Japan has the oldest population on Earth, which makes surviving a disaster like the tsunami much more difficult. Clearly running up a hill to high ground is easier when you are age 20 then when you are age 80. Surviving without proper food or medications or proper shelter for a few days is difficult when you are old.

Quote: Pacomartin

Marx may have predicted class warfare between the haves and the have-nots, then what will happen between vast aging cultures with lots of infrastructure, and massively growing countries where survival to adulthood is questionable. Japan has the oldest population on Earth, which makes surviving a disaster like the tsunami much more difficult. Clearly running up a hill to high ground is easier when you are age 20 then when you are age 80. Surviving without proper food or medications or proper shelter for a few days is difficult when you are old.

My thought is when do we as a world hit terminal decline? If at a snap of our fingers the worldwide birthrate fell to 2.1 per woman distributed evenly across the world the population would age rapidly. Carrying capacity would be questionable, fo the young would have a harder and harder time taking care of the old.

But it is worst than 2.1 in many places, and they will have it really hard. At first it is a benefit--no new schools needed, less daycare needed, etc. But in 20 years as the children reach adulthood problems arise. Housing no longer needs to expand so some units sit vacant. As they are vacant the landlords cannot keep up repairs so everything starts to decompose, slowly at first. As units empty out taxes go unpaid, then city upkeep suffers. Helllo, Detroit!

General demand falls. We need fewer Wal-Marts, and thus fewer cans of soup, so fewer veggies planted. There is potential for long-term deflation. Try paying $16MMMM in debt in a deflated currency!

This has never happened worldwide over a long term. The Black Death had some positive effects after it was over but many areas never recovered. American Indians lost over half their population to smallpox early on, they never recovered. Smallpox probably sealed their fate more than any other one thing.

Those born before 1980 will probably at most only seee the beginnings of what will come. Those born 1980-2000 will get hit hard but survive with little life-change. Those born after 2000 will have to find a new model because the increase-in-living-standards-due-to-increased-demand-of-rising-population model is over by 2040.

Current census predictions are 2.15 total fertility rate for the world in the year 2050. But as you pointed out there will be no uniformity. Sub-Saharan Africa may still be growing a century from now. As the old saying goes if a man has one foot frozen in a block of ice, and the other on fire, on average he is comfortable, but in reality he is in agony.

While the fertility rates started dropping in Europe after WWI when the great emigration to America began to stop, the countries have had almost a century of plunging fertility rates. China did all that in roughly 30 years. Much of china is still desperately poor without clean water. The aging population will hit them like a thousand tons of bricks.

Without the Black Death, the Middle Ages in Europe may have gone on for many more centuries. The population began to move as the fiefdoms were demolished and often the nobles died. The labor shortages created the need for craft guilds.

In 1466, at the age of fourteen, Leonardo da Vinci was apprenticed to the artist Verrocchio, whose workshop was "one of the finest in Florence". But the Black Death had devastated the population of Florence in the previous century. The workshops only began to exist in the rebirth after the plague.

Roberto Sabatino Lopez argues that in a more prosperous era, Florentine businessmen would have quickly reinvested their earnings in order to make more money . However, in the leaner years caused by the black death, the wealthy found few promising investment opportunities for their earnings and instead chose to spend more on culture and art.

Quote: Pacomartin

Without the Black Death, the Middle Ages in Europe may have gone on for many more centuries. The population began to move as the fiefdoms were demolished and often the nobles died. The labor shortages created the need for craft guilds.

Maybe or maybe not. If Columbus still discovered the New World you would have still seen the opening up. Maybe even faster as Europe would have been more overcrowded. I will concede he may not have sailed had the Dark Ages not been closing, but it has always been my understanding the Age of Discovery slammed the door on the Dark Ages closed.

My personal feeling is that humanity has 1,000 years left. I not think we will make it beyond that, not is current societal format. I see major and ongoing depression in the 2100s. This could destroy the USA as the world's superpower, and send our navy home for good. When that happens, trade becomes vulnerable to piracy and all the rest of the institurions in the world fall one by one. The world will start falling back to regional-level living instead of global, but the basic skills needed to survive will be gone as people become dependent on technology to do the most basic things (as an example, see how many people under 30 are incapable of reading a map!) A new Dark Ages will emerge, but with no new worlds to be discovered they will be even harder to escape.