Chapter 9 guide

★The commercialization of the World Wide Web and its convenient access technology have brought joy to people. Only such revolutionary inventions as electric lights and airplanes can compare with it in history. ★The technological revolution in the 1990s brought about fundamental changes in the global operation mode and commodity production mode of enterprises. ★In the late 1990s, the "new economy" had become an obsessive culture. ★Whether it is before the arrival of the "new economy era" or under the influence of the prosperity of the "new economy", some enterprises come to China just out of despair or because they want to find the last hope.

In this chapter, the author argues that the "new economy" is a prerequisite for the development of "Middle America", which is a very novel point of view. How exactly did the "new economy" affect the development trajectories of China and the United States?To what extent has Internet technology changed the world? What role does the "new economy" play in the entry of American companies into the Chinese market?These are the highlights of this chapter. In the 1990s, the U.S. economy was booming like never before.However, in the early 1990s, the United States experienced a severe recession, and the fleeting joy brought by the victory of the Gulf War was quickly replaced by worries about the current and future economic conditions.The economic situation is especially tough in regions such as Southern California, where employment and economic prosperity depend largely on the defense industry.

Across the United States, the real estate market has shrunk sharply, and no region, including the traditionally strong New York real estate market, has been immune.Although the overall economic situation began to improve in late 1991, in 1992, most Americans were worried.The unemployment rate is over 7%, with 1.5 million people out of work.Due to excessive debt and soaring prices in the real estate market, the country's economic development level has plummeted, with the manufacturing and financial services sectors bearing the brunt.The public reaction was strong, even though data suggested the recession was not particularly severe. In 1992, when Clinton succeeded Bush Sr. as President of the United States, Americans began to emerge from a severe depression.

After 1992, the U.S. economy took a dramatic turn for the better.Almost as quickly as they sank into depression, Americans quickly returned to optimism.This is the typical American way.In the presidential campaign, Clinton used the banner of restoring the American economy, but when he entered the White House, the American economy was already improving.Undoubtedly, the series of policies implemented by the Clinton administration played an important role in the recovery and further development of the US economy, but there is also no doubt that even without these policies, the US economy would have some improvement.

In the 1990s, the US economy was not simply recovering.Numbers do not necessarily reflect the actual state of the U.S. economy.In the eight years before the arrival of 2000, the average annual growth rate of the US GDP was 3% to 4%.The actual numbers are not astonishing, but behind them are fairly low inflation and unemployment.Economic efficiency has improved, the price of oil has fallen steadily, and interest rates have also fallen relatively steadily.The job market looks particularly strong, with nearly 20 million jobs added between 1992 and the end of the millennium. However, the numbers reflect only part of the state of the U.S. economy in the 1990s, and, in fact, it is not the most important part.Both supporters and opponents of the Clinton administration used the numbers to bolster or undercut the fact that Americans shared enormous prosperity under Clinton.But macroeconomic data is not a good barometer of how many Americans are actually living or sociocultural.A controversial figure, longtime Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has astutely pointed out that many data-collection tools are inadequate for the task of judging the state of the economy.In short, we want to be as accurate as possible about the economic situation, and what happened in the 1990s posed a challenge.The data says the economy is good, and the zeitgeist says the economy is freaking out.

In one respect, the 1990s were a harbinger of the present.The problems found by Greenspan and others still exist today.Data and data collection tools are not up to the task of judging the economic situation, and have even lost their usefulness.This poses a serious obstacle to our understanding and accounting for the influence of "Central America".If the state agencies responsible for collecting U.S. economic data in the 1990s were unable to make real-time judgments about actual economic conditions, they are even more outdated now.National economies are now integrated into a global system in which they collide and interact with each other like atoms interact and react in a reactor.

In 1993, the United States passed the bill of balancing the comprehensive budget, the economic situation of the United States further improved, and the Clinton administration moved towards fiscal self-discipline.This is different from the typical approach of previous Democratic presidents, and is considered to be one of the reasons why the U.S. economy can quickly get rid of recession and achieve further development and rapid and stable growth.But in fact, no matter how wise the policies implemented by the government are, the rapid improvement in the economic situation is not mainly due to these policies. The optimism in American society also has other roots.

In 1993, many people in the United States had personal computers, but most of their computer operations were limited by the software they purchased.People can communicate through group message boards, and service providers such as America Online, Prodigy and Compu Serve offer some basic e-mail services, but the combined users of these services are less than 2 million.Two years later, the situation changed dramatically, because in 1993 and 1994, a new element of the World Wide Web was introduced into the Internet. The World Wide Web was originally built as a software program in a research laboratory in Switzerland.The World Wide Web allows users to access fixed web pages on external servers without requiring a connection to those servers.In other words, before the birth of the World Wide Web, Internet users had to establish a two-way connection, just as a call between two landline users required a two-way connection.The birth of the World Wide Web made it possible for international Internet users to have one-way network access, which feels like we watch TV or go to the cinema to watch a movie.This has led to a rapid expansion of the amount of information transmitted and shared via the Internet.After a group of graduate students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign invented the Mosaic browser, the World Wide Web quickly became the hottest thing in America.

The commercialization of the World Wide Web and its convenient access technology has brought joy to people that is only comparable in history to such revolutionary inventions as the electric light and the airplane.True, some computer and software engineers disliked commercialization and were disappointed by it, but most were quick to jump on board to accelerate the wave.Venture capitalists in Silicon Valley and bankers on Wall Street have been involved in the cause almost since the World Wide Web first appeared.A wave of finance, investment, and initial stock IPOs ensued, and related economic activity multiplied.

The surge in economic activity surrounding new technologies has spurred massive investment in communications infrastructure, especially equipment such as fiber optics, wireless phones, and cables.The purpose of the investment is to speed up the information transmission rate of traditional telephone lines and cables, so that users can obtain information faster, more and enrich the variety of information through the World Wide Web. In the late 1990s, hardware equipment and semiconductor technology were greatly developed, and the amount of semiconductor information storage increased significantly.Home computers run faster and can store vast amounts of information, which is what matters most to millions of users.

Soon, under the benign stimulus of new investment to the development of high-tech industries, the economic activities triggered by new technologies promoted the further development and commercialization of technologies, and the lives of millions of ordinary people in the United States and the Western world began to change as a result, which in turn Inspired more investment and created a "new economy".Within a few years, the "new economy" had taken center stage in American society and culture, compared with other issues and concerns that were on the fringes of public life.