Sino-American Showdown in Tiwan Strait
- Thread starter darkbeaver
- Start date
It has taken the Chinese 20 years to accomplish what the west has done in 50 - what will the U.S. do? do you think your going to open up the largest market in the world. The U.S. has outsourced the majority of their manufacturing to China they have nothing they could sell the Chinese that the Chinese couldn't produce for themselves at a cheaper cost. they certainly can't afford US or Canadian cars or even those from Mexico. You cannot bribe a Chinese official for they know what punishment awaits them if they are caught - execution- no club fed there.
I think the really interesting part will be when the American government starts to promote the Americans Can Do switcheroo at home and look to the dirty Mexicans they want gone for the man power to take on all the crappy jobs that Americans don't like doing.
Its easy to bribe a chinese official, there is no punishment unless it causes embarassment to the state.
And the USA hasn't outsourced a majority of anything. The interesting thing about the USA, is it is a nation with little dependance on foriegn trade. 90% of its wealth is internal. It could go isolationist and be just fine.
China doesn't have that luxury. China is modernising sure, but only in a few key cities. In the country side its getting worse, whats more there are eerie similarities to the rise of the communist party which stopped the last similar modernization of China in the 20's and 30's.
Its impressive, but far more impressive is India. Its growth is slower, but stable.
really....http://http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article282433.ece just google china bribery execution and see what pops up, also if you dig a bit you will find numerous articles on how the Chinese are building 20 NEW cities per year for the next twenty years. As far as being self sufficient if the U.S. became isolationist, what do you think would happen to walmart when you took thier cheap slave labour goods away? and they actually had to pay what it cost - they couldn't compete. I can't remember the last time I saw something with a "Made in the USA" label on it.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article282433.ece sorryDeath sentences
Hu Changqing, deputy governor of Jiangxi executed for taking bribes worth $660,000
Li Chenglong, former vice-chairmen of Guangxi executed for role in $66,000 corruption scandal
Hyang Faxiang, a local government official in Chongqing, sentenced to death for embezzling more $1m in connection with Three Gorges Dam project
Hu Changqing, deputy governor of Jiangxi executed for taking bribes worth $660,000
Li Chenglong, former vice-chairmen of Guangxi executed for role in $66,000 corruption scandal
Hyang Faxiang, a local government official in Chongqing, sentenced to death for embezzling more $1m in connection with Three Gorges Dam project
Last edited:
Toro
You're waiting?
Too bad your FBI and the CIA and the alphabet soup of "intelligence" organizations weren't "waiting" before you had two buildings destroyed by a bunch of malcontents from over yonder...
Maybe the crew on the ship that was docked in Yemen was "waiting" too and a squad of radical hooligans re-shaped the hull with high explosives as a "knock-knock".....
Face it Toro, America has rattled its sabers and established military bases all over the world and even with the enormous costs of that alphabet soup...the Cole and the Twin Towers suffered for America....waiting.....
Have you considered the option of examining the antecedents to the feelings the rest of the world have toward the United States as opposed to "waiting" until invaison and war are the outcome...?
Just wondering....
You're waiting?
Too bad your FBI and the CIA and the alphabet soup of "intelligence" organizations weren't "waiting" before you had two buildings destroyed by a bunch of malcontents from over yonder...
Maybe the crew on the ship that was docked in Yemen was "waiting" too and a squad of radical hooligans re-shaped the hull with high explosives as a "knock-knock".....
Face it Toro, America has rattled its sabers and established military bases all over the world and even with the enormous costs of that alphabet soup...the Cole and the Twin Towers suffered for America....waiting.....
Have you considered the option of examining the antecedents to the feelings the rest of the world have toward the United States as opposed to "waiting" until invaison and war are the outcome...?
Just wondering....
I feel for the average American, they have been fleeced. I was doing some research on how much money they owe - 9 trillion in funded liabilities = 64% of their GDP, if you factor in their unfunded liabilities such as Social security and medicare the it skyrockets to 43 triilion or 404% of their GDP yike- You can't tell the Average American that because they have been so brainwashed into beleiving that they have the god given right to spend as much money as they want and not pay it back, and that the Good ol' USA is a veritable Cornucopia of cash, The Americans are in for a rude awakening I'm afraid.
You really think Cheap crap is what drives the American Economy?
"Oh noes! people will lose 20 plastic cups for $5! what will they do". That cheap crap you are talking about would be that 10% of wealth. People would adjust and be just fine.
China is building 20 cities per year...ok... so what is china getting that land? Hint, pushing peasants off their overworked farms (china needs food, badly) and making them into illegal workers in their own homes (not having permits to live in cities they lack any benefits like health care, education or the right to be paid, they are illegal immigrants in their own homelands).
And China is worrying about this, it knows if this keeps up in 10 years there will be peasants waving the red banner and launching a communist revolt. Riots are already a daily occurance in the rural areas.
China has taken to trying to Colonialize Africa for resources, and its already causing the same problems that forced Western interests out.
China is on shaky ground, it can stabalize but its going to be a hard few years if they make even one major screw up.
As for America, you can't screw it over with foriegn debt, it can simply go isolationist and refuse to pay. That is WHY they have been allowed to rack up such foriegn debt, if you tried to call it in too quick you won't get anything.
"Oh noes! people will lose 20 plastic cups for $5! what will they do". That cheap crap you are talking about would be that 10% of wealth. People would adjust and be just fine.
China is building 20 cities per year...ok... so what is china getting that land? Hint, pushing peasants off their overworked farms (china needs food, badly) and making them into illegal workers in their own homes (not having permits to live in cities they lack any benefits like health care, education or the right to be paid, they are illegal immigrants in their own homelands).
And China is worrying about this, it knows if this keeps up in 10 years there will be peasants waving the red banner and launching a communist revolt. Riots are already a daily occurance in the rural areas.
China has taken to trying to Colonialize Africa for resources, and its already causing the same problems that forced Western interests out.
China is on shaky ground, it can stabalize but its going to be a hard few years if they make even one major screw up.
As for America, you can't screw it over with foriegn debt, it can simply go isolationist and refuse to pay. That is WHY they have been allowed to rack up such foriegn debt, if you tried to call it in too quick you won't get anything.
I agree with Lester. While it would be easy for the US to become isolationist, it would be no different than East Germany behind the wall and before long, I suspect the people would have the same look of hopelessness and armed guards keeping people inside the borders would be common place.
But you can't tell Americans that. News is an interesting indicator of that. Check out their international news and it's all about what happened to an American abroad, or the war they're involved in, or the latest paranoid dream of who is a threat to them.
But you can't tell Americans that. News is an interesting indicator of that. Check out their international news and it's all about what happened to an American abroad, or the war they're involved in, or the latest paranoid dream of who is a threat to them.
Yes, I'm for waiting for this revolution.
"Storm the White House," "drag Bush onto the streets," blah blah blah
All hat, no cattle.
time
Lester
Countries might have to cut thier losses sooner or later and salvage what they can out of a bad situation. Refuse to pay? They would have to go isolationist, nobody would trade with them -would you sell to a deadbeat that you knew wasn't gonna pay.
Lester
February 16, 2005-1
[SIZE=-4]Copyright © 2005 Earth Policy Institute[/SIZE]
CHINA REPLACING THE UNITED STATES AS WORLD'S LEADING CONSUMER
Lester R. Brown
Although the United States has long consumed the lion’s share of the world’s resources, this situation is changing fast as the Chinese economy surges ahead, overtaking the United States in the consumption of one resource after another. Among the five basic food, energy, and industrial commodities—grain and meat, oil and coal, and steel—consumption in China has already eclipsed that of the United States in all but oil. China has opened a wide lead with grain: 382 million tons to 278 million tons for the United States last year. Among the big three grains, the world’s most populous country leads in the consumption of both wheat and rice, and trails the United States only in corn use.
Although eating hamburgers is a defining element of the U.S. lifestyle, China’s 2004 intake of 63 million tons of meat has climbed far above the 37 million tons consumed in the United States. While U.S. meat intake is rather evenly distributed between beef, pork, and poultry, in China pork totally dominates. Indeed, half the world’s pigs are found in China.
With steel, a key indicator of industrial development, use in China has soared and is now more than twice that of the United States: 258 million tons to 104 million tons in 2003. As China’s population urbanizes and as the country has moved into the construction phase of development, building hundreds of thousands of factories and high-rise apartment and office buildings, steel consumption has climbed to levels not seen in any other country. (See data.)
With oil, the United States is still solidly in the lead with consumption triple that of China’s—20.4 million barrels per day to 6.5 million barrels in 2004. But while oil use in the United States expanded by only 15 percent from 1994 to 2004, use in the new industrial giant more than doubled. Having recently eclipsed Japan as an oil consumer, China is now second only to the United States.
Looking at energy use in China means also considering coal, which supplies nearly two thirds of energy demand. Here China’s burning of 800 million tons easily exceeds the 574 million tons burned in the United States. With its coal use far exceeding that of the United States and with its oil and natural gas use climbing fast, it is only a matter of time until China will also be the world’s top emitter of carbon. Soon the world may have two major climate disrupters.
In addition to steel, China also leads in the use of other metals, such as aluminum and copper. Not only has China overtaken the United States in use of these materials, but it is widening the gap, leaving the United States in a distant second place.
In another key area, fertilizer—essentially nitrates, phosphates, and potash—China’s use is double that of the United States, 41.2 million tons to 19.2 million tons in 2004. In the use of the nutrients that feed our crops, China is now far and away the world leader.
In China’s consumer economy, sales of almost everything from electronic goods to automobiles are soaring. Nowhere is the explosive growth more visible than in the electronics sector. In 1996 China had 7 million cell phones and the United States had 44 million. By 2003 China had rocketed to 269 million versus 159 million in the United States. In effect, China is leapfrogging the traditional land-line telephone stage of communications development, going directly to mobile phones.
The use of personal computers is now also taking off in China. After a late start, the number of personal computers jumped to 36 million in 2002 compared with 190 million in the United States. But with the number of computers in use doubling every 28 months, it will only be a matter of time before China, a country of 1.3 billion people, overtakes the United States, which has a population of 297 million.
With household appliances, such as television sets and refrigerators, China has long since moved ahead of the United States. By 2000, for example, TV sets in China outnumbered those in the United States by 374 million to 243 million. With refrigerators, perhaps the most costly household appliance, production in China overtook that of the United States in 2000.
Among the leading consumer products, China trails the United States only in automobiles. By 2003, it had 24 million motor vehicles, scarcely one tenth the 226 million on U.S. roads. But with car sales doubling over the last two years, China’s fleet is growing fast.
And the race is far from over. With a per capita annual income in 2004 of $5,300, one seventh the $38,000 in the United States, China has a long way to go to reach U.S. per capita consumption levels. For example, despite China’s wide lead in total meat intake, the meat consumed per person is only 49 kilograms (108 pounds) a year compared with 127 kilograms (279 pounds) in the United States. As Chinese incomes rise at a world record pace, use of foodstuffs, energy, raw materials, and sales of consumer goods are continuing to climb.
China is now importing vast quantities of grain, soybeans, iron ore, aluminum, copper, platinum, potash, oil and natural gas, forest products for lumber and paper, and the cotton needed for its world-dominating textile industry. These massive imports have put China at the center of the world raw materials economy. Its voracious appetite for materials is driving up not only commodity prices but ocean shipping rates as well.
The new industrial giant’s need for access to raw materials and energy is shaping its foreign policy and security planning. Strategic relationships with resource-rich countries such as Brazil, Kazakhstan, Russia, Indonesia, and Australia are built around long-term supply contracts for products such as oil, natural gas, iron ore, bauxite, and timber. These strategic ties it is forming are welcomed in countries like Brazil as a counterweight to U.S. influence.
China’s eclipse of the United States as a consumer nation should be seen as another milestone along the path of its evolution as a world economic leader. Its record-high domestic savings and its huge trade surplus with the United States are but two of the more visible manifestations of its economic strength. It is now China, along with Japan, that is buying the U.S. treasury securities that enable the United States to run the largest fiscal deficit in history.
The United States, the world’s leading debtor nation, is now heavily dependent on Chinese capital to underwrite its fast-growing debt. If China ever decides to divert this capital surplus elsewhere, either to internal investment or to the development of oil, gas, and mineral resources elsewhere in the world, the U.S. economy will be in trouble.
China is no longer just a developing country. It is an emerging economic superpower, one that is writing economic history. If the last century was the American century, this one looks to be the Chinese century.
[SIZE=-1]Copyright[/SIZE] [SIZE=-1]© 2005 Earth Policy Institute[/SIZE]
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Printer friendly format [SIZE=-1]See following Eco-Economy Update: Lester R. Brown, “ LEARNING FROM CHINA: Why the Western Economic Model Will not Work for the World,” Eco-Economy Update, 9 March 2005. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=-4]Copyright © 2005 Earth Policy Institute[/SIZE]
CHINA REPLACING THE UNITED STATES AS WORLD'S LEADING CONSUMER
Lester R. Brown
Although the United States has long consumed the lion’s share of the world’s resources, this situation is changing fast as the Chinese economy surges ahead, overtaking the United States in the consumption of one resource after another. Among the five basic food, energy, and industrial commodities—grain and meat, oil and coal, and steel—consumption in China has already eclipsed that of the United States in all but oil. China has opened a wide lead with grain: 382 million tons to 278 million tons for the United States last year. Among the big three grains, the world’s most populous country leads in the consumption of both wheat and rice, and trails the United States only in corn use.
Although eating hamburgers is a defining element of the U.S. lifestyle, China’s 2004 intake of 63 million tons of meat has climbed far above the 37 million tons consumed in the United States. While U.S. meat intake is rather evenly distributed between beef, pork, and poultry, in China pork totally dominates. Indeed, half the world’s pigs are found in China.
With steel, a key indicator of industrial development, use in China has soared and is now more than twice that of the United States: 258 million tons to 104 million tons in 2003. As China’s population urbanizes and as the country has moved into the construction phase of development, building hundreds of thousands of factories and high-rise apartment and office buildings, steel consumption has climbed to levels not seen in any other country. (See data.)
With oil, the United States is still solidly in the lead with consumption triple that of China’s—20.4 million barrels per day to 6.5 million barrels in 2004. But while oil use in the United States expanded by only 15 percent from 1994 to 2004, use in the new industrial giant more than doubled. Having recently eclipsed Japan as an oil consumer, China is now second only to the United States.
Looking at energy use in China means also considering coal, which supplies nearly two thirds of energy demand. Here China’s burning of 800 million tons easily exceeds the 574 million tons burned in the United States. With its coal use far exceeding that of the United States and with its oil and natural gas use climbing fast, it is only a matter of time until China will also be the world’s top emitter of carbon. Soon the world may have two major climate disrupters.
In addition to steel, China also leads in the use of other metals, such as aluminum and copper. Not only has China overtaken the United States in use of these materials, but it is widening the gap, leaving the United States in a distant second place.
In another key area, fertilizer—essentially nitrates, phosphates, and potash—China’s use is double that of the United States, 41.2 million tons to 19.2 million tons in 2004. In the use of the nutrients that feed our crops, China is now far and away the world leader.
In China’s consumer economy, sales of almost everything from electronic goods to automobiles are soaring. Nowhere is the explosive growth more visible than in the electronics sector. In 1996 China had 7 million cell phones and the United States had 44 million. By 2003 China had rocketed to 269 million versus 159 million in the United States. In effect, China is leapfrogging the traditional land-line telephone stage of communications development, going directly to mobile phones.
The use of personal computers is now also taking off in China. After a late start, the number of personal computers jumped to 36 million in 2002 compared with 190 million in the United States. But with the number of computers in use doubling every 28 months, it will only be a matter of time before China, a country of 1.3 billion people, overtakes the United States, which has a population of 297 million.
With household appliances, such as television sets and refrigerators, China has long since moved ahead of the United States. By 2000, for example, TV sets in China outnumbered those in the United States by 374 million to 243 million. With refrigerators, perhaps the most costly household appliance, production in China overtook that of the United States in 2000.
Among the leading consumer products, China trails the United States only in automobiles. By 2003, it had 24 million motor vehicles, scarcely one tenth the 226 million on U.S. roads. But with car sales doubling over the last two years, China’s fleet is growing fast.
And the race is far from over. With a per capita annual income in 2004 of $5,300, one seventh the $38,000 in the United States, China has a long way to go to reach U.S. per capita consumption levels. For example, despite China’s wide lead in total meat intake, the meat consumed per person is only 49 kilograms (108 pounds) a year compared with 127 kilograms (279 pounds) in the United States. As Chinese incomes rise at a world record pace, use of foodstuffs, energy, raw materials, and sales of consumer goods are continuing to climb.
China is now importing vast quantities of grain, soybeans, iron ore, aluminum, copper, platinum, potash, oil and natural gas, forest products for lumber and paper, and the cotton needed for its world-dominating textile industry. These massive imports have put China at the center of the world raw materials economy. Its voracious appetite for materials is driving up not only commodity prices but ocean shipping rates as well.
The new industrial giant’s need for access to raw materials and energy is shaping its foreign policy and security planning. Strategic relationships with resource-rich countries such as Brazil, Kazakhstan, Russia, Indonesia, and Australia are built around long-term supply contracts for products such as oil, natural gas, iron ore, bauxite, and timber. These strategic ties it is forming are welcomed in countries like Brazil as a counterweight to U.S. influence.
China’s eclipse of the United States as a consumer nation should be seen as another milestone along the path of its evolution as a world economic leader. Its record-high domestic savings and its huge trade surplus with the United States are but two of the more visible manifestations of its economic strength. It is now China, along with Japan, that is buying the U.S. treasury securities that enable the United States to run the largest fiscal deficit in history.
The United States, the world’s leading debtor nation, is now heavily dependent on Chinese capital to underwrite its fast-growing debt. If China ever decides to divert this capital surplus elsewhere, either to internal investment or to the development of oil, gas, and mineral resources elsewhere in the world, the U.S. economy will be in trouble.
China is no longer just a developing country. It is an emerging economic superpower, one that is writing economic history. If the last century was the American century, this one looks to be the Chinese century.
[SIZE=-1]Copyright[/SIZE] [SIZE=-1]© 2005 Earth Policy Institute[/SIZE]
View Data
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Printer friendly format [SIZE=-1]See following Eco-Economy Update: Lester R. Brown, “ LEARNING FROM CHINA: Why the Western Economic Model Will not Work for the World,” Eco-Economy Update, 9 March 2005. [/SIZE]