Replies

You overlook the primary reason for the difference....... the people, the Chicaps if you will.

In China, there is some new freedom to engage in business and the world is beating their doors down for the products produced there. China has been bound by oppressive government, their own and the colonials for at least a hundred years.

Some left and became the overseas Chinese. Where ever they were they prospered..... Taipei, Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, San Francisco. They represent the repressed entrepreneurial desire present and now unleashed in China proper.

To be certain, there is still a socialist government and the economy still has very strong governmental ties but the economic and academic and other freedoms have been used by the population to bring about unprecedented growth.

To blame the prosperity solely on an imbalance in trade is to overlook the part of the ordinary Chinese people striving for a better life, the life they see in Japan and America and Europe.

When you observe people in Chinese street scenes, none wear the gray of communist rule. They wear what they consider to be colorful, modern, stylish and up to date. My favorite indicator of the tremendous change in process is a video clip of some young girls. They were wearing Daisey Mae’s..... blue jean shorts. One wonders where they got them and what provoked them to wear them...... Daisey Mae’s are quintessentially American.

I think the certainty on how the change in China will progress or if the excesses of exuberant business experiments will cause things to come crashing down is unknowable. The certainty is that he days of repression and Mao are over and change is in process.

Here in America we still have a fantastically strong manufacturing base. We still make lots and lots of highly technical products and the world comes here to buy them. Our exports support the economy. We do not make paint brushes or commodity refrigerator compressors like we once did because we have moved on. We subcontract the manufacturing to get the best price. Americans demand a good price and will not pay an excessively expensive price.

Part of the manufacturing by American companies is to gain markets in those areas. It is profitable to establish foreign plants for products sold in the foreign markets. It is not competitive to make the stuff here and ship it abroad.

But to sum it up, China is and not only that is going to become more is as the current trends continue. China is after all the most populous nation and that populations wants to improve the quality of life. It is only rational to assume that once the pent up power and desire to throw off poverty change will occur.

No, I didn't overlook the difference. You merely assumed I had.

But lets be clear here, NO CHANGE was coming unless we sold out American citizens to move their jobs off-shore. When we sold those U. S. citizens out, we sold ourselves out.

People making $15.00 an hour spend money, and they spend most of it around home employing other citizens. We're now enmeshed in the Great Recession praying it won't get worse, and our citizens are now spending the spoils of $8 to $10 dollars per hour, if they're lucky enough to even have a job. And while this may sound like we're just addressing this wage sector, it's not truly that easy. We're also addressing the investment industry, because a whole sector of our economy that used to have enough expendable income to invest, now doesn't. We have massive amounts of unemployed and under employed. Make no mistake about it, the selling out of our fellow citizens, affected us all. And even though we do still have manufacturing here, we have sent trillions of dollars worth of it overseas. Our trade deficit with China was approaching the major portion of $1 trillion dollars per year prior to the down-turn. Please don't try to tell me we have a robust manufacturing base here, when you yourself know that having $500 dollars in your pocket is not the same as having $1000 dollars there.

Okay great, we have $500 dollars still in our pocket. Is the multiplier effect as effective as it would be if we were spending $1000 dollars here? No. So lets at least be honest with ourselves.

I have no quarrel with the Chinese people. It saddens me to know that's what you think this all boils down to. Good grief. No, it's about a pariah government that is skimming off money to create unrest around the world, and build up it's military so it can hopefully (on their government's part) become as proficient as ours is. Swell! It's also about bankrupting our fellow citizens.

Frankly there's an aspect of this that angers me too. It's the Chinese people and their hopes for a bright future... Where's the hopes of our own citizens mentioned in your comments? Oh that's right, they were missing.

At a time when no other nation on the planet was building up trade deficits with China, the United States was already in for $0.5 trillion of it per year. That bastard piehole Senator Orin Hatch went so far as to offer to gift our entire patent database to China. Imagine us gifting Nazi Germany our entire patent database in 1934. That's the level of treachery we're addressing here.

As you have so eloquently stated, China will continue to grow. I agree, and this time it was us who awoke a sleeping giant.

As for the Chinese government, and whether it changes or not, the Chinese people see things differently than we do. They see the region as their own. They want to claim every blade of grass that pops up out of the South Western portion of the Pacific, and that includes the areas rightfully claimed by other nations. They also want to capture the island of Taiwan. And lest you tell me how reasoned that is, you really need to do some study about the history of Taiwan. China's claim to it is a relatively recent development in the overall scheme of things.

We are going to be confronted on the high seas by a belligerent China, and we will have financed every bit of it. Many of our young men and women will die. Our very homeland will be threatened by this. And ultimately all this will take place, because some idiot thought it was a great idea to make it so we could buy a VCR at half the cost, and all it would cost us is selling out our neighbor's lively-hood. Never-mind you have to replace the VCRs every two years when they quit working.

Our policy with China turned down-right suicidal and as China builds up, it's becoming more evident by the day.

It used to be the United States who was trying to sound the voice of reason around the planet, sending our military and citizens there. Now China is taking on that roll. Good luck with that. Good luck with the clapping for China now that it's becoming a policing force on the high seas as far away as Somalia and the Western end of the Indian Ocean. This is only the start of where we are headed.

We need a Winston Churchill today, not an Orin Hatch.