Posted on 09/29/2004 10:12:39 AM PDT by Willie Green
It could simply be this year's edition of the morose introspection that sometimes accompanies autumn. But it could also be the case that the relatively short epoch of the United States as the world's sole superpower is drawing to a close.
A U.N. Conference on Trade and Development report released last week indicated that China was the largest recipient of foreign direct investment in 2003, having overtaken the United States. In the past year, foreign investment in the United States had dropped by 53 percent, taking it to the lowest level in 12 years.
The Chinese growth rate is now projected for this year at 9.6 percent. The U.S. economy is estimated to grow only at a respectable but unexciting 4.4 percent, less than half the Chinese rate.
U.S. manufacturing and service jobs are being outsourced to China and India. China is graduating thousands more engineers and scientists per year than the United States.
The United States is dependent on huge dollops of Chinese purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds to be able to continue to finance the soaring Bush administration budget deficit. A precipitous drop in Chinese confidence in the health of the American economy would be disastrous in financial terms for the United States.
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
ping
Oh no not the big bad Japanese buying up America.
Er.. I mean the Chinese. How will we ever survive?
Zzzzz...
Thank-you for submitting the "useful idiot" perspective on this issue.
Didn't we just see this article about Japan in oh, say 1987? This is like the perennial "The Great Depression of the 1990's" book. Sure, it could happen, if everything went right for China and everything went wrong for the United States.
However, one trip to Hong Kong or Shanghai and Chan will not be very happy back on his Manchurian farm with his $20.00 a week standard of living. If China wants to run with the big dogs, its gonna have to feed its pack and that will be increasingly expensive.
In my estimation, a country that supports free enterprise, curbs taxation on entrepreneurship and supports higher education will always be a pitri dish for success. If China can do that, great. If not, then don't count on China sailing forward trouble free for long.
sigh ...
America's greatness was never based on the volume or quality of our manufactures, on the size of our armed forces or on how many graduates in engineering and the sciences we produced.
America's greatness comes from the freedom of enterprise that we have here in this country and the innovation in product and process that it engenders.
For probably much of the last century, on a per capita basis and even on a gross basis, Germany has had more manufacturing workers producing items rated higher than US manufactures for quality, Germany has had more soldiers under arms (until 1944), and Germany has had more degrees awarded in engineering and science.
Yet we profoundly defeated Germany militarily, we have far outstripped Germany in innovation and basically completely outclassed them in every way. The same goes for Britain and France. The greatest economic and military powerhouses of old Europe could never touch us despite their possession of what you consider advantages.
WHAT "freedom of enterprise"???
The federal regulatory bureacracy places economic access to our own productive resources out of reach,
And Dubya's trade and outsourcing "strategery" undermines our domestic efforts to compete.
China is far from replacing the US as the world's lone superpower either economically or militarily.
From an April 30, 2004 article …
http://www.morganstanley.com/GEFdata/digests/20040430-fri.html
I am doing some research work for UNLV. The "students" that are all educated are coming HERE. That means those dollars are being spent on American education. American education is STILL the most highly valued and desired in every country, especially China.
China opening it's doors seemed to me almost inevitable considering it's history. Yeah, the past 50 years haven't been their high point but in general their culture is always trade and technology heavy. I worry more about China's looming energy crisis because of the modernization. They could become warlike to claim their needed oil resources at some point.
The United States is by far the world's largest debtor nation,
with half our debt obligations being owed to foreign creditors.
As a U.S. taxpayer, this means that an increasing portion of your taxes will go to supporting foreign governments (as interest payments) BEFORE even one penny is spent to support our own.
"Economic access to our own productive resources"? This phrase itself is perfect bureaucratese.
America's most productive resources are American minds and American guts.
There is too much federal regulation, of course. But there is no law against having a good idea and raising capital to make it a reality.
And Dubya's trade and outsourcing "strategery" undermines our domestic efforts to compete.
If America thinks that the key to being economically competitive is having as many people working in manufacturing in the US as possible then America can never compete. Even if some ridiculous iron law were passed that forbade American corporations from ever relocating another job, China would still bury us with sheer numbers on the manufacturing front.
The President, like most reflective Americans, realizes that the sheer number of warm, unionized bodies on an assembly line does not equal added value.
It's 2004, not 1950.
Over 50% of China's workforce are engaged in agriculture compared to 1.4% in the US.
What a silly misrepresentation.
You have literally no idea how the treasury market works.
Once upon a time, there was this major superpower - named the USSR. Their economy wasn't very good, and their military expenses went up and up.
A funny thing happened. They went bankrupt, their government imploded, and they became a rather pathetic shell of their former selves.
In the U.S., the current account deficit is up to 5.7% of GDP - and getting worse. China is the center of global manufacturing, and the U.S. buys much, all of it on credit.
Some speak of a "new paradigm", one which will make such patterns sustainable. We heard the same nonsense during the tech bubble in the stock market.
Can the U.S. be supplanted as global superpower? Given the present patterns, it not only can, but will.
Our "knowledge" based industries are being outsourced to India,
and our guts are being spilled to import OPECker oil.
When I was in HS, I did a piece like this using honest statistics to show that East Germany was whipping the tail off W.Germany... ROTFLMPO ... some high schoolers never learn.
Taking orders by phone and routing help-center calls isn't "knowledge based" industry.
And, of course, major US employers like Dell are already calling the outsourcing of such jobs to India a failure and are rehiring in the US.
and our guts are being spilled to import OPECker oil
In other words, you believe that the Workers' World Party analysis of the Iraq War is the correct one, in spite of the facts.
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