Posted on 11/23/2004 8:41:42 AM PST by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
The scariest ride I have ever had was not at any amusement park. It was the ride I took recently through Shanghai, China from Hongqiao international airport to the Bund area along the Huangpu river front. It was just after dark, and this mammoth city was lit up in an awe-inspiring display the likes of which I had not seen even in Beijing. Shanghai has a skyline that puts New York or Chicago to shame, but then Shanghai has a larger population than New York and Chicago combined. Mile after mile of new high rise office buildings, many boosting the names of the world's major corporations, stun the viewer with their proclamation of wealth and power. Unlike the boxy concrete and steel designs I had seen in Tokyo, the Shanghai skyline is marked by some of the most beautiful urban architecture I had ever seen.
And that was before I saw Pudong, the new economic area on the other side of the river. I took a boat tour down the river to get a better look at this new economic zone for Shanghai development. It is already crammed with office towers and factories along the route to the new Pudong international airport. One impressive complex is the new Krupp steel plant. Another is the Jinmao Tower, the third tallest building in the world. It is an impressive 88-story office complex, but even more noteworthy was the forest of other towers around it. Over half of the high-rise buildings in the Shanghai-Pudong area have been completed in the last five years, and the new structures are much more massive than those that existed before. With the grandiose designs inherent in the development of this area, China is clearly sending a message to the world that it playing for keeps.
American security concerns have been focused on terrorism and the Middle East. This is understandable. Muslim terrorists are plotting more American deaths and must be combated. Yet, terrorism is the weapon of the weak. It cannot change the global balance of power. And Islamic fundamentalism is a backward looking doctrine of social and economic stagnation.
It is the rise of China that poses the greatest challenge to America's position in the world. Endowing an empire of 1.3 billion people with modern industry, technology, and capital gives the authoritarian central government in Beijing immense resources with which to support its ambitions. And what is driving China is the impassioned spirit of nationalism and the limitless energy of capitalism. This combination will rock the world.
Military threats always loom largest in the public mind, and China is creating such a danger. My visits to Beijing and Shanghai were preludes to the real reason for my trip, which was to attend the 5th Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai. This event is held every two years. It has two purposes: to showcase China's advancements and to attract American and other Western companies who want to sell technology and systems to Beijing.
China's space program was highlighted, from the capsule astronaut Yang Liwei used to orbit the Earth in 2003 to animated projections of how China plans to land on the Moon and exploit its resources. Most of the displays, however, were devoted to Chinese fighters, remotely piloted (unmanned) military aircraft, helicopter gunships, and missiles of all types.
It was clear from the displays that there is no segregation of civilian from military aviation activities. The Chinese aerospace industry is run by the state. Its largest agency is Aviation Industries of China I (AVIC I), whose displays featured, side by side, a variety of civilian airliners and numerous military projects for fighters, bombers, military transports, trainers, and reconnaissance aircraft. Its sister organization, AVIC II, which was split off in 1999 to create competition and improve management, concentrates more on business jets, helicopters, and missiles. One display featured a row of cruise and air-to-air missiles under a large poster of a corporate jet, again showing the guiding Chinese principle of "Jun-min jiehe," which translates as "combine the military and the civil."
This principle was very evident as I strolled through the two halls devoted to American and Western firms trying to sell high-tech products to China. These firms are only supposed to be engaged on the civilian side of Chinese development. But that line cannot be drawn, and it is doubtful those marketing their wares in this booming market care.
Italian Deputy Minister of Defense Salvator Cicu was on hand for the signing of a co-production agreement between Agusta Westland and AVIC II for a new helicopter project. Italy, along with France and Germany, have been pressing the European Union to lift is arms embargo on China. But this embargo has long been undermined by the sale of dual use equipment and technology to Beijing. Helicopters are a prime example. Why else would a defense official be celebrating an allegedly civilian project?
One display showed two identical remotely piloted helicopters. One was configured for crop dusting, the other for military reconnaissance. It didn't take much imagination to consider what the crop duster might also be used for if armed with chemical or biological weapons.
American companies have been just as guilty as European in helping China improve its capabilities. Boeing had a large mural at its booth touting not only how many airliners it had sold to China, but also how much production work it had outsourced to Chinese industry, how many Chinese engineers and technical workers it had trained, and how much it was investing in Chinese research facilities.
It may not come to a military showdown. The economic changes may be so large, that America will simply back down if there is a major confrontation. It is really the economic changes that determine what resources governments can mobilize to advance or protect national interests. Wars, when they occur, test whether the changes have been sufficient to reorder how the world is run and whose decisions matter.
In Shanghai, I stayed at the Broadway Mansions hotel in the Bund. The Bund is the area where the European powers had their offices when they ran China's affairs. The British were the most powerful of the imperialist powers and the Broadway Mansions was built by a British businessman in the 1930s when England was still considered the leading global superpower.
Today, Britain no longer holds that position in the world hierarchy or in Chinese affairs. In 1999, there was no serious thought given in London to holding on to Hong Kong. This beautiful city of free and prosperous people was handed over to the Beijing dictatorship without a whimper. The balance of power had obviously changed from what it had been in 1842 when England first laid claim to Hong Kong, or 1945 when London reclaimed the city after it had been captured by Japan at the outbreak of World War II..
The British were on the winning side of both world wars. Indeed, England has not lost a major war since the Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815. But they still declined as their economy fell out from under their empire. And the danger to us, as the British example should make clear, is that we have embraced the same classical liberal economic notions about "free trade" and the neglect of international economic strategy that had their origins in 19th century British thought.
Economic strategy is at the top of Beijing's agenda: the core of its pursuit of "comprehensive national power." Zhuhai, like Pudong, is a designated economic development zone. It has a new international airport, about 25 miles from the port city. There is an 8-lane superhighway running from the city to the airport, mainly through farm land with very little traffic. But there are massive housing projects built (and being built) for the expected future workforce. Near the city, new factories line the highway. A friend of mine who had been to the 4th Aviation Expo noted that where there had been a single line of factories two years ago, the plants are now 2-4 deep along the road.
The first challenge China poses is economic. It goes beyond the lop-sided trade imbalance which is menacing American domestic industry and the value of the dollar as the international medium of exchange. The longer term threat is from the vast new wealth and array of modern capabilities that will be available to a regime whose strategic ambitions clash with those of the United States.
Washington must concentrate its attention on enlarging and sustaining its own economic capabilities – industrial, technological, financial, to ensure that its stays generations ahead of China. This will take more effort than was needed to defeat the Soviet Union, as Chinese capitalism is a much more vigorous contender than was Russian communism. But safeguarding America's preeminence is just as imperative, regardless of the nature o f the threat.
It looks like something out of Star Trek, doesn't it?
So we get stuff for paper. Sounds like a good deal to me.
Since I would like to get more of such paper and you do not seem to value it very much, maybe I can help you with getting rid of it? Send me private mail and remember I was the first to propose it!
The world market is widely open. They can sell dollars, US treasury bonds in other countries.
There are only two ways to get out of the debt trap - paid it back or default/go bankrupt. Otherwise one stays in the servitude for ever. Governments have one extra option - they can debase their currency. Imperial Spain did it.
ping
Japan does not have the 'throw weight' that PRChina does, in billions of bodies...
Nor, for that matter, the land mass/natural resources to be a Great Power in the military sense.
It was a Dimowit-inspired war, lost by a Dimowit: LBJohnson, ably assisted in losing by Bob MacNamara, truly a genius with a moron's understanding.
The MSM simply piled on.
You are wrong.
Captilalism promotes capitalism.
It is possible to have a nation ruled by an iron hand and still have capitalism. The means of production can be corporate controlled (even if the government has a say) and individually owned. Miltaristic expansionists can still control the armed forces even in a capitalistic country.
China never really bought into the definition of communism, "Soviet style". China uses capitalism as an economic means to achive its geopolitical and military goals.
Very true. Or you can have mixed socialdemocratic system like it used to be in Sweden.
The real question is - if the capitalism and republic/democracy are not magically unseparably connected what is better if forced to choose:
Representative/democratic republic with socialism,
or
Market private economy with authoritarian government?
This is a real life choice as there were elected socialist regimes overthrown in right wing coups.
I personally think that the best system is which brings people closer to God. Be it socialism, capitalism, republic, monarchy or else.
I'm not an economist, but it is hard to see how a population with a shortage of women, vis a vis men, is going to be econmically successful. No where is this demographic problem addressed.
Or the problem of two adults caring for four elderly adults (their parents) while raising a family.
No, it means we have transferred to them much of our cutting edge technology, industry, and adventure capital. Our industrial cupboards are becoming bare. We are losing the ability to make "stuff." Military included.
The Chinese are getting all the capabilities we used to have, and we are losing what we used to have. Almost perfect symmetry.
Visualize a big Tick, looking like Mao Tse Tung, fastened onto the back of Uncle Sam. Initially, the tick is the size of, well, a cockroach. After 14 uninterrupted years of siphoning off the life-blood of American industry and capital (where whole plants, with cutting-edge technology are simply closed down, boxed up, and shipped to Tianjin and Shanghai for reassembly) the tick is already, at least as a matter of industry, as big as Uncle Sam. Indeed, many of the friends of the Tick brag that they are in fact already bigger than Uncle Sam. Soon, there will be little doubt as to who is the SuperPower...and who is living in the past...unaware of how the tables have turned.
Before he tried to be a technofuturist, George Gilder wrote some very interesting things about why women are critical to sustaining a civilization--it revolves around the woman forcing the man to accept responsibility for his offspring.
I read somewhere that some Chinese are now importing women from SE Asia for brides. They do have to pay a large dowry. Of course, there is always Russia, with their surplus of women. Russian men tend to die young from too much Vodka.
I was hoping someone would post a pic -- and wow, what a skyline. The writer of the article is right. Very impressive.
You are right, there is no longer a true "communist" sytem. It is in name only. It is a capitalistic free market economy. The social system is evolving away from the communist system.
As usual there are elements of truth and elements of nonsense to both sides of this argument. China is comparable to Japan in the 1980's in that much of its success is based on unsustainable factors. Factors which may eventually bring its economy down. Does this mean that we should completely ignore what any sensible observer knows is going to be a major strategic threat? China is already driving up commodity prices worldwide with its massive consumption. Those commodities are finite and, despite what many naive free-traders think, competition over them could very easily leave the realm of peaceful economic competition and enter the realm of armed conflict.
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