Posted on 02/16/2005 6:37:24 PM PST by tbird5
A report by the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute says China has eclipsed the world's richest economy in consumption of four of the five basic foods, energy and industrial commodities.
The reports says China's rapid growth means it is taking the main share of grain, meat, coal and steel.
The country uses twice as much fertiliser as the United States and Chinese people buy many more television sets, refrigerators and cellular phones than Americans.
China trails the United States only in automobiles.
Do they consume more because there are more of them? Seems like the articles seem to forget that little tidbit..
Well geez. They've got us outnumbered - what, 7-1?
FMCDH(BITS)
Does this mean the Eco-nutz, ELF and the Lefty-Lawyers will go bother them now and leave us alone?
FMCDH(BITS)
We already have television sets and refrigerators. Congratulations to them for buying their first one ever.
Thank you Richard Nixon
search 2-15-2005 Toilet paper suppliers in a flush ( Terrified forests shudder as Chinese learn to use toilet paper).
Well our corporate and politician free traitors said there was going to be huge demand for american goods from China.
Silence (crickets chirping in the background)
Rolls eyes.
...and they said they would be buying our autos in huge numbers..
Now I see they plan on making their own and selling them to use with 30 cent an hour labor.
Goody!!
Thanks to the Bent one!!
Well, they're royally screwed now.
I've always said that we in the US worry about last years problem. Years ago it was the Japanese who were going to overwhelm us. Why they even bought Rockefeller Center! 10 year later they sold it off for a song and are barely holding on to their pitiful little island.
Now the boogy man is China. Guess what? The time to worry about China (at least their economy) was 1995. They are well and truly caught by their own peoples raised expectations. Do you think for an instant that several billion Chinese consumers are going to stand by idly while China threatens to cut them off from American TV and the latest innovation from Redomnd or Silicon Valley?
I don't think so.
Not.
"Rolls eyes."
Yea - and I guess we were just paranoid about the Russians too, they never REALLY had all of those nasty weapons </sarcasm>.
Well, that wasn't quite what I meant; I wasn't really rolling my eyes at you, I was rolling my eyes at the author of the article. That's someone who WANTS the USA to be second to some other country at anything.
Personally, I don't think it is economically that we should be worried about China, unless they go completely capitalistic. I think we should definitely be worried about them militarily, and what they do to further their agenda in other areas.
Like it or not, China is now a global power that is going to compete with us economically for generations to come. I don't think it will ever become a military conflict, too many nukes and too many business interests that would be threatened.
I majored in Chinese studies, have spent alot of time in China/Hong-Kong/Macao, and am about to marry a Chinese national. So I know a bit about this subject.
Get used to China being both a competitor and partner on the global stage. Comparing it to Japan, particularly the Japan of the 1980's, is neither accurate or useful. China will continue to absorb resources and technology for many, many years to follow. China will continue to expand is cultural, economic and military power. In our lifetime, China will far more influence over affairs in east Asia than the United States.
China will increasingly exert economic influence on the countries that surround it, potentially creating a "Monroe Doctrine"-like situation as the United States has enjoyed in Central and Southern America.
As for exerting military power to usurp territory, the chances of that happening is extremely unlikely. The national borders of China have been mostly the same for hundreds of years: ocean to the west, deserts and well-armed foreigners to the north, Himalayas to the east, and jungles and well-armed foreigners to the south.
Personally, I foresee most of the 21st century being dominated by 3 geopolitical groups, slowly undermined by a wide variety of trans-global movements/corporations. U.S., European Union, and China, each dominating the countries closest to them and competing globally for resources and cultural influence. Within the tri-polar megastructure, trans-national corporations and trans-cultural ideological movements will become the structures most people experience on a day-to-day basis. Such corporations and new ideologies would probably identify less and less with any particular nation-state.
Already we see that "Made in the USA" means very little to most Americans consumers, and patriotism is not considered important when competing against shareholder value.
The only way I think the U.S. could maintain lone superpower dominance of world affairs is a successful military take-over of Middle Eastern crude oil supplies. Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia ought to do the trick. Unfortunately, doing so would require at least half a million U.S. soldiers occupying said countries, inflicting genocide on the Middle Eastern civilian population and suffering 5 digit or 6 digit killed/wounded figures of American personnel.
Personally, I think we'd be better off focusing our efforts on investing in export industries, energy independence, an interstate fiber-optics system, expanded national rail service, children's healthcare and uniform, verifiable voting systems.
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