[robowombat]

You are right that the Chinese walk a fine line. They want all the Outer barbarians to properly respect the innate superiority of the Middle Kingdom and continue to buy Chinese products. At the same time they want to replace the US as the greatest military power on the planet. They are as you say a long way from trying to do that but I suspect they think in decades or longer not today's lamestream evening news or the next poll.

Exporting socialism is not much on the PRC menu. They have basically become in action a true fascist dictatorship complete with hyper-nationalistic appeals to the masses, glorification of the armed forces,chauvinistic historical propaganda, and the myth of the heroic party. On top of which their attitude towards 'the broad masses' is that 'we still have far to many' so they are expendables and spending money on OSHA protections is not only damaging to export supremacy but counterproductive period. The PRC is a true thug state with desires to be super power. Imagine militarist Japan of the 1930's with a billion people.

[pawdoggie]

At the same time they want to replace the US as the greatest military power on the planet.

Can't say that I agree with you on this. I believe that they are concerned with being the preeminent power in Asia (much like the pre-WWII Imperial Japanese military), but with the intent of securing their defense perimeter, on the one hand, and preventing the US military from interfering with their "projects" in Asia, such as invading Taiwan and securing as much of the offshore oil in South Asia as possible. To accomplish these objectives, the Chinese don't have to "match up" in every military category versus the US, they simply have to achieve conventional and asymmetrical military parity in Asia.