Posted on 07/07/2010 4:58:55 PM PDT by Comrade Brother Abu Bubba
Yankee Utopians in a Chinese Century
For those who can yet recall the backyard blast furnaces of Mao's China in the 1950s and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to re-instill peasant values in the 1970s, the news was jarring.
In 2011, said the Financial Times, China will surpass the United States as first manufacturing power, a title America has held since surpassing Great Britain around 1890.
Each year, China passes a new milestone.
Last year, China surpassed Germany as the greatest exporting nation. This year, China surpasses Japan as the world's second-largest economy. This year, China became the first auto manufacturer on earth.
For a decade, China has been running history's largest trade surpluses with the United States and has amassed a hoard of $2.3 trillion in foreign currency. She now holds the mortgage on America.
How has China vaulted to the forefront in manufacturing, trade and technology?
Export-driven economic nationalism.
Beijing cut the value of its currency in half in 1994, doubling the price of imports, slashing the price of exports and making Chinese labor the best bargain in Asia. Foreign firms were invited to relocate their plants in China and told this was the price of access to the Chinese market. Beijing began looting these firms of technology, as she sent her sons to study in America. Industrial espionage and intellectual property theft became Chinese specialties.
And how has America fared in the new century?
One in every three manufacturing jobs we had in 2000, nearly 6 million, vanished. Some 50,000 U.S. factories shut down. We have run trade deficits totaling $5 trillion since NAFTA passed. The real wages of working Americans have been stagnant for a decade.
While China has resumed her 12 percent growth rate, the United States, with 25 million unemployed or underemployed, appears headed for a double-dip recession.
While China has resumed her 12 percent growth rate, the United States, with 25 million unemployed or underemployed, appears headed for a double-dip recession.
Yet, even as the end of America's tenure as the world's first manufacturing power was being announced, The Wall Street Journal admonished us to keep our eyes on the prize: a new world order where it does not matter who produces what or where.
"The pursuit of some ideal global 'balance' in trade and capital flows is an illusion. ... World leaders would do better to worry less about (trade) imbalances and more about whether their own nations are pursuing policies that contribute to global prosperity."
There you have it -- the conflict in visions between us.
For decades, America's leaders have followed the Wall Street Journal ideology. We put a mythical world economy before our own economy. We put "global prosperity" before national interest. We forced our workers to compete, in their own country, against the products of foreign laborers earning a tenth of their pay. And we let in tens of millions of semi-skilled and unskilled immigrants, legal and illegal, to take the jobs of our countrymen.
And the Chinese? They put China first, second and third.
And who won the decade? And who is winning the future?
Inside the July 1 Washington Post is a small story about how the World Trade Organization finally ruled that European nations have been unfairly subsidizing Airbus -- for 40 years.
While welcome, what good will it do now for scores of thousands of U.S. workers who built commercial jets for Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas, which Airbus took down, or Boeing, which was outsourcing jobs even before Airbus dethroned it as the world's No. 1 aircraft manufacturer.
Why did some U.S. president not tell the Europeans when they started this: Either stop subsidizing Airbus to kill our U.S. aircraft companies -- or start defending yourselves against the Russians.
The day the FT reported that China was sweeping past us to become No. 1 in manufacturing, The New York Times ran a front-page story on the closing of the Whirlpool refrigerator plant in Evansville, Ind., and the loss of 1,100 jobs. The plant is moving to Mexico.
"Free trade! Free trade!" said Henry Clay in the tariff debate of 1833. "The call for free trade is as unavailing as the cry of a spoiled child in its nurse's arms for the moon or the stars that glitter in the firmament of heaven. It has never existed. It will never exist."
It will only place us, said Clay, "under the commercial dominion of Great Britain." Today, it is the dominion of China.
The US has transformed itself from the world's greatest creditor nation into the world's greatest debtor nation thanks to the "FREE MARKET".
The “free market” forced people to borrow way beyond their means?
The “free market” forced the government to borrow endlessly to build the illusion of productivity?
It is government at the root of easy money that enticed people to borrow instead of save. In addition government has destroyed savings in this country by trashing the value of dollar and taxing it to death.
Denial is the name of a river which runs through Egypt.
That’s an emotional response not addressing anything I actually said.
Sadly, not every China supporter likes China's new transition to the free market:
China has been running history's largest trade surpluses with the United States and has amassed a hoard of $2.3 trillion in foreign currency.sidebar:
LOL
US prepares for war with China
Of course by the way N0bamas handling America China would kick us.
What do you mean by valid? It’s some kooky person wearing a uniform with a PRC flag behind him.
LOL
I meant the notion the weirdo makes concerning America-China relations and whether or not there’s a chance America and China could be at war shortly. I think he’s full of it but then again he’s a commie.
China is overrated. They have some very long term cultural habits (and absence of some culturally valuable habits) that is already hobbling them, and that hobbling will continue. On such weakness is that Chinese culture does NOT recover well or easily from upset.
US culture’s great strength is our ability to get up quickly after a serious fall.
“Globalism” is of higher importance than Americans well being- it’s as simple as that.
Ivy-leaguers are taught this (crap) are the elite foists this upon all of us.
Oh, please; like we’re going to take the word of a Communist country (however nominally) about its economic activity?
LIES!
All LIES!!!
It was this sort of defeatism that led to the the sucking-up of “detente” in the ‘70s, the ‘realpolitik’ that ‘proved’ that Reagan was a crazy fool. Well, guess what? Reagan was right: evil is unsustainable, and will crumble when opposed.
Buchanan has only one good observation, and that is, “Demographics are destiny.” Using that to view China gives us the clue that they must launch a war within 15 years, to solve the ‘Little Emperor’ problem of too many young men. Rampant homosexuality is another answer, but not one likely to appeal to the government. The relative positions of China and the U.S. today are remarkably similar to those of Japan and the U.S. in 1941.
Don’t worry that China will outpace us; worry that the new Red Dawn movie is too accurate.
And I agree.
Japan was going to own us in the 80’s... Funny how that worked out...
China is in for some major upheaval. In addition the Chinese people aren't going to be willing to continue being the worlds slaves and continue to live in a seriously polluted toilet. With their new wealth they are going to demand a better standard of living and a safer environment all of which will increase the cost of Chinese production. As that happens all their other culture issues will come into play making them far less competitive than they are now.
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