Posted on 04/10/2011 5:40:51 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
APRIL 7, 2011.
A Businessman's Guide to China's Collapse
It might not happen soon, but when it does it will pay to be prepared..
By JOSEPH STERNBERG
Months of turmoil in the Middle East have focused attention on two points. First, authoritarian regimes are inherently unstable. Second, this poses some significant problems for businesses. Consider managers trying to evacuate staff, safeguard physical property or keep supply chains operating as smoothly as possible.
Think it couldn't happen in China? Four months ago, no one would have predicted imminent mass unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen or Libya, either. While signs of discontent with those governments were obvious, the authoritarians seemed by all accounts to have the situation firmly in hand.
That is precisely the case in China today, too. Disaffection over inflation and official corruption are rising rapidly, while the government has further reduced, to 7%, its official growth target for the year. Beijing clearly is worried, to judge from the lengths to which authorities have gone to suppress the whiff of any Jasmine protest.
Businesses don't have to believe that regime collapse is imminent—it probably isn't—to look at these events and conclude some planning might be prudent just in case. Herewith a brief guide to keeping your business afloat if China goes kablooey:
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
China has a skewed top-down economy that still reflects the instincts and control of the Communist Party.
Private consumption is only about 35% of the economy - a figure about half the USA’s and well below “normal” levels. “Investment” is 49% of GDP - a huge figure representing the chinese Gov’ts control over the economy at all levels.
IF China has a crisis - it will be begin in politics first, because the Communist Party and the Gov’t ARE the chinese economy/
Protesters versus tanks....let’s see....how did that Tiananmen Square thing turn out?
However, if that economic dislocation doesn't come, then for certain China is the next superpower! It's really that simple. I was talking to certain gentlemen from a certain Chinese company that I can obviously not name that are setting up all these subsidiaries in the US, and it was amazing the ease at which they were doing that. The excitement in the room was palpable. Add to that all the expansion happening in Africa and Latin America, and a graph showing their frenetic rise contrasted against the slowing down (and in two cases decline) of American and European competitors showed just how things may be if the Chinese economy keeps chugging. For the life of me I cannot decipher the STUPIDITY of the West to cede Africa (almost completely) and Latin America (to a large extent) to the Chinese. Someday that will be written down as a major mistake by the West, particularly considering the abundant resources present, the geo-political advantages, and also the fact that Africa alone currently has a larger middle class than India, and a middle class that is increasing at a significant rate (hence the current Chinese one-two punch of not only taking natural resources, but also tapping into the nascent but quickly developing consumer market in sub-Saharan Africa).
Anyways, it was an enlightening (and enjoyable) trip. Very enlightening. If China does not collapse within the next 7-10 years, then it will be next to impossible for them to not to be a superpower. In some ways they already are!
If no one is buying their lead crap or can’t afford to buy their junk, then I don’t see how they continue growing at all. Think they will nuke us for allowing their trillion dollar investment because we’ve cause the collapse of the treasuries?
I don’t think they’ll nuke us, but they’ll move on Taiwan and possibly make very aggressive action action Japan, which would suck us immediately into WWIII.
I agree. The most dangerous time for a government is when things are getting better, but not quickly enough and mostly only for a few.
China NEEDS to expand its middle class, consisting of its engineers and managers. In order to do that, it MUST allow some degree of free market, which results in winners and losers. To retain control, it cannot allow the Communist Party members and their families to be losers. Meanwhile, the peasants, who were raised on the slogans of Mao about egalitarianism are seeing Party members running around in cars talking on their smartphones, while peasants worry about starving if the harvest is not good.
Meanwhile, you have a middle class consisting of productive people who must give up a good chunk of their income to supporting unproductive Party leeches. The combination is not good...
How much of that "investment" is being embezzled by Party members at all levels.
China is the only power that can safely invest in Africa any more.
Neither America or Europe can. We are no longer ruthless enough to be able to stop African thugs from expropriating our investments. The Chinese are. They don't CARE if they are called racist. They ARE racist, in that they believe in the inherent genetic superiority of the Han race. They even have test scores to back them up.
Meanwhile, they retain enough ruthlessness to respond violently to any attempted theft of their investments, and the Africans know it. They are shipping over tens of thousands of their young men of military age, to work in their African operations. Once a critical level is reached, they will start dealing with the native Africans similarly to how we dealt with Native Americans pre-20th-Century. And they will not give a DAMN about what the UN or World Opinion has to say about it.
In the greatest movement of people the world has ever seen, China is secretly working to turn the entire continent into a new colony.China has a lot of equipment for fighting a land war. They don't have the amphibious capability to make an opposed landing against a place like Taiwan, but Africa does not have much of a defended coastline. They DO have enough container ships to bring several divisions and their equipment to Africa quickly if they have a place to land them, and keep them supplied if the US Navy does not choose to get into a shooting war with China.Reminiscent of the West's imperial push in the 18th and 19th centuries - but on a much more dramatic, determined scale - China's rulers believe Africa can become a 'satellite' state, solving its own problems of over-population and shortage of natural resources at a stroke.
With little fanfare, a staggering 750,000 Chinese have settled in Africa over the past decade. More are on the way.
The strategy has been carefully devised by officials in Beijing, where one expert has estimated that China will eventually need to send 300 million people to Africa to solve the problems of over-population and pollution.
They will spend their T-bills taking over Africa and then South America. See my prior two posts.
Interesting...I’m betting you’re on it.
I’m trying to bug out now, I think China is just as shaky as the U.S.. I’ve been reading a book called “Going Galt”, about economic survival when everything is collapsing. It’s pretty good, but damn scary. Are whole worlds are about to change radically.
https://www.createspace.com/3514336
Thanks for saying that.
From my name you can tell I am African, I also live in Africa. Most Westerners have very sparse knowledge of Africa and this knowledge is stuck in a time warp. Africa is changing very rapidly and only the Chinese seem to understand that.
I just visited a 10 million tonne p.a cement plant in central Nigeria and the major technical partners were Chinese (Sinoma). Travelling further down to Lagos, the Chinese are working on a huge special economic zone project, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.
I used to respect the West as strategic thinkers, now I am not too sure.
Then why is Walmart investing in Sub-Saharan Africa?
The author lives in fantasy land.
China is replacing America. The only nation collapsing is us.
Because we are sending everything of value - our jobs, factories and wealth to “collapsing” China, to which we owe trillions.
The author may as well write about bigfoot or ufo’s for all the reality his writing contains.
Once the Chinese emigrants are in Africa with their families, they will FIGHT any attempt to steal what they've built, and the Chinese government will back them (unlike American and European governments with respect to whites in Zimbabwe and South Africa).
“As to China collapsing. The government there simply won’t allow it.”
The Chinese central government has no control over whether they collapse. As long as they are an export powerhouse, they and the Chinese people will enjoy the benefits that accrue to making things that people buy. If the rest of the world stops buying, and they eventually will, there is only so much even a centrally planned government can do to stave off the inevitable collapse.
We will provide the model for central planning collapse - our Fed and it’s outrageous behavior the past few years is not so far removed from politburo-style central planning. We will survive probably without famine. The Chinese will survive, too but probably not without famine.
Yes, WalMart recently acquired South Africa's MassMart.
Two questions:
(1) From what country does WalMart get most of the products it stocks its shelves with? (Answer: China), and
(2) What would the response be of WalMart's major supplier over any seizure of those stores? (Answer: unpleasant).
Please take a step back, carefully consider your words and understand that we live in the 21st Century. Cecil Rhodes is dead (and the last major empire builders died with him).
The population of Africa is at least 1 billion, and the British will tell you that on occasion Africans can make life very difficult for outsiders (you can google “Mau Mau”).
Okay, if we assume that the Chinese will colonise all the “brain dead” Africans, how are they going to get there? Are they going to swim? Frankly speaking to get to Africa they have to pass through the Indian ocean and the the gulf, then past the Cape of Good Hope. As of present, they cannot even mount a successful operation across the straits to Taiwan. What could they do in Libya?
There is something in the Western psyche that wishes the worst for Africa, it hasn’t changed since King Leopold set up his plantations in the Congo.It doesn’t take much to bring it to the surface evidently.
But believe me, even though the daily stream of news media tells you that we are all doomed, we are not. I represent the flicker of hope that will light the African continent and I don’t care whether you believe me or think I am dumb.
And I am willing to bet all my possessions that there is a greater likelihood that your children not mine, will live under Chinese rule.
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