Posted on 03/02/2018 11:39:12 AM PST by Mariner
“We got China wrong. Now what?” ran the headline over the column in the Washington Post.
“Remember how American engagement with China was going to make that Communist backwater more like the democratic, capitalist West?” asked Charles Lane in his opening sentence.
America’s elites believed that economic engagement and the opening of U.S. markets would cause the People’s Republic to coexist benignly with its neighbors and the West.
We deluded ourselves. It did not happen.
Xi Jinping just changed China’s constitution to allow him to be dictator for life. He continues to thieve intellectual property from U.S. companies and to occupy and fortify islets in the South China Sea, which Beijing now claims as entirely its own.
Meanwhile, China sustains North Korea as Chinese warplanes and warships circumnavigate Taiwan threatening its independence.
We today confront a Chinese Communist dictatorship and superpower that seeks to displace America as first power on earth and to drive the U.S. military back across the Pacific.
Who is responsible for this epochal blunder?
The elites of both parties. Bush Republicans from the 1990s granted China most-favored-nation status and threw open America’s market.
Result: China has run up $4 trillion in trade surpluses with the United States. Her $375 billion trade surplus with us in 2017 far exceeded the entire Chinese defense budget.
We fed the tiger, and created a monster.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
Thank you for further clarifying. The situations aren’t the same.
Buchanan bump for later....
“Where did they get this “WE” stuff?”
The collective “we”, as in the US Congress, Presidents, Industry, Academia and Finance.
Hell, the entire “conservative” commentariat has been leading this effort since 1970.
They forgot that Conservatism without Nationalism is like Faith without Works. And likely to end in destruction.
When talking about conservatism we always must have a context as to what is being conserved (and for what sake). Because we could be conservative with respect to folly, not just with respect to wisdom.
All the way back to the Opium War era there has never been a single time that the West has gotten anything right on China.
When missionaries went to China was the sanest occasion.
What bothers me about it are two things.
1. We destroyed American jobs by the 100s of thousands.
2. We strengthened an fledgling Capitalist economy, that fed a 1.25 billion person collective.
On top of that if you were Chinese pretty much your history with the West wouldn’t be very good. So they aren’t particularly inclined to be subservient or even very friendly.
True.
As far as who western man is, it’s more reasonable to equate western man with the common people, not with the few misguided and mentally deficient elite.
“Most of the money your grocery gets is spent in your country. The analogy breaks down when you consider the world to be your supermarket.”
ALL of the dollars we paid China for the goods they sold us eventually have to be spent in this country (or countries where the dollars is an official currency).
And they are spending them, buying mostly US Treasuries, but also real estate, businesses, Stocks and bonds, etc.
If they were being spent at the rate of accumulation, then there wouldn’t be a deficit.
But you are looking through a keyhole yet. Not everything of note or value on earth can be guided by brute economics.
If other countries are proxies for the spending, why aren’t they showing up as surpluses with those countries?
But we have a more fundamental problem here, and that’s the use of economics as the sole lens to gauge the wisdom of an activity.
If we have a secular doctrine that the love of money is the root of all goodness, and a sacred one that the love of money is the root of all evil, someone is wrong.
“How reasonable would your transactions be if the store owner put all other stores out of business, and then would only give you 75 cents for every dollar you spend there?”
And he does that how?? Has China put Vietnam out of business, or Cambodia, Or Indonesia, Or Bangladesh, Or Honduras Or Guatemala, Or Korea. Check where things are made and you’ll see more and more stuff coming from those places. In a free market a monopoly that gouges people will go under in no time because there will always be competitors ready to undercut them.
“Now imagine you were an employee of that store and your hours or rate were reduced because a 17yr old kid was willing to do your job for less.”
Nonsense. A hungry 30 year old couldn’t undercut whoever has the job now? And by that statement are you suggesting that wages should be dictated by law instead of the market?
What’s the common factor in all those places? A cheap standard of life.
The market itself is right to be constrained by law. America ate its own seed corn. Now idjits are coming up for excuses for doing it. The pressures we get for doing it force us deeper and deeper into socialism.
And don’t tell me about labor markets till you get pigeonholed by resume. A prodigious past is almost a death sentence to a career when economics shrink. Oh open up your own business? Great for those with business acumen, not so great for others.
“If they were being spent at the rate of accumulation, then there wouldn’t be a deficit.”
There is no deficit!! Just like there is no deficit when I go to McDonald and they give me a hamburger and fries and I give them 5 dollars.
When you go to Walmart and gladly pay for some chinese made product, do you personally incur a deficit to China?? Does anybody incur a deficit, or is it simply a voluntary transaction with both parties happy and neither owing anything to each other?
Oh, we’ve defined away the problem?
That’s nonsense.
The problem indeed comes in that we were induced to “gladly pay for some Chinese made product.” For the sake of a merchant class.
If you can't even master a Honda Accord, are you even capable of dressing yourself in the morning?
Maybe if they also had Western traffic police, they’d do better.
As it turns out, China has Western manufacturing experts ready and eager to show these dime a dozen laborers how to make something splendid for Western consumption.
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