Posted on 10/25/2010 1:11:00 PM PDT by justsaynomore
I spent last week in China as part of a board meeting with some of our joint venture business partners based in China. It was my first time in China, and some of my preconceived notions were shattered, as is the case for many people who visit there for the first time. But other perceptions were confirmed.
China is a Communist country, but we were not met at the airport with machine gun-carrying soldiers. We were not harassed during our visit simply because we were Americans. In fact, we were warmly greeted and shown the best of hospitality by our business hosts and the government officials who were invited to attend our dinners and luncheons.
But Communism is about government control. And despite the warm hospitality and reforms instituted over the last 20 years to create a hybrid communist-capitalist country, Big Brother is still Big Brother. It’s just not as obvious as it was decades ago.
We visited the ancient Great Wall of China, which the Chinese started 200 years before Christ across their northern border, roughly 3,000 miles long, to protect themselves from their enemies to the north.
Today, there is another great wall technologically erected by the government to protect the people from outside influences. This wall blocks 1.3 billion people from social networking with the rest of the world. There’s no Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter allowed. There’s none coming into the country and there’s none going out.
When I tried to access my 40,000 friends on Facebook and Twitter, it was blank!
The government owns all three telecommunications companies, and simply restricts incoming information from those sources. Too much information and an open exchange of information are considered a threat to government control.
China welcomes foreign investment and ingenuity, but they do not welcome meddling into how they do things. And they certainly, would not want their people to get any ideas about challenging the government through social networking.
It is clear that China is trying to blend their traditional government control with some selective principles of capitalism to inspire entrepreneurial intensity. They are experiencing some success, as evidenced by their explosive economic growth – about 10 percent GDP growth per year. The Chinese will privately admit that there are some growing pains with such a high rate of growth, but they are willing to bear them the pain for the sake of a vibrant and growing economy.
While traveling from Shanghai to Nanjing to Beijing, it was obvious that China’s infrastructure development is on a fast track. One of our tour guides during an outing even joked that the crane has become China’s national bird. As in “construction crane”!
I didn’t say it was funny.
And when we inquired about areas other than construction, we learned that their growth in industrial and technology capabilities was equally intense.
One evening, we received a presentation from an economist who teaches at one of the universities in China, and he acknowledged that if they continue to grow at that high rate and the U.S. continues to grow at our anemic rate, then in 15 to 20 years, China’s economy will be as big as the U.S. economy.
Red light! If our biggest lender becomes the world’s biggest economy with an aspiring world military presence, then our national security could be severely compromised. I have a big problem with that!
China’s rapid economic growth is no big surprise. But when you see and hear it firsthand, coupled with its central government control, there is a chilling and depressing realization. America’s economic and military strength could become second in the world.
That’s a not a perception. It’s reality. But it can be stopped if we counter with American-style strength – a reinvigorated economy combined with real freedom. No countervailing force can stand up to that.
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It takes me longer to shop these days, to find things to purchase that aren’t made in China.
BUMP!
Yep, me too, not to mention finding affordable (thanks to the unions)
That would be like Britain, having a problem with the US having an economy as large as their's. Despite the fact that the US has nearly five times the population of the UK.
This kind of talk is rather absurd. The US economy is over five times larger than the UK. Shouldn't it stand to reason, that if China's become As large as the US, she is still far from her potential?.
He was not saying he has a problem with a country having a larger economy than the US. His concern is over the fact that it is China, that they hold so much of our debt, and because it is a communist country that could be a national security issue.
It concerns me too, I don’t trust the goals and global ambitions of communist governments.
They do allow LinkedIn - I have a number of connections in China.
The Chinese government doesn't do itself any favors by continually calling itself a communist government. However, if you look at everything they've done so far, it is very capitalistic.
Karl Marx wrote the bible of communism. In the end, is nothing more than useless idiology. Yet, the Chinese government have used tried and true economic policies of the Western World to build up their economy. Even when balancing between government owned and/or natured industries to letting it go fully private is based on historically observation on what happened in the West.
China's resistance to allow a sudden increase in the yuan has more to do with their observation of what happened to Japan when they allowed a rapid increase in her yen.
In the end, China is adjusting her economic policies, based on history, that best suits her specific needs. In this case, transitioning an entirely agricultural economy (1978) to one that is semi-industrialize today and ultimately to one that will hopefully be fully industrialized by 2040.
China doesn't concern me, because when you look at every country that has practiced all out agression, e.g., Axis during WWII, they went through a period of over a decade or two where a highly disproportionate amount of their resources went towards military. China has not demonstrated that. Despite their growing military expenditures, even when the Pentagon estimates is several times higher than Beijings stated amount, it is only 4% of her GDP. Which is not unreasonable for any nation during peace time (Beijing's stated amount of $70 billion would be about 1 1/2% and with the Pentagon saying it is three times higher, makes it 4 1/2%, which is still not unreasonable).
"What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state -- Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do." - Arthur Jensen (Network - 1976)
“Looking capitalistic” and actually being a free market are two very different thing in my book.
Here is a very interesting thread on the subject: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2612536/posts
Also:
Pentagon warning over China military build-up
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.3feb3f5f39259253ed4519db00d15acd.551&show_article=1
Back in the 1950's and 1960's, Mao often accused Stalin of abandoning the true ideology of Karl Marx. As a result, Mao set in motion the Cultural Revolution in the 1960's, as he believe that revolution should be on going (another useless idiology from Karl Marx). As a result, China set herself back further than she already was.
Today, Russia is a relatively capitalistic society. And China too. And becoming more so every year.
Interesting video. I don't agree with deficit spending, at least, not for the next 10 years. However, we need to keep in mind a couple of things:
What is owed to China is nothing more than blips in a computer program. There is no vault where there is $3 trillion in cash with a Chinese proprietor stamped on it. In a time of war or conflict, that $3 trillion can be easily frozen or even erased all together.
And as far as owning any hard assets in the US, such as corporations or property, China is way down the list. British, Dutch and Japanese owners, rank as the top three in that order. I don't know who follows, but I wouldn't be surprised, that it is then followed by Canadians, Germans, Australians, etc.
Even hard assets, in times of war, mean very little.
What it really comes down to, is that China's economy, within her own borders, her acquisition of technology, her build up of an industrial base, etc. is unsavory to many in the West. And with a population 4 times that of the US, it is not unreasonable for China to ultimately become larger.
Britain was once the leading world economic power. It is still one of the major economies today, 6th largest after the US, China, Japan, Germany, and France. Becoming 6th, did not mean Britain simply rolled over and died, but rather, other countries, with larger populations simply caught up in industry and technology.
China will be no exception. If the US is someday relegated to the second largest economy in the world, it does not mean the US will somehow end her economic prosperty anymore than Britain becoming number 6 ended hers. Four decades ago, Japan surpassed Germany to become the second largest economy in the world back in 1970. That did not mean Germany simply quit being prosperous. Neither will the US simply quit being prosperous simpy because she will no longer be the largest economy in the world.
So, in conclusion, though I agree with the video about the dangers of deficit spending, I disagree with the emotional response it is trying to convey with the Chinese gloating over the US as China becomes the leading economic country. If China does become the largest economy in the world, historians will not point to America's deficit spending, they will point to China's economic policies and more importantly, that China is FOUR times larger than the US in population.
Yes, China is working to increase her reach. But, China, afterall, is a large country, the largest in the world for that matter. And why shouldn't she have some reach. The British, (in 1983?), was able to wage war against Argentina, clear on the other side of the Atlantic.
There's nothing wrong with a modernizing China, modernizing her military in tandem. China's economy is already larger than Japan's and over twice the size of Britain. Yet, China still does not have an aircraft carrier. Should China be relegated to a third world military while she her economy moves up the global rankings?
While I don't agree with Obama's deficit spending (at least not for a decade), he didn't star the current economic crisis. The current economic crisis really did start with congress abanding a law that was put in place after the 1929 stock market crash (forgot the name of the Act, so sorry for butchering my explaination). This resulted in the issueing of trillions upon trillions of dollars of investment insurance called derivatives (once again, I admit I'm butchering my explanation here). And somewhere in this flood of credit was also the flood of credit to the housing industry. Which, today, is still the lynch pin of our current economic slowdown. That is, until all the forclosed homes are finally processed (and we will take a few more years of this), credit will not flow as easily as it once did until then.
In the end, it was congress, that repealed this act in the late 1990's, that provided stimulus for the economy with a tremendous amount of capital (based on credit) which resulted in the crisis of 2008, and we are still paying for today.
why would you do that?
And while policies such as cash for clunkers didn't give a big boost to the economy, it is necessary to put money back into the system.
When there is a large surge in credit and then a sudden U-turn of it, what do you propose to do? A surge in credit results in the value of homes and stocks to skyrocket, thereby creating a sort of casino like environment. And when the music stops (i.e., credit dries up), a sort of cascading effect occurs where people pull money out of the stock market and home prices collapse. And this is what happened recently.
When that happens, the daily cadence of loans to keep businesses operating begins to fail. So, in order to keep the economy going, the government spends while the free market works its way out, i.e., comes full circle again.
I don't believe in deficit spending for $10 trillion, but a trillion or two, I believe is necessary.
The biggest mistake I believe Obama made was not spending more and quickly spending it on infrastructure projects, such as updating the nations power grid for wind energy.
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