ping
Super power economy by unfair trade.
Hmmm.. I thought one of the benefits of opening China was all the high value goods we could sell them. I guess we can cross cars off that list.
Here’s a quick quiz:
Which country in the world has lost the most manufacturing jobs in the last 10 years?
I was in a Coldwater Creek store this Dec 24th, Christmas shopping. I NEVER DID find anything in the store that did not have “Made in China” on it....not clothes, not jewelry, not pots and pans, not nic-nacs, etc. They are nothing but a retailer of ChiCom goods. Then, I went next door to a Chico’s store. After the first 5 or 6 garments were Chinese, I did find a FEW made in India. NOTHING in EITHER store was made in America. NADA.
As to manufacturing employment in Red China, there is a fairly recent paper at the BLS (produced independently, though, I believe) that is interesting to read:
Manufacturing Employment in China
As 1rudeboy pointed out in post #17, Red China's published economic numbers are not of high quality. The paper attempts to point out some of the anomalies and tries to work up some more reasonable numbers.
There is a longer, related paper that also deals with compensation at the BLS:
Does China have a large and growing manufacturing capability? Sure, thanks to global corporations in a “race to the bottom” looking for low-wage labor markets.
Can the Chinese shoot down low earth orbit satellites with rockets? Yep.
Are they building a Blue Water navy? Yep.
Will they take over Taiwan via military invasion after the 2008 Olympics if HRH Clinton is elected el Presidente? Sure—and the U.S. won’t stop them.
The problem (in my opinion), remains however the size of their population. They all have to eat...and if, in the future, they can’t feed everybody then their’s another set of issues they’ll have to deal with as a “superpower”.
I think their answer will be to become another culture in love with death: Euthanasia of the old and sick and “undesirables”, continuation of the “one child” policy via abortions on a massive scale; tens of millions of unmarried males hornier than Bill Clinton but who can’t breed. Rising death rates due to the environmental pollution “byproduct” of their massive economic build up.
Cultures in love with death always get their wish—their culture dies.
Then again, if we make up an altogether different arbitrary rate, different from the arbitray PRC peg rate of 7.77 or the arbitrary BigMac defined rate of 3.4 or 2.8 or whatever, then we can post an altogether more or less inflammatory and more or less informative article.
How bout I give you $1 Million dollars in the US or $15 Million Yuan and you have to choose to live, work, invest only in the respective country for the rest of your years. Your choice would be what?
Move the manufacturing plants to Mexico. That was what was supposed to happen with NAFTA. The mexicans would stay in mexico and work there. Then China would lose business as the plants went south instead fo east.
What happened? Mexicans are here, no plants in mexico and china is stonger than ever.
So China has some oil for a while and they figure they can run a navy and some airforce for the time being and they can also let their serfs drive cars on the new 50,000 miles of Interstate Superhighway. So, will they be able to scale down their expectations when the war cuts off their supply completely? They aren’t Japanese who luv the Emperor. .
Yet, their status as a “developing country” absolves them from the Global Warming fiasco.
But yet they still don’t have democracy, as many people naively thought would happen.
” But it means that Washington can no longer condescend to China as a “developing” nation in need of U.S. tax dollars for programs relating to energy, environment, and the like. China has ample money and resources to pay for these programs by itself. It also has the potential to build a superpower military. The Central Intelligence Agency suggests that China spends 3.8 percent of its GDP on arms. Therein lies the real downside of China’s economic boom. “
The Heritage Foundation sounds a lot like Duncan Hunter these days. THE ONLY candidate who is concerned and willing to do anything about China.
The article didn’t mention him, but I kept thinking about Duncan Hunter while reading this thing. He has been almost a lone voice warning the country about the problems now and in the future with a growing, militarized China. Too bad everyone is so quick to dismiss him. I have a feeling we are going to pay a huge price because of it. Glad to see the Heritage Foundation is wise to the problem. That’s a good sign.
The author's argument is circular. Doh.
Super-duper Economy, based on slavery.
No thanks.
Assuming the Chinese gubmint is smart enough not to start a war, China's boom is good news all around. As is India's. Nowhere is it written that the rest of the world is obligated to remain poor so as not to compete with us. In the long run, we want China and India to rise to a level of prosperity that (1) provides a decent standard of living for their people and (2) establishes a domestic cost structure with which we can compete on a level playing field. Per capita parity is a long, long way away, but the sooner China reaches a South Korean level, the better.
Of course there are problems. China has been getting a free ride on exchange rates and is naturally reluctant to surrender its advantage. The pressure, however, is only going to grow. My layman's opinion is that China will yield sooner rather than later; the question is whether it will take sanctions first. In the end, however, China will have to accept the fact that as the (soon to be) largest economy in the world, it has systemic responsibilities larger than narrow mercantilist self-interest. China is too big to any longer be treated as an international charity case.
China is currently getting an expensive lesson on transparency and quality assurance in an international marketplace. As the Chinese economy matures, it will inevitably be pulled into compliance with international commercial norms. At the same time, China still has to deal with 600 million people stranded in the countryside, a rapidly aging population, and the need to liberalize internally to accommodate a mass professional and business class. They've got some serious problems on their plate as well.