Posted on 08/25/2018 5:15:05 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
It's been a few weeks since Donald Trump fired the opening salvo in a trade war with China, slapping tariffs on a range of Chinese-made goods.
Beijing retaliated with tariffs of its own — and since then, the rhetoric on both sides has been unrepentant.
Much of the focus has been on nervous financial markets, and how the war could affect the fortunes of US farmers and manufacturers — but how do things look from China's side?
Is the trade war the biggest threat to China's economy, or does the country have more pressing problems — like its massive debt?
Dinny McMahon, who spent a decade covering China for the Wall Street Journal, says while Beijing obviously isn't welcoming the trade war, it's also unlikely to be crippled by it.
That's because China's economy is no longer driven by exports.
"In 2007, net exports contributed about 9 per cent to China's GDP. Last year we were down to 2 per cent," McMahon says.
"Exports aren't the be all and end all for the Chinese economy, as they once were."
On top of that, he says, the US only accounted for about 19 per cent of China's exports last year.
"So the ... trade conflict with China isn't perhaps the bludgeon that Donald Trump believes that it is, and certainly once would have been," McMahon says.
The big problem for China, he says, is that the trade war isn't happening in isolation.
Massive debt and ghost cities
China is also dealing with a "mountain of debt" racked up at a massive pace over the past decade, as it raced to catch up with the "rich world".
"It has been fuelled by debt at every step of the way, to a point where now Chinese debt levels are in excess of
(Excerpt) Read more at abc.net.au ...
Internal Quantitative Easing?
LOTS of Pollution can’t be helping much either
I have been seeing signs off an on for several years that Chinese debt and fiscal hanky-panky were ticking time bombs. I wonder if they will go off before China launches its military bid for supremacy in Asia and the West Pac.
Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere 2.0?
Trade is exactly the problem, from the perspective of America.
We are currently running the largest trade deficit in the history of the entire planet, bilaterally with China.
Right now.
https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html
>>>LOTS of Pollution can’t be helping much either
Why? Seems to me, the last time America was great was when companies were free to dump whatever they wanted into our air and water. Isn’t that why people on this forum frequently call for the dismantling of the EPA?
We have been told for years that China was holding a mountain of US debt. What’s going on??
Go away Troll
“Seems to me, the last time America was great was when companies were free to dump whatever they wanted into our air and water. Isn’t that why people on this forum frequently call for the dismantling of the EPA?”
Oh shut up.
L
Trump has a full house and Xi has a pair of twos.
Go ahead, keep playing!
If you do the research pollution will cause the end of china. We have family in Taiwan and the clouds of pollution that come over from china are horrible.
Virtually all new serious viruses come out of the polluted areas there.
Type in pollution, china and read a few articles. And this is only the ones we know of.
This is why the Paris Accord was such nonsense. Total CO2 emissions were, in 2015, in million kt:
China - 10.6
U.S.A. - 5.1
all EU - 3.4
. India - 2.4
Russia - 1.7
.Japan - 1.2
(Germany 0.8)
Under the Paris Accord, the West had to cut 10% and 20% by certain deadlines. China was allowed to INCREASE CO2 emissions by 30%... 0.3 x 10.6 = 3.18 by 2030... that's about the entire total of the EU combined... ADDED to China's already #1 status... all so that the rest of the world could tighten their belts, for China's benefit.
We ducked out of the Accord, thank you Mr President, and increased our economic growth while also decreasing CO2 emissions in 2017.
Yes, of course, and we all salute Hitler daily and plot ways to kill the elderly in our spare time, when we aren't lynching minorities in the streets. *eyeroll*
By the way, we cut regulations, defanged the EPA, and still cut carbon emissions in 2017, while doubling the economic growth rate. Please explain this to us, oh wise one.
China's graying population and demographic imbalance prevent expansion based on a growing workforce. New economic growth will require technological advances and institutional reforms that secure property rights, the rule of law, and free markets. Yet technological advances require the creativity and freedom that have but thin roots in Chinese culture, while the Chinese Communist party is hostile to any reforms that would limit its power or contradict its ideology.
I expect that China will become like Tony Soprano: menacing to the weak, a worry for neighbors, but with much attention required by problems at home. And, like Tony Soprano, China will have to expend much effort trying to collect on its loans.
Last I checked we had a mountain of debt too
Odd that ABC Australia would run this story and ignore their own previous story:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-16/tonga-leads-pacific-call-for-china-to-forgive-debts/10124792
that discusses the loans China is making all over the W Pacific and SE Asia.
China is borrowing massive sums in order to fuel it’s colonization efforts all over the world. Check this out:
China lends money to coastal countries from Montenegro to Fiji to Sri Lanka to Djibouti that they can never repay. These countries have very small economies, too small to get big money from the IMF, to build up their seaports, supposedly to increase shipping and trade.
The countries default and China takes over their port for a new Chinese naval base.
Everyone needs to understand that China has long term goals to dominate the world, no kidding, it is happening.
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