What About China?

[sam i am]

See attached article :

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1576831,00.html

What does everyone think about China's role in the world going forward? Will the US and/or India remain relevant in a world where (soon) 2 billion Chinese people have the power, via sheer numbers, to influence the globe?

What about China's involvement in Africa? Is it benign or not?

Interested in your opinions and prognostications...

[freetibet]

[The fact that the 'free' world happily trades with China makes me sick. That's hypocrisy for me! Free Tibet, dudes.]

And naturally, I don't wish the Chinese economics anything good to happen. They have the power and the potential but I think it's an empty potential, what does Mr Wang or Zheng get from Chinese economic growth? It's just empty numbers and statistics while people die every day, suffer in prisons and a bunch of commie-elite rules them. Not to mention the rape on environment.

Unfortunately, I don't see no chances of them collapsing in the near future...

[sam i am]

^^^

OK.

China's middle class is rising from the bottom rapidly, they're expanding their economy by leaps and bounds, and they're projecting power out into the world.

What about that stuff, rather than the pablum-atic statements above, my Polish brother?

[Schmeltz]

Meh, China's always been an essentially introspective nation. Historically the Chinese only get antsy when what they consider their own rightful sphere of influence is threatened - China sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers against the Japanese in Korea during the sixteenth century, but didn't prepare any offensive against Japan. China occupies Tibet but I doubt they're interested in going any further militarily. Historically, China keeps as wide a buffer zone as it can between itself and the outside world; it lets invaders break themselves on proxy countries and then reasserts its own compromised influence in those areas. Sometimes this doesn't work, but on the other hand no outside culture has ever sustained a permanent occupation of China (even the Manchus were hated and despised after three centuries) and anybody who tries it now is in for a nasty surprise just like the Japanese got seventy years ago.

To me it seems that Chinese forays into other economic spheres are gambits designed to prop up an economy rapidly outgrowing its own resource base. China's large population is as much a liability as an asset; it has lots of productive power but a disproportionately low amount of purchasing power and requires enormous material investment to keep it educated, fed, clothed, employed, sheltered, and so on - resources that could otherwise be expended on modernizing the vast sectors of the country's infrastructure, economy, and armed forces that remain backward or obsolete.

I don't think we'll ever have to worry about Chinese troops in San Francisco or Seattle. Or Tokyo, for that matter. PRC troops in Taipei - I could see that. But so long as the USA guarantees Taiwanese security it's very unlikely.

[sam i am]

Well thought out.

What's your opinion of the Chinese support for the Sudanese government while Darfur continues to kill hundreds/thousands per day?

What about Chinese gambits into outer space exploration (definitely NOT introspective), their muffling of the internet, and their widening influence over worldwide economic matters?

[Schmeltz]

Outer space: trying to stay competitive.

Internet: trying to keep a lid on a potentially volatile populace. I think government repression will ease over time; it will have to, or else everything will boil over and it will all have been for naught. The next generation of Chinese leaders will be better educated, more informed, modern, connected, cosmopolitan. More chill.

Sudan: tough call. I don't imagine the Chinese have much in the way of qualms about supporting a repressive government if it's in their interests to do so. It's quite reprehensible, naturally, but then Western governments do things just as rotten and digusting. Your country wrote the book on propping up disgusting, predatory regimes.

Economic influence: meh.

[sam i am]

Outer space: trying to stay competitive.

Or looking for a competitive edge? Maybe resources and/or territory outside of traditional bounds?

Internet: trying to keep a lid on a potentially volatile populace. I think government repression will ease over time; it will have to, or else everything will boil over and it will all have been for naught. The next generation of Chinese leaders will be better educated, more informed, modern, connected, cosmopolitan. More chill.

Prognostication at best. Maybe more insidious - i.e., keep information out and evidence of far more massive human rights and environmental abuses in?

Sudan: tough call. I don't imagine the Chinese have much in the way of qualms about supporting a repressive government if it's in their interests to do so. It's quite reprehensible, naturally, but then Western governments do things just as rotten and digusting. Your country wrote the book on propping up disgusting, predatory regimes.

There are approximately 7,000 Chinese troops in the Sudan to protect their oil interests while hundreds/thousands per day are being killed off in Darfur. Meanwhile, the Chinese are blocking UN action that could significantly reduce the destruction...far worse and more crass than the US/coalition effort in Iraq. Why don't you rant and rave about that more and less about the US?

Economic influence: meh. It's huge and growing, to the point where if China has a cough, the rest of the world can get a cold...ala the 1929 worldwide economic Depression if we're all not careful.

[Schmeltz]

Or looking for a competitive edge? Maybe resources and/or territory outside of traditional bounds?


Mmmm... nah. China has as much right to space exploration as anyone else, after all.


Maybe more insidious


Mmmm... nah. Keeping information out - probably. But I think I covered that.


Why don't you rant and rave about that more and less about the US?


China did not invade the Sudan with hundreds of thousands of soldiers with the stated goal of installing a regime more favourable to its interests, only to lose control of the situation and precipitate a savage and bloody civil war harkening back fourteen centuries to a volatile religious divide. It sent some soldiers to protect its property. The situations are totally incomparable.


to the point where if China has a cough, the rest of the world can get a cold


Whatever, that would be the case with any dominant economy. Why would it be better to have the USA at the top of the peak? Or Britain? Or Tonga? The same thing could happen.

[sam i am]

^^^^

Did you read the article I linked to? Your replies seem to come from a lack of comprehending the current situation while putting too much weight on the history.

[Schmeltz]

I gave it a skim. China's exporting capital and developing other areas in a bid to increase its access to the resources it needs to maintain its economic growth. So? I don't think China's bent on world domination.

And it's impossible to put too much weight on history. You don't know where you're going till you know where you've been.

[D_Raay]

Why is it when any other country but the US seeks to expand their global influence it is always potrayed as some sort of massive schoolyard intrusion? The US being the malignant but omnipotent bully of course. It's ridiculous.

[Bob]

china has a lot of potential and always will

[DroppinScience]

If China continues to grow and becomes some kind of superpower, I imagine the world will be a lot like this (http://www.antoniogenna.net/doppiaggio/telefilm/firefly.jpg) (hopefully somebody catches the significance)

[D_Raay]

If China continues to grow and becomes some kind of superpower, I imagine the world will be a lot like this (http://www.antoniogenna.net/doppiaggio/telefilm/firefly.jpg) (hopefully somebody catches the significance)
Now THAT was a good show.

[DroppinScience]

Now THAT was a good show.

Damn right it was! Nathan Fillion (our main hero) is from Edmonton. Yeah! (y)

[D_Raay]

Damn right it was! Nathan Fillion (our main hero) is from Edmonton. Yeah! (y)
He was the best part of the show.

I am actually embarassed to say that I checked out Buffy just because Joss Whedon was in on that show too.

[yeahwho]

The most amazing thing to me about the Time Magazine link prefaced in this thread "China Takes on the World (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1576831-1,00.html)" is a complete lack of how China is actually taking on the world. Through a complete lack of agreement to any sort of compliance in Earths demise. Every legitimate study on China points to gashouse emissions surpassing the US no later than 2030.

The majority of the studies say in the the next 2 to 4 years China will be the planets #1 abuser of greenhouse emissions. A global disaster ticking away.

link 1 (http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1223/p01s04-sten.html)
link 2 (http://www.newstarget.com/021386.html)
link 3 (http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1962439.ece)
link 4 (http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/PEK78904.htm)

My take on China is this, things are FUBAR in that Time article, China is taking on the World by choking it to death.

[Ali]

Meh, China's always been an essentially introspective nation. Historically the Chinese only get antsy when what they consider their own rightful sphere of influence is threatened - China sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers against the Japanese in Korea during the sixteenth century, but didn't prepare any offensive against Japan. China occupies Tibet but I doubt they're interested in going any further militarily. Historically, China keeps as wide a buffer zone as it can between itself and the outside world; it lets invaders break themselves on proxy countries and then reasserts its own compromised influence in those areas. Sometimes this doesn't work, but on the other hand no outside culture has ever sustained a permanent occupation of China (even the Manchus were hated and despised after three centuries) and anybody who tries it now is in for a nasty surprise just like the Japanese got seventy years ago.That's an almost perfect description of the United States :p

The Chinese are ruthless b@stards who will stop at nothing to ensure the continuation of their culture and country. They have always been powerful and will continue to be so. Nothing the West can do will bother them and they have the economic clout to make things extremely difficult for anyone who dares fuck with them. They own nearly all of the US deficit. Do you understand the implications of this? They can pull the rug from under the feet of the US at any time. Yes, they are reliant on the US to keep buying their stuff at Walmart, but they have plenty of customers all over the world and could take the knock.

China is a major threat to the US. If it comes to a fight, my money's on China.

[Schmeltz]

That's an almost perfect description of the United States

Quite to the contrary, the United States has been an avowedly expansionist nation almost from its inception. The Chinese have no cultural institutions to match the Frontier, or Manifest Destiny, or the Monroe Doctrine, or Wilsonian interventionism, or Containment.


They have always been powerful


During the Opium Wars? During the Mongol invasions? During the Sino-Japanese conflicts? Not particularly.


China is a major threat to the US.


Only in the sense that it's an important competitor. China doesn't threaten any US interests and those deficits are more of a security than an offensive weapon.

[Ali]

Then why is the US so afraid of China?

[Schmeltz]

Why were they so afraid of Iraq?

[Ali]

Why were they so afraid of Iraq?Oil.

And they weren't afraid. They are now.

[icy manipulator]

Russia and the US have a China Clause in their Nuclear arms agreement right? it's something like even tho they're reducing the amount of nuclear arms they can produce as many as they want if China starts a nuclear program?

[Ali]

I think that the clause just states that they will reduce their nuke capability multilaterally... it's like telling the other kid in the playground to put down his rock and he says "you first" and you say, no, you first and this carries on until you are old men and each have a massive pile of rocks and you're still yelling at each other, except that now everybody else in the playground has his own pile of rocks and everybody's yelling insults at each other and waving rocks.

Something like that, anyway.