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US fights, China profits
Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2010 9:41 pm
by Gob
I am reminded of China's rise almost every day when I drive past the brand new Chinese embassy in Washington, a beer bottle's throw from our house. Not that I would ever deploy such a projectile.
It is an ivory white colossus with tinted windows and a diamond shaped hole in the front facade to enable the dragon - that threatens all structures - to fly through and thus avoid knocking it all down. It was built in less than a year by an army of Chinese workers, who had been flown in from their mother country and housed in makeshift dormitories - erected under patriotic Chinese banners written in Mandarin.
Beijing has created a little corner of China right in the heart of northwest Washington. The hole for the dragon has nice feng shui and is a reminder that superstition lingers in China's otherwise highly pragmatic expansion.
And as Ann Applebaum points out in her column in today's Washington Post, that expansion has been proceeding apace, mostly under our radars. It is a mercantile mission to exploit and own some of the world's most precious resources.
In Afghanistan, American troops may be sacrificing blood and treasure to make the country safe for education and voting. But it is a Chinese company that has won the rights to exploit one of the world's biggest copper deposits. In Iraq, it is Chinese companies that have acquired bigger stakes in the oil business than their American rivals.
In other words, Ms Applebaum concludes, America fights while China does business. Some of the business is in rare earth metals that most of us don't even know exist, but without which our Blackberries would go, well, black. China now dominates the world market in promethium and ytterbium.
China today is similar to what the East India Company was like in the 18th Century, when its expansion into India and beyond for nutmeg, cloves and tea laid the mercantilist foundations of the British Empire. The question is when will China bolster trade with gunship diplomacy? Is the recent spat with Japan an indication it is doing so already?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/mattfrei/
Re: US fights, China profits
Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2010 12:47 pm
by rubato
1960s: The Russians are scientific supermen who are taking over the world; FEAR FEAR FEAR FEAR
Reality: The Russians are pathetic losers who are 2 generations behind the US in technology even AFTER stealing all they can with an economy smaller than Indiana and whose only 'superpower' is their own inflated egos something which make them easily enslaved and duped by their own demagogues.
1980s: The Japanese are engineering and business supermen who are taking over the world; FEAR FEAR FEAR FEAR
Reality: The Japanese cultural shortcoming are even greater than their remarkable abilities whose economy has been in the doldrums for 20 years with no end in sight, a falling population, and whose manufacturing edge disappeared and went to Korea and Taiwan faster than it build up in the home Islands. They never did get close to the US in real innovation; but then no one has.
Now it's the Chinese who, in fact, we have even less reason to fear than the Japanese but irrational fear of 'the other' is just such an effective tool for manipulating stupid people (witness McCarthyism during the cold war) that it gets trotted out all the time.
following: reasons that China has more to fear from itself than we do.
yrs,
rubato
Re: US fights, China profits
Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2010 1:09 pm
by rubato
Reasons that China is in trouble:
1.
Their edge in manufacturing costs is gone. Wages have risen enough that its cheaper to make cheap crap in 20 other countries than China.
2.
They had a very small proportion of educated people and that group was completely exhausted in the boom as of 5 years ago. This means that the stupidest graduates are immediately hired and given a "manager" title with predictable consequenses. Other than a small number of elite schools their education system is mediocre to poor and based on 'rote' learning.
3.
They have the nastiest pollution in the world, it is getting worse, and their government's 1st reaction to all problems of man or nature is to lie about them. They are killing themselves and their children and driving away all of the best and brightest so that their next generations aren't going to be an improvement.
4.
The differential between rural poverty and rural oppression and exploitation and urban affluence is growing leading to intensifying social unrest.
5.
Tibet.
6.
The depth of corruption in a society driven by savage materialism in all aspects of life is breathtaking. It is not considered shameful to steal someone else's scientific work and present it as your own in a job interview at a research university* (something that here will mean you never work for a top 50 research department in the rest of your life). It apparently is not considered shameful to kill your own people by putting melamine in milk; 2 years AFTER the scandal people had hidden stocks of melamine and were putting it back in milk again.
There's more but that's enough for now.
yrs,
rubato
*
I've seen direct evidence of this. All of the powerpoint slides were copied directly from a colleague's research and presented as the liar's own, even though the slides were in English and his own command of the language was too poor to have made them.
Re: US fights, China profits
Posted: Fri Oct 01, 2010 12:29 am
by tyro
They have the nastiest pollution in the world, it is getting worse, and their government's 1st reaction to all problems of man or nature is to lie about them.
Proof that they are still more backward!
Even the Republicans can achieve the same level of contempt for the environment by simply denying the evidence.
In the minds of many, there is a difference.
Re: US fights, China profits
Posted: Fri Oct 01, 2010 12:35 am
by rubato
They lie reflexively, the way Republicans would if Republicans were allowed to shoot people for pointing it out.
yrs,
rubato