China is No. 1!

[Gob]

Hang on to your hats, America.

And throw away that big, fat styrofoam finger while you’re about it.

There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just say it: We’re no longer No. 1. Today, we’re No. 2. Yes, it’s official. The Chinese economy just overtook the United States economy to become the largest in the world. For the first time since Ulysses S. Grant was president, America is not the leading economic power on the planet.

It just happened — and almost nobody noticed.


The International Monetary Fund recently released the latest numbers for the world economy. And when you measure national economic output in “real” terms of goods and services, China will this year produce $17.6 trillion — compared with $17.4 trillion for the U.S.A.

As recently as 2000, we produced nearly three times as much as the Chinese.

To put the numbers slightly differently, China now accounts for 16.5% of the global economy when measured in real purchasing-power terms, compared with 16.3% for the U.S.

This latest economic earthquake follows the development last year when China surpassed the U.S. for the first time in terms of global trade.

I reported on this looming development over two years ago, but the moment came sooner than I or anyone else had predicted. China’s recent decision to bring gross domestic product calculations in line with international standards has revealed activity that had previously gone uncounted.

Making millions using China's Twitter(9:26)
Hear how China’s Sina Weibo microblog makes you money, watch how your fingertips could give you access to your health records and check out top five games for holiday gifts.

These calculations are based on a well-established and widely used economic measure known as purchasing-power parity (or PPP), which measures the actual output as opposed to fluctuations in exchange rates. So a Starbucks venti Frappucino served in Beijing counts the same as a venti Frappucino served in Minneapolis, regardless of what happens to be going on among foreign-exchange traders.

Make no mistake. This is a geopolitical earthquake with a high reading on the Richter scale.
PPP is the real way of comparing economies. It is one reported by the IMF and was, for example, the one used by McKinsey & Co. consultants back in the 1990s when they undertook a study of economic productivity on behalf of the British government.

Yes, when you look at mere international exchange rates, the U.S. economy remains bigger than that of China, allegedly by almost 70%. But such measures, although they are widely followed, are largely meaningless. Does the U.S. economy really shrink if the dollar falls 10% on international currency markets? Does the recent plunge in the yen mean the Japanese economy is vanishing before our eyes?

Back in 2012, when I first reported on these figures, the IMF tried to challenge the importance of PPP. I was not surprised. It is not in anyone’s interest at the IMF that people in the Western world start focusing too much on the sheer extent of China’s power. But the PPP data come from the IMF, not from me. And it is noteworthy that when the IMF’s official World Economic Outlook compares countries by their share of world output, it does so using PPP.

Yes, all statistics are open to various quibbles. It is perfectly possible China’s latest numbers overstate output — or understate them. That may also be true of U.S. GDP figures. But the IMF data are the best we have.

Make no mistake: This is a geopolitical earthquake with a high reading on the Richter scale. Throughout history, political and military power have always depended on economic power. Britain was the workshop of the world before she ruled the waves. And it was Britain’s relative economic decline that preceded the collapse of her power. And it was a similar story with previous hegemonic powers such as France and Spain.

This will not change anything tomorrow or next week, but it will change almost everything in the longer term. We have lived in a world dominated by the U.S. since at least 1945 and, in many ways, since the late 19th century. And we have lived for 200 years — since the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 — in a world dominated by two reasonably democratic, constitutional countries in Great Britain and the U.S.A. For all their flaws, the two countries have been in the vanguard worldwide in terms of civil liberties, democratic processes and constitutional rights.

[MajGenl.Meade]

[oldr_n_wsr]

Oh well. I try to buy Made in the USA. It's not easy.

[Sue U]

If I were 35 years younger I'd probably be looking to move to Shanghai. It appears to be the city of the future.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Just don't litter.

[wesw]

I d be heading north. Alaska Canada or Russia.....

[Big RR]

The problem with China is its population; if its economy continues to grow and the people do not experience better standards of living, expect economic problems stemming from the domestic ones.

[wesw]

good point RR. we face the same thing if we allow open borders....

[Sue U]

Just don't litter.

That's Singapore.

The problem with China is its population; if its economy continues to grow and the people do not experience better standards of living, expect economic problems stemming from the domestic ones.

From what I've seen on the Tee-Vee, there is a rapidly growing urban middle class (and even more rapidly growing plutocrat class) in China these days, although I understand that, like here, there is a shortage of professional employment for university graduates. But there is no country without problems, and looking toward the future I think China is going to be the place to be in the latter half of this century.

[Big RR]

I think that's entirely up to them. Yes, there is a burgeoning middle class, but there is a also a big discrepancy between the wealthy and the rest. The US has worked mainly because most people believed they had a chance to get ahead and do better (the fabled American dream), and most were living well by the standards of a lot of the rest of the world. If China cannot do something similar, I predict problems, as just clamping down on the people to force production does not work in the long run.

FWIW, I think the US has a similar problem for different reasons. As you said, there is no country without problems.

China may well be the next economic powerhouse, but a lot has to be done to help progress this. And I don't think their current government is poised to make the necessary adjustments, looking at the short, rather than the long, term.

[oldr_n_wsr]

That's Singapore.

i knew that.

[Jarlaxle]

Oh well. I try to buy Made in the USA. It's not easy.

Sometimes, it's damn near impossible!

[TPFKA@W]

Pollution is going to put a big damper on their success.

[Lord Jim]

And then there's the whole most repressive and extensive totalitarian police state system on earth thing, that might effect the quality of life a tad....

If I were 35 years younger I'd probably be looking to move to Shanghai.

That seems contradictory, (and somewhat amusing) coming from someone who consistently stakes out the most absolutist civil libertarian positions whenever it comes to legal rights in the US...

there is a shortage of professional employment for university graduates.

Then all they have to do is become political dissidents; there's plenty of work available in the labor camps...

[rubato]

The Chinese Communist party's environmental policies have been the same as the Republican's for 30 years; "it costs too much".

Actually they aren't as bad as the Republicans now because they have seen the error of their ways and are paying for 50GW of photovoltaic energy to be built (the equivalent of 50 nuclear plants at peak output) and as a result own most of the largest photovoltaic companies in the world.

The world awaits the US Republicans admitting the error of theirs, when will it happen? When Miami is under water 6 hours a day?



yrs,
rubato

[MajGenl.Meade]

When Miami is under water 6 hours a day?
yrs,
rubato

So there is an upside then?

[rubato]

Hang on to your hats, America.

And throw away that big, fat styrofoam finger while you’re about it.

There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just say it: We’re no longer No. 1. Today, we’re No. 2. Yes, it’s official. The Chinese economy just overtook the United States economy to become the largest in the world. For the first time since Ulysses S. Grant was president, America is not the leading economic power on the planet.
... "

Entirely a good thing for us. We are safer, more secure, and more prosperous when the std of living of the rest of the world improves and more people are lifted out of poverty.

And this is not really news or surprising. The growth of China's economy has been closely watched for many decades now. They have many problems which we don't (to the same degree) with improving environmental controls, reducing corruption, and we would like to see a transition to a more democratic society.


yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

and we would like to see a transition to a more democratic society.

Since they could scarcely transition to a less democratic society...

[Lord Jim]

Twenty-Five Years After Tiananmen, China's Repression Is Worse Than Ever

By Andrew J. Nathan and Hua Ze
June 3, 2014

It is unlikely that anyone outside of China who watched the massacre of peaceful protestors in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on live TV 25 years ago will ever forget the events of that horrible day.

The Chinese regime argues that the shooting of unarmed pro-democracy demonstrators laid the groundwork for political stability and China’s miraculous economic growth. Yet the continuous intensification of repression since then tells another story. Most recently, in early May, the regime “disappeared” a dozen rights activists merely for meeting in a private apartment to commemorate June 4, 1989 and formally detained one of them, human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang, for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”

This was just the latest in a series of harsh repressions. Five years ago, Tiananmen activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo was handed an eleven-year prison sentence for advocating civil rights and constitutionalism. Earlier this year, human rights activist Xu Zhiyong was sentenced to four years in prison for opposing corruption and abuse of power. The National Endowment for Democracy, with which we are both affiliated, honored Liu and Xu on May 29 in the U.S. Congress in an effort to raise awareness of their cases in advance of the Tiananmen anniversary—and through their cases, to bring awareness to the estimated 4,800 political prisoners in Chinese jails and camps.

The need to sustain and progressively intensify repression is a sign that the June 4 crackdown did not solve China’s problems; it exacerbated them. The ruling Chinese Communist Party faced a fork in the road in 1989. It could have dialogued with the students, as party leader Zhao Ziyang advocated, forming a common front against corruption. But the prime minister, Li Peng, argued that dialogue could end the Party’s monopoly on power. The top leader, Deng Xiaoping, sided with Li and the rest is history.

Refusal to dialogue with citizens has marked the regime’s modus operandi since then. This explains why citizens lack trust in government when it comes to land seizures, corruption, and pollution. Recent demonstrations against the building of a chemical plant in Maoming, Guizhou, and against an incinerator project in Hangzhou are signs of this corrosive mistrust.

Indeed, repressing the memory of June 4 has itself become a fresh motive for repression elsewhere. As Freud (and Nietzsche before him) argued, forgetting is not a natural process. It takes continuous effort. And there are multiple examples of repressed memory besides June 4: the cruelties of the land reform movement in the early 1950s, the anti-rightist movement of the late 1950s, the great famine during the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, Mao’s licentious private life, and many other subjects that people would otherwise want to discuss and debate.

Keeping mouths and minds shut is the task of a growing security apparatus. In the Shadow of the Rising Dragon, a book one of us co-edited with Xu Youyu, one of the persons who disappeared on May 3, shows how the political police have a wide range of flexible measures that they can use to warn people to keep quiet. “Inviting to drink tea” (as police interrogations are known), round-the-clock surveillance, and disappearing people for a few weeks or months are just the first steps. These procedures cause less suffering than the beating and killing that took place under Mao, but they are still traumatic and suffice to warn most people to mind their own business. If these measures do not get the message across, the police can escalate to trumped-up criminal trials and jail terms as they did with Liu Xiaobo and Xu Zhiyong.

June 4 is connected not only to other historical memories that have been repressed and to other issues of injustice in the lives of ordinary Chinese people, but also to the way in which China handles the ethnic groups that it designates as “national minorities,” especially the Uighurs in Xinjiang and the Tibetans in the Tibetan Autonomous Region and other provinces near Tibet. Beijing tries to force modernization, development, secularism, and assimilation on these populations without respecting their sense of identity. This has led—extremely gradually and reluctantly—to acts of resistance, to which Beijing responded again with intensified repression, since dialogue is deemed too risky. Not only does Beijing believe it could lose control over vast strategic areas, but it would also imply the need to talk openly with the residents of Taiwan and Hong Kong—and again, the domestic public in China proper.

With each new regime since Deng Xiaoping, the outside world and many Chinese like Liu and Xu have hoped for liberalizing “political reform.” Instead, repression has worsened under Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and now Xi Jinping. Will China democratize? Probably yes, eventually; the present way of rule is not sustainable. But with every passing year the risk of opening up is greater, because the social demands that have been repressed are growing.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/1179 ... worse-ever

[Lord Jim]

Here's something that should make interesting reading for those who have convinced themselves that they're getting honest appraisals about conditions and attitudes in China from Chinese citizens living in the US, (particularly those connected in some way with academia) Appraisals that by the sheerest coincidence happen to uniformly and invariably reflect the official Party Line:

(You'll never believe the source I'm using; wait till you see the link...)

In the West, Chinese Student Groups Push the Party Line: Part I
Chinese students group acting as fronts for Chinese Communist Party
By Li Chengsi

Epoch Times Staff Created: Jan 27, 2010 Last Updated: Jan 28, 2010
Facebook icon Facebook Digg icon Digg del.icio.us icon del.icio.us
StumbleUpon icon StumbleUpon Print | E-mail to a friend | Give feedback
Related articles: United States > National News

With China's reform and opening up, thousands of students have streamed
overseas to study at Western universities. Evidence and suspicion has been
growing, however, that while they are in the West, many have not adopted
Western values, and are instead acting as front groups that further the
interests of the Chinese Communist Party abroad.

While the groups carry out typical student association type functions,
evidence suggests that a clandestine aspect of their duties includes
acting as subordinates to local Chinese consulates.

"Provisional Regulations Regarding Work on Overseas Students," a document
published by China's State Education Commission, states that doing a "good
job" with overseas students is an important task for Chinese embassies and
consulates.

This equates to managing the activities of overseas students while they
are abroad-in ways that few would suspect.

At least in the U.S., agents abroad are required to be legally registered,
and must comply with the dictates of U.S. law, according to the Foreign
Agents Registration Act (FARA), which came into force in 1938.

According to a FAQ on the act, the law was designed to "ensure the U.S.
Government and the people are informed of the source of information
(propaganda) and the identity of persons attempting to influence U.S.
public opinion, policy, and laws."

In an interview with The Epoch Times, FBI Philadelphia special agent and
media spokesperson Dr. J.J. Klaver said, "The Act requires every agent of
a foreign principal ... to register with the Department of Justice within
ten days of agreeing to become an agent and before performing any
activities for the foreign principal."

Non-compliance with FARA can result in up to a ten-year prison sentence.

However, students belonging to student associations who conduct activities
on behalf of the CCP have gone largely unchecked by hosting governments.

There are few cases of Chinese being charged in violation of FARA.

Li Jianzhong, former president of the Caltech Chinese Association in 1996,
came close. While in college he agreed to become a student representative
for the Chinese Consulate, and through the consulate's connections got to
know the overseas Chinese community and business leaders in Los Angeles.

He arranged and organized many activities for the consulate, and found
that he was encouraged to give local pro-China democracy groups a hard
time. Later he was contacted by the FBI in connection with his activities.
He was not charged for violating FARA.

Another case is You Yunqing, who was president of the University of
Minnesota (UM) Chinese Students Association in 2002. During his one-year
term, Cheng Jiacai, the Chinese Consulate Consul in Chicago, transferred
$3,000 to Mr. You's personal account. The student later transferred the
money to the student association's account.

"The so-called activity funds from the Consulate are not given to the
student association, but to its president, in secret," Mr. You said. "This
is a great inducement to the association president."

Around the 2004 New Year, the student association president of UM
resigned. His reason: he was not willing to follow the Chinese Embassy's
directive to suppress Falun Gong abroad.

For the appointing of a new president Jiang Bo, the Secretary General of
the China Education Association for International Exchange, a
government-operated non-governmental organization controlled by China's
Ministry of Education, went to UM in person. Consul Cheng personally
phoned several of the vice presidents, telling them that Jiang would
invite them to dinner.

After dinner, Jiang recorded each student's name, school, and the
addresses of their parents.

Former agents of Chinese intelligence services have said that CSSA members
do the sort of work that consulates are unable to.

On record, there are at least 109 CSSA groups in the United States.

Much like the role played by the state-run Xinhua News Agency in mainland
China, student and scholar associations monitor overseas Chinese abroad
and report back on developments; at the same time they promote CCP
propaganda in their overseas countries, and where necessary, sow seeds of
dissent.

In more extreme cases, Chinese agents have stolen information from the
intelligence communities of other countries.

The CCP is known to keep close tabs on the CSSA members it utilizes.
Chinese Consulates hold regular meetings to discuss overseas Chinese they
have concerns about.

CSSA contacts and those from other groups dispatched by the consulates are
required to report back to them once a month.

A Chinese agent in Belgium defected to the West in 2005, testifying that
the CSSA system is in essence the "front organization" of an espionage
network that for two years had been monitored by the Center for Strategic
Intelligence and Security in Europe.

The secret agent was a member of the Louvain University CSSA in Belgium.
He had studied and worked in Europe for ten years. He reported to the
Belgian government detailed espionage activities of hundreds of Chinese
agents in the European business community.

He said the Chinese spy network that spans all of Europe utilizes the CSSA
infrastructure as a cover.

Its main tasks focus on securing industrial and economic intelligence, as
well as collecting information on dissidents. Reporting is then made to
Beijing and the CCP's Ministry of Public Security.

The CCP systematically interferes with groups abroad when such groups
undermine, deliberately or not, its domestic political objectives. Through
the CSSA international framework, the regime is able to utilize email
lists and personal contacts as its means.

One such group targeted by the CCP is the Shen Yun Performing Arts
company, which tours internationally. The group promotes a revival of
traditional Chinese culture and values, and depicts scenes of Chinese
people standing up to end the persecution of Falun Gong in China-a highly
sensitive subject to Chinese authorities.

Ms. Chen Ying, the former wife of a staff member of the Chinese Embassy in
France, said that when important events are about to take place, diplomats
of the education division of the Chinese Embassy would "convey it to the
backbone of overseas student associations, who would then convey
[information] to all relevant students."

Activities would then be arranged in compliance with the Embassy's needs.
Related Articles

The CCP-run New York University Chinese Culture Club (NYUCCC) launched a
petition in 2007 on its website to protest the International Classical
Chinese Dance Competition organized by New Tang Dynasty Television, a New
York-based television station that was also founded by Falun Gong
practitioners, sponsors Shen Yun, and reports on human rights abuses in
China.

A short time later, the Columbia University CSSA uploaded an open letter
supporting NYUCCC's actions, and later on the same day posted nine
articles slandering Falun Gong on its website.

All of the articles had links to the Chinese Embassy's website. CUCSSA has
three consultants, two of whom are from the office of the Chinese
Consulate General in New York.

http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/16/16 ... h-the.html