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China vs. the world
hambone
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Over the last few months, I've been seeing a trend in the news:
Senator Wants Congressional Hearing on Chinese Toy Imports
US says importer must recall Chinese tires
Wider distribution of tainted Chinese toothpaste found
FDA Halts Imports of Farmed Fish From China
The Growing Dangers of the China Trade
Chinese cars perform horribly in crash tests
Not to mention the tainted pet food scare a couple months ago.
Are these the inevitable growing pains of skyrocketing economy, or are they symptoms of an inherently flawed system? Is it just a coincidence that all of these things are happening right now, and only in China as opposed to similarly emerging economies?
Part of me also wonders if maybe the US government is giving Chinese imports special attention in order to equalize the huge trade gap or stall the growth of our #1 competitor. I wouldn't be too surprised if we were using stories like this to take some of the attention away from our farm subsidies and steel protections.
One thing's for sure: China won't be able to build a sustainable market economy if it only exports inferior goods.
Senator Wants Congressional Hearing on Chinese Toy Imports
US says importer must recall Chinese tires
Wider distribution of tainted Chinese toothpaste found
FDA Halts Imports of Farmed Fish From China
The Growing Dangers of the China Trade
Chinese cars perform horribly in crash tests
Not to mention the tainted pet food scare a couple months ago.
Are these the inevitable growing pains of skyrocketing economy, or are they symptoms of an inherently flawed system? Is it just a coincidence that all of these things are happening right now, and only in China as opposed to similarly emerging economies?
Part of me also wonders if maybe the US government is giving Chinese imports special attention in order to equalize the huge trade gap or stall the growth of our #1 competitor. I wouldn't be too surprised if we were using stories like this to take some of the attention away from our farm subsidies and steel protections.
One thing's for sure: China won't be able to build a sustainable market economy if it only exports inferior goods.
Just a bunch of intoxicated pigeons.
hambone on
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Senator Dole has a strong stance against trade with China but I haven't heard a peep from her in the last few months.
OH NO WE'VE PLAYED RIGHT INTO THEIR HANDS!! DAMN YOU CARNY FOLK AND YOUR DISTRIBUTION OF CRAPPY CHINESE TOYS
naw, i don't think China makes ONLY crappy merchandise, but most of it isn't likely to be up the standards that the US is used to. and it's not like this kind of thing hasn't happened before, recalls of Chinese products ain't exactly a new thing
Entropy?
The thing that makes this special is that these recalls and import bans are spread throughout several different types of products, they're all happening at once, and they're making high-profile headlines.
This isn't a case of US consumers being picky. These recalls are due to major health and safety issues.
Some of it is quite dubious too. Apparently they concluded that the pet food tainted was likely on purpose to increase the amount of protein content on the label
Personally, I think it's a combination of the lower QA standards that has always been present in Chinese manufacturing, and a bit of coincidence that all of these extremely flawed products were found all at once.
It would be interesting to see the results, should this cause some kind of groupthink that Chinese manufacturing is inherently falwed, in regards to whether or not US companies that outsource manufacturing to CHina move their plants elsewhere.
Are we really importing that much more from China this year, as opposed to last year?
QA on outsourced manufacturing, especially in a country with different standards and lower pay, isn't the same as QA in America. I do not claim to be extremely familiar with all of this, but my assumption is that while QA likely takes place in the factory itself to some degree, there is relatively little QA done on American shores, after importation. Likely, American QA folks look at one or two batches, and then okay the rest based on that. This leaves a lot of room for error.
edit: here's an interesting NYTimes article about the FDA trying to trace the source of poisoned drugs back to a Chinese factory
FDA tracked poisoned drugs, but trail went cold in China
Look at our history, we really have only had a good economy while we had a major world competitor.
Depends on our education though.
The whole "Dumbing down of America" thing can't be that good.
That said, competition may -force- us to get education going full speed.
But I expect we'll be lagging, and China's not going to waste its chance to pull ahead.
It would be really, horribly, insanely difficult to beat a country that much bigger if its education level caught up.
Their quality is getting better over time though.
That's not being reflected in the media, if that's even the case.
Slave labor. Get get what you pay for.
From personal experience, I know most manufacturers around southern Ontario are terrified of China although the gap in quality is wide enough that they are still in business.
Also the smart people don't breed that much, which is part of -many- problems.
*I know this from watching Back to the Future >.>
Oh, fuck that social darwinism crap. Scads of smart people come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Like height, IQ trends towards an average across generations and is very heavily affected by external factors such as training and nutrition. We're not breeding stupid people, just raising them >_<
I've known too many supergeniuses who work at McDonalds to consider them.
You scientists need to get knocked up more.
Then they went balls out on quality and turned that mutha up. The focus on high quality really turned their shit around.
Now imagine if Japan was the 3rd largest country in the world instead of 62nd.
Do I have to?
It's okay to cry.
In the second world war the US supported Chiang Kai-Shek and the Nationalists, who lost the civil war against the Communists, hence the change in allegiances.
China just tripled theirs and they still don't come close, plus the Navy and the Air Force aren't that busy.
The US was sending most of their aid to the nationalists (who were leaving most of the fighting to the communists, big mistake), but it isn't like they were fighting communism and the Japanese at the same time.
There's also the problem of where they would pick a fight with us, and how likely it would be for nukes to enter the equation. Biggest threat they could represent without nukes would be somewhere like Korea or maybe Southeast Asia. But once you get into Taiwan and Japan and even moreso US holdings then they would have to deal with naval supremacy and could not get away with numbers.
This doesn't seem like it would be a very plausible short term proposition without something else big happening first though.
We'd kick their ass if they were to try to project their force anywhere, though.
Given that we're both nuclear powers, though, I don't see us getting into a conventional war with each other anytime soon, though China will be kicking our asses economically in the next couple of decades. We should really get on top of the environment thing now, so we can get them to do the same before they're any further along in industrialization.
Israel showed that all you need is air supreriority and you can kick the crap out of a stronger opponent (Six Day War)
Economic friction could lead to trade barriers, but not war.
That may be true, but America's economy can't sustain a prolonged conflict. They are already in considerable debt from the Iraq occupation and a war with China will simply bankrupt the country.
High quality equipment has the double edge of being difficult to maintain.
What is more likely is some kind of a spat over Taiwan.
The problem is it's harder to NOT get pregnant then it is to GET pregnant. Hence, the stupid breed faster.