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China's Rise: Should the West be concerned?

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Posts

  • ronyaronya Arrrrrf. the ivory tower's basementRegistered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Extractive and non-extractive varieties of colonialism made a difference; colonialism has only created post-colonial benefits when the colonizer exported rule of law and other institutions of governance to the colonial territory - a purely extractive colonial state encourages a deterioration of such institutions instead (because wealth and power then come from violent control over resources to be extracted, not from cooperation and long-term investment with fellow humans).

    It is likely however that the Chinese businesses involved don't realistically have more moral options here - they are not marching in with an army; they are trading with the local governments and people (who tend to feel entitled to sell what they are selling). Likely the local government is corrupt; likely those local claims are enforced by arbitrary violence than rule of law, but unless you want the PLA to show up and institute Chinese law (actual neocolonialism) there aren't really better choices.

    ronya on
    aRkpc.gif
  • Modern ManModern Man Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    BubbaT wrote: »
    The USSR wasn't a true counter-balance for the vast majority of the Cold War, outside of deterring a nuclear exchange. In most of the proxy wars they talked a lot and did nothing. Cuba was one place where they actually planted their feet and stood up to the US, chest to chest. Result: the US quit trying to invade Cuba, and decades of peace between 2 enemies only 90 miles apart.
    Yeah, but the world came within a smidgen of nuclear war because two nuclear powers decided to compare dick sizes. If the US had been the only superpower at the time, the stakes with Cuba would have been a lot lower.

    Yeah, a single superpower can be a dick to small countries. But, since the end of the Cold War, US invasions and pushing around small countries has mostly been harmless to anyone who didn't live in those countries. Without a rival superpower to up the ante, even the worst excesses of American foreign policy are pretty harmless to the rest of the world.

    Modern Man on
    Aetian Jupiter - 41 Gunslinger - The Old Republic
    Rigorous Scholarship

  • DarkCrawlerDarkCrawler Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    adytum wrote: »
    Yeah, let's not try to kid ourselves that the Chinese are actually significantly developing Africa or anything like that.

    Let's not lie and claim that they are any worse then Western companies either, though.

    At a minimum, Western companies are governed by laws that prevent them from engaging in corruption or bribery.

    The companies may not be any better (corporations are amoral, after all) but the framework in which they operate is at least mildly more "fair."

    In their home countries, maybe (and countless recent news show that it isn't always the reality) in Africa though? Pfft, all rules fly right out of the window. It's still in many ways the Heart of Darkness there, especially when it comes to business ethics.

    DarkCrawler on
  • DarkCrawlerDarkCrawler Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Modern Man wrote: »
    BubbaT wrote: »
    The USSR wasn't a true counter-balance for the vast majority of the Cold War, outside of deterring a nuclear exchange. In most of the proxy wars they talked a lot and did nothing. Cuba was one place where they actually planted their feet and stood up to the US, chest to chest. Result: the US quit trying to invade Cuba, and decades of peace between 2 enemies only 90 miles apart.
    Yeah, but the world came within a smidgen of nuclear war because two nuclear powers decided to compare dick sizes. If the US had been the only superpower at the time, the stakes with Cuba would have been a lot lower.

    Yeah, a single superpower can be a dick to small countries. But, since the end of the Cold War, US invasions and pushing around small countries has mostly been harmless to anyone who didn't live in those countries. Without a rival superpower to up the ante, even the worst excesses of American foreign policy are pretty harmless to the rest of the world.

    If nukes are your measure for a "superpower", then America isn't the sole remaining one. Russia (and China) have a lot more nukes then Soviet Union had in 1962. It can't actually do anything about the territorial ambitions of either, as many wars have shown - South Ossetia in 2008 being the latest one. The whole concept of superpower is a bit outdated in 21st century anyway, no country isn't able to operate without backlash in wherever they want.

    DarkCrawler on
  • [Tycho?][Tycho?] As elusive as doubt Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Seal wrote: »
    export morals which even in your own country didn't work
    Which morals is the director referring to here exactly?

    Maybe advocacy of Free Enterprise, followed by demands to get development loans from institutions like the IMF and World bank, with pressures to privatize their national services so they can be sold to Western corporations.

    All the while massive food subsidies in the West make it impossible for African farmers to compete with the only real industry they can do themselves.

    Check out how Shell has fucked Nigeria big time for a decent example of this. Not that the Chinese are necessarily any better, or that Africa's corrupt, incompetent and often brutal leaders have any real credibility.

    [Tycho?] on
    mvaYcgc.jpg
  • ronyaronya Arrrrrf. the ivory tower's basementRegistered User regular
    edited June 2011
    To reiterate an old point from the Africa thread: African socialism could get really, really silly and you need to be aware of the extent of terrible government policy after independence to get why the IMF and WB were pressuring these countries to liberalize.

    Predictably, African growth has stopped being negative, albeit at the cost of surging inequality; atop that, like Russia, the act of removing state-led employment was frequently not coordinated with imposing basic features of market-driven capitalism like contract enforcement.

    ronya on
    aRkpc.gif
  • EgoEgo Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    I dunno about you, but I'd say privatizing water resources and turning them into a pay-for-use service (ie, swipe a little debit card THEN the tap works) service isn't terribly liberal.

    There are some pretty good documentaries on the practice.

    Flow - For Love of Water

    (documentaryheaven.com is also an awesome site, I've been meaning to link it in the documentary thread, guess I can go do that now.)

    edit: looks like it has been linked. Nifty.

    Ego on
    Erik
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    BubbaT wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    gtrmp wrote: »
    It's ironic in a sad kind of way that all the hand-wringing in the OP boils down to Americans wanting China to stop acting more American than America. Rapidly expanding military-industrial complex? Check. Exploitative neoliberal economic policies in Africa? Check. Addiction to nonrenewable fuels? Check. Too bad the OP didn't go for the hat trick and remind us about their corrupt, inhumane prison-industrial complex.

    And?

    I mean seriously, as a non-American, who would you rather have as your belligerent military and economic super-power?

    Cause I'd pick the US over China any day of the week.

    I'd rather live in the US than in China. That's domestic policy (and also Mexican food).

    But if I didn't live in the US or China, I'd be a lot more wary of the US' foreign policy than China's. A LOT. And the respective domestic policies of the US and China wouldn't really concern me too much in comparison to their foreign policies. Hell, you think some Afghani shepherd who just watched a Predator kill his wife and kids cares whether a guy in Nebraska has the right to a jury trial?

    In fact, I'm sure what, if any, relevance a nation's domestic policy has on their actions in the foreign policy sphere seeing as how often domestic-oriented talk about "principles" and "rights" end up as nothing more than blown smoke used to cover the advance of more tangible interests.

    So with that in mind, I'd ask:
    - How many countries has China invaded in the last 10 years?
    - How many countries has China bombed in the last 20 years?
    - How many coups has China organized and/or backed, how many Shahs and Pinochets and Duvaliers and Habrés and Mobutus and Brancos and Bautistas has China imposed on other nations?

    Now if you want to give me Sweden as the dominant global power, fine. It ain't Sweden who's spent the last decade warmongering, or the last 60 installing murderers as heads of state for fun and profit.


    tl;dr - China's domestic policies are a problem for people in China. What relevance does that have to China becoming a global military power? China's foreign policies in that scenario are more important than its domestic ones. And in terms of one's foreign policies causing death and destruction around the world, China compares favorably to the US.

    I think you're somewhat missing the point. China doing these things too would not somehow make America stop doing them.

    The world needs one less superpower not one more. God I hate typing that, because I feel like as an American I should be more patriotic but we really need to stop being a superpower, it is doing nobody any favors.

    override367 on
  • FPA20111FPA20111 Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Modern Man wrote: »
    kedinik wrote: »
    Thanks for the clarification.

    And fair enough, they weren't exactly focusing on intellectual honesty in that piece.

    Yeah, most documentaries or news pieces on China are either overly optimistic or overly pessimistic to try and make them more interesting and get ratings. If its not "Oh no, the sleeping Dragon has awoken and is taking over the world" its "China's economy is on the road to collapse."
    I read an article a while back that made an argument in the middle. That is, China's structural problems will not be resolved any time soon, but it won't collapse into a Mad Max like hell. The article argued that China would end up like a big Mexico: pretty dysfunctiona and corruptl, but stable enough to keep itself together.

    Bigger, more powerful Mexico seems pretty likely in the near term. They're not going to collapse, they're not going to overtake the U.S., Japan, or Germany on a per-capita basis.

    The regime can't handle any real political roiling, so there's going to be too much corruption for the economy to really take off. Regime friends are going to keep running big industries, nepotism, central planning, etc. etc.

    There's also the matter of China needing to transition into creating new technology instead of just ignoring all our patents and stealing shit.

    FPA20111 on
    The paranoid man believes that everyone is out to get him. The intelligent man knows that everyone is out to get him.
  • BubbaTBubbaT Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Modern Man wrote: »
    BubbaT wrote: »
    The USSR wasn't a true counter-balance for the vast majority of the Cold War, outside of deterring a nuclear exchange. In most of the proxy wars they talked a lot and did nothing. Cuba was one place where they actually planted their feet and stood up to the US, chest to chest. Result: the US quit trying to invade Cuba, and decades of peace between 2 enemies only 90 miles apart.
    Yeah, but the world came within a smidgen of nuclear war because two nuclear powers decided to compare dick sizes. If the US had been the only superpower at the time, the stakes with Cuba would have been a lot lower.

    Yeah, a single superpower can be a dick to small countries. But, since the end of the Cold War, US invasions and pushing around small countries has mostly been harmless to anyone who didn't live in those countries. Without a rival superpower to up the ante, even the worst excesses of American foreign policy are pretty harmless to the rest of the world.

    Pretty harmless? The Iraq War has had an estimated 100,000 (Wikileak'd Iraqi war logs) to 650,000 (Lancet survey) excess deaths, the vast majority of them civilians.

    How many people died in the Cuban Missile Crisis? 1.

    BubbaT on
  • BubbaTBubbaT Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    BubbaT wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    gtrmp wrote: »
    It's ironic in a sad kind of way that all the hand-wringing in the OP boils down to Americans wanting China to stop acting more American than America. Rapidly expanding military-industrial complex? Check. Exploitative neoliberal economic policies in Africa? Check. Addiction to nonrenewable fuels? Check. Too bad the OP didn't go for the hat trick and remind us about their corrupt, inhumane prison-industrial complex.

    And?

    I mean seriously, as a non-American, who would you rather have as your belligerent military and economic super-power?

    Cause I'd pick the US over China any day of the week.

    I'd rather live in the US than in China. That's domestic policy (and also Mexican food).

    But if I didn't live in the US or China, I'd be a lot more wary of the US' foreign policy than China's. A LOT. And the respective domestic policies of the US and China wouldn't really concern me too much in comparison to their foreign policies. Hell, you think some Afghani shepherd who just watched a Predator kill his wife and kids cares whether a guy in Nebraska has the right to a jury trial?

    In fact, I'm sure what, if any, relevance a nation's domestic policy has on their actions in the foreign policy sphere seeing as how often domestic-oriented talk about "principles" and "rights" end up as nothing more than blown smoke used to cover the advance of more tangible interests.

    So with that in mind, I'd ask:
    - How many countries has China invaded in the last 10 years?
    - How many countries has China bombed in the last 20 years?
    - How many coups has China organized and/or backed, how many Shahs and Pinochets and Duvaliers and Habrés and Mobutus and Brancos and Bautistas has China imposed on other nations?

    Now if you want to give me Sweden as the dominant global power, fine. It ain't Sweden who's spent the last decade warmongering, or the last 60 installing murderers as heads of state for fun and profit.


    tl;dr - China's domestic policies are a problem for people in China. What relevance does that have to China becoming a global military power? China's foreign policies in that scenario are more important than its domestic ones. And in terms of one's foreign policies causing death and destruction around the world, China compares favorably to the US.

    I think you're somewhat missing the point. China doing these things too would not somehow make America stop doing them.

    The world needs one less superpower not one more. God I hate typing that, because I feel like as an American I should be more patriotic but we really need to stop being a superpower, it is doing nobody any favors.

    What about China's history suggests they would be doing those same things? China tried the whole "let's invade everybody" thing before, copying the US by trying to invade Vietnam. Like the US they got smacked in the nose. Unlike the US, they actually learned from it. They haven't gone around invading countries willy-nilly since.

    China could be tampering with internal African politics if they wanted to. Neither the US or EU really care enough about Africa to call them on it. But they don't. Maybe it's because they've actually been on the shit end of colonialism themselves before.

    BubbaT on
  • adytumadytum The Inevitable Rise And FallRegistered User regular
    edited June 2011
    adytum wrote: »
    Yeah, let's not try to kid ourselves that the Chinese are actually significantly developing Africa or anything like that.

    Let's not lie and claim that they are any worse then Western companies either, though.

    At a minimum, Western companies are governed by laws that prevent them from engaging in corruption or bribery.

    The companies may not be any better (corporations are amoral, after all) but the framework in which they operate is at least mildly more "fair."

    In their home countries, maybe (and countless recent news show that it isn't always the reality) in Africa though? Pfft, all rules fly right out of the window. It's still in many ways the Heart of Darkness there, especially when it comes to business ethics.

    Nope, they are still accountable to the laws of their home country. Firms can be and are prosecuted for bribery and corruption overseas.

    adytum on
  • Psycho Internet HawkPsycho Internet Hawk Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    shryke wrote: »
    They are, in fact, doing exactly what the colonial powers did before. (Building only enough infrastructure to rape the land)

    It didn't do anything to help Africa then either.

    Western aid tends to feed nations via the state with one hand and economically squeeze them in the balls via the IMF and free market with the other. Russian and Chinese activity in Africa, on the other hand, is pretty blatant about its intentions, but at least it's not excessively paternalistic, which is why in recent years Russia and China have been making huge inroads.

    There's no reason the US state couldn't simply support an entirely African-drive economic aid program essentially doing what China and Russia are doing but without the exploitation. But we don't, because otherwise we'd be infringing on the free market and clearly that can't happen.

    Psycho Internet Hawk on
    ezek1t.jpg
  • HappylilElfHappylilElf Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    BubbaT wrote: »
    Modern Man wrote: »
    BubbaT wrote: »
    The USSR wasn't a true counter-balance for the vast majority of the Cold War, outside of deterring a nuclear exchange. In most of the proxy wars they talked a lot and did nothing. Cuba was one place where they actually planted their feet and stood up to the US, chest to chest. Result: the US quit trying to invade Cuba, and decades of peace between 2 enemies only 90 miles apart.
    Yeah, but the world came within a smidgen of nuclear war because two nuclear powers decided to compare dick sizes. If the US had been the only superpower at the time, the stakes with Cuba would have been a lot lower.

    Yeah, a single superpower can be a dick to small countries. But, since the end of the Cold War, US invasions and pushing around small countries has mostly been harmless to anyone who didn't live in those countries. Without a rival superpower to up the ante, even the worst excesses of American foreign policy are pretty harmless to the rest of the world.

    Pretty harmless? The Iraq War has had an estimated 100,000 (Wikileak'd Iraqi war logs) to 650,000 (Lancet survey) excess deaths, the vast majority of them civilians.

    How many people died in the Cuban Missile Crisis? 1.

    Are you just deliberately being obtuse?

    HappylilElf on
  • poshnialloposhniallo Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    BubbaT wrote: »
    Modern Man wrote: »
    BubbaT wrote: »
    The USSR wasn't a true counter-balance for the vast majority of the Cold War, outside of deterring a nuclear exchange. In most of the proxy wars they talked a lot and did nothing. Cuba was one place where they actually planted their feet and stood up to the US, chest to chest. Result: the US quit trying to invade Cuba, and decades of peace between 2 enemies only 90 miles apart.
    Yeah, but the world came within a smidgen of nuclear war because two nuclear powers decided to compare dick sizes. If the US had been the only superpower at the time, the stakes with Cuba would have been a lot lower.

    Yeah, a single superpower can be a dick to small countries. But, since the end of the Cold War, US invasions and pushing around small countries has mostly been harmless to anyone who didn't live in those countries. Without a rival superpower to up the ante, even the worst excesses of American foreign policy are pretty harmless to the rest of the world.

    Pretty harmless? The Iraq War has had an estimated 100,000 (Wikileak'd Iraqi war logs) to 650,000 (Lancet survey) excess deaths, the vast majority of them civilians.

    How many people died in the Cuban Missile Crisis? 1.

    Are you just deliberately being obtuse?

    It is a pretty ridiculous thing to say - MMs post I mean. Logically true, and BubbaT's post ignored that truth, but still a pretty terrible thing to say.

    'The US is pretty harmless to the people they don't murder.'

    It's only a meaningful thing to say if you marginalise the deaths of brown people and play up the safety of white people. Yup, living in Spain, the US is no danger to you. Living in Iraq, it sucks. So what if the US hasn't attacked Europe? Civilian deaths are civilian deaths, and the attitude of most white people towards those deaths is nauseatingly hypocritical. 3000 dead in 9/11 vs half a million Iraqis, but one is a national trauma that will last for decades and the other is realpolitik?

    Absolutely disgusting.

    poshniallo on
    I figure I could take a bear.
  • SyrdonSyrdon Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    shryke wrote: »
    They are, in fact, doing exactly what the colonial powers did before. (Building only enough infrastructure to rape the land)

    It didn't do anything to help Africa then either.
    Western aid tends to feed nations via the state with one hand and economically squeeze them in the balls via the IMF and free market with the other. Russian and Chinese activity in Africa, on the other hand, is pretty blatant about its intentions, but at least it's not excessively paternalistic, which is why in recent years Russia and China have been making huge inroads.

    There's no reason the US state couldn't simply support an entirely African-drive economic aid program essentially doing what China and Russia are doing but without the exploitation. But we don't, because otherwise we'd be infringing on the free market and clearly that can't happen.
    There are really any number of ways to generate substantial benefits for the economy of any given African nation without substantially interfering with the free market (at least not more than its being interfered with anyway), the issue is that I strongly doubt the population of the US has any interest in it, and it wouldn't be profitable for anyone making really large donations to campaign funds. Actually, it could likely be done entirely with private money and be profitable if people decided they wanted to do it. Not as profitable as exploiting the country, but profitable none the less. But people don't tend to be willing to contribute monetarily what they do audibly.

    Alternately, any country that has foreign companies coming in and actually building infrastructure is in a great position to make some requirements about what gets built and where (say ... the backbone of a serious national rail or road system) and they don't have to fund it. The trick is getting leadership good enough to do that effectively (which is by no means an African problem. See also: every congress/president set since Eisenhower more or less).

    On a chinese note, short term the worst they can do (short of warfare) is sell treasury bonds, which might actually qualify as a good thing for the US. Long term they are going to end up on top economically if they can manage to keep their country together. With a population that big, even at a moderate income/capita you end up with a lot of money moving around. Yes they're going to get there by using patents without license and likely some explotation too but lets take a look at how that turned for everyone else on that planet. Industrial revolution resulted in some colonies getting the shaft and everyone else ending up pretty much ok after the fact. Regionally, the best the US can do is attempt to mitigate, the Chinese have the ability to cause serious military problems in the Pacific if they ever decide to (and stop thinking about everything in terms of how they can use their Army against it).

    Syrdon on
  • Modern ManModern Man Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    BubbaT wrote: »
    Modern Man wrote: »
    BubbaT wrote: »
    The USSR wasn't a true counter-balance for the vast majority of the Cold War, outside of deterring a nuclear exchange. In most of the proxy wars they talked a lot and did nothing. Cuba was one place where they actually planted their feet and stood up to the US, chest to chest. Result: the US quit trying to invade Cuba, and decades of peace between 2 enemies only 90 miles apart.
    Yeah, but the world came within a smidgen of nuclear war because two nuclear powers decided to compare dick sizes. If the US had been the only superpower at the time, the stakes with Cuba would have been a lot lower.

    Yeah, a single superpower can be a dick to small countries. But, since the end of the Cold War, US invasions and pushing around small countries has mostly been harmless to anyone who didn't live in those countries. Without a rival superpower to up the ante, even the worst excesses of American foreign policy are pretty harmless to the rest of the world.

    Pretty harmless? The Iraq War has had an estimated 100,000 (Wikileak'd Iraqi war logs) to 650,000 (Lancet survey) excess deaths, the vast majority of them civilians.

    How many people died in the Cuban Missile Crisis? 1.
    There has been a conflict in the Congo that has been going on, with some breaks, since about 1998. Death estimates range from 3.5-8 million. It sucks for the people involved, obviously, but the war is pretty much harmless and meaningless to the rest of the world.

    Similarly, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are pretty meaningless, in the grand scheme of things. It's only when two nuclear powers start bumping up against each other that the situation becomes serious. It's why in both Vietnam and Afghanistan during the Cold War, the USSR and US had to pretend that Soviets and Americans weren't killing Americans and Soviets, in each respective case.

    You need to have a sense of perspective on this type of thing.
    poshniallo wrote: »
    It is a pretty ridiculous thing to say - MMs post I mean. Logically true, and BubbaT's post ignored that truth, but still a pretty terrible thing to say.

    'The US is pretty harmless to the people they don't murder.'

    It's only a meaningful thing to say if you marginalise the deaths of brown people and play up the safety of white people. Yup, living in Spain, the US is no danger to you. Living in Iraq, it sucks. So what if the US hasn't attacked Europe? Civilian deaths are civilian deaths, and the attitude of most white people towards those deaths is nauseatingly hypocritical. 3000 dead in 9/11 vs half a million Iraqis, but one is a national trauma that will last for decades and the other is realpolitik?

    Absolutely disgusting.
    Your options since WWII are living in a world where (a) two nuclear powers are engaged in a competition for dominance which can, if things go wrong, lead to a nuclear holocaust or (b) a world where the relatively benign remaining superpower occasionally slaps around small countries, but where the spectre of a cataclysmic nuclear war has mostly been eliminated.

    If (b) is the lesser of two evils, then you shouldn't be that eager to return to a bi-polar world like we had in the post-WWII period.

    Modern Man on
    Aetian Jupiter - 41 Gunslinger - The Old Republic
    Rigorous Scholarship

  • FPA20111FPA20111 Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    There's also the matter of the U.S. military taking scrupulous care to avoid civilian casualties in its wars, as opposed to the insurgents//Taliban//AlQaeda keeping body score for the lols.

    FPA20111 on
    The paranoid man believes that everyone is out to get him. The intelligent man knows that everyone is out to get him.
  • L|amaL|ama Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Modern Man wrote: »
    BubbaT wrote: »
    Modern Man wrote: »
    BubbaT wrote: »
    The USSR wasn't a true counter-balance for the vast majority of the Cold War, outside of deterring a nuclear exchange. In most of the proxy wars they talked a lot and did nothing. Cuba was one place where they actually planted their feet and stood up to the US, chest to chest. Result: the US quit trying to invade Cuba, and decades of peace between 2 enemies only 90 miles apart.
    Yeah, but the world came within a smidgen of nuclear war because two nuclear powers decided to compare dick sizes. If the US had been the only superpower at the time, the stakes with Cuba would have been a lot lower.

    Yeah, a single superpower can be a dick to small countries. But, since the end of the Cold War, US invasions and pushing around small countries has mostly been harmless to anyone who didn't live in those countries. Without a rival superpower to up the ante, even the worst excesses of American foreign policy are pretty harmless to the rest of the world.

    Pretty harmless? The Iraq War has had an estimated 100,000 (Wikileak'd Iraqi war logs) to 650,000 (Lancet survey) excess deaths, the vast majority of them civilians.

    How many people died in the Cuban Missile Crisis? 1.
    There has been a conflict in the Congo that has been going on, with some breaks, since about 1998. Death estimates range from 3.5-8 million. It sucks for the people involved, obviously, but the war is pretty much harmless and meaningless to the rest of the world.

    Similarly, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are pretty meaningless, in the grand scheme of things. It's only when two nuclear powers start bumping up against each other that the situation becomes serious. It's why in both Vietnam and Afghanistan during the Cold War, the USSR and US had to pretend that Soviets and Americans weren't killing Americans and Soviets, in each respective case.

    You need to have a sense of perspective on this type of thing.

    you're comparing the actions of the largest military on earth to one of the most brutal civil wars ever

    well, gotta have standards I guess

    L|ama on
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    BubbaT wrote: »
    BubbaT wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    gtrmp wrote: »
    It's ironic in a sad kind of way that all the hand-wringing in the OP boils down to Americans wanting China to stop acting more American than America. Rapidly expanding military-industrial complex? Check. Exploitative neoliberal economic policies in Africa? Check. Addiction to nonrenewable fuels? Check. Too bad the OP didn't go for the hat trick and remind us about their corrupt, inhumane prison-industrial complex.

    And?

    I mean seriously, as a non-American, who would you rather have as your belligerent military and economic super-power?

    Cause I'd pick the US over China any day of the week.

    I'd rather live in the US than in China. That's domestic policy (and also Mexican food).

    But if I didn't live in the US or China, I'd be a lot more wary of the US' foreign policy than China's. A LOT. And the respective domestic policies of the US and China wouldn't really concern me too much in comparison to their foreign policies. Hell, you think some Afghani shepherd who just watched a Predator kill his wife and kids cares whether a guy in Nebraska has the right to a jury trial?

    In fact, I'm sure what, if any, relevance a nation's domestic policy has on their actions in the foreign policy sphere seeing as how often domestic-oriented talk about "principles" and "rights" end up as nothing more than blown smoke used to cover the advance of more tangible interests.

    So with that in mind, I'd ask:
    - How many countries has China invaded in the last 10 years?
    - How many countries has China bombed in the last 20 years?
    - How many coups has China organized and/or backed, how many Shahs and Pinochets and Duvaliers and Habrés and Mobutus and Brancos and Bautistas has China imposed on other nations?

    Now if you want to give me Sweden as the dominant global power, fine. It ain't Sweden who's spent the last decade warmongering, or the last 60 installing murderers as heads of state for fun and profit.


    tl;dr - China's domestic policies are a problem for people in China. What relevance does that have to China becoming a global military power? China's foreign policies in that scenario are more important than its domestic ones. And in terms of one's foreign policies causing death and destruction around the world, China compares favorably to the US.

    I think you're somewhat missing the point. China doing these things too would not somehow make America stop doing them.

    The world needs one less superpower not one more. God I hate typing that, because I feel like as an American I should be more patriotic but we really need to stop being a superpower, it is doing nobody any favors.

    What about China's history suggests they would be doing those same things? China tried the whole "let's invade everybody" thing before, copying the US by trying to invade Vietnam. Like the US they got smacked in the nose. Unlike the US, they actually learned from it. They haven't gone around invading countries willy-nilly since.

    China could be tampering with internal African politics if they wanted to. Neither the US or EU really care enough about Africa to call them on it. But they don't. Maybe it's because they've actually been on the shit end of colonialism themselves before.

    Because superpowers don't get to be superpowers unless they're sticking their dick in other countries affairs. This is what we are talking about here - China becoming a super power and whether or not it is a good thing. You say the US needs someone to keep them in check, well how in god's name do they do that without fucking the US by proxy (which generally speaking means taking actions that fuck over lots of poor people somewhere, see: just about everything the US and USSR ever did in foreign countries)



    Also, while I don't like Modern man's viewpoint, saying the Cuban missile crisis had one casualty really kind of sidesteps the enormity of it a bit... we were literally one sub captain's vote away from the potential extinction of the human race.

    override367 on
  • DarkCrawlerDarkCrawler Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Also, while I don't like Modern man's viewpoint, saying the Cuban missile crisis had one casualty really kind of sidesteps the enormity of it a bit... we were literally one sub captain's vote away from the potential extinction of the human race.

    Cuban Missile Crisis would not have been anywhere near the extinction of the entire human race. Neither Soviets or Americans had enough nukes for that. It would have been the end Soviet Union, both Germanies and other Eastern European nations. Everyone else would have survived (comparably) unscathed.

    Obviously, stakes were still the deaths millions of people, but not worldwide extinction.

    DarkCrawler on
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Also, while I don't like Modern man's viewpoint, saying the Cuban missile crisis had one casualty really kind of sidesteps the enormity of it a bit... we were literally one sub captain's vote away from the potential extinction of the human race.

    Cuban Missile Crisis would not have been anywhere near the extinction of the entire human race. Neither Soviets or Americans had enough nukes for that. It would have been the end Soviet Union, both Germanies and other Eastern European nations. Everyone else would have survived (comparably) unscathed.

    Obviously, stakes were still the deaths millions of people, but not worldwide extinction.

    I would imagine the ensuing nuclear winter from hundreds of out of control city fires would have had a pretty negative effect. You're right there was a zero chance of extinction so I should have chosen my words more carefully.

    More like, the death of a significant percentage of the human race and knocking the survivors back a couple of dozen pegs down to subsistence living at best

    override367 on
  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Also, while I don't like Modern man's viewpoint, saying the Cuban missile crisis had one casualty really kind of sidesteps the enormity of it a bit... we were literally one sub captain's vote away from the potential extinction of the human race.

    Cuban Missile Crisis would not have been anywhere near the extinction of the entire human race. Neither Soviets or Americans had enough nukes for that. It would have been the end Soviet Union, both Germanies and other Eastern European nations. Everyone else would have survived (comparably) unscathed.

    Obviously, stakes were still the deaths millions of people, but not worldwide extinction.

    I would imagine the ensuing nuclear winter from hundreds of out of control city fires would have had a pretty negative effect. You're right there was a zero chance of extinction so I should have chosen my words more carefully.

    More like, the death of a significant percentage of the human race and knocking the survivors back a couple of dozen pegs down to subsistence living at best

    You're also actually overlooking that it would have likely meant the end of the United States as a single, autonomous nation. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely agree with BubbaT's rough analysis--even considering it as a bipolar world, the "Cold War" as period did not mean perfect, or near-perfect parity of the two superpowers. It's the reason why the United States can continue to spend half the world's war expenses, today, and seemingly laugh it off. This ability didn't just emerge in a vacuum. The United States was the dominant power--the wars it did lose were not a reflection of being "overall" weaker than the other power, somuch as a reflection of simple realities of guerilla warfare, national resistance, and the practical limits of military occupation short of "kill everyone in the whole region or country".

    MAD doctrine, while not as earnestly established as after the period, existed, obviously. Besides, you obviously don't have to kill every person in the US to put an end to any meaningful idea of a United States--you can do that with just a portion of people and a handful of nuclear weapons in 1961. No meaningful ABM existed--the Soviets would conduct the first successful ABM test in 1961, and the US would catch on shortly after, but that was matched by rapidly progressing warhead delivery. The USSR had retired all of its diesel-powered nuclear-armed submarines by 1960, but still had a large fleet of nuclear ones. We now know (though we didn't at the time) that Cuba had already received nuclear-armed bombers, which would be used against the continental United States, well within their range (150 km versus 2,180 km one way, so say half of that normally). Short of a near-miracle interception of all of these--which is very unlikely, versus the interception of a large number of these platforms--you've got a large number of nuclear weapons pounding the United States coasts. And even that would leave you with the existing missile, which there existing no meaningful way to intercept. See above about ABM.

    Also, Turkey would have likely been obliterated, the target of retaliatory strikes, I think. Would it have killed everyone in the lower-48 United States? I don't think so. Would it have been the end of the United States as a nation? I think so. At the very least, it's a long cry from "largely unscathed". If you want to find somewhere largely unscathed, you'd have to look at a non-participant, i.e. a nation in Africa or far South America.

    Synthesis on
  • DarkCrawlerDarkCrawler Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Well, relatively to the Soviet Union, which would have been completely obliterated, U.S. would have survived "largely" unscathed (bad word, but relatively). As in the vast majority of it's population would survive. The U.S. had approximately 5000 warheads in 1962. Soviets had 300, vast majority of which had no way of reaching America, and in the event of a strike, multiple warheads would be targeted on singular locations. Sure, many of America's important cities with military assets would be obliterated - New York, Washington D.C., San Diego, Philadelphia - as well as less populous/important places with military focus, like Norfolk, Colorado Springs (NORAD) etc.

    America also had a huge edge in air force and bombers - more so with Soviet's being busy in Europe (which would tie the majority of the their forces) and U.S. having no such concerns. That means that it would most likely intercept a majority of bomber-based attacks. Either way, Cuba did not have enough bombers or nuclear weapons to have a massive impact on United States. With launch failures, navigational errors and other inevitable such things taken on account, there really wasn't no way for Soviets to wipe out United States. The disparity was simply too large.

    In short, America would lose a lot, but I personally don't think it would mean the end of America as a nation. Vast, vast majority of it's cities and population would still survive.

    There are some very well-researched hypotheticals as to what would have happened, this one is my favorite. The thread itself goes very deep on potential targets and missile disparities, as well as the arraying of the forces of each nation.
    http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=65071

    UK would be in pretty shitty shape though, now that I remember it. Not as bad as Germany, but among the worst nonetheless, though. But I don't think Cuban Missile Crisis was a "true" MAD scenario in the way that it did not mean the end of the world, or complete destruction of both sides. By the late 1960's we were already pretty close to that. By 70's and 80's...you probably could fit the surviving human population on a single town. And then they all would die of cancer/starvation anyway.

    DarkCrawler on
  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    America would be in a better situation to intercept those bombers and aircraft, but given the atomic payloads in question, I don't think it would be enough. A certain number would be lost to navigation errors and misfires (the same could be said about American missiles even from Turkey, with a longer distance to cross, unless their sole targets were in Armenia or elsehwhere nextdoor--missiles in Turkey were also thought by the US to be notoriously unreliable, a consequence of their length of deployment and administration). Likewise, the American bomber force is not invincible--the largest bomber force in the world would be going against the largest dedicated air defense force in the world, the PVO--at this time, certainly the strength of the USSR's air forces in the period. The sheer quantity of bombers would likely make up for the fact, but both sides have to deal with it (hence the attractiveness of missiles, "missile gap" mania, etc.)

    America's hurt by something I think you overlooked: it's weak civil defense standing in 1961. The cultural imagery of family-operated bomb shelters aside, American civil defense was largely inferior compared to its military superiority (even more so than would be naturally assumed for the premiere military power). It stayed this way for decades, and by some critques, until the end of the Cold War (of course, the material wealth of the country, along with MAD, made it easy to argue this was a minor point by then). The Soviet Civil Defense program was born out of the deaths of +20 million people, largely civilians, in the last war. The United States has no analog for this experience and, in extreme case, no meaningful modern civil defense for the general public (other critiques are much less evere--take this 1977 Document, which reflected decades of investment, versus a United States that largely ruled out the concept). In 1962, it's a lot more of interest that the United States had a very long way to catch up (essentially from scratch) versus the Soviets having a head start. Civil Defense also includes response to the atomic explosions, evacuation plans, distrubtion of existing resources.

    The superior quantity of fire would certainly help the United States, but the areas that would come under fire in the US itself would represent extremely curcial areas of the United States, in terms of numbers of people, would be enough to end the meaningful existence of the nation. Then again, this could be overly pessimistic on my part: from 1941 until even after the war ended, western historians and sociologists largely considered the Soviet Union to be at its death, as a political entity and a nation, if the upper estimates of lives loss during the Second World War were true (and these were actually lower often than the actual numbers, due to difficulty and calculation to this day and deliberate Soviet subterfuge). The country dissolved nearly a half-century later.

    I'm actually really wary of Alternate History.com, but it comes from a differnet reason from years back, so naturally, YMMV. The treatment of this topic could be much better.

    Synthesis on
  • tinwhiskerstinwhiskers Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    The people arguing over whether or not the Cuban missile crisis wound h ave been an extinction event are missing the forest through the trees here. It would have been an extinction event if it happened now, returning to that paradigm of 'balanced' superpowers is an insane idea.

    tinwhiskers on
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  • Modern ManModern Man Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    The people arguing over whether or not the Cuban missile crisis wound h ave been an extinction event are missing the forest through the trees here. It would have been an extinction event if it happened now, returning to that paradigm of 'balanced' superpowers is an insane idea.
    Well, as someone mentioned upthread, if the 2 superpowers were the US and the EU, the chances of proxy wars and nuclear confrontations would be next to zero.

    But the EU doesn't seem to have the desire, or the ability, to become a competitor to the US in the traditional sense.

    I'm not sure China has a real desire to have a relationship with the US similar to the US/USSR Cold War. China's economy is too tied in to the global system for its leadership to want to mess with the status quo all that much.

    Modern Man on
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  • DarkCrawlerDarkCrawler Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Synthesis wrote: »
    America would be in a better situation to intercept those bombers and aircraft, but given the atomic payloads in question, I don't think it would be enough. A certain number would be lost to navigation errors and misfires (the same could be said about American missiles even from Turkey, with a longer distance to cross, unless their sole targets were in Armenia or elsehwhere nextdoor--missiles in Turkey were also thought by the US to be notoriously unreliable, a consequence of their length of deployment and administration). Likewise, the American bomber force is not invincible--the largest bomber force in the world would be going against the largest dedicated air defense force in the world, the PVO--at this time, certainly the strength of the USSR's air forces in the period. The sheer quantity of bombers would likely make up for the fact, but both sides have to deal with it (hence the attractiveness of missiles, "missile gap" mania, etc.)

    There is just so many more American missiles and bombers that the same fact wouldn't be as harmful of them. Even if half of American warheads won't reach their destination for one reason or another, there would still be 2500 of them hitting Soviet Union. Soviet Union would be destroyed, there is no uncertainty about it.
    Synthesis wrote: »
    America's hurt by something I think you overlooked: it's weak civil defense standing in 1961. The cultural imagery of family-operated bomb shelters aside, American civil defense was largely inferior compared to its military superiority (even more so than would be naturally assumed for the premiere military power). It stayed this way for decades, and by some critques, until the end of the Cold War (of course, the material wealth of the country, along with MAD, made it easy to argue this was a minor point by then). The Soviet Civil Defense program was born out of the deaths of +20 million people, largely civilians, in the last war. The United States has no analog for this experience and, in extreme case, no meaningful modern civil defense for the general public (other critiques are much less evere--take this 1977 Document, which reflected decades of investment, versus a United States that largely ruled out the concept). In 1962, it's a lot more of interest that the United States had a very long way to catch up (essentially from scratch) versus the Soviets having a head start. Civil Defense also includes response to the atomic explosions, evacuation plans, distrubtion of existing resources.

    The superior quantity of fire would certainly help the United States, but the areas that would come under fire in the US itself would represent extremely curcial areas of the United States, in terms of numbers of people, would be enough to end the meaningful existence of the nation. Then again, this could be overly pessimistic on my part: from 1941 until even after the war ended, western historians and sociologists largely considered the Soviet Union to be at its death, as a political entity and a nation, if the upper estimates of lives loss during the Second World War were true (and these were actually lower often than the actual numbers, due to difficulty and calculation to this day and deliberate Soviet subterfuge). The country dissolved nearly a half-century later.

    With the line of presidential succession, existence of forces such as National Guard, lack of massive internal division and the fact that many important population centers would survive, I just don't see a reason why United States would end with vast majority of it's population, intelligence, organization and resources still in existence. There is no way that Soviet Union of 1962, with the forces at it's disposal could wipe out America. It would certainly be a massive reconstruction, the greatest tragedy in it's existence with millions of dead and without a doubt a martial law would be instituted, and U.S. wouldn't be the same as we know it, but I don't see any conceivable reason why it would fracture or areas would secede or anything like that. After all, the Soviet Union didn't, like you said. And unlike Soviet Union, the U.S. at this point has been an unified nation for hundreds of years, not a few decades.
    Synthesis wrote: »
    I'm actually really wary of Alternate History.com, but it comes from a differnet reason from years back, so naturally, YMMV. The treatment of this topic could be much better.

    Fair enough, but I don't really see any gaping mistakes in the writing I posted - at least regarding the pure military side.

    DarkCrawler on
  • dojangodojango Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    That's a good point, MM. In the cold war, the world was sort of divided into two competing economic systems. Although there was some trade with Commies (grain, mostly, because their crop yields sucked), the world economy wasn't nearly as integrated. As much as China rises, it probably won't try to establish a competing economic system to rival the "west's". Even if it does transition from building stuff for foreigners to building stuff for its own citizens.

    dojango on
  • YarYar Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    I lost 20 grand on a Chinese company that turned out to be a total fraud. They were Nasdaq listed and had audited financials going back years... but turns out that they were just really good liars. Whole thing was a fraud, the business didn't exist. There seems to be a growing sentiment that a lot of what we think about China is hot air.

    Yar on
  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Alot of their "scientific research" papers and such are apparently complete bullshit. Universities come with their own academic journals who's sole purpose is to publish papers by people from that university to inflate said people's "Paper's Published" numbers. Said papers often being heavily plagarised.

    shryke on
  • L|amaL|ama Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    not hugely so, that's a common view that isn't really backed up by much evidence. I can't remember where I got the info, but there was a thing on academic plagiarism/dishonesty by nation and China was in the same range as the western countries.

    L|ama on
  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    With the line of presidential succession, existence of forces such as National Guard, lack of massive internal division and the fact that many important population centers would survive, I just don't see a reason why United States would end with vast majority of it's population, intelligence, organization and resources still in existence. There is no way that Soviet Union of 1962, with the forces at it's disposal could wipe out America. It would certainly be a massive reconstruction, the greatest tragedy in it's existence with millions of dead and without a doubt a martial law would be instituted, and U.S. wouldn't be the same as we know it, but I don't see any conceivable reason why it would fracture or areas would secede or anything like that. After all, the Soviet Union didn't, like you said. And unlike Soviet Union, the U.S. at this point has been an unified nation for hundreds of years, not a few decades.

    A fair point, but I think that the current United States government would not survive--it would not take "the wiping out" of the country to do that, not by a long shot, as far as I can tell. The social pressures of the 1960s and 1970s may have been "wiped out" by such an exchange, or they might have been exasperated past the point they could be imagined in the current historical timeline. The United States would not have to "wipe out" the USSR any more to end its meaningful existence as a country, and the reverse is true, even though one power has far more ability to afflict suffering on the other.

    I don't think it would have been any sort of "unscathed government"--which is not to say I don't think many leaders wouldn't survive, or that some government or governments would emerge in its place. It just would not be the same United States government (the distinction can be hard to say--compare the CIS and the USSR, and the Russian Federation within the CIS). This is based on my own understanding of the military assets available to either side to be deployed, and would have been called to, and the long lasting effects of nuclear fallout, and the very sad state of American Civil Defense for literally any sort of nuclear catatastrophe--the ability of the National Guard to institute martial law is really the smallest problem faced by civil defense, and easiest one. The further bureaucratic and managerial redundancy of the 15 republics--something that would doom the nation in the political future--was not replicated to the United States either over 50 states and territories, both a a benefit and as a weakness. The issues of threats of seccession are complex in 1961, but the emerging government over time, almost certainly, would be distinguishable enough (and perhaps come into conflict with the predecessor). I'm borrowing heavily from my peers who study social stratification and political rivalries within the United States, particularly within this reason, but the notion that the delicate relationship between multiple tiers of local governments and the national government, already strained by the climate, would "absolutely" survive nuclear strikes isn't convincing to me. Which is not to say the USSR at the same time didn't have its own tenuous social arrangements, but the United States, by the virtue of being older, does not purely survive as though this was merely a short period of carpet bombing.

    Then again, this is reflecting a shift from purely military history towards "small" history (I want to say "cultural history", but that's a very loaded term in the US right now) in academia. In the debate of the metropole versus the outlier, including the US, the ability to cary on "business as usual" is based on a long standing set of social arrangements that would be mercilessly treated in even a small nuclear exchange. There doesn't necessarily have to be radioactively-buzzed Neo-Confederates and Neo-Unionists showing down over the ruins of Washington, or something resembling Fallout, to mean a meaningful end to the United States government--though at the same time, I don't want to imply this is like the switching of Italian governments between elections (again, the word "government" is tricky too). Of course, this is limited by analysis, like it would be for anyone--one of the reasons I've come to distrust Alternate History.com is that a lot of the analysis (not all) treats things from an almost purely military, and perhaps military-industrial level--this number of people killed, this number of aircraft left available, etc.--while largely dismissing the considerations of agency both in goverment and in civil society more broadly. Sometimes totally.

    (Ack, now I sound like some of my current professors.)
    L|ama wrote: »
    not hugely so, that's a common view that isn't really backed up by much evidence. I can't remember where I got the info, but there was a thing on academic plagiarism/dishonesty by nation and China was in the same range as the western countries.

    This may have less to do with China and more a reflection of the rampancy of plagarism and what is considered extremely dishonest behavior in American academia--even at the highest levels (and by that, I mean rather than one grad student to another one, I mean one tenured professor in employ of the state and even a "think tank" to another one, both of whom published books, and both of them who are going to get into a debate that will last an easy ten years and may, unfortunately, not be resolved to reflect actual honesty). I don't want to say this with the impression that every professor is getting ripped by every other one, but I think it happens far more often than people would be comfortable with otherwise, and that's just on a superificial, public level. That could happen all the time in a very much more private manner.

    I suspect China has similar issues.

    Synthesis on
  • zekebeauzekebeau Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Since I'm currently living and working in China, thought I should give my impression. As an American, I feel we have nothing to worry from the rise in China. They are focused on their country and their country only, and do not want a dust up with anyone. Mention Taiwan, every Chinese agrees they own it and don't understand how we could be confused that it was not China. But ask if China would use force to rein Taiwan in, they are horrified. They want Taiwan to be another Hong Kong, an addition that doesn't require any big change.

    I've also found they view Americans in two big ways. 1) in business they think we are rich and naive. 2) at work they think we are smart and creative and can do amazing things. Neither are harsh, both makes them want to work with us all the more. Short of a US attack on China, they do not want to rock the boat.

    And Yar, sorry to hear about your loss, but China is a fraud based economy. Seriously, I read China Law Blog, about 40% of his posts are about how people get tricked by fake books and fake buildings that run for the 1 day the foreiner visits, and then they run off with the money. Goes back the the naive part of China's understanding of Americans.

    zekebeau on
  • HamurabiHamurabi MiamiRegistered User regular
    edited June 2011
    The thing to remember is that China is still largely a third-world country. Yeah, the cities are going gangbusters, but 1 billion of their 1.3 billion population is still rural and poor. The only reason they've made such a big splash over the last decade is that when 1.3 billion people make even incremental progress, in a world of 6.7 billion, it makes huge waves. Same for India.

    This quote is (possibly apocryphally) attributed to Napoleon: "Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world." "Waking up" in this context simply means "not being a country filled only with abject poverty."

    Another very interesting quote vis-a-vis China's agnostic foreign policy, from a speech by one of the Communist Party's heads back in 1979, when China was having a lot of internal ideological back-and-forth: "Black cat or white cat -- if it can catch mice, it is a good cat." That says volumes about the present Chinese approach.

    Hamurabi on
  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Huh. Didn't realize that statement was attributed to Napoleon.

    Synthesis on
  • HamurabiHamurabi MiamiRegistered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Fareed Zakaria seems to feel it belongs to him.

    Incidentally, I wasn't previously aware that Fareed Zakaria actually coined the phrase "rise of the rest." I'd always kind of had this sneaking suspicion that Zakaria really just pilfered / condensed the foreign policy community's views and put them in mainstream-accessible novel form.

    Hamurabi on
  • Ethan SmithEthan Smith Origin name: Beart4to Arlington, VARegistered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Robman wrote: »
    I watched this one video of a dude trying to make contact with some illegal group in China, and his government tails freaked when the turned the video camera on them. They shouted at them and he backed off. No biggie.

    Then I watched this video in America of the police swarming around this dude in Miami and pointing guns at him, demanding that he turn over his video equipment - he only kept his video because he hid the SD card in his mouth. His crime? Filming the cops surrounding a vehicle and opening fire. He filmed a legitimate police shooting and they still demanded his phone at gunpoint. They then smashed that phone.

    But herp da derp CHINAAAA I guess

    External threats are still threats even when internal corruption is rampant. I agree that the primary threat to American happiness and prosperity is actually Americans at this time, but Chinese prosperity is bad for the US. We have nothing to game and much to lose from runaway resource exploitation, military expansion, pollution, and R&D capabilities outpacing us.

    I think the best offense in this case is actually good defense, such as improving infrastructure, education, health, living conditions, science, etc, etc. stateside so that we flourish more quickly than they do, but not being on top is not good for you.

    Bullshit. Chinese prosperity could fuel an American boom. Most of their economy is based around saving right now, but imagine the amount of money we would get when every Chinese kid wants a Kindle, a cell phone, an MP3 player and a computer?

    Ethan Smith on
  • HamurabiHamurabi MiamiRegistered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Most of their economy is based around saving right now, but imagine the amount of money we would get when every Chinese kid wants a Kindle, a cell phone, an MP3 player and a computer?

    They would walk down the street and pick one up off the assembly line? :P

    Hamurabi on
  • EgoEgo Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    *grin*

    Chinese pump knock-off cell phones out of family-run 'factories' in ridiculous numbers. I've bought some, just to fool around with them (iphone clones and symbian models, but they have blackberry and android clones too --and yes the androids run android OS, though they generally can't access the android marketplace to buy software, they have to steal it.) You won't be selling mp3 players or cell phones or kindles to China (or India for that matter, it's just as rampant there) any time soon. Patents really do mean nothing to China.

    That said, a booming Chinese economy means more loans to the US which, right now, is probably still a good thing.

    Ego on
    Erik
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