China's Emergence As A Global Superpower

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Saint, Nov 19, 2005.

  1. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    I agree. In fact have long considered the "take over" to include non-economic areas, but in the "arts" etc. it is very difficult to compare: For example how do you compare the art of photo below to a US one?

    Which “freedom” is more essential? How do you compare?
     
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  3. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    Considering that China has both much more poverty and much less political freedom than the US, I'd say you are presenting a false choice.
     
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  5. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    I said:
    “For them "freedom" is much more about having a full stomach and place to sleep than the right to openly tell the government to go to hell. Which “freedom” is more essential? How do you compare? ”

    I did not intend to offer any choice between these two freedoms to Americans. Americans have both; but for many Chinese just having a dependably full belly is relatively new.

    I was suggesting that FOR THEM the choice was clear. Perhaps someday they too will want and have both. Few Americans have gone hungry / no food/ for even 24 hours.* It is thus difficult for them to compare or understand how the typical Chinese feels on their choice between the two.

    In addition to the daily propaganda that tells the masses how fortunate they are to have the wise CCP leading them, the fact that huger has been abolished is why they overwhelmingly support the CCP. They have chosen not to be hungry and many fear freedom of speech etc. may restore chaos and hunger.
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    *I did once. I did not have money even for bus fare home from Cornell one Thanksgiving. I was sort of embarrassed to eat in a greasy spoon luncheonette or even go out. So I stayed in my room that day - I was quite thankful when Thanksgiving was over that year.
     
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  7. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Perhaps China will just buy the USA:

    "... Since the beginning of this year, yields on both 10- and 30-year Treasuries have been rising, threatening to choke off a full-scale recovery. The Fed could buy Treasury bonds to counteract rising rates, but the money to buy those bonds would have to come from the government's printing press.

    ... it's hard to imagine a robust recovery when the American Banking Association says credit card default rates are at a record high, consumers who have money aren't spending it, and the wealth of the nation has been gutted by the collapse of real estate prices.

    If the Fed slips and falls, we may be in for either a continuing deflationary spiral, as happened during the Great Depression, or the opposite curse, hyper-inflation...

    The only silver lining in this dismal scenario is that, like a bank foreclosing on a homeowner, China is maneuvering to pick up U.S. assets at bargain prices. According to published reports this week from Reuters, China’s $200 billion sovereign wealth fund plans to invest up to $2 billion in "toxic" mortgage-backed securities from U.S. banks. ..."

    FROM: http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/18/ch...de-deficit.html?partner=globalnews_newsletter
     
  8. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    You should drop this patronizing habit of speaking for "them." You don't speak the language, know the people, etc., and it's in pretty poor taste to go around telling people what "they" think and want. Especially when it's your standard infantilizing image of the poor foreigner, desperate for subsistence and so easily controlled and oppressed.
     
  9. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    I mainly report what I have read as you are correct that I do not speak the language, but do several times each week visit here: http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/

    I think you too read Foreign Affairs and I recall an article there not too long ago that influenced me - Many Americans tend to think that the CCP will collapse with demands for "freedom" - I leaned to that POV prior to0 reading that article (and others like it) All I was saying is that a very high percentage of Chinese are very happy with their government (much higher than in the US) because their material conditions have improved so much.
    I did not qoute and credit these source, but merely restated their POV. If that is "patronizing" then so be be it but I think not. You can think other wise, but I am in good company as Foreign Affairs and the others are doing the same. As I recall you get Foreign Affairs so you may be albe to find the article and read it to see if I am not basically just condensing it.
     
  10. sayswho Registered Member

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    Thank you Billy T for standing up for China. You have said everything that Chinese are thinking but can’t really put it into English words. After all, we don’t speak the language. You know so much about China and as a Chinese I feel a little ashamed for knowing so little about my own country.
    You are right just about everything. I was born in 1989, so I belong to the younger generation in China. We complain about the government too, if not as much as Americans do. But different from americans, we trust our government. We believe we are heading for the better. And that's enough for us at least for the moment. I just hope that in America there are more Billy T who wants to know China and understand our people, and less quadraphonics who does not know the first thing about China and likes to argue for the sake of arguing.
     
  11. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    **** China's recent converting of US paper into real assets:

    6Sept09 China National Petroleum Corporation has struck oil at the Ahdab field in Wasit Province, southeast of Baghdad. … All oil revenues go directly to the government in Baghdad and are the foundation of the national budget. … The Iraqi government has so far rejected the locals’ demands,… “No one would have dared to ask for such a thing during Saddam’s regime; if he did, he would definitely be executed,” said Ghassan Ali, a 43-year-old farmer who lives near the oil field.

    The basis of the complaints here is that, aside from the hiring of a few hundred residents as laborers and security guards at salaries of less than $600 a month, the Ahdab field — a roughly $3 billion development project — has provided no local benefit. China National Petroleum says it needs relatively few workers because it is still in the exploration phase of its 23-year project at the Ahdab field. Oil production is not scheduled to begin for two and a half years.
    From: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/world/middleeast/06iraqoil.html?hpw

    Note China also has been granted oil rights in the NE of Iraq (Kurdistan part)


    5Sept09 100USD million (foot in Qatar’s door) Qatar Petroleum (QP) and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) have signed an exploration and production sharing agreement …The 25-year agreement will start-off with a five-year exploration program consisting of technical studies, 2D and 3D seismic acquisition, processing, reprocessing and interpretation and drilling of exploration wells. Block BC, which covers 5,649 square kilometers offshore acreage, is located off Qatar’s east coast. The first agreement by Qatar dedicated to explore and produce hydrocarbon from the deep pre-Khuff reservoirs. From the 1:55AM link at: http://thenumbers.marketplace.org/about/?Page=CHANNELINFO&ChannelID=5270


    18Aug09/~41USD Billion (from Singapore Straight Times, SST): ExxonMobil Corp had inked a deal to sell liquefied natural gas from its share of an LNG project in Australia to PetroChina in a deal worth about A$50 billion (S$59 billion). … The agreement is Australia's largest ever trade deal with China, the fastest-growing major economy in the world. Two-way trade last year was worth US$53 billion. SST quoted at: http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cach...nd china $15 billion&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

    {The project, located near Barrow Island 30 miles off Austrailia’s north-west coast, is expected to produce 40 trillion cubic feet of gas during the 20 years of the contract. Australia is going to process and ship some 15 million metric tons of LNG fuel each year. Development of the project is expected to create 6,000 jobs initially, with another 3,000 to follow.}


    7Sept09“Japan Steel Works is spending 80 billion yen ($864 million) at its Muroran plant in the country’s northern island of Hokkaido by March 2012 to increase capacity to make parts for 12 nuclear reactors a year, compared with 5.5 units now, the president said. … Japan Steel Works Ltd. … more than doubled its forecast for China’s nuclear plant construction because of stimulus spending and environmental pressures.
    {China} may build about 22 reactors in the five years ending 2010 and 132 units thereafter, compared with a company estimate last year for a total 60 reactors, President Ikuo Sato said in an interview”
    From: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a2lUkzmYNGWI

    This is also a way to get real energy assets, and reduce pollution, for dropping value dollars. (154 nuclear power plants ain't cheap.) Most of world's power generating wind mills and electric cars are also now being sold in China. China is world's largest producer of solar cells and now building solar cell power staions too. (In part because export demand has fallen.) China is serious about getting pollution problems under control but growing as fast as it is, it will be a decade or so before they turn the corner on the problem.

    -----------------
    **** Note this map also shows why Saddam invaded Kuwait. Kuwait was originally, (I.e. in first British division of the Ottoman empire), a part of Iraq and Iraq had about 50 to 100 times more coast line on the Gulf. At that time Kuwait was not of much interest to anyone, except as some desert one tried to get thru as quickly as possible. (Its oil not known). When oil was discovered there and Iraqi government was getting more difficult to control, The Brits re-defined the borders of Iraq to make Kuwait a separate nation, not just a worthless state within Iraq.

    The greatly reduced coast of the newly defined Iraq could be controlled by a single British gun ship. Iraq was too weak to do anything but make international protests, until Saddam ceased power. In some sense (a very limited one) Saddam was trying to do what Abraham Lincoln did - re-unify the country. (He of course want the oil as well as his original coast line back.)

    Iraq, of course, was no match for GHB's invasion force, but GWB's father wisely stopped without going to Baghdad. The Iraq/Iran war was also largely due to Iraq's need for more coast line, if only the economics are considered. During that war, Saddam was the US's hero -punishing the Iranians who held US citizens for nearly a year at end of Jimmy Carter's term as POTUS. Then US spy satellites gave Saddam the locations of Iranian troop contrations in almost real time so he could hit them with posion gas strikes.When you get down to the modern truth of the region, if it is not about religion, then it is about oil.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 6, 2009
  12. StrawDog disseminated primatemaia Valued Senior Member

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    What is your point?
     
  13. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Is Sciforums even allowed in China? How about that Tiananmen Square thing? China has made a deal with it's citizens. You can have no say in how your country is run, and in return they will let you benefit from some limited capitalism.
     
  14. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Wow, plate spinning. No one has found that entertaining since the 1950's. They look like a bunch of trained monkeys.
     
  15. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    For reasons not clear this thread's name changed. It was someting like: Do you think China will surpass the US someday?

    Here is one answer to that question:

    "... The money-earning capability of China's top 500 enterprises has exceeded that of their United States counterparts for the first time, as the sweeping financial crisis pummeled many US firms while China is already entering an economic recovery.

    Net profits for the Chinese companies stood at $170.6 billion in 2008, well above the $98.9 billion for US companies in the same period, according to the latest report released on Saturday by the China Enterprise Confederation (CEC) and China Enterprise Directors Association.

    Although the financial crisis decreased net profits for the Chinese heavyweights by 12.4 percent from a year ago, it is far less than the 84.6-percent fall experienced by US companies, which saw the worst decline in 55 years, as recorded by Fortune magazine. ..."

    FROM: http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90884/6749534.html
     
  16. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    yea -sort of like the 1950s sport of stuffing people inside a VW bug to look like a bunch of sardines in a can. - Each culture to its own taste is my POV, but I think becoming a Chinese plate spinner does take more skill and practice. (And for me they are a lot more attractive too.)
     
  17. Buffalo Roam Registered Senior Member

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    Considering the fact that your government reads your post, and does take action about non-party line opinions, I have to question the veracity or your statement.
     
  18. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    How do you foster creativity? No, people at the very least NEED the illusion of Democracy and better yet - real opportunity.
     
  19. kmguru Staff Member

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    You mean like Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, China etc?
     
  20. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    I do not think you "have to question" it. "Sayswho" could have done as 1.299,999,999 other Chinese have done - I.e. post nothing here. Just by posting here, even to tell me I am full of S---, know nothing about China, and otherwise toe the CCP's standard line, he would probably be running some risk (if his/her ID were not hidden*) as I bet this free ranging forum is on the "Do Not Open or Read" list.

    * His/her name strongly suggests that he/she is intentionally defying the censors. Challenging them to identify him/her. Only "GuessWho" would be more clearly a challenge. - I guess that slipped by your notice.
     
  21. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    I was thinking the USA :shrug:
     
  22. Buffalo Roam Registered Senior Member

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    Or a government paid propagandist, or did you think of that?
     
  23. dixonmassey Valued Senior Member

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    China's emergence as world's dump and cloaca is somewhat faster than its meteoric rise to international domination stardom.
     

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