Let’s talk about China
I’ll start with an autobiographical note. When I was young, China was terra incognita. Travel was prohibited there and little news got in or out compared to most of the other countries of the world, including the USSR. It was a big, scary place, even worse than the Soviet Union, and that was saying something.
And yet it had this fascinating, lengthy history of civilization, and a huge population. It was obviously a Force, but the details were blank—at least to those of us in the general US population.
Then came those ping-pong (excuse me: table tennis) players and Nixon’s visit to China in the early 70s. For those of you who weren’t around back then, I can’t over-emphasize how strange it was to penetrate that particular curtain in that particular way, featuring that particular person (Nixon).
Then we were treated to all sorts of visual images: huge crowds of people all weating the same blue Mao jackets, bicycles clogging the crowded streets, exotic food, and the usual glowing descriptions from leftists venturing into this marvelous Utopia.
Over the years, China has become just another country in many people’s eyes. But China has always been different. And China has its own ways and its own big plans.
Which brings us to two recent articles on China. The first is about China’s economic woes, in particular its debt:
China’s debt levels rapidly shot up a few years ago as its banks extended record amounts of credit to drive growth, which led to the Asian giant undertaking deleveraging efforts, or the process of reducing debt.
But the trade war has put a dent in its efforts to pare its massive debt as Beijing sought ways to boost its slowing economy, which was at its lowest growth in 27 years. Earlier this year, banks started to increase its lending again, with new loans surging to a record high…
[Fraser Howie, an independent analyst] told CNBC that the issue was really whether there would be demand for more credit.
“The Chinese economy is clearly slowing, there are a lot of headwinds, there’re companies leaving China. China’s becoming a much harder investment case for a number of reasons. So is the underlying demand there or not?” he asked.
In the second article I want to highlight, Michael Barone looks at the big picture:
…Chinese economic growth has been flagging, and its workforce has essentially stopped growing. Post-Tiananmen annual growth, unparalleled in history, ranged from 8 to 14 percent from 1991 to 2013 but has tailed off, probably below the official 6 percent level.
And, thanks to China’s longtime one-child policy, its working-age population has been declining, down 3 percent since 2011. For years, one big question about China was whether it would get old before it got rich. The answer seems to be that it has gotten old about halfway up the path. Poverty is way down, but incomes significantly lag those in North America, Western Europe and East Asia, including Taiwan and Hong Kong. Meanwhile, just as the United States once lost low-skill manufacturing jobs, so China is now.
And then there’s the political:
Deng Xiaoping’s decision to kill thousands — maybe tens of thousands — in Tiananmen Square showed the permanence of the communist regime, which had already started to spark — or permit — economic growth…
The hope through these years was that a more prosperous China would also become more democratic and tolerant at home, and less aggressive abroad. But as foreign affairs journalist James Mann pointed out in his 2007 book, “The China Fantasy,” and as longtime Kissingerian Michael Pillsbury wrote in his 2015 book, “The Hundred-Year Marathon,” China’s leaders weren’t interested in following this script.
On the contrary, Pillsbury argued that they had their own scenario, in which China would embark quietly but steadily on a long-term race to world supremacy by 2049, the 100th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s victory over Chiang Kai-shek.
China would use strategy and tactics laid out by Sun Tzu 2,500 years ago and restore the state to the primacy it enjoyed before the civil wars and invasions that started with the Taiping rebellion in 1849 and ended with Mao’s death in 1976…
Barone goes on to say that the Chinese leadership could easily crush the Hong Kong rebellion, but it may have costs. How this will play out is anyone’s guess, but it appears to be a signal—one of many—that the status quo is being shaken up, and perhaps the long era of treating China largely as though it wants what we want is over.
[NOTE: China’s retaliatory tariffs are the big news at CNN.]
For now, tariffs hurt the Chinese economy far more – 300 billion from China, 75 billion from the US.
Plus there is more talk about the IP “stealing” that China has been doing, as well as the semi-slave labor & child labor sweatshops.
Plus the millions of Muslims being put in semi-concentration/ re-education camps.
Plus the society credit score, and how dissent leads to state sponsored small econ punishment (no plane trips, sometimes no train).
Yet there are some 30-60 million Chinese men who “need women” if they are to have any children; women missing thanks to years of sex-selection abortion. Lonely, horny men wanting China to be great.
Increasingly dangerous times for China, SE Asia, and the world.
And let’s talk about the Chinese have bribed Joe Biden.
Why he isn’t asked about this is a mystery to me.
The problem in the short term is that’s highly unlikely that the communists lose control in the next 15 months so they can just wait Trump out on any effort to counter them. The big question is how would Warren treat China? Would she be easier on them than Trump? Maybe. But I would think she would be more consistent and coherent if nothing else. It’s beginning to look to me that she will be the nominee and will probably win the election.
Admittedly days like today raise my pessimism level to the max but I think too many people on our side live in their own little bubble and aren’t exposed to people who are just tired of it all. A ‘return to normalcy’ campaign could be a winner.
Instapundit uses his funny ‘all the Democrats have to do is not act crazy’ line but that is true of Trump also and fails at it far more than I like.
Griffin:
You think not only that Warren will get the nomination but will win the election?
Of course, it may pan out that way, but I have no idea why you’re jumped to that conclusion at this point. Right now, any data is pretty much garbage in-garbage out.
I’m not in a bubble, by the way. I know that almost everyone I know will vote for Anyone But Trump. And I mean that literally: anyone. They think Trump is the personification of evil.
But the bubble on the right and the bubble on the left somewhat cancel each other out in numbers. It’s the middle that decides. I have no idea what will happen. It’s well over a year from now.
You must listen to the podcast by Scott Adams today, #638
It is a doozy! And right on target.
Trump has once again surprised China — I suspect the leaders did not think that Trump would join battle until after the 2020 election.
This is the perfect time, as China is highly leveraged — the combined debt for that nation is 3 times its GDP.
China is a conundrum. The people, for the most part, are industrious, value education, and are capable of building big, intricate projects.
On the other hand their leaders embrace Communism, control the citizens with social credits, crush dissent among their Muslim citizens, tyrannize Tibet, suppress justice in Hong Kong, steal intellectual property, insist on one sided trade deals, and have a plan to become the world’s hegemon.
I’ve spent some time in both Hong Kong and China. The people in Hong Kong are more open, more upbeat, and more optimistic about the future. The place bustles with commerce and energy.
China is working hard to grow its economy and there is a lot of commercial activity. Many individuals are very entrepreneurial, but the people generally are not as open, not as optimistic, not as seemingly happy as in Hong Kong. China has big plans, but suffers somewhat from what I call the “Big Diamonds and Ragged Underwear” syndrome. Examples: We stayed in five star hotel in Beijing. It had many luxuries, but the tap water was not potable. Botted water was provided for drinking and tooth brushing. The Shanghai airport is very modern , but the public restrooms sported holes in the floor with painted feet on each side for peeing. Shanghai has many sleek new skyscrapers, yet the Huangpu River that runs through the city is polluted beyond belief. Contrasts like that are the rule in China today.
It appears to me that China’s problems lie mostly with the Communist rulers. If China was willing to accept the free market, private property protected by law, and trial by jury principles that Hong Kong operates under, they could more quickly become a prosperous, acceptable member of the world’s nations. Their ersatz Commuism/free markets and belligerent attitude toward others is leading down the wrong path. It’s a real shame.
Neo,
I admit I’m being pessimistic today. I don’t think it’s a certainty that the Democrat will win but right now that’s how I’m leaning. I just can’t see the left nominating an old white man so that limits the options and Warren seems the most likely.
I think the economy is a real wild card in this and the environment is really uncertain right now. Some of the evidence supports the theory that the tariffs themselves aren’t hurting the US economy that much but what is starting to show up is the uncertainty so many businesses are facing and that is showing itself in lower business spending and may start showing up in hiring. That’s why stuff like this mornings tweets are so damn counterproductive.
And the people I was referring to are people that are not entirely opposed to voting for Trump but tire of circus. I realize he is not totally responsible for it but sometimes he is. I’ll still vote for him but it’s not like my vote matters in Washington.
If you look at history, Chinese leaders have always viewed China as the preeminent civilization—the Center of the World (which is what the two characters for China mean)—and the Chinese as innately superior—with all other peoples and civilizations as their inferiors; second raters, innately suppliants and vassals.
That they have fallen from their heights has to be a gigantic burning coal in the Chinese people and their leader’s guts, fueling a determination to return to that preeminent position.
A fundamental problem in our relations with China is that, while the Chinese tend to think in the long term—the next generations or next century, our leaders (when they think at all) tend to think in short terms—the next year, the next election.
Thus, China’s very ambitious “One Belt and One Road” program, a several decade campaign designed to expand their presence and influence in 70 different countries—by funding/building transportation & trade routes to them, and infrastructure projects in them—commercial and military naval ports, airports, railroad systems, highways—by buying control of natural resources, and things like ports, and choke points (see the Panama Canal), by expanding their military forces (and things like the artificial islands the Chinese have built and stationed troops and armaments on in the East China Sea,) by building even more commercial shipping, by moving out from Chinese coastwise shipping into new sea routes, and trade with these countries, etc.–a massive outward expansion which is intended to allow China to surpass the U.S., and to regain its former preeminent position.
In this competition, our tendency to focus on short term goals, on what is immediate and only easily visible, and not over the horizon, puts us at a fundamental disadvantage vis-a-vis the Chinese.
Then, there is China’s truly gigantic and routine theft of our intellectual property, their massive intelligence gathering operations here in the U.S. via the hundreds of thousands of Chinese students, scientists working here, and “tourists,”* plus their massive propaganda effort/influence operation, via their nearly 100, under the radar “Confucius Institutes” planted in our universities and colleges, that you rarely even hear about.
Some fundamental problems for China are that, for instance, while there are a few coastal and other cities and areas that are modernized, a large percentage, perhaps a lot more than half of all Chinese, are still living out in the rural countryside, in primitive, often medieval conditions.
Then, there is are the demographic distortions/imbalances that their “one child” policy has produced, and its effects on their economy, society, and stability, their surplus cohort of young males in their trouble making years, and an increasingly aging population.
The Chinese government has long been manipulating their currency. Whether this is a good long term policy, and a stabilizing factor remains to be seen.
And, right now, there is the dilemma of Hong Kong, and how not
to “kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.”
* One interesting difference, among many between us and the Chinese is in the field of intelligence gathering.
While we here in the West tend to rely on a few agents targeting usually well secured, high value information, the Chinese reportedly rely, instead, on the “grain of sand” approach; flooding the target with a large number of people, each one of whom gathers a little bit of information, which is sent back to China and combined to reveal the information they are seeking.
According to Limbaugh today, the new China tariffs are aimed at swing states which Trump needs to win, so China is intervening directly in our election, in favor of any Democrat, and probably much more effectively intervening than the Russians’ feeble Facebook ads.
“Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing … your companies HOME and making your products in the USA” — Trump (today)
I suppose this is relatively clear messaging if you are Ford Motor, or Apple Corp. But yikes, it would be painful as those are some massive and complex operations. What if you are Starbucks or PepsiCo? What does it even mean?
What if Trump had said “urged” instead of “ordered”? The market still would have tanked I think, but he would have seemed more sane.
_____
Tom Grey is correct that we can inflict much more pain on China in this battle, than they will on us, but some financial wag said today, “Who can better withstand the pain? The U.S. people and gov. or the Chinese people and gov.?”
On the third hand, another wag said, “If Trump really wants to play hard ball, he should cancel the student visas of all the Chinese plutocrats’ children who are attending Harvard and Yale, etc. If that happened, president Xi would be gone in a flash.” (paraphrasing)
I remember being told the Soviet Union would outperform the West because it had long term goals, whereas the West only looked to the next election.
Communist parties can waste decades on goals that aren’t possible, and can be ruined by a single event. Some Muslim revival or war in the Stans could destroy the Road side of their policy. Their dedication to a goal can also be their undoing.
But generally authoritarians collapse because without checks their leaders think they can control anything. And so you get Erdogan’s belief that he can control the economy in a “Turkish” way.
China has done well since the fall of Mao because their leaders have changed from time to time. With Xi locked in, expect things to become less flexible.
I agree, Chester Draws.
There are so many people in the West who buy in to the notion that the Chinese have figured out a better way to run an economy, ie., they have more foresight or see farther into the future. I don’t think that’s true. It’s just that they’ve ridden the internet and globalization revolutions of the last few decades so far that the laws of economics seem not to matter.
We have the same perception problem here with our own economy, unfortunately, in these times of greed and political intrusion.
Chester,
The only problem with the Soviet comparison is that the US had a pretty consistent approach to the Soviets from one administration to the next whether ‘D’ or ‘R’ whereas I’m not sure that is true now. Will the next president continue the policies of the hated Trump? Not sure.
This entire strategy toward China is questionable in my opinion and I’m not talking only about tariffs. The ping ponging back and forth makes it almost impossible to figure what is going on. A few weeks back after the trade talks in China administration officials called them ‘productive’ then the next day Trump announced a bunch of new tariffs only to postpone a bunch of them til December a couple weeks later and that is what the Chinese were responding to today because they used the same dates (Sept. 1 and Dec.15).
Trying to win this is virtually impossible in years only decades will suffice and I have a hard time believing ensuing administrations will have the will for that.
China is on the brink of a total economic collapse and America should not be bluffed by China’s weak attempt of retaliation in this game of chicken. revenues of Casinos in Macau has fallen 40% so far, China Government is turning every stone to try to collect every penny they could here and there to survive the trade war. 60% of property gain tax is being proposed to prevent citizens from selling their properties to artificially propping up a property market that has already crashed. Government squeezing all the Celebrities they can get their hand on to acquire as much cash as they could using made up tax fraud charges. many smaller banks are immersed in bad debts, big banks are forced to take the bad loans off the hands of smaller banks to keep them afloat. President Trump should not let up, keep squeezing them, find out every oversea bank account of every high level China official and freeze them all or better yet seize them to help fund the wall.
Tommy Jay: ““Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing … your companies HOME and making your products in the USA” — Trump (today)”
Trump is not being very sensible. He must know this is like spitting in the wind. (At least Larry Kudlow and Wilbur Ross know it.) Maybe he thinks Xi will believe he has such power. I don’t know.
I have an acquaintance who works for a motorized scooter company. They looked at moving their production to the U.S. from China. The scooters cost $4000 more per scooter here. As a result, they are moving their production to Vietnam. Many companies are leaving China because of the trade problems/issues there. A few have come home. Most are moving to Vietnam, Thailand, India, etc.
I think the Chinese Communist leaders believe they can open new markets, as they would like to be rid of their dependence on the “white devil Yankees,” who have recognized their scheme for world dominance.
In a battle of who can take the most economic pain, Trump is at a disadvantage. The Communists do not care how much pain the Chinese people have to suffer. Trump does have to worry. He has an election coming up. IMO, Trump seems to believe that the Chinese Communists want the same things we do. He’s wrong about that. He thinks we have leverage, but the Communist leverage is that they can wait him out. That appears to be their plan. I’m not optimistic. I hope Kudlow, Ross, Navarro and company can figure a way to change course to head off the looming crisis. We’ll see.
J.J. on August 23, 2019 at 3:19 pm
“If China was willing to accept the free market, private property protected by law, and by jury principles that Hong Kong operates under, they could more quickly become a prosperous, acceptable member of the world’s nations. ”
* * *
Substitute “USA” for “Hong Kong” and your choice of any other country for China, and this is still true.
Which is why it is so infuriating that our UniParty Elite class (but mostly the Democrats) are so intent on suppressing the free market, removing the legal protections on property, and suborning the courts through corrupt prosecutors and judges.
Now the US has raised the tariffs from 10 to 15 percent on some things and 25 to 30 percent on a bunch of other things.
Once again in my opinion it’s not entirely the tariffs that are problematic but the stunningly erratic policy (if you can call it a policy) which leads to big time uncertainty for businesses. Cap X has been weak for a while and this isn’t going to help.
Does anybody think Trump can win with a noticeably weaker economy?
Businesses want a fair level of certainty even if it’s at a less than advantageous level. At least then they can plan.
What it comes down to for me is the gain from this for US businesses worth the pain and I’m having a hard time seeing that. Not saying they shouldn’t be doing something to counter China but this bizarre approach is not working.
P.S.- On a side note one of things that bugs me to no end is how this is reported. It’s always ‘Trump’s tariffs’ or ‘Trump’s trade war’ when it should be ‘U.S. tariffs’ and so on… This started with Bush I think and accelerated under Obama where the president is given king like credit and blame.
Dave and J.J.,
China does have major debt problems and that might be a big factor in all of this, but debt crises are so unpredictable.
The Chinese gov. doesn’t care how much pain the Chinese people have to suffer, until they are forced to care. I agree with the J.J.’s basic point, but once in a great while authoritarian power reaches its limits. On the other hand, some people here are starting to ask for Navarro’s firing.
I eagerly await the big shoe to drop…
The Administration stopping Google from working with the Chinese military on AI (they refused to work with our military).
The Administration stopping Amazon from getting free shipping via USPS for prime customers to sell their Chinese goods.
The Administration putting real pressure on Apple to shift their production facilities out of China.
The Administration completely blocking Huawai (spelling?) from doing any business with US.
The Administration blocking generic drugs of Chinese origin (they are not held to the same medical standards as those manufactured in the US).
The Administration blocking Chinese banks from doing business in the US.
The Administration stopping children of the Chinese elite from moving to the US.
The Administration blocking the Confucius Institutes in our uiversities.
They don’t care about the pain of their people but they care about their oversea bank accounts and the well being of their family. Some serious leverages Trump can gain over these high chinese officials is a threat to seize their oversea assets and to revoke their families’ visas/citizenship, the conflict in Hong Kong gives Trump the perfect excuse to do just that. Due to the political instability in China the first order of business for every successful person in China after having acquired significant amount of wealth is to find a way to send family to America and transfer significant amount of assets to oversea.
If Clash with China both politically and economically is inevitable, There is no benefit for America to keep kicking the can down the road just to keep pushing back the inevitable for a temporary truce in the expense that the more delayed the confrontation is America will be in a progressively less advantaged position as China is growing stronger by the day benefiting from the indecisiveness and tentativeness of America.
If not now then when? If not trump then who? Communist China is a cancer that has to be eliminated before its terminal effect takes hold of the whole world.
Communist China is an illness that must be taken care of before it becomes terminal but no presidents before Trump were willing to do the necessary because of their fear of how such dramatic action would impact their reelection chances. I am glad President Trump had the courage take the stand and prioritize this serious matter that would impact the world for generations over his personal interest of winning his reelection. As I said before, releasing china from the grip of the tyrannic Communist party must be done, if not now then when? if not Trump then who? China Joe? give me a break.
Dave,
That all sounds great but people were saying the same things about the USSR 30 years ago and the Middle East 20 years ago. Pretending we have that kind of influence is beyond naive. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take a strong stance with China but thinking any country or even the entire world collectively can ‘release china from the grip of the tyrannic Communist party’ is a step way, way too far for the vast majority of the American people. Because we ain’t doing that with just tariffs and tweets, you know.
China poses a real threat to America’s dominance that no other previous alleged enemies could have come close, it has 5 times the population of America in an arable land full of resources with a race of people with IQ at near the top of the scale unlike russia, japan or the middle east. China’s rise and overcoming America is inevitable, but would you rather be overtaken by a ruthless thuggish regime like the communist party or a democracy human rights respect who will play by the rule and dominate with respect to others like America today? America is in position to implement a democracy there before China reaches its potential and emerge as the next dominant superpower as a communist regime, it must be done and the best time is now
Those focused on the economic aspects have the cart before the horse. China’s plan to surpass the US and become the world’s top superpower is the primary international problem we face.
Continuing to kick that can down the road will have unimaginably disastrous results.
Currently, China cannot be certain of winning a military conflict with the US. So that is not an option for them. Now is the time to geld the Chinese horse, regardless of how economically painful in the short term it will be for America. Trade with China is fueling their military and industrial expansion and the only way to reduce the growth in China’s military prowess is to attack them economically and to stop their intellectual espionage.
The ChiComs, with their “social credit” system, a prelude to 1984 and their Muslim ‘reeducation’ prisons have demonstrated a ruthlessness that, should they rise to preeminence, in time will be used to impose on the rest of the world.
Dave,
“China’s rise and overcoming America is inevitable”
It’s NOT inevitable but it is arguably probable primarily because of the American Left. China’s denial of individuality is a great hindrance to technological breakthroughs. Committees do not invent and China has always been a ‘collective’ society. China cannot surpass a undivided America but a divided America can fail to meet the challenge that communist China poses.
“America is in position to implement a democracy there”
Only the Chinese people can implement democratic rule. We can, through the economic measures Trump is taking (if consistently implemented) create economic conditions that will help to destabilize China but that’s as far as our influence goes.
Again I’m not entirely opposed to the tariffs but this back and forth is insane. In August alone we had talks called productive one day then tariffs imposed the next then like 10 days later we had a large portion of the just imposed tariffs pushed back 3 months and now today tariffs increased and we still have 8 days left in the month. Try running a business with those wildly shifting costs. And don’t forget most of these companies don’t have a pile of cash laying around they have to borrow huge sums every month to meet their obligations which they then pay back.
> at least to those of us in the general US population.
Maybe, but back in the day there were a lot of missionaries there from the US whose children had expertise, not only in the language but in the culture. IIRC, the Barefoot Doctors program was designed by an American. I also went to high school with a boy whose uncle was Edgar Snow who wrote Red Star Over China and I also learned some Chinese characters from a book that one of the people I babysat for had picked up while serving in China in WWII. Margot Fonteyn grew up in the expatriate community at Shanghai. When I visited China in 1989 I ran into a fellow tourist who had been a missionary in China back in the thirties, he was in Xi’an during the Xi’an Incident. He spoke fluent Chinese and drove the tourist guide in Xi’an crazy because he wandered where he wished. He was also renewing contacts with the Chinese Christian community who had gone underground.
In short, there has been a long history of US involvement in China, the break during the Communist period from 1949-1972 was just that, a break. I’ll agree that knowledge about China may not have been widespread in the US population, but it wasn’t universal.
Hi. I want to circle back to Neo’s original thoughts, as they interested me. Not that the comments don’t also interest me, at least a good many of them.
But that reminiscence about when Neo got to first thinking about China… it makes me wonder when I first became aware of China at all, too. Must have been in college, I imagine, but let’s see.. the Tiananmen Square (reaching for my Chinese dictionary as I write that word – can’t remember what the character for ‘an’ in that phrase was. Aha – the character for ‘peace’ is the image of a roof over a woman, thus suggesting a settling-down of things. Interesting.)
Anyway, the Tian-an-men Square massacre was in 1989, but I did know at least of China’s existence before that. I don’t know details any more, though. My attention was focused on the USSR if anything back then, as far as international rivalries went. But I don’t remember actually knowing anybody from China for most of college. I did meet a few Chinese when I was in Germany thereafter, so at least by then I had some clue.
I was going to mention, too, that this general trend of China becoming slightly more Christianized as time goes on may mean something in all of this. It’s like a number of intersecting trend lines, social, economic, spiritual, and it’s so hard to tell where the sweet spot on the big graph of history will turn out to be.
AesopFan: “Substitute “USA” for “Hong Kong” and your choice of any other country for China, and this is still true.”
True dat. The major hurdle is that people don’t understand it. It seems to be magic. Which brings us to the need for reading Adam Smith and, of course, Hernando DeSoto”s “The Mystery of Capital.” It isn’t perfect, which is the Progressives objection. They believe perfect economic fairness is possible. They don’t accept that free markets, private property laws backed by courts, and a reasonably fair justice system are the conditions that produce the highest living standards for the most people. Best economic system devised by humans to date. All you have to do is examine the record – The U.S. versus the USSR, West Germany versus East Germany, Taiwan versus Mao’s Red China, and South Korea versus North Korea. Th evidence is overwhelming.
Tommy Jay: Beijing’s debt has been a problem for some time. Gordon Chang, a Chinese American, has been predicting their collapse for several years. However, one expert on China (David Goldman) has pointed out that China’s government bureaucrats are far superior to most government bureaucrats because they have a highly competitive government bureaucracy that is a meritocracy. Unlike our government bureaucracies. Thus, their best people are managing their government affairs and monetary policy. They have cried poor while plotting to use us (theft of IP and selling us far more than they buy) to build their wealth. Trump has seen through this and wants to change it, but it’s not going to happen quickly. Knowing whether the tariffs will work eventually is way above my pay grade. 🙁
The matter of fact is America’s divorce with China economically is now pretty much not a choice but a necessity that even those who are heavy advocates for continuing our friendly economic partnership with Beijing as before have to come to term with. America’s relationship with China can never go back now especially considering the reality that Hong Kong’s place as the international business hub with advance accounting and justice system where contracts with Chinese can be signed and still be protected under international laws is over. American businessman will not be able to do business safely and have Chinese honor their end of deal without a safe haven like Hong Kong the place both sides can trust where the real negotiations happen and deals being made. If the protesters lose and the extradition legislation made into laws, not only the city’s self governance is over as Beijing will assign only hardliners proxies to look after the city, serious business with China is over for Americans.
For those who are not familiar with the details about the contentious extradition bill which ignited the demonstrations, it was really a counter move by Beijing to enable them to apprehend American businessmen in Hong Hong as hostages to retaliate the Canadian’s arrest of huawei’s meng wanzhou under the order of the us. in fact Hong Kong is pretty much the city of Troy in the Trojan war, a causality caught in the middle of a proxy war between two fractions of gods. trump and the Congress seem to finally caught up with the reality in recent days, it was more than just Hong Kong fighting for their freedom, America has as much stake in this fight as the Hong Kong in reality. However, if the protesters lose Americans can pack their bags and leave like always but the young people will be the one suffering from the consequences.
For those who like a conspiracy, what if I tell you xi is just as anxious and willing to have the trade deal done as soon as possible just as much as trump but there is a shadow force working behind the scene keep attempting to foil the deal and making the negotiation process as difficult as possible for both trump and xi.
Xi has no incentives to prolong the negotiation process unnecessarily. why you might ask, it is because xi never intended to honour his end of the deal anyway. he just want to get the trade war out of the way as soon as possible to get the economy back on track and worry about how to cheat his way out of the deal Down the road. time is on his side as some friends here have mentioned, trump might not even get re-elected. in fact xi probably believe the trade deal for trump is for show only thinking trump just needed a show victory to help his chances of getting re-elected, getting the deal enforced might not be his intent.
However, Xi has a lot of enemies behind the scene, they see the trade war and an economy collapse of China a great opportunity to dethrone him, what if they are ones insisting xi to take a hardline approach with the trade war to not lose face in front of the people? What if the extradition bill was never xi’s idea, but order from enemies of xi in Beijing to Hong Kong’s chief executive carrie lam as way to get xi in as much troubles as they could? Beijing has many inner competing fractions it is sometimes very difficult for the proxy officers in remote governing city to discern the true origin of every order coming from the central government.
China poses a real threat to America’s dominance that no other previous alleged enemies could have come close, it has 5 times the population of America in an arable land full of resources with a race of people with IQ at near the top of the scale unlike russia, japan or the middle east. China’s rise and overcoming America is inevitable…
Dave: I worked in hi-tech and was plenty impressed with the Chinese I met. But when it comes to dominance, I wonder. For all their virtues and their high civilization ahead of the West for centuries, the West blew right past them and still leads.
A few days ago I read that 300 million Chinese are still living in peasant poverty about the same level as 2000 years ago.
The 300 million Chinese are intentionally being kept in poverty for one purpose, to keep China qualified as the third word developed country and the benefits and special treatments that come with it. Those people are inconsequential, the fact is those highly skilled living in the coast cities are the ones competing with America and they are vast in number. China has 1.4 billion people, even if 1/10 of them are competitive that is 150 million people.
Dave: I’ve no doubt China is competitive with the US but their “inevitable” victory over the US is not so clear to me.
Nor do I buy without sources that China intentionally keeps a fifth of its population in poverty comparable to Jesus’s time in order to maintain third world status.
If China could do better, I rather think they would.
I haven’t yet found a personally persuasive explanation for why China stagnated and has in modern times produced such a horrific authoritarian state. I’m disinclined to believe it’s because they are superior to the US.
For Dave:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/23/hong-kong-protesters-join-hands-in-30-mile-human-chain
Hope it works!
Honestly I don’t believe the gandhi/Martin Luther King brand of people Civil disobedience protest will ever work against an totalitarian regime who can’t be held accountable by its people in the form of democratic elections. It has a history of working only in democracies that understand and respect common laws. We need the second amendment in Hong Kong
Freedom loving Hong Kong protestors would be considered alt right and hated by the left if they were Americans, they even adopted Pepe the frog as their mascot and symbol for the movement.
China hasn’t been a ‘preeminent’ civilization for a thousand years. Neither politically, spiritually or technologically. And they have always been cripplingly insular. That insularity will always be a problem for them.
Think on this – Hong Kong is <2700 miles from Darwin, Australia, with many islands (stopping/hopping off points) in between. And yet they never discovered Australia which was practically on their doorstep!
In 1768 – 251 years ago – Captain Cook left Portsmouth, England and traveled over 10,000 miles to find 'The Great Southern Continent'.
I think this may be a turning point where Trump has given up on a deal with China and will work endlessly to grow manufacturing in the US and the Western Hemisphere. It gives him a positive goal, forces his opponents to support a totalitarian system and oppose job growth, and will probably work.
Add to that new opportunities within the Anglosphere after Brexit and you have a setup for interesting positive developments. Can Ireland be pried away from the EU into the growing Anglosphere? Very likely.
Just saw an article about non-stop flights to Australia. With twitter it has become easy and interesting for me to follow Australian and UK happenings, probably true for many others also.
An Anglosphere with a renewed focus on the values described so well by Hannan is what the world needs IMHO. We may be seeing the beginning of the second act of the Rise of the West.
There wasn’t really anything special about china that caused them to be the world factory that they had become, it could have been india, Africa, mexico, south/north america or anywhere. What propelled china to become the world factory was one reason, their four little dragons brother countries hong kong and taiwan waere going through a economical transformation moving on from being the low level manufacturing states for the west to a higher level high tech/financial/service base economy and they moved all their low level manufacturing to china. When the economic reform didn’t result in the political reform that wise people anticipated and not only that they are now using their economic power that the west helped them built to more efficiently oppress their people and spreading their form of fascism across the globe someone needs to start taking a stand and make it stop. I would much rather having reagan or thatcher around to deal with them (however not that thatcher was really that competent in negotiating with deng xiaoping) we have to make do with what we have, and trump was the only one flew over cuckoo’s nest or don quixote brave/foolish enough to take on that necessary but difficult challenge.
Think on this – Hong Kong is <2700 miles from Darwin, Australia, with many islands (stopping/hopping off points) in between. And yet they never discovered Australia which was practically on their doorstep!
The Manchu Dynasty turned inward and stopped exploring. Many things that had existed in China, like iron foundries, disappeared. When Europeans came in the 1700s, China had lost many cultural traditions like iron fabrication.
News stories are reporting that President Trump is urging U.S. companies to leave China, to come back to the U.S., or to set up shop in other countries.
In fact, there is a law, PL95-223, The International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, signed into law by Jimmy Carter, which gives the President the power, in a declared National Emergency, to essentially cut off U.S. trade with a foreign nation, and, in essence, to compel U.S. companies to go along with his order.
Historians will judge Trump favorably in this ‘tariff’ squabble with China. It’s not about tariffs at all. It’s a conflict China has already lost and badly. Trump has succeeded in shifting the trajectory of capital investment away from China. To win Trump doesn’t need an ‘agreement’ the Chinese do. The Chinese want an agreement in which the US (and others) agree to channel disputes into an arbitration panel or organization that will take years to evaluate and issue a decision, all the while they steal IP and finance its deployment globally via Chinese companies (e.g. as they were well along in doing with the Micron theft). Trump to keep winning just needs the uncertainty to continue (e.g. on again off again tariffs) to bleed China of future investments.
It is ironic that for the Chinese to win all they need do is concede to Trump everything he’s asking for – follow WTO rules, stop IP theft etc – but they can’t. Instead they arrest innocent businessmen in China and jail them with capital charges, a reaction that couldn’t play into Trump’s hands more neatly to encourage the diversion of capital investment from China to other countries less likely to arrest executives and steal technology.
A few more years of this and China will become mired permanently in the middle income trap. Perhaps they already are.
Another tragic aspect to this conflict with China is that the left gets worked up over imagined issues here while China does pretty much anything and gets little to no notice from our enlightened elite. China invaded Tibet in the 40’s and continues genocide there. They enforce capital punishment by the thousands annually to feed an organ transplant industry – the execution can be scheduled for the day of operation – so convenient. And if you want to see some real Muslim oppression look no further than the Uighurs and the massive concentration camps reordering minds to order in a very real Brave New World. And the Hong Kong people are being brought to heal regardless of agreements signed. And our Hollywood virtue signalers look the other way.
If republicans are smart they would propose to offer political refugee status to the two million Hong Kong protesters who took to streets protesting against communist China, they will be facing serious political persecution and repercussions from Beijing for their involvement in this insurgence and in fact the white terror has already started as prominent businesses such as hsbc or Cathay Pacific airline are being pressured by Beijing to terminate many employees who have participated in the demonstrations. These two million freedom loving people will be the most loyal and adamant republican voters and resistance against socialism for years to come such as the many Cuban immigrants in Florida and great for balancing out the socialism loving illegal immigrants democrats take into our country every year. They won’t be a burden to society as most of them are well educated and fluent English speakers who will assimilate in no time. They are mostly technically British anyway who were born and grew up under the uk rule.
There’s a British guy, Gavin Menzies, who wrote a best-selling book saying the Chinese did get to Australia before anyone else:
Link: https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/junk-history/8953466
Ann on August 24, 2019 at 4:15 pm said:
There’s a British guy, Gavin Menzies, who wrote a best-selling book saying the Chinese did get to Australia before anyone else:
* * *
The book “1421” has been on my shelf for a couple of years; guess I won’t rush to read it anytime soon!
“Zheng He’s giant junks circumnavigated the world ,”
Junk history indeed —
Taiwan is watching. Viet Nam is watching. India, Pakistan and Japan are watching.
China is showing it is still Maoist Red China, with markets but still under the control of the CCP and the PLA. It does not uphold treaties. It is a lawless state.
It may be a paper tiger, so afraid of any dissent.