The Chinese agenda

Because tankers stay far away from anti-aircraft assets and are protected by F-22s....which would make mince meat out of any Chinese fighters.

 

Your points are well taken. However, the Chinese are relentless. They will continue experimenting, researching and committing espionage until they get where they want to be.

 

To the extent F-22s are involved in force protection they aren't engaged in power projection.

 

They can't touch us for at least another two decades, but the Chinese leadership is shrewd as hell. They think strategically, unlike our politicians, who are nothing more than cheap whores. I've always been of the opinion that we need to stay light years ahead of everyone else. Heck, I think we should start weaponizing and exploiting space. The Russians and the Chinese are serious about that stuff and we basically gave up on it. Fifty years from now, we might regret it.

 

I agree. The Chinese leadership are strategic thinkers. The play chess while our politicians play checkers. We need to stay way, way ahead of them. They can never hope to exceed our capabilities.

 

Why would you doubt that a nation of 1.5 billion people wll overtake one of 300 million. China is an ancient civilization. Once it figures out how to escape its feudal past - something that communism has only exacerbated - it will overwhelmingly dominate nations such as the USA. There are only two things to debate: the nature of that domination - will it be a democratic and free nation - and the timescale. The interesting thing about Americans posting here is that they see their nations superiority as being based merely on military power.

The USA's leadership has been based on the superiority of its political system - one of universal values and liberty - which has encouraged nations to partner with it and accept its leadership. Those who believe that it has simply been a "might is right" thing - typically the testosterone charged numskulls who play armchair general or when they do get into some sort of uniform trash their country's reputation through military excesses and human rights abuse - will be in for a rude awakening when emerging nations such as India and China surpass them. This will happen quicker than otherwise if economic illiterates such as the Tea Party get elected and start to erect protectionist walls against global free trade. The USSR had lots of big toys for its little boys in uniform to play with. It collapsed because its political-economic system could no longer sustain such a luxury. Should the USA succomb to feudal Tory reaction - as its neanderthal right would have it - then it will go the same way.

China will only be constrained by China because it too has the same sort of numskull nationalist exceptionalists who will take it in the same direction, if given half the chance. But an emerging free and reforming China will be unstoppable.

 

Quality over quantity, I always say.

Maybe fifty years from now if our country doesn't get its priorities straight. But in the interim, we're the nuts (that means we're the best).

I never said it was.

If I was in charge, there isn't a nation on the planet that could hope to surpass us...

 

How about, instead of China showing it's face as another Engine of Hate, they form with the US a superunion and lead the future of humanity with innovation and technology.

Also China would be (*)(*)(*)(*)ing stupid to attack the US, their economy would fall back into the Dark Ages if the US decided it didn't have to pay you anymore for your hostilities. I'm not just saying that because I'm an American, the chinese government has recognized that publicly too.

 

If I was in charge I would simply science us onto another planet and out of the bonds of this ridiculously hilarious planet.

Anyone watching this farce of a species must be laughing their (*)(*)(*)(*)ing asses off.

 

Japanese manufacturing is an interesting example. Even the "father" of Japanese manufacturing - probably their greatest innovation in the 20th Century - was the American Deming, who was ignored in his own country. But it was Japanese innovation nonetheless. And who would deny the awesome genius of Taichi Ohno, who borrowed concepts from US supermarkets to apply in Toyota factories? Innovation is not confined to "pure" research or abstract concepts. If it was Britain would still be a world beater. Many British have argued that the USA always took British original concepts and adapted and commercialized them. Only British snobbery would deny tha there is considerable innovation in that. Nuclear technology for example? Genetics? Phramaceuticals? As the saying goes: there is nothing new under the sun.

Your 99% is silly. I use a Lenovo computer, no longer designed by IBM. Many of your consumer goods will have components designed in Chinese factories (with smaller lighter motors for example - designed in Shenzhen). China right now is innovating in terms of electric cars (BYD - Warren Buffet sees it), solar power (world leaders), and electronics (in the same way you describe Japanese excellence). That's off the top of my head. But it is true that the innovation required for success now is largely in the field of adaptation as economic progress depends of mass market penetration. So what? Adaptation is still innovation. Look around your home - what is an original concept? Your sofa? Your TV? Your kitchen? Virtually nothing is original. It is all a "latest version of" and this is all now firmly in the domain of emerging Chinese designers.

I personally have worked with Chinese subcontractors who are consciously changing their business model to product design, away from simply a low cost base. Costs in the Pearl River Delta for example - the original location of Deng's open the door policy - are escalating so much that Chinese manufacturers are now facing unsustainable cost pressures and are forced to innovate. Ten years ago my UK business moved its manufacturing to Malaysia. People who worked for us in Malaysia told us that they were not really a low cost country and were as focused on quality and innovation as any of us. China was their low cost competitor. Now this has changed and other south east Asian economies, such as Thailand and Indonesia are seen as potential low cost bases for Eastern China businesses - as well as the vast swathes of central and Western China that are still undeveloped. China is no longer just a "low cost country". It has tens of millions of university graduates, a generation now under forty that is as different from the one that went before it as night is from day. Compare those who have lived in the cities - exposed to the consumerism and culture of global capitalism - with their brutalized parents whose life was to slave for decadesd in paddy fields, living in abject poverty. Chinese migrant workers may look poor to us, but in their own eyes they are getting richer and richer at an unprecedented rate. Probably no mass population has seen their lives transformed as much in such a short period as that of Chinese migrant workers. And already they demand more. They want apartments. They want cars. They want consumer goods. And they want political rights as well.

Everything is moving. Everything is changing. Nothing stays the same. This is the future being played out before our eyes.

This is how capitalism works. Cities like Shenzhen do not want manufacturing any more (unlike the moronic backward looking Right in the USA) - they see themselves as financial centres and actively encourage manufacturers to move West, away from coastal areas, where 700 million people still work for ten cents a day in fields (compared to the US$15,000 per annum that millions of young professionals in Shenzhen are now earning). Chinese professionals I have worked with are hungry to ansorb and develop "western" management thinking - even those whose nationalism makes them hostile to all other things Western. Americans should not underestimate the far sightedness of Chinese thinkers. Low cost manufacturing is now simply not wanted by the political elites in many prosperous coastal cities. Your i-pod won't be manufactured in Shenzhen much longer. Shenzhen doesn't want the likes of Foxconn (the manufacturer) any more. Manufacturing is in decline in Shenzhen, a city of twelve million people that was a fishing village just thirty years ago. Americans cannot comprehend development taking place at this pace.

The trajectory of US/European industrial revolutions - starting with low quality mass produced products with a labour force that masses in poor living conditions in cities, but still earning untold riches compared with their peasant life - is the same in China, but happening about ten to twenty times faster than it did in the West. Just as in the USA and the UK this leads to en emerging middle class and demands for political rights from a workforce whose expectations quickly rise. This is already happening. People in the West - with little experience of understanding what China is really like - just cannot get their heads round the pace of change in China. Just standing for ten minutes at midnight on a Shanghai street and hearing the jackhammer tends to cure that quickly. China is corrupt - the CCP creams off billions - and still has a deeply conservative and reactionary Confucian culture. These two things will hold it back. But the unstoppable dialectic of capitalism will eventually result in "liberal capitalism with Chinese characteristics" emerging, or China sinking back into its fedual quagmire. As Engels, at once a capitalist by practice and the eminent Marxist theorist of his time, wrote about emerging capitalism:

This is the direction which China will find, in its won way, according to its own mores, solving the contradictions that today's feudal confucian subservience in CHinese culture has with its society's need for individualism and the triumph of reason. How it will do this is probably impossible to predict, but the fact that it must proceed towards a liberal democratic model is without doubt. This was seen by Hu Yaoband and Zhou Ziyang twenty five years ago. They understimated the power of Chinese capitalism - almost mimicking the model of the Industrial Revolution in early nineteenth century England - in world with mass markets ready to consume Chinese goods at the drop of a hat. But ultimately their call for liberal democracy was prescient: capitalism built solely on scale cannot sustain itself for ever. It needs, and will istelf produce, an emerging middle class of professionals who will at once innovate and demand political rights. Therein lies China's challenge.

 

Complete drivel. Utter and complete drivel. This is a neo-imperialistic mindset analogous to Brits thinking about what the fuzzy wuzzies could do. If you think this there is simply no point going further.... the fastest growing market for Chinese goods is China. All countries are switching their long term planning towards domestic consumption. Western engagement has given China a platform for domestic growth. It will keep its export business, even if it declines modestly as a proportion of its GDP. Its growth will be domestic.

Take a trip. Stand in a Chinese city centre. Go in a mall. There are many to choose from. A recession here means that growth is down to 8%.

This ignorance is what will underlie American failure. Smart people are already investing in the Chinese market. If you are a consumer goods company for example, and you want a decent price earnings ratio then you better have a China story. It's interesting how American companies led the charge for cheap labour production but European companies seem to be most alive to its potential as a market (to be fair, companies like Walmart who source here, do understand the potential).

 

I'm not Chinese. I am certainly not a fan of the Chinese government.

Nevertheless, there are no "hostilities". This is ridiculous. There may be a high unfloating renminbi (that's the currency) but on the other hand the US dollar is also hardly "free" floating as it is the world's reserve currency. Currencies are always politically managed. China is actually slowly cooling its exports deliberately - this is a reality to all of us who work here - in favour of boosting domestic demand.

I personally would like to see massive American soft power (ie showing the superiority of democracy rather than underlining its hypocrisy) persuade the emerging Chinse political generation that a liberal democratic China would be the best future for mankind. A world dominated by democratic capitalism in Europe, North America and Asia (including India) is the last best hope of all mankind.

Much of this can be achieved through persuasion. Peesuading the Chinse that the USA is not a devious hypocrite would be a good start. This is currently how the West and democracy is seen by many Chinese.

 

And the funny thing is, the exact same media that overhypes Chinese capabilities (Chinese Aircraft Carrier! Chinese Carrier Killier Missile! Chinese Stealth! Chinese Rocket Infantry!) does the exact opposite to any US equipment (PATRIOT misses over half the time! Rifles not effective enough! Paperclips and chewing gum defeat stealth!). And the overhype is believed so much that I have had several fights in here with China Fanboys over what is real and what is not.

Personally, I now consider 80% of the media to be in the hip pocket of China, just the way they were in the pocket of the USSR a few decades ago. They are Communist, Socialist, and therefore Enlightened and the Right Ones in the mind of most reporters. Plus the fact that the US Military Is Always Wrong.

I view China almost the same way I did the Soviet Union. They are believers in International Communism, they try to expand that belief, and they believe that their belief will take over the world. They are so sure that they are the "Master Race" that it is their right to do whatever they think they can get away with.

I for one still remember the Hainan Island incident in 2001. As well as one that got little attention in the US, when Chinese ships tried to interfere with the USNS Impeccable.

I do not see them as an enemy, but they are not my friend either. I see them as a beligerant people, which need to be watched very closely.

 

F-117s routinely took off from bases in the US and struck targets in the Middle East, before landing on Diego Garcia.

And why do we need bases in the Western Pacific, when we have Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean?

Plus what makes you think Kadena will be taken out at the beginning of hostilities? Attacking any US bases on Okinawa will only raise the chances of further escalation of any such conflict. Because this will ensure that Japan gets into the conflict as well. You are making an assumption here, without making considerations of the capabilities of China, the US, and the political implications.

And they can refuel because the tankers can take off from carriers. Unless they put nukes in the tip of their DF-21Ds, there is no way China is taking those out.

Plus you are ignoring the more obvious route. I only hope that China would do the same thing in a conflict.

I would not expect US bombers and Fighters to strike China from the East. They would more then likely strike it from the West and South. Europe, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Diego Garcia, even India would more then likely provide assistance, or look the other way as the US "violated" their air space. And depending on why China and the US started fighting, I would not be surprised if Russia stepped in on the side of the US.

There is certainly no love lost between those two nations.

 

Yes, I am familiar with Dr. W. Edwards Deming. A mathmetician, he worked in and with the Japanese for years. He mostly showed them that they had to build quality over quantity. He then returned to the US in the 1980's and showed this to the US companies again.

And you confuse improvements with real innovation. Improvement is going from the Atari 2600 to the Intellivision, NES, then the Playstation.

True innovation is creating the Atari 2600 in the first place.

Improvement is creating the CD, DVD, and Blu-Ray Dick players.

True innovation is creating the originator, the LaserDisc.

And interesting you mention Lenovo. You are aware of where some of their main research centers are, are you not?

Morrisville, North Carolina is their primary one. They have another one in Japan. And the company is starting to loose it's reputation that it initially carried over with the ThinkPad. IdeaPad sales have been slipping, and US partners have been pulling out in increasing numbers. It is also recognized as ranking #5 as the worst electronics pollutor in the world (down from the #2 position it held last year).

Smaller, lighter motors. Yea, the types in cheap electric drills. This goes right back to what I have said before about durable goods.

China is not a world leader in durable goods. Sure, they make good cribs, and clothes, and lead painted PVC toys. But they do not manufacture durable goods. Televisions, Refridgerators, Cars, Washing Machines, Ships, tractors, and things like this. As IB stated, most of their heavy equipment is nothing but Chinese made items, based on foreign designs, with major componants made overseas.

This is not originating, it is copying. And the IdeaPad is little different then the ThinkPad it replaced 6 years ago. Heck, it still looks like a ThinkPad, and a lot of people are not aware that IBM no longer makes them.

 

No, you are not CHinese, just a Chinese Fanboi.

The entire world saw how China reacts to Democracy. And the Chinese people know how their government reacts to the threat of even a little democracy and change.

It responds with tanks running down college students.

They even banned the release of the latest Guns N Roses CD, since they saw the title of "Chinese Democracy" as a criticism of their government.

So do not go expecting to see Democracy in China any time soon. The people of China lerned a brutal lesson in 1989, one they are unlikely to forget any time soon.

None of this can be achieved through persuasion. Personally, the "persuasion" I would love to see would be to an end to MFN status. That would be a huge face slap, and may make them wake up and realize that they are not all they think they are.

Personally, I am sitting back, waiting for another Tiananmen Square type incident. Eventually they are going to push their citizens to far, and they will respond, just like they did in the USSR, and Romania, and Poland, and all the other European Communist nations. Then when they crack down again, I hope the US, EU, and all the other nations stand firm and put a stop to MFN status.

Then just sit back and watch the house of cards crumble.

 

You miss the whole point. Original innovation does not make you rich. It never has. The USA itself developed a great deal of British originality (nuclear weapons, computers). It's development that counts for an economy, not invention. What China is doing is going up the value chain. It's about what is happening now, not in the past. China understands it's reliance on cheap labour and is changing.

Your post about another Tiananmen is just nastiness. Adolescent willy waggling. When the Chinese people finally take control of their ggovernment, American exceptionalism will look very silly.

 

One question that no one has answered yet, is lets say there was some sort of military conflict between China and the US for whatever reason.

Who do you think, if any other nations would get involved.

It would obvious depend on the scale of the conflict.

If it was fought out in the china seas then i could see no one else getting involved.......but if the conflict progressed to the US bombing the Chinese mainland then the US would have to be careful that things didnt too close to the borders of neighbouring coutries as that could seriously escalate matters and probably bring other nations into the conflict.

Personally i dont think Russia would get involved, they would be an interested spectator, and would feel that they would be in a stronger position after the conflict.

Would India join the US?

 

Well, a lot of that would depend on which conflict started it off. Because odds are, the US and CHina would not get involved directly by themselves. Much more likely would be China invading/attacking/pressuring another nation like India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Taiwan, or Russia.

And what nations get involved would depend largely on the allies of that nation. However, just like WWI and WWII, the bigger the nations that get involved, the more likely this would expand to include even more nations.

 

"Nuclear Weapons" does not really belong here, unless you think that is a commercial product being sold on the world market. Plus it had many originators. Germany, UK, US, and Japan all did early and groundbreaking work in this field, almost all isolated from each other and working in seperate "Top Secret" bubbles.

And you may claim "nastiness" all you like. However, remember that you are the one that brought up "Democracy in China". And when you did that, I felt it was my duty to remind you and others of what happened the last time that was tried.

I am sorry, my name is Mushroom, it is not Ostrich. It is also not Tsibele.

 

It's seen that way because the Chinese Government forces that view down their peoples throat. Why do you think they blackout media, information, etc. They WANT their people to think like that, it helps them maintain control. Hopefully when China truly joins the ranks of Democracy they see that for themselves instead of advancing their current governments agenda of hatred.

The Chinese people that live in the US know it. Painting the US in a bad light is good for the Chinese Government to maintain it's control over it's own people with the notion of outdoing the US.

The Folly of Hatred, it will simply lead to the Chinese being another cog in the hate machine that is humanity.

 

Has the fact that the US government exercises this same bad mouthing vis-a-vis China passed you by without your noticing?

 

America will not initiate hostilities with China under any circumstances. China would be well advised not to offer combat to America.

I think the most likely scenario involves hostilities between China and India in Arunachal Pradesh or in the Indian Ocean sometime around 2030 or later. America wouldn't become involved unless it appears that China is going to defeat India.

 

This hatred thing is bollocks. Chinese people don't hate the USA. On the contrary, they admire it. But they suspect its motives and see hypcorisy when the USA tells China how it should govern its affairs. Of course the Chinese do not have a free press and that is lamentable, but the language you use of "hatred" is just war-mongering rubbish.

China's objective is to protect itself and grow its people's living standards. It does partly by containing dissent and maintaining stability through nationalism and xenophobia. American networks like Fox News also do this to project American power and appeal to soft-in-the-head patriots. The difference is that China has no pluralism in its system and does not have a free press as the US does. But its xenophobia is only along the lines of the same stuff that comes from the US Right. I agree that it will do that better as a democracy, but all this polarized cold war language coming from american nationalism is just pathetic.

 

let see compass, printing, paper, gunpowder etc etc are invent in china. the technology gap between china and wester are huge in the 80's, but that gap become narrower every years. check the chinese scientist publication over the years vs west, also check the chinese enrollment of engineering undergrad/grad school in western countries, alot those chinese went back to china later.

reverse engineer itself require extensive knowledge of science. once china copy/acquire western tech(many corporation give china free technology in order to access chinese market), they can create their own quality products. its naive to think china can only copy technology without ever create something. do some research on current and past chinese invention/publications