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Threat
April 11, 2007
ACB is one of the few blogs I visit regularly. His informative writings give us a glimpse of the current affairs in China from the perspective of a foreigner who has been living in China for some time and who has a good grasp of the Chinese culture. That said, I was taken aback by a poll in his blog’s sidebar titled ‘The China Threat’ – it asks its readers to choose from a list of five items as to what they consider to be the biggest threat. The poll assumes that a threat does exist – a view seems to be prevalent only in America but not the rest of the world. It leaves no choices for those of us who perceive China not a threat but an opportunity.
Like all polls, I suppose ‘China Threat’ shouldn’t be taken too seriously and in this spirit, my answers to ACB’s poll are as follow:
- Military: Chinese weapons will kill US citizens in a future war
Unlikely as EU will soon lift its ban on arms sales to China. The Brits, French and Germans are all very eager to make some deals with China. And there is no certainty as regards what the American’s big defense contractors might do – they are eager to sell as well.
It is not at all unlikely that in a future war, Americans will be killed by American weapons as already happening in Iraq. - Economic: Trade deficit/Cheap imports will ruin US manufactures.
The cheap imports are largely from foreign owned factories taking full advantages of their cheap Chinese subcontractors.
One easiest way to deal with these cheap imports and to protect its inefficient manufacturing sector is for the American to make outsourcing illegal – something they have refused to do for some reasons. - Politics: China will buy/bribe everybody until it replaces the US in terms of world influence.
All I can think of is Leonard Cohen’s song “Be for Real”. Is it the way they conduct business inside the Beltway too? Buying influence. - Culture: Chinese cultural creep will destroy indigenous US culture.
Not sure about this but it cannot possibly happen the other way around as the Chinese culture is time proven. - Genetics: Chinese will emigrate and procreate, breeding Whites out of the American gene pool
Hard to compete with the African American and Latino in this area. A chocolate country for sure. The only uncertainty is how dark the chocolate will be.
Posted to General at April 11, 2007 02:14 PM :
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Comments
Let me see.
1. First rule of economics, never kill off insatiable (U.S.) consumers of whatever it is you (Fill in here with lowest cost supplier country) want to sell to us. Only the truly and deeply republican paranoid dreams this. Oh, we love military exports in (any)times of unstable political climates. Just ask any U.S. supported (propped up) regime.
2. Trade deficit continues to focus on Heavy industries like steel, cars, paper and other things that require a low cost labor force to be competitive. The sooner the U.S. gets over the fact that we are greedy victims of over paid members of Unionized Labor we will be okay. U.S. needs to focus on technology.
3. World influence sharing by China might help U.S. focus on its own problems. Not allowing us to peddle western economics in places it won’t work and peddle U.S. values that are of no value to those we force feed them to. China has 1.3 billion people who will also demand a better standard of living and Chinese government will be busy coping with the developing middle class. Not worried about influence peddling.
4. U.S. culture is like Attention Deficit Disorder. You build video games, we by cheap, learn culture. Flippant, maybe, but even a time tested (Chinese) culture will be strained by the new economics and challenges China will face as standard of living improves for some an others are marginalized.
5. Not sure about the tan factor. Might be other way around. We learn Mandarin instead. Excellent post!
posted by: Driver8 ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.hollymolly.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at April 14, 2007 03:39 AM
As a blog that sometimes tries to be deliberately provocative, the poll was intended to gauge the views of my readers, not to express my own opinions.
As anybody who reads regularly will know, I often try to turn the news around. When somebody says that China is a threat, I point out how ridiculous some of the arguments are, and when they say that it is not a threat, I point out some of the threatenign things that it has done.
posted by: Angry Chinese Blogger at May 1, 2007 08:28 AM
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