CHINA

[Carlos_f_Rose]

Hi everyone.... I would like to discuss about China... what do you think about this powerful country...  which is going to be the first Superpower in the world in a few decades (in my opinion)  and has some strange relation with Axl Rose Apparently.. as you know...  It would be interesting to know... why Axl reportedly decided to call the new Album... C.D. (if he is going to do it)

Anyway this topic is only about China and its influence in the world...

what's your opinion?  @;---

[SLCPUNK]

(Pretending you said "word association")

Oppression.

[MCT]

Recession.

[N.I.B]

Communist. Nothing good ever comes out of that.

[Axls Locomotive]

Subjugation of Tibet, Tianenmen Square, cheap goods, and almost a quarter of the worlds population...i think they need good politicians to tell the people that life is great in China

[Carlos_f_Rose]

Well its obvious that China is a communist country and lots of people are treated like crap... anyway they are becoming the next superpower in the world....

postscript: I would like to know... what axl has to do with china?

[Genesis]

anyway they are becoming the next superpower in the world....

What gave u that idea?

[Izzy]

anyway they are becoming the next superpower in the world....

The mark of a great nation is the quality of life for the inhabitants - on that scale China is positively third rate with so many millions living in poverty and oppression

[nesquick]

Economicaly, I think they're going to eat everybody. Here is my views for the future (for the next century):
- China will be the #1 powerfull country in the world
- USA will still be very strong, but will loose some of their power.
- Russia, India and South America will grow.
- Africa will stay as they are.
- Arabic countries won't evolve.
- Europe will fall down. Too old, too slow, a too depressed continent. HUGE islamism problems in almost every Europeans countries. Rise of extremes (left and right), rise of nationalism. Political implosion. Economic recession. Rise of racism and antisemitism. Old demons will come back. We are already in it.

[Carlos_f_Rose]

Those predictions are remarkable.. and certainly the first one if going to happen...
now you asked me,what make me say that China is gonna become the 1st  superpower in the world... easy:

Growth of an average of 10% a year...
In 20 years ... half of the population will be middle class...
and many more to say....

Maybe its time for a change....   
postscript: Communism is not as bad as they make it seem...

                                                                     @;---

[GnRNightrain]

http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/archives/2005/04/index.html


Interesting topic.  I recently read some posts on Richard Posner's and Gary Becker's blog about China.  Here is one of the posts that I found interesting.  For those that dont know him, Gary Becker is a Nobel Prize winning economist from the University of Chicago.

Will China Become the Leading Nation of the 21st Century? Perhaps Not!-BECKER
NOTE: Posner and I believe that we should place more emphasis on events of interest to the international community. So we will discuss international issues more frequently, starting with our entries on China.


China?s economic growth since it freed agriculture from the oppressive hand of government has been spectacular, averaging some 7-10 per cent per year in real GDP since 1980, even allowing for some inflation in the official numbers. It has becoming a leading destination of foreign investment, one of the world?s biggest exporters, and among the largest users of oil and other natural resources.

Its potential seems to be so limitless, after awakening from a slumber that lasted for centuries, that many are already forecasting that China will replace the United States during the 21st century as the leading economic power. Perhaps these forecasts will be correct-my crystal ball is very cloudy- but some cautionary comments are needed because we have heard that tune before.

The ?German miracle? after World War II was so impressive that many forecast Germany would overtake the United States rather quickly, in part because Germany supposedly discovered a new way to organize economic society- a ? social contract? among workers and companies- that would propel that nation past America?s old fashioned capitalism. But Germany began to flounder in the 1980?s, did much worse in the 1990?s, and is considered by many now to be the ?sick man? of the European Union.

Krushchev?s prophesy in the late 1950?s that the USSR would ?bury? the US was not about military victory but economic superiority. This was made when Soviet official statistics showed extremely rapid economic growth. The apparent miracle of Soviet growth suggested to the great economists Joseph Schumpeter and Paul Samuelson, and many others that central planning might be superior economically to capitalism and decentralization of economic power.

The latest case prior to China is Japan, which experienced impressive economic growth from the early 1950?s into the late ?80?s that propelled Japan into the elite club of the richest economic powers. Japan too had supposedly discovered a new approach of consensus capitalism with a long-term business outlook that was allegedly superior to old Adam Smith varieties of competitive capitalism. This alleged superiority of the Japanese system was extolled in a series of articles by the very good economist Alan Blinder, and in books with various titles, such as ?The Japan That Can Say No?. Yet Japan basically stagnated since the early 1990?s, and now the concern is whether it can ever come out of this stagnation and deflation (I am confident it will eventually). It?s economic model now seems riddled with inefficiencies and drawbacks, and is no longer considered a new wave of capitalism.

None of this proves that China will not be an exception, and continue to grow well beyond other nations, but these examples do suggest caution in conceding the next 50 years or so to China?s economy. Countries invariably discover that it is much easier to grow rapidly when they are economically way behind since they could then import the knowledge embodied in technology and human capital developed by leading countries. As a country begins to catch up to the knowledge frontier, a simple transfer of knowledge is no longer productive. It then has to participate in the generation of new technologies and approaches, which is far harder than simply using advances made elsewhere.

To be sure, China has considerable strengths that should enable it to grow relatively rapidly for much longer. China has an abundant, hard-working, and ambitious labor force. The government also radically liberalized the incredibly rigid labor markets under its old style central planning toward flexible markets that allow companies to hire and fire easily. Also workers now have the freedom, they did not before, to find jobs that best suit their talents and interests. China has opened its economy to foreign investments and domestic entreprenuers, something the Soviet Union, Japan, or even Germany never really did, and China has been learning from the new technologies brought by these investors.

China has also created a highly competitive environment in most markets, where companies have flexibility to change prices as costs change, and as competitors alter their prices and terms of sale. China?s long history of great respect for knowledge and scholars has returned. Even poor families now sacrifice their meager resources to insure their children a decent education and other investments in human capital.

During the past couple of decades, China has been blessed with far-sighted leaders that have generally wisely approached liberalizing its economy. They started off with relatively simple steps that gave farmers greater freedom to decide what to produce on their small private plots, and to sell their output at more market-based prices. After seeing the overwhelming success of these first steps, they gradually liberalized much of the rest of the economy, allowing workers freedom to choose jobs, employers freedom to determine hiring and firing, markets freedom to set most wages and prices, foreign investors to start factories, often in partnership with local governments, and stock exchanges to develop in Shanghai and elsewhere. Meanwhile, the mainland has largely lived up to its agreement to give considerable economic autonomy to Hong Kong.

This rapid development of the Chinese economy has provided many benefits to the US and other rich economies. Chinese has exported clothing, toys, simple electronics, and many other labor-intensive goods at prices far below those possible without China?s development. China?s growth helps provide a much larger and richer market for the knowledge-intensive products and services produced by rich nations, such as cars, computers, drugs and medical instruments, kitchen appliances, and many others.

China?s development so far poses economic problems mainly not for the advanced nations, but for developing nations that produce the same types of labor-intensive products as China does. These nations include Mexico, Pakistan, Brazil, and some countries of Africa. It is a general but sometimes neglected result in trade theory that the growth of a large nation will raise world GDP per capita, but can hurt the nations that are most similar to the growing nation.

Richer nations could be hurt eventually if China continues to move up the product ladder. It would then produce and export more knowledge-intensive products, partly made possible by China?s disrespect for property rights, intellectual property, and patent protection laws. But even so, I believe that rich nations will generally benefit from China?s progress since different richer nations generally specialize in different types and varieties of products and services. Moreover, as China gets richer, it will provide even larger markets for exports from other nations.

[GnRNightrain]

But to return to the main theme, as with Russia, Germany, and Japan, it is not inevitable that China will continue to grow rapidly enough to equal or surpass eventually the growing per capita incomes of the US and Western Europe. For like the other nations that looked unstoppable, China has serious problems, and other problems might surface as it becomes richer.

China has a disastrous capital market, with government banks that have been forced to make loans to inefficient public companies. The result has been hundreds of billions of dollars of debt that will never be repaid, and are now being auctioned off. Perhaps that debt overhang will be rapidly absorbed, but Japan suffered for more than decade with a huge supply of bad bank debt that they did not absorb efficiently; indeed, the government has continued to encourage the creation of more bad debt.

China still has many highly inefficient public enterprises that authorities are reluctant to close because they fear discontent from laid off workers. These enterprises can stay in business only because they receive uneconomic loans from other state enterprises; namely, the banks. China does not have a developed system of commercial laws, and shows little respect for intellectual property rights. This may well be a rational strategy for a developing nation that is mainly using knowledge originated elsewhere, but this strategy becomes a drawback as a country becomes richer, and must begin to participate itself in the production of new knowledge.

Authoritarian regimes can do well economically when they have good leaders, but they can produce disasters when these leaders have foolish economic ideas. China discovered this under Mao, with his incredible ?great leap forward? that helped kill millions of rural Chinese. While the evidence indicates that authoritarian regimes do not grow slower on average than democratic governments, they do have more unstable growth rates than democracies. I believe China will become more democratic if it continues to grow rapidly, but economic progress could falter badly if they select poor leaders who have strange ideas about how economies should be organized.

China has had a much faster decline in birth rates to below-replacement levels than other developing nations, no doubt helped by its so-called one child policy. This has meant a prematurely aging population that creates a burden on its evolving social security and health systems as relatively few young persons one way or another have to ?finance? the care of increasing numbers of elderly.

The rapid fertility decline also greatly slowed its population growth, which may have looked attractive in a poor Malthusian-style economy. But knowledge-based economies often thrive on larger populations because of what economists call increasing returns to scale in the production of new knowledge, and in the degree of specialization in different types of human capital. While exports to the world?s population provide some offsets to declines in a country?s population, domestic populations are much more important usually in determining the advantages of investments in knowledge and human capital.

A more intangible but important factor is that as countries get richer, they often introduce policies that retard further progress. This happened in Germany with legislation that made labor very costly, and ossified its labor and retirement markets. It happened in Japan that kept many regulatory restrictions on services, on foreign investments and immigration, and maintained a protected and inefficient banking system. It can surely happen also in China in ways that are difficult to forecast at this early stage of its development.

I am not saying that China will not become the leading economic nation, but rather that it is far too early to tell. The many failed predictions about Japan and other nations should make us modest about such long-term predictions. Perhaps India will become the leader-it has strengths (and weaknesses) that China lacks- or maybe Brazil if it can finally get its act together.

Or indeed, perhaps the US will continue to be the most dynamic economy. Many economists and others wrote off this economy during the 1970?s and some of the ?80?s when productivity growth declined and the economy faltered. Since I do not believe countries necessarily age the way species do, the US can continue to do well- productivity started growing rapidly about 10 years ago- if it provides a good environment for new companies, flexible labor and product markets, sizeable investments in human capital and technology, and an open attitude to new ideas, immigrants, and different ways. Those of you alive in 20-30 years will be able to discover if my skepticism and analysis will be borne out by events.

[SLCPUNK]

- Europe will fall down.  HUGE islamism problems in almost every Europeans countries. Rise of extremes (left and right), rise of nationalism. Political implosion. Economic recession. Rise of racism and antisemitism. Old demons will come back. We are already in it.

You could replace Islamic with Christian, and that would be America.

[Walk]

You could replace Islamic with Christian, and that would be America.

America has been fine with Christianity for hundreds of years. Europe has never had a large number of Muslims in it until very recently, and the number is only going up. You're dead wrong here.

I think of capitalism rising and economic growth when I think of China. They might lack political freedom, but they have a great deal of economic freedom, as long as the right authorities are payed off. They sell counterfeit goods in the streets. Hell, some counterfeiters are so good, the real company sometimes pays them to make the genuine article!  Compared to Europe and the US, they don't have to deal with nanny state policies that slow economic growth. They're doing better because they're becoming more free, and we aren't.

Political freedom just means there's a 4 year horse race. Economic freedom leads to prosperity.

[SLCPUNK]

You could replace Islamic with Christian, and that would be America.

America has been fine with Christianity for hundreds of years. Europe has never had a large number of Muslims in it until very recently, and the number is only going up. You're dead wrong here.

You are too dim to understand my post.

I didn't mean soley Christianity, I meant everything he said after it, which falls into place very well in this country. Christianity is not under attack by me (like you are attacking Islam), rather it is synonymous with America:

Rise of extremes (left and right),

rise of nationalism.

Political implosion.

Economic recession.

Rise of racism and antisemitism.

We are already in it.


I could tell you didn't read the other thread (because you made a reference to benefits-which wasn't being discussed at all) as well as this one.

Try to at least read the posts before you go about telling people they are 'dead wrong'. Makes you look like less of an ass.

[Walk]

You are too dim to understand my post.

I didn't mean soley Christianity, I meant everything he said after it, which falls into place very well in this country. Christianity is not under attack by me (like you are attacking Islam), rather it is synonymous with America:

Rise of extremes (left and right),

Republicans are not extreme. They have all the power in Washington now. But abortion, homosexuality, and blasphemy aren't illegal, are they? If they wanted to ban these things, they could, but they won't. They aren't any more extreme than they used to be. Democrats only seem extreme because they're clueless reactionaries who don't understand why they're losing. Michael Moore doesn't help, either.

rise of nationalism.

This is a good thing. There's a huge difference between patriotism and nationalism, and there have been many essays written about it. That's for another thread. But nationalism is very important for political stability and well being.

Political implosion.

Huh?

Economic recession.

The economy is doing well. It's only doing relatively poorly, not absolutely. It can and will recover.

Rise of racism and antisemitism.

That just goes along with nationalism. It's normal to look down on others if you think your people are the best. It doesn't always result in genocide, like many people think. As for anti-semitism, it usually springs from conspiracy nuts and lefties who are jealous that Jews are wealthier, on average, than everyone else. So what?

We are already in it.

No.

I could tell you didn't read the other thread (because you made a reference to benefits-which wasn't being discussed at all) as well as this one.
Try to at least read the posts before you go about telling people they are 'dead wrong'. Makes you look like less of an ass.

The size and influence of government are too imporant for a nation's economy to be ignored.

[SLCPUNK]

You don't read. 

Maybe it's just plain old assholism.

The first step to getting better is to admit you are an asshole.

Maybe you should start with that.

***********

PS: I can't believe you are serious.

[Walk]

What part of "what's your opinion" do you not understand? I was giving my opinion about China and you were giving yours.

[SLCPUNK]

You don't read.

[BigCombo]

The 1 child restriction has slowed China's population growth.? I believe India will surpass China in population during the next 10 years.? Economically, China has nowhere to go but up.? For the past 20 years, China has been producing the world's cheap plastic crap but this is about to change.? China has the capability to produce all textiles for the United States if the US follows WTO rules and rescinds the quota system.?

China's workforce is becoming educated at an astonishing rate.? Each year, China graduates 3X more engineers than the US.? Soon, white collar jobs will be outsourced to China.? China has the capability to be an economic superpower.? ?I predic they'll slide into the 2nd spot behind the US within the next 5 years.

A some one who has been to China; I can say its not a third-world country.? In the cities along the eastern coast, there is practically no discernable difference between Chinese cities and Western cities.? Both have large skylines, good public transporation, and economic prosperity.?

The central government of China faces two daunting issues: foreign policy with the US over trade/Taiwan and the fate of 800 million poor people.? The Western part of china is largely undeveloped and agarian.? 800 million people earn under $2 per day.? China has to ensure these people won't rise up against the communisti goverment (ironic) or emigrate and flood the prosperous seaboard cites.? China has Taiwan issues.? If Taiwan declares independence, China will attack it.? Its a matter of losing face.? If it attacks Taiwan, China will most likely lose the war which would wreck havoc on international trade.? I predict Taiwan won't declare indepence nor join up with China in the foreseeable future.?

For the average person, China has a huge effect on your everyday life.? You could probably blame about 50 cents rise in gas prices on increased demand from China.? I know this is a bold prediction but...if 9/11 didn't? happen, there's a good chance the neocons would have us in war with china now.? ?

ps.? china isn't textbook communist.? they are essentially capitalistic without all that free speech stuff.