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How China Can Help Europe
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How China Can Help Europe |
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Huan Yi Member Ascendant
since 2004-10-12
Posts 6688Waukegan 
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. “The time has come for China to adopt a broader concept of its interests and become a “responsible stakeholder” in the global system.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-china-can- help-europe-get-out-of-debt/2011/09/14/gIQA1WIxSK_story.html?hpid=z2 Or else what? To me the article is so Charlie Brown as to be laughable. . |
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Bob K Member Elite
since 2007-11-03
Posts 4208 |
China's first concern is internal stability. Having Euyropean markets more open to them would be useful, but not at the potential resk of any internal stability. As John says, "Too Charlie Brown." The comments about Germany in the article may have been misleading, suggesting, I thought, that Germany was being poorly managed. I don't think it is. I think that West Germany is still trying to bring East Germany up to speed and that the debts and issues have to do with helping stabilize and integrate that East German economy from 45 years of Soviet domination. Much of it is still, apparently, in bad ecological shape as well. Even if Germany wanted to help, it would be very difficult for it to do so. |
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Uncas Member
since 2010-07-30
Posts 408 |
quote: Or else risk losing a large slice of its export market and damaging its own economy - at least that's what the author of the article thinks. I'm not convinced but the argument is plausible, if China did decide to bankroll Europe though it would potentially royally screw the US economy - maybe that could be all the incentive China needs - more Dick Dastardly than Charlie Brown.  |
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Huan Yi Member Ascendant
since 2004-10-12
Posts 6688Waukegan |
. A screwed US economy doesn’t help their export market either. They’ll do nothing because they can afford to do nothing. Any government run by a party that killed tens of millions of its own country’s citizens to get and maintain power and currently enforces how many children the survivors can have isn’t going to be moved by any talk like: “The time has come for China to adopt a broader concept of its interests and become a “responsible stakeholder” in the global system.” You can’t threaten them and you certainly can’t guilt them. They’ve got more than enough will and money to just sit back and watch Western Europe crash and burn. . |
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Uncas Member
since 2010-07-30
Posts 408 |
quote: Actually, in a roundabout way, it does, for a start China exports more to Europe than it does to the US, who have managed over the last 30 or 40 years to transfer their middle class spending power abroad - along with a large chunk of their jobs. Currently China's exports to the US are growing at a far slower rate than their exports to Europe - in fact it won't be long before Hong Kong overtakes the US in the Chinese imports tables. Europe and Asia is a growing export market for China - the US is a shrinking market, it makes perfect sense to nurture a growing market, that's Capitalism 101 - speculate to accumulate. Buggering up the US economy also definitely helps China in other ways, China's aspirations to replace the US as THE global superpower for one. A key requirement to attaining that status would be a weak US economy allowing China to push even harder to replace the dollar as the standard world currency. China has long suggested that a currency controlled by the IMF would be preferable, how does that help China? The clue to that is in the article you posted: quote: Of course what China would like to see once America was forced to buy commodities and trade in a new international currency would be a weak dollar, reducing the US spending power. Fortunately they couldn't conspire to make that happen, or could they? Surely to do that they'd need to hold oodles of dollars in US debt that they could swamp the market with to devalue the dollar. Hmmm.. Aren't conspiracy theories great? |
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Huan Yi Member Ascendant
since 2004-10-12
Posts 6688Waukegan |
. China can do nothing different and still reap benefits. . |
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serenity blaze Member Empyrean
since 2000-02-02
Posts 27738 |
When using quotes with the quote, a singular quote should be utilized. |
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Uncas Member
since 2010-07-30
Posts 408 |
quote: I'll bear that in mind.  |
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Huan Yi Member Ascendant
since 2004-10-12
Posts 6688Waukegan |
. The EU can come crying to the US and the US run to its aid with money borrowed from . . . Win win . |
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Uncas Member
since 2010-07-30
Posts 408 |
quote: You'd presume that in that scenario the US would "go crying" to the entity that holds more US debt than any other but as that happens to be the EU I suppose that the US would have to "go crying" to China. Fortunately that's unlikely to happen as long as the EU can cut out the middleman and go straight to the source, which is, after all, what the article was suggesting. . |
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Huan Yi Member Ascendant
since 2004-10-12
Posts 6688Waukegan |
. The article suggests they aren't having much luck either. . |
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Huan Yi Member Ascendant
since 2004-10-12
Posts 6688Waukegan |
. I am just about finished reading “Henry Kissinger On China” and the one thing that comes through is the Chinese confidence based on 4,000 years of history that there’s nothing they can’t go through, (even, in Mao’s case, nuclear war), and in the end not end up the winner if only by virtue of their numbers. . |
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Huan Yi Member Ascendant
since 2004-10-12
Posts 6688Waukegan |
. "Obama to China: Behave like 'grown up' economy Obama said China was keeping its currency value artificially low, hurting American companies and jobs. He said China, which often presents itself as a developing country, is now "grown up" and should act that way in global economic affairs. China shot back that it refused to abide by international economic rules that it had no part in writing." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45283979/ns/politics-white_house/ Earth to President Obama: It's still thier country . . . . |
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Bob K Member Elite
since 2007-11-03
Posts 4208 |
I think you're right. I don't like the big posturing and the attempts to push other countries around, especially within their own borders. I'd feel better if the US could be more consistent about its policy about force and the threat of force, and not only in this administration, though your point is well taken here. I suspect we have more of a bone to pick with the various multinationals that have taken advantage of China's current welcoming policy and its willingness to cooperate with the exploitation of its own labor, at least in the short run, to undermine the position of capital in the US. Business, is, in this case, on the side of the Chinese communists, who are playing a very smooth hand indeed. Was it Lenin who said that Capitalists would be thrilled to be the guys to sell you the rope you were going to use to hang them? I'm sure I've gotten that mangled somehow. |
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