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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (125782)	3/8/2004 5:10:35 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi twfowler; Re: "China having a situation like what happened to the "Asian Tigers" would be a drag on the world economy and so would hurt the US in an absolute sense even if it hurt China more." No, the US gets its way in the world to a large extent because it is the only superpower. The unification of Europe provides a bit of a balance to that, but it is a very friendly balance. We have no nuclear weapons ready for use in keeping Western Europe in line. Our nukes are for China. We have no spy planes hugging the coast of Europe seeking information on what their military is doing. Our spy planes are for China. And it is China that is our rival, not democratic, christian and western Europe. If growth in China continues to the point where they are as wealthy, per capita, as the Japanese, Hong Kongese, Singaporeans, or Americans, the result will be a China that is more powerful than the US. And that should be the worry of the US, not that China is going to have a minor bust. Furthermore, even though Neocon denies that he wishes China bad, look at the arguments he makes for the hopelessness of its situation. These remind one of the neocon arguments before the Iraq war about WMDs and how the occupation would go. That China will somehow stop growing is just more wishful thinking on his part. Re: "Most of the population also doesn't participate in advanced manufacturing or trade with other nations." This is about as true of China as it is of the US. Of course there are regions where advanced manufacturing is concentrated. In the US we call them "Silicon Valley" or whatever. And even in San Jose, most of the population does not work in high tech. Re: "The deep interior is third world or at least close to it." Hardly anyone lives in Inner Mongolia. And Tibet is a total of only about 0.4% of China's total population. Here's some data giving per capita GDP by province for the 30 provinces of China: gwu.edu In the above data, the highest GDP was Beijing at 4417.85, and the lowest was Guizhou at 609.80, for a ratio of about 7. Of course Guizhou province is in the far west, where nearly no one that is actually Chinese lives. Even the US, with its many decades of growth, has ethnic regions that are fairly poor. Think about Puerto Rico, American Samoa, or the various Indian reservations. I doubt that China will solve its problems with its minorities before we solve ours. -- Carl