THANK YOU for that excellent video reference for the Rose/Goldsmith interview. That is, indeed, the best summary, originally made as a prediction, of where we are as a result of the economic process we have chosen. It is excellent because it was made 16 years ago and so can be measured by the test of time. Everything he predicted has come true and more and he lays it at the feet of the philosophy our politicians live by – we, the people, must serve the “needs” of the economy instead of the other way around.

Everyone should watch this …..

Your July 7th’s comment is ignorant, derogatory, racist, and stupid! You ARE a BIGOT!!! You are the one who is moaning and bitching!! And if you are religious, which I don’t think you are, everyone is created with the image of GOD!

China is a controlled ecconomy, all statistics that come out of that country from the ecconomy to military spending are controlled & altered to what they want the world to believe.

They may be now more powerfull than you are led to believe.

Running a big trade deficit is no different than living on credit cards: it’s borrowing from the future so that we can enjoy an “increased standard of living.”

The problem is that we will later have to suffer a decreased standard of living to settle up accounts.

@Mr. Carpenter – Very well said. Probably the best comment here.

So you can say “Communist China – Proudly Made in the USA”

No one forced American consumers to buy the little Chinese plastic trinkets you could have bought American-made plastic trinkets. Guess you weren’t willing to pay a premium for the American made trinket?

Bleat and moan beg Comrade Obama to tell you everything will be alright and tuck you into bed at night. Let him tell you it’s not your fault you are so ignorant and lazy, those nasty yellow china men are so evil for enticing you with their cheap goods.

Were the hell has American pride, ingenuity and entrepreneurship gone?

The first factor that is driving China towards superpower status is globalization. Everyone in America has witnessed the ever growing prevalence of products made in China within many of our major retail giants. One retail giant, Wal-mart, has a massive trading policy with the Chinese government. According to Jiang Jingling, Author of “Wal-mart’s Inventory of Stock Produced in China to reach $18 Billion.” Says, “More than seventy-percent of commodities sold in Wal-mart are made in China.” Every time an American consumer ventures into Wal-mart, or any other major retail store, and buys products from that business, they are helping the economy of China grow. America’s spending habits and China openness towards Multinational Corporations have helped these businesses to flood their shelves with products made in Chinese factories and this has helped China gain a massive export based economy that is on tract to produce consumer goods for the entire planet.

The second factor that is driving China towards superpower status is currency manipulation. Currency manipulation is to artificially inflate or deflate a one currency against another currency and China has been doing this for years now and have benefited from it. According to Don Lee, author of “China Denies Charges of Currency Manipulation” says, “In written comments to the Senate Finance Committee last week, Geithner buttressed complaints that the Chinese kept the value of their currency artificially low, making their exports cheaper in the U.S. and giving them a bigger trade surplus.” The benefits of currency manipulation is that they can make more money from their exports and redistribute that money inwards to grow their domestic economy in regards to infrastructure, personal saving accounts, etc.

The Third factor that is driving China towards superpower status is nationalism. Nationalism is loyalty to ones collective or nation. According to Professor Pranab Bardhan, author of “China Ascent” says, “As nationalism has replaced socialism as the social glue in this vast country, old memories of humiliation at foreign hands and current pride in phenomenal economic success generate popular resentment at what looks like external attempts to rain on the parade of China’s glorious Olympic moment.” Basically, China has had its sovereignty violated numerous times in the 19th and 20th century by foreign nations and by becoming a superpower it will be able to prevent this from happening again the future by staving off violators of its sovereignty.

A fourth and final factor that is driving China towards super power status is the need for resources. Two continents in particular are key places where an abundant source of minerals and petroleum can be found for China to exploit; those continents are South America and Africa. In Latin America, China has just surpassed the US as Brazil’s largest trading partner. China has been making massive amounts of financial and infrastructure investments in many South American countries along with many contracts that give Chinese corporations free reign and are in the midst of creating massive trading hubs on the continent. According to Tyler Bridges, author of “China’s Big Move into Latin America” states, “Beijing’s main interest in Latin America has been guaranteeing access to the region’s raw materials – principally oil, iron ore, soybeans, and copper – to fuel its continued rapid growth.” China needs these materials to help keep its growing manufacturing base going and to maintain its own economic prosperity. In order to maintain this inflow of need resources, the Chinese government has been in the business of brokering alliances with the leaders of each country, regardless of their political standing in the world (I.e. Hugo Chavez in Venezuela). Another continent that is seeing a significant Chinese hunt for resources is Africa. Like Latin America, China is using its economic clout to bolster financial alliances via monetary investments in Africa. According to Jacques DeLisle, author of “Into Africa: China’s Quest for Resources and Influence,” says, “Major state-owned and state-linked Chinese companies are already on the ground or soon will be, largely through investments to develop Sudanese oil, Zambian copper, and other African resources for export.” The government of China uses aid as a carrot on a stick to needy countries in order to bribe them into allowing them open access to the large resource reserve within the African lands. China is also willing to deal with both democratic and dictatorial countries to get what they want and turn the other cheeck in regards to human rights violations in the countries they do business with. However, it was the need domestic need for energy resources and quest for new markets that helped propel the Western countries to super power status.

One factor that will hinder China from becoming a super power is its massive wealth disparity. Despite its large economic growth and strength in the last couple of decades, there has been a growing wealth gap between the urban citizens and the rural inhabitants of the country. According to Ian T. Brown and Tao Wu, authors of “Chinese Economy Climbs, but Struggles to Spread Wealth,” says, “Education and healthcare systems are less available and of poorer quality, leading millions of rural Chinese to relocate to the city in search of better public services and economic opportunity.” The economic growth has raised as many as three-hundred million Chinese citizens into their equivalent of a middle class, but there is still large numbers of poor rural citizens who are left to play catch up with their higher income countrymen.

Another factor that will hinder China from becoming a super power is the consequences of its one-child policy. In 1978 the Chinese government introduced the one-child policy in an attempt to decelerate population growth. The policy prevented an estimated 400 million births and lowered the fertility rate from five to two; however, this policy has also contributed to a growing demographic nightmare within the population of China. A BBC News Report titled “has China’s one-child policy worked?” Claims: “This will result in an increasing proportion of older people, a smaller workforce to look after them and a disproportionate number of boys to girls. “ Although China has a one billion plus population, its population will age eventually and with fewer births to take their place of the aged workers productivity will falter and so will its status as an economic super power. Secondly, the disproportionate number of boys to girls will have several consequences on China. First, is replenishing the aging population. Second, is internal strife over the scarcity of women, of which will possibly cause major societal problems for the government. Lastly, the Aging population will place a large strain on the few youth in the workplace. Unless China finds a way to solve this problem; they will not become a superpower via demographics.

A third factor that will hinder China from becoming a super power is its effect on the environment. Although globalization has helped China’s economy grow, it has had negative effects on its environment. According to Carin Zississ, author of “China’s Environmental Crisis,” says, “About one-third of China’s population lacks access to clean drinking water. Its per-capita water supply falls at around a quarter of the global average. Some 70 percent of the country’s rivers and lakes are polluted, with roughly two hundred million tons of sewage and industrial waste pouring into Chinese waterways in 2004.” However, water quality is not the only environmental problem China faces. Desertification and soil degradation brought on by overgrazing and cultivating of farmland has created a massive dustbowl that engulfs many population centers, icluding the capitol city, Beijing. Massive amounts of green house gas emissions, mainly from the burning of coal and automobile emissions, which creates acid rain. Air quality stands out among the most prevalent environmental hazard in the country. On an average day, the smog created by industrial pollutants bloats out the sun with a thick, gray haze that fills the skies of many cities in the North. With over a billion people, in order to gain the amount of prosperity that the developed world now enjoys, China would have to further depredate its environment even further, which is something that is not feasible because every empire that has over burdened their surrounding environments has fallen.

The fourth and final factor that will hinder China from becoming a super power is its massive dependence on energy. According to David Zweig and Bi Jianhai, authors of “China’s Global Hunt for Energy,” says, “An unprecedented need for resources is now driving China’s foreign policy. A booming domestic economy, rapid urbanization, increased export processing, and the Chinese people’s voracious appetite for cars are increasing the country’s demand for oil and natural gas, industrial and construction materials, foreign capital and technology. Twenty years ago, China was East Asia’s largest oil exporter. Now it is the world’s second-largest importer; last year, it alone accounted for 31 percent of global growth in oil demand.” China is so dependant on imported resources that if their delivery to the mainland China were to be disrupted many issues would surface. Resources such as fossil fuels and metals are becoming finite and harder to procure for the global economy. As growth continues, so will its hunger for resources. This puts China in a precarious situation, one in which it must choose between acquiring needed resources to maintain economic growth, or slip back into decline. Zweig and Jianhai go on to say, “Beijing’s access to foreign resources is necessary both for continued economic growth and, because growth is the cornerstone of China’s social stability, for the survival of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).” China’s thirst for petroleum and other form of energy is putting it on track to surpass the US as the world’s largest oil importer. The CCP knows that to stay in power it must continue prosperity, and in that very same prosperity depends on easy access to energy resources. However, China is attempting to take measures to curtail their dependency on foreign energy, but will it be enough to help them will have to wait to be seen in the future.

Work Cited
Bandow, Doug. “China Rising: The Next Global Superpower.” Antiwar.com 27 January 2007 http://original.antiwar.com/doug-bandow/2007/01/26/china-rising-the-next-global-superpower/

Bardhan, Pranab. “China Ascendant – Part II.” Global Politician. 4 Apr. 2008 http://www.globalpolitician.com/24618-china

Bridges, Tyler. “China’s big move into Latin America.” The Christian Science Monitor. 12 July 2009 http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0712/p06s10-woam.html

Brown T., Ian and Tao Wu. “Chinese Economy Climbs, but Struggles to Spread Wealth” Gallup 21 May 2009 http://www.gallup.com/poll/118567/Chinese-Economy-Climbs-Struggles-Spread-Wealth.aspx

DeLisle, Jacques. “Into Africa: China’s Quest For Resources And Influence.” Foreign Policy Research Institute. Feb. 2007 http://www.fpri.org/enotes/200702.delisle.intoafricachinasquest.html

“Has China’s one-child policy worked?” BBC News.com 2007. BBC News. 20 September 2007 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7000931.stm

JINGLING, JIANG. “Most (70%) of Wal-Mart’s Products Are Produced in China” Organic Consumers Association. http://www.organicconsumers.org/corp/walmartchina113004.cfm

Lee, Don. “China denies charge of currency manipulation” Los Angeles Times 26 January 2009 http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jan/26/business/fi-china-geithner26

Zissis, Carin. “China’s Environmental Crisis” Council on Foreign Relations. 4 August 2008 http://www.cfr.org/publication/12608/#p2

Zweig, David and Bi Jianhai. “China’s Global Hunt for Energy” Foreign Affairs. October 2005 http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/61017/david-zweig-and-bi-jianhai/chinas-global-hunt-for-energy

Plus, any nation worth its salt and which was sufficiently blessed with resources, puts up tariffs to imports (which was the original means of financing the Constitutional Republic known as the United States of America), along with a FEW Federal Excise Taxes on some items (i.e. “consumption taxes”).

Little known fact: new automobiles had Federal Excise Tax until 1965.

In plain English, if the United States returned to TRADE with other nations – which means NO trade deficits either way – and returned to Constitutional law – including relying upon FET and tariffs to fund a small Federal Government (and one which doesn’t redistribute wealth) – AND returned to legal, Constitutional money (i.e. gold and silver), then we could save the day.

But Ron Paul doesn’t even want to go that far, and is roundly decried as a lunatic by the main stream media.

In plain language, we’re so screwed….

BTW, my son has a 1968 dining room table & chairs set that my parents bought new for $850. Now, that was 1/2 the price of a new Volkswagen, and it was just an upper-middle class expandable dining room set. A new Color TV cost $700, or about 1/4 of what a new Mustang cost in 1968. The median household income in 1968 was $8600, while in now it is about $44,000.

Now, let’s assume that my parents had a median income in 1968. That big Chroma ’68 table and fancy vinyl covered swivel chairs set cost my parents 10% of their GROSS income.

The color TV we bought in 1971 probably cost about 8% of their income. It was a Magnavox, still made in the United States.

I’m not saying we should not bring jobs back into the USA, but let’s be honest – when we do, and when we pay people a living wage, we are going to have to pay more for goods.

How would $4400 for a table & chairs, or $3500 for a medium sized television sound?

Not forgetting clothing, the production of which was exported starting some 40 years ago.

How would new men’s shirts for $52 sound?

I bet we’d be much less of a throw-away society! I bet if socks cost $20 a pair, people would learn to mend them again!

(Of course, in 1968, gasoline cost 27 cents per gallon, which would roughly therefore equate to $1.41 a gallon in today’s money, adjusted for average income variances between 1968 and now). We KNOW that’s not going to happen….

Beans, Bullets,Boards, Barbed Wire and Bandages the new gold.

Red