China. China China. ChinaChinaChina for the China

Exactly. The article is USA! USA! USA!

Pathetic. And the reasoning is always as follows: ‘the common argument is that China is winning due to X factors, well they are wrong America is winning due to X!’

They have nothing and they know it. Buy more FXI.

That was an interesting article. I was unaware that China’s economy functioned that way. You would think with all the zero interest loans and whatnot someone over there would have said “Hey, let’s get on some serious infrastructure improvement that will both employ people and create a self-sufficient economy outside of just the coastal regions”. But of course, just like here in America, when people in charge are given money they don;t tend to do the smart or the right thing, they tend to do whatever they think will make them more money quickly.

I agree with people upthread that China ceasing to buy American debt would have greater reprecussions than the article lets on. The article treats it like “oh, we’d feel the pinch and the government would have to blance the budget”, but it doesn’t even hint at the possible global financial panic those actions might create. It was bad enough when the money dried up during the worst of the housing/lending meltdown recently, I can imagine it would be even uglier if the whole world knew that we were spending money we didn’t have backers for all of the sudden, then watched in horror as our own interest rates shot way up and lending ground to a halt, taking businesses down with it and in turn sending us back into a spiral of unemployment and housing crisis. The only race at that point would be to see who collapsed first, China from lack of the ability to export or us from lack of the ability to finance.

Yeah, I think the strongest criticism of the article is its under-estimation or downplaying of the consequences to the US of some of those measures or decisions it talks about. The rest of it rings fairly true. Certainly the NPR stuff I’ve heard with interviews with Chinese factory owners and the like echoes the concern with lack of domestic consumption in China, at least.

Yep… if Stratfor has a blind spot, it’s that they always seem to assume that people make the best decisions for their self-interest possible given the situation they have.

I also agree that they’re downplaying the negative impact. But I think the reason they’re doing so is that the negative impact – relative to what China is and will experience – is so much smaller; for the US, at least, the implication is that any pain is temporary, because that’s the way our system is designed.

But I don’t think either of the above are really major problems. What I do think is an issue is that I don’t see the need for the USA to impose import controls to cause trouble in China. China’s rapid growth is causing huge, huge problems over there that, if not addressed, are going to cause that place to implode.

On that note:

You do not want your citizens breathing air like this.

Is that the Inland Empire?

That’s Qingdao. Near the ocean. And the sad thing is, my phone camera tinted the color blue; it looked more of a bright yellowish orange in person.

No, it looks like the Inland Empire.

Not to sound all knee-jerk defensive about Qingdao (where I live) but a lot of that is pretty clearly sand. Of course this doesn’t absolve anyone, since the sandstorms are a direct result of desertification, but normally this place looks a hell of a lot better. Lord knows I wouldn’t oversell the air quality of any city in China, but it’s probably better than the water quality at least…

As for the article it doesn’t actually say anything particularly new or controversial, although I will point out that one of the discussed imbalances (the west-east gap) is improving fairly rapidly. There’s actually a labor shortage in the coastal regions right now because workers in the west (who make up the bulk of the migrant population) have less reason to leave the region now, and a bunch of the migrant workers laid off in '08-'09 found decent jobs back home and aren’t willing to move east again.

Not to sound all knee-jerk defensive about Qingdao (where I live) but a lot of that is pretty clearly sand. Of course this doesn’t absolve anyone (since the sandstorms are a direct result of desertification) but air quality here is normally pretty decent. The water quality is another story.

Not to sound all knee-jerk defensive about Qingdao (where I live) but a lot of that is pretty clearly sand. Of course this doesn’t absolve anyone, since the sandstorms are a direct result of desertification, but normally this place looks a hell of a lot better. Lord knows I wouldn’t oversell the air quality of any city in China, but it’s probably better than the water quality at least…

As for the article it doesn’t actually say anything particularly new or controversial, although I will point out that one of the discussed imbalances (the west-east gap) is improving fairly rapidly. There’s actually a labor shortage in the coastal regions right now because workers in the west (who make up the bulk of the migrant population) have less reason to leave the region now, and a bunch of the migrant workers laid off in '08-'09 found decent jobs back home and aren’t willing to move east again.

Yeah, this is all very true, and thanks for saying it. Actually, what it is, is sand trapped in fog, which was actually kinda cool (except for the whole Dust Bowl aspect of it).

Heyyyyyyy… maybe you can explain something to me. Why the hell does Qingdao have loudspeakers blaring city traffic noises near the streets? I saw a street lamp near the … well, right here, in the middle of that map, on the South side of Wendeng road near the entrance to that plaza.

Why? Dear God, why? The whole appeal of Qingdao, especially there, near the bay, is to go on vacation and get the heck away from the noise of the regular city. Why put a speaker there blaring canned city noise out at full volume?

Probably for the same reason that the airport in Seattle feels compelled to announce over the PA system every five minutes, in a stern Big Brother voice that “Remember citizens, the police, fire, and emergency rescue departments are here to assist you.” Not sure if that’s still happening, but it was definitely one of the highlights of traveling through Seattle in the early 00s.

Seattle isn’t doing that any more. Not when I was there this past weekend, anyway.

Anyway, this somehow seems relevant to the thread, re: whether or not Stratfor is engaged in “cheerleading.” (Put another way, is it really cheerleading to say that the USA can easily deal with China, when its GDP is such that you could fit China’s, Japan’s, Germany’s and the UK’s within it?)

I guess some people just don’t like PPP.

Those are great charts Rimbo. The big spenders two chart showing defense spending as a percent of GDP is particularly interesting:

Although it’s not shown, China would end up even further down than the UK by that standard, which surprised me. I was also surprised at how far down China was on the armed forces size by percent of population, although it’s not clear to me that that chart is as meaningful. A smaller country might feel more threatened and would be more likely to need a higher percent of its population in the military – large countries have far deeper reserves and far fewer countries that might threaten them.

Well, China also has a nuclear deterrent.

I am amused we have only 25% less soldiers than China, who have 4x the population.

I think the summary is a bit off because it’s just numbers, not goals analysis.

Yes, we have a low GDP percentage, but that’s mostly because we’re so rich.
China doesn’t automatically require a big army; they apparently think they need to use it for something, be it internal or external threats.

I’d say the US is basically set up to stomp another first-world country, but actually uses it to stomp dozens of third-world countries at once because that’s where the money is (either in trade route protection, ensuring pliable governments, take your pick). I have no idea what Russia expects to do what with military though.

I’m sure I’ll be corrected if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that the PLA is much, much smaller in terms of headcount than it was in recent decades. Viva la modernization. Technology and training is a better investment than hordes of poorly trained, ill equipped grunts.

Troop levels have been reduced by nearly half over the past 25 years, from about 4.2 million in 1985 to 2.3 million today; that number is supposed to be cut by 700,000 before 2012. The figures include administrative and political personnel and not just combat troops. For context they peaked at 6 million during the Korean War, which was something like 2% of the population at that time.

And sorry, Rimbo, have no idea what’s up with the loudspeakers, but then it’s been like two years since I visited that area and I haven’t noticed them elsewhere. Only thing I can think of is that maybe they’re somehow supposed to warn the visually impaired that “yes there is a road here” (sorta like the annoying squawking speakers they have set up at some crosswalks), but that seems unnecessary.

Troop levels have been reduced by nearly half over the past 25 years, from about 4.2 million in 1985 to 2.3 million today; that number is supposed to be cut by 700,000 before 2012. The figures include administrative and political personnel and not just combat troops. For context, they peaked at 6 million during the Korean War, against a total population of about 550-600 million.

And sorry, Rimbo, have no idea what’s up with the loudspeakers, but then it’s been like two years since I visited that area and I haven’t noticed them elsewhere. Only thing I can think of is that maybe they’re somehow supposed to warn the visually impaired that “yes there is a road here” (sorta like the annoying squawking speakers they have set up at some crosswalks), but that seems unnecessary.