The 21st Century Satan

**Fragony** · 04-14-2008, 15:21

Originally Posted by TuffStuffMcGruff

And China would incinerate Russia. Russia has been allowing China to fill their lands to the east for years now. It is kind of like a Mexico - U.S. relationship with teeth. Lets say that Russia and China go at it and Russia loses land. Then what?

Why are we talking so much about inevitability?

They would still need somebody to buy their things, China is cheap labour it's depends on our demand for their products. Where would they take their stuff isn't like their own population is getting that much goodness out of it, no real self-sustaining market like we have here. If the west stands strong nothing can touch us. China is gonna fall like everything that moves too fast takes only a tackle. If it doesn't we will probably only benefit from it.

**ICantSpellDawg** · 04-14-2008, 15:27

Originally Posted by Fragony

They would still need somebody to buy their things, China is cheap labour it's depends on our demand for their products. Where would they take their stuff isn't like their own population is getting that much goodness out of it, no real self-sustaining market like we have here. If the west stands strong nothing can touch us. China is gonna fall like everything that moves too fast takes only a tackle. If it doesn't we will probably only benefit from it.

How about themselves? With close to 1.7 billion people, with a little elbow grease they are their own international market.

How did the west do it? BY SELLING TO THEMSELVES!

**Fragony** · 04-14-2008, 15:42

Originally Posted by TuffStuffMcGruff

How about themselves? With close to 1.7 billion people, with a little elbow grease they are their own international market.

How did the west do it? BY SELLING TO THEMSELVES!

And that is why China has a problem, they can't. Cheap as their products may to us, to the average chinaman it's still a fortune, they are overstretching and they know it. The wild west in china is dirt-poor, and in the developed parts they already have a tv. Watchman is right but I expect it to collapse much sooner, they are running harder then their legs can carry them.

**ICantSpellDawg** · 04-14-2008, 15:47

Originally Posted by Fragony

And that is why China has a problem, they can't. Cheap as their products may to us, to the average chinaman it's still a fortune, they are overstretching and they know it. The wild west in china is dirt-poor, and in the developed parts they already have a tv. Watchman is right but I expect it to collapse much sooner, they are running harder then their legs can carry them.

So what is going to happen? The average Chinaman can't afford to buy products from anywhere else and will need the prices to go lower. The national economy will most likely oblige and such an action will cripple the west further. China has the means to really do a number here. There is no inevitable fall for them scheduled. If anything, we look closer to collapse.

I don't think that either will fall any time soon, but you can already see Asian markets rebounding while ours are still falling into the abyss. This suggests a more independently sustainable Asian market than we have previously known.

**Watchman** · 04-14-2008, 15:51

Originally Posted by TuffStuffMcGruff

So what is going to happen? The average Chinaman can't afford to buy products from anywhere else and will need the prices to go lower.

Well, the poor could always do with lower prices. Tends to be they have to settle to just not buying though.

When that starts including food, you get trouble big time.

**Vladimir** · 04-14-2008, 15:51

Originally Posted by Fragony

And that is why China has a problem, they can't. Cheap as their products may to us, to the average chinaman it's still a fortune, they are overstretching and they know it. The wild west in china is dirt-poor, and in the developed parts they already have a tv. Watchman is right but I expect it to collapse much sooner, they are running harder then their legs can carry them.

There is a lot of merit to that statement. Like a bee colony many are working themselves to exhaustion; very productive but short-term. Their labor conditions will have to dramatically change. Also since the Chinese government doesn't care about the local or global environment it's poisoning it's people at a greater rate to a greater extent every day.

OPEC is pricing itself out of business and if current oil prices are maintained or continue to rise, China will literally have a fossilized economy. Imagine if all the money spent to import energy was suddenly reinvested in domestic energy production.

**Watchman** · 04-14-2008, 16:05

Funny detail: manufacturing is also now starting to leave China and move into the few locales of cheaper labour stable enough to run a factory in... The "China effect" doesn't discriminate.

I actually recently heard a rather noted analyst observe the world's basically gradually running out of such pools of lower-cost labour to exploit; it's partly built into the system really...

**Fragony** · 04-14-2008, 16:20

Originally Posted by Watchman

Funny detail: manufacturing is also now starting to leave China and move into the few locales of cheaper labour stable enough to run a factory in... The "China effect" doesn't discriminate.

Ya to the philipines mostly. I wouldn't want to be the guy pretending to act for the collective. Here in the west we don't have that we believe in reprocacity by individuals, such a big country, so many problems, certain bye if you ask me.

edit, another thing I like to bring up, the buying Blitzkrieg of western stock, that sounds bad but in the end it forces them to play by our rules. They could drop the $-bomb but it would be like nuking theirselves. Suicide never was a sound survival strategy.

**Watchman** · 04-14-2008, 16:29

You wouldn't believe the rhetorical gymnastics the Chinese have came up with to explain how what's basically naked greedy capitalism is, supposedly, "in fact" Communism...

I don't think anyone there particularly cares about that being a very small and transparent fig leaf either, though. Going through the motions as it were.

**Quirinus** · 04-20-2008, 05:47

Oh, wow. I was laughing at this genius of a thread until I realised that you guys were serious.

Is the Daily Mail generally taken as legitimate journalism in the West? I was under the impression it was a tabloid rag.

**Watchman** · 04-14-2008, 15:48

Originally Posted by TuffStuffMcGruff

How about themselves? With close to 1.7 billion people, with a little elbow grease they are their own international market.

How did the west do it? BY SELLING TO THEMSELVES!

But that requires buying power. Which the majority of the Chinese, being kind of on the dirt poor side, don't have.

EDIT: Beat to it.

Anyway, as things go, China still has to import its higher-end military hardware (the last I heard the electronics and computers on their most up-to-date warship were French); and numbers mean remarkably little if geography and weapons technology gets in the way. It doesn't matter a jack that there's 1.7 billion mainland Chinese and, well, however many there now are Taiwanese, as long as the PLA has no credible means of getting to that island without the still quite primitive navy getting blown out of water. (You know the US sells Aegis-grade warships to Taiwan right ?) Nevermind now starting a war with the US and in all likelihood quite a few others it has no chance of winning...

Russia ? I may be kind of ramshackle but even then its gear is still at least a generation ahead China, plus it has lots of nukes. "Feeling lucky, punk?"

Plus as already repeated ad nauseum, Beijing has no shortage of domestic problems to deal with as is (Tibet, the Uighurs, socioeconomic shifts, corruption, pollution, gross domestic shortage of raw materials...) and has more coming down the road. God forbid should the Party for some reason start to "fail to deliver" on the economic growth to the appropriate important segments of society...