evelynds

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/wo...a/18china.html

Short: no one in China is allowed to have a website anymore.

From today, only incorporated businesses [aka government fronts ... since the majority of China's SMB's are not formally registered] are allowed to operate websites.

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stan100

Take the title of the article and google it, click from there. NYT will show the article to Google-referred traffic.

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evelynds

FT.com / UK - Beijing tightens its grip on the internet

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WickedJoe

Good. The more China acts like this the more
- American Businesses will move away from there, bringing back some manufacturing
- People will continue to realize the American dollar is still the best reserve currency
- China will become less of an economic threat to the US

Ideally

ThatSwissIMGuy

LOL sure. Well except that since your debt is so huge the fed has to monetize and drive up inflation like crazy just to keep up with interest payments.

WickedJoe

Sure but other countries sins are often much worse. The question is, what reserve currency do you propose? Gold backed currency might be a solution, but I doubt it will happen whether it's a good solution or not. You have to get the countries and politicians to accept it first.

ThatSwissIMGuy

The Euro as the major currency in combination with basket of Yen, GBP and USD.

That way the reserve currency isn't relying on one country. Using a new reserve currency will be mostly decided in the market and not in politics. Once everyone starts switching the politicians will follow.

turbolapp

Nah The China superpower Juggernaut won't slowdown. All this will do is make sure our our eyes are wide open when we slam into it.

Dispel

lol China is no economic threat to the US. They are totally and completely on America's dick. Without the US exports market they would pretty much deteriorate to within an inch of civil fucking war. 200 million starving peasants get a bit pissy.

As their foreign minister candidly said when he was in New York last year: "We hate you guys but there is nothing we can do about it, our economy depends on yours."

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Dispel

Japan's debt is MORE THEN TWICE that of the US as a % of their GDP (about 190%) and Japan could (and will) implode at any moment now that their population is rapidly shrinking and they've entered another - now irrecoverable - period of deflation. And the UK's financial situation is also far worse than that of the US.

Shit, even if you tried that, US dollar capitalisation dwarfs the others into irrelevancy.

Thats before we even get into the geopolitics of the situation.

Its US dollars for a long time to come whether you like it or not.

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Businessman26

China and India are growing and set to catch up with the US in 20**, watch this to know when exactly :

http://www.youtube.com/user/tedtalks...18/fiK5-oAaeUs

ThatSwissIMGuy

You are right but only showing one side of the coin. If China goes down, so does the US. China owns about 23% of US foreign debt and Japan another 21%. If they go down and pull out their money, they might crash and burn but so will the US. If you don't count mutual destruction, then yes, China is no threat.

evelynds

Two pieces of intel from my side;

# China's proxy industry is as large [and sophisticated] as America's webhosting industry.

# With these reforms... growth becomes exponential.

Last year, top bracket providers boasted records with 400k+ customers at an average PPI (Price Per IP) of €3.X/mo with their monthly CPI (Cost Per IP) around €1.8...

Figuratively speaking, today's reforms double their potential reach several times.

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Dispel

Nice video and some good points. But.

Firstly he is only showing they will catch up in life expectancy and average income. This does not translate into actual power on the world stage. Even when you take into account population.

And he is using Japan as a litmus test to compare India and China against. Japan is extremely different from those two. For example its culture is extremely homogenous. There is little internal division, hence they project their power outward and have been able to develop so fast. Even besides that though - why did he not use South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia??

But he already said what will prevent his extrapolation from playing out - internal division in China and India.

Thats if they avoid war. Pakistan vs India? Its pretty much inevitable. No to mention the 10 or so insurgencies/independence movements India is currently dealing with. Kashmir? The Sikhs? The huge Naxalite army? Amman? The border skirmishes with China? The current exodus of Tamil Tigers into Tamil territories in India? The constant subversion by the Pakistani and the Balgladeshi intelligence services? All these things take up too much bandwidth for India to really move forward on the world stage. No to mention the saturation of the political landscape with backward looking Socialist and Nationalist movements.

And China - IF they were able to transition to a Western style economy they could have a chance... but that transition would tear them apart. It would require a degree of freedom that would have to allow the Tibetans and Xin Xiang Muslims and other minorities become untolerably vocal. And there is the colossal task or spreading the wealth - all the wealth has been gained in the resource rich coastal areas, hardly anything has penetrated into the poor inland areas.
The Chinese economy is a strawman, overheated to sustain growth. It is overheated because the government instructed banks to give out loans at ridiculously cheap rates. What this means is that businesses did not need to really perform as they would in the West - they get free money from the banks! (Japan did the same thing, result - their 20 years of recession, because they cant allow real reform). Those chickens will eventually come hope to roost, as these businesses start to fail and defaulting on their loans. Its already happening. The Chinese government reckon they need to maintain 8% annual growth to maintain internal stability! This year they've just fall below that. Lets see what happens.
And there is so much more.. Energy for example.. The Chinese dont have any of their own and depend on sea access to Middle EAst. The other option is Central Asia - but here they meet the Russians. Then there is the competion between China/Korea/Japan over the seas, the disputed territories, Taiwan, North Korea etc etc The US simply has no such problems to hamstring it. Not to mention it basically owns the world's oceans and is 2 generations ahead militarily and has projection power that is several heads above the competion.


The video is the typical ramblings of an economist. But only one part of the picture, only taking into account a small subset of variables. Geopolitics and internal cohision (or lack therefore) put limits on the true trajectory - you cant just extrapolate in a straight line, history just doesn't work like that. Japan flew for 30 years, then platowed for the last 20 and is heading down. Same thing will happen with China and India, for similar and different reasons.

/rant
damn, gotta get back to work. its hard on a Friday night, feels like I should be out somewhere

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Dispel

Well, I didn't say China will go down, I think they will more kind of plateau out. Japan is likely to go down hard though. Foreign debt at 190% of GDP, interest rates at below 1% (cant stimulate economy by lowering them further), a shrinking population, growth that maneuvres between 1 and -1%, more and more frequent periods of deflation, aging population, shrinking exports (western recession). There is just no recovery from that.
China does not have those kind of problems.

Of course Japan imploding economically would fuck the global economy hard, although its a lot more decoupled from Japan than it was 10-20 years ago, as foreign investors have been slowly taking their business elsewhere. It would probably be much worse than what happened with this financial crisis. Possibly the biggest threat to the global economy in the next 10-20 years. The only positive is their huge reserves of foreign currency (biggest in the world, I think). And their culture and cultural confidence.
The Chinese have pretty large reserves too.

But were this to happen... who in the world would recover fastest and still be the strongest? The US. In the long run in would only intrench US dominance.

Btw, the assumption that if they were in trouble the Chinese and Japanese would take their investment out of the US is entirely false. In times of trouble they would hide away their investment in the US - because it would STILL be the world's safest place to invest, especially if their own economies collapse.
Whichever ways things swing, the US wins, even though from the inside it always looks like its about to take a nosedive - thats an illusion, in part a by-product of the apparent chaos that a western democratic system gives the appearance of.

/rant2

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Businessman26

listening to you dispel is really Depressing, you only see the dark side of the picture, i agree that the guy is somehow "optimistic", but you on the other side are definitely over pessimistic, to be the great nation that it is now, the US succeeded in overcoming Two World wars, Civil wars, Great depressions and loads of other crap, what makes you think that INDIA and China will not be able to overcome their problems ?

also you assume that the US is doing great and will still be doing just fine by 2048, but the reality is that the US is going down too, a failing education system, a crumbling infrastructure, soaring health care costs, lagging productivity, a huge national debt, a large trade deficit, and an anemic rate of economic growth.

if history can teach us anything, it's that no Empire or Power in the World can dominate forever.

Allegro

I hope the "USA IS BETTER THAN CHINA FUCKERS" shouter know that China owns roughly a third to a half of ALL american debts. And they are able to pull the trigger at any given time "YO OBAMA I HEARD YOU DONT LIKE MY NEW BACKUP CURRENCY PLANS? GOODBYE DOLLAR!". Boom nosedive. Of course that would be bad for their own economy too since they rely on the dollar to trade internationally, but the threat is there nevertheless.

Dispel

The threat of what, China committing collective suicide? Dont be an idiot.

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Dispel

Well sure, a couple of civil wars each, wipe out Pakistan, take back Taiwan, eliminate competition in the South China Sea, wrestle control of Central Asia
away from the Russians, plus a bit more 'house cleaning' and yes, they could be on the way to a glorious future. Fer real!

Jokes aside, in the end it actually comes down to geography. You just don't get it.

All these things... compared to where and what?? Of course its not doing great. But its adversaries are cripples and an ocean away. Its not going to be brought down by its 'failing' education (ironically a growing underclass = cheap labour pool), health care costs etc etc. Lagging productivity? The US is no place to be making cars anymore, realize that move on. Blah. The sky is falling my arse.


By no means am I saying the US will dominate forever. Yet it will for decades to come if for no other reason then lack of worthy adversary.

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cryptix

Waiting on Hellblazer and Popeye and Guerilla?

tick, tick. tick, tick.

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Businessman26

For some Strange reason, DISPEL reminds me of this guy:



and it has been almost 20 years since i forgot about the Smurfs.

Thrawn$

the US dollars is now backed by the supremacy of the american army, the debt may be huge but america can take over the country they want and they actually do it, so the us dollar is still and will continue to be valuable

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WickedJoe

True dat.

Also Dispel is probably right about geography. I'm not 100% sure how he's meaning it but the way I'm seeing it is that geographically we're a nice secure bank. We have very few access points for rogue countries or even terrorist groups. Meanwhile Europe, Asia, and Africa are all up in each others faces.

Maybe there will never be another world-wide conflict but if there is Europe and Asia always burn to the ground first. The old world has tons of smaller countries with very bitter histories. We have none of that.

Sure you see American cinema where we berate ourselves for some sins against Indians, racism, etc. But the hate, racism, crimes, and sins of the old world dwarf anything found in the new world. And that hate is much stronger than it is here.. you just dont see it in the movies because we make most the movies.

Then we have the fact that our population sizes have remained fairly sane. Meanwhile, I don't know WTF is going on in some of these countries like China and India. Seems like bad socio-economic conditions in those countries could cause a humanitarian disaster. And that sort of thing can spill over into adjacent countries. How hard is it to wear a fucking condom for fucks sake.

And we still have a ton of resources and after we invade Canada we'll have even more.

Businessman26

if it all comes down to geography like Dispel claims, then why is his country, Australia not dominating the world already? unlike any other country in the world, they have a whole continent just for themselves.

Dispel

WJ, you've heard of China's one-child policy right? Their population is about to start shrinking, as the pre-1-child generation ages and dies away. India will overtake them in 15-25 years.

You're totally right about the old world racism though. Just look at what happened when Yugoslavia broke up.

And you're about the geography, although thats half the story. Security and resources yes and also huge advantages for trade - the massive shorelines, access to the Atlantic and the Pacific, huge secure harbours, massive river systems, all these tings facilitate trade. An example of the opposite is Russia - the economy is always at a massive disatvantage - only a couple of decent ports and all their major rivers flow into the Arctic, which is useless. Then the roads freeze over in winter and their borders are indefensible - nice big plains that everyone just waltzes across - the Northern European plane for example, with Napolean and the Germans (3 times) hitting across it. The Mongols from the other end. This is why the Russians are always paranoid, always pushing out their borders to create borders. And why they always revert to totalitarian central control - its the only thing that can hold it together when travel and trade from one end to the other is so diffilult. The US has unique in the world in that it does not have its problems, since the wars of centuries past. That plus its free market is what made it so strong.

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WickedJoe

Because everyone knows Australia is just a big penal colony.

Dispel

I meant it comes down to geography in the competition between the countries discussed above - US, India, China. Also read my last post - it explains what I mean by the importance of geography, which should make Australia's imperfect position clear.

Taking what I explained into account, Australia's geography has the following drawbacks - its far away from the world's economic hot spots. Its ports are further away still. It is also mostly desert, so travel (and thus trade) internally is restricted. Only the coastal areas can support large populations and are good for agriculture. Technically it may as well be a series of islands, not one big one (plus Tasmania etc). It does have security though. Its resources are decent for its size and its population, but thats actually its main drawback - a population of 20 million can barely swing it on the world stage. Its economy can only grow so large and its military power can never be significant with a population that size. Power is a combination of the economic, political and military.
If it had the population of say Japan, with the same per capita income (distributed as evenly among the vast majority) it would be far far more powerful.

But yes, Australia is one of the few countries I consider to have a reasonably bright future for decades to come. Island nations especially with big homogenous and internally stable populations always have that advantage - like Japan and the UK. Living on an island also creates a confidant culture and islands are so much harder to invade. Again, consider the terminally paranoid Russians at the opposite end of the scale.

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shaqball

I agree when people start dumping their US currency in large amounts the politicians will have no choice. I notice a lot of people are buying gold and silver also (mostly silver my circle can't afford to buy gold at its price).

WickedJoe

Dollas Up
Golds Down
When feds raise interest Gold will crash even harder.

Long live the NWO!

FerrisHilton

Lack of arable land and oil reserves.

popeye

You would think that events like this would turn the Maoist in the Obama admin. away from their socialist/communist idealology.

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HarveyJ

Don't forget that if we really wanted to, we could be the dominant nuclear power, as Australia has over 60% of all known fissile material reserves, and could basically say we're starting a nuclear program and not let any one have any of our shit.
It's a good thing that our country was founded and run by bureaucrats that just wanted to sit back and take it easy, and that we prefer being relatively peaceful on a national level, because we don't have issues about our gigantic penises that are large enough for their own cork hats.

Seriously though, it does come down entirely to the fact that whilst Australia is huge and has plenty of resources, we have SFA in terms of arable land, and lose more of it annually. But if globalized trade and travel did suddenly break down, we'd probably be ok as we have still have a local manufacturing base for a lot of essentials and even some of the more advanced electronics.

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