Asia China's growing influence

[yebiga]

What is the source of that graph?

I read something along these lines a few years back in the economist
And last week zerohedge had a similar article
In this instance I simply googled gdp timeline across centuries

Have a look There are quite a few graphs showing similar trends

 

[Mofra]

I watched a European symposium recently - the panel included senior euro diplomats. They expressed concern that they are being forced by the USA to choose between supporting the USA and or Russia/China

That would genuinely be a difficult choice for the Europeans - Germany as the manufacturing superpower of western Europe relies heavily on Russian energy sources, hence their silence when Putin resurrected Soviet era buffer state strategy.

Germany and Russia need each other more than either of them need the US, the USD status as the reserve currency notwithstanding (and we're a Saudi revolution from that process starting to fall as well). A transfer from commodity pricing to the Pound wouldn't be difficult noting the importance of the LME and bulk commodities traded outside of the LME generally have their price set by the first large FOB contract of the trading season which can be priced in Yuan e/g/ Iron Ore from Australia and Brazil.

 

[yebiga]

That would genuinely be a difficult choice for the Europeans - Germany as the manufacturing superpower of western Europe relies heavily on Russian energy sources, hence their silence when Putin resurrected Soviet era buffer state strategy.

Germany and Russia need each other more than either of them need the US, the USD status as the reserve currency notwithstanding (and we're a Saudi revolution from that process starting to fall as well). A transfer from commodity pricing to the Pound wouldn't be difficult noting the importance of the LME and bulk commodities traded outside of the LME generally have their price set by the first large FOB contract of the trading season which can be priced in Yuan e/g/ Iron Ore from Australia and Brazil.

In the middle of reading a book re China - just wow
I’m not sure the general western public has even an inkling of how powerful they are becoming. The metrics on any conceivable level are staggering.

 

[Mofra]

In the middle of reading a book re China - just wow
I’m not sure the general western public has even an inkling of how powerful they are becoming. The metrics on any conceivable level are staggering.

Book title? Interested to read more

 

[yebiga]

Book title? Interested to read more

China is communist, damn it!
Author something Brown

Bit of a love song to China - and an anti western rant but even allowing for that - it presents a version we never hear and can not easily refute.

 

[Mofra]

China is communist, damn it!
Author something Brown

Bit of a love song to China - and an anti western rant but even allowing for that - it presents a version we never hear and can not easily refute.

Nothing wrong with reading an opinion from a different viewpoint.
Cheers.

 

[smokingjacket]

China’s trillion-dollar sharp power play
https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/c...oject-changing-the-world-20180618-p4zm4k.html

The Belt Road Initiative (BRI) is about railways, ports, roads, pipelines, power stations, industrial parks – and much more. It’s a trade bloc revolving around China. It’s rules and standards written by Chinese companies; economic cooperation zones, financial regulation, high-speed internet, direct investment. It’s about education, culture, health, aid, tourism, foreign relations and politics.

Misses a few things in the "why?" section IMO, but a really good primer on the BRI or OBOR.

 

[smokingjacket]

China’s new aircraft carrier is in for repairs — and its project manager faces corruption charges
https://www.news.com.au/technology/...m_campaign=EditorialSF&utm_source=News.com.au

Story about failures in the Chinese aircraft carrier program. Hard to say if the problems are genuinely due to skimming on contracts - would certainly be ironic if the flagship carrier of the Chinese fleet had compromised Chinese steel problems - could be corruption as a euphemism for failing his task. It's not unheard of for ships of this size to have teething problems, particularly when its the first build. With a planned operations date of 2020, I'm sure they're not panicking but it's not a great start to their first build and highlights some of the ongoing problems of business in China. You still can't rely 100% on things getting done cleanly. Everything comes with a level of graft and/or substitution, even the nations first aircraft carrier.

 

[smokingjacket]

The US withdrawal from the UNHRC is perfect for Xi Jinping and China
https://www.theguardian.com/world/c...the-unhrc-is-perfect-for-xi-jinping-and-china

This story is a good example of the earlier discussion about the US under Trump withdrawing from the institutions it created post WWII and how China is filling that withdrawal with its own values.

Quitting the UNHRC won’t make it disappear. It opens a leadership vacancy that China is happy to fill. The Trump administration has stepped back to allow China the space to dominate the council unchallenged and advance its agenda to redefine human rights after the “China model.”
...
Outside the council chamber, China has deployed procedural and budget rules to “wage war” on UN human rights bodies, with tactics ranging from cutting funding for UN offices, blocking NGOs from receiving accreditation, all the way down to attempts to block individual activists from UN buildings in New York.

It is willing to take extreme measures. Chinese activist Cao Shunli died in detention in 2014 after being denied medical care because she tried to attend a council session and speak out about human rights abuses. China reacted angrily when NGOs tried to hold a moment of silence for Cao at the council. China’s behaviour at the UN is anything but rules-based, and this is just a taste of what’s to come.
...
Xi Jinping may say that China will be a “keeper of the international order,” but what he means is that it will keep the exterior of the institutions but get rid of the protection for human rights inside.

 

[Mofra]

^ This demonstrates the US foreign policy failings of the past decades quite well.

Leave a power vacuum, then look surprised when it is filled by someone you didn't want filling it.

See Iran, Iraq 2.0 (after sending the entire Iraqi army home unemployed with their weapons, armed and angry), Afghanistan, South America in the 70s when Friedman's Chicago Schoolers ran amok, the Arab Spring, etc etc.

 

[smokingjacket]

^ This demonstrates the US foreign policy failings of the past decades quite well.

Leave a power vacuum, then look surprised when it is filled by someone you didn't want filling it.

See Iran, Iraq 2.0 (after sending the entire Iraqi army home unemployed with their weapons, armed and angry), Afghanistan, South America in the 70s when Friedman's Chicago Schoolers ran amok, the Arab Spring, etc etc.

The most common thing you hear ex-foreign policy staffers coming out of the White House saying is that the US doesn't have that many levers to control things as they assumed going into office, or at least there are way to many variables to control with the levers available. The recent Ben Rhodes book touches on this a little bit.

They've developed some extremely effective non-violent and violent techniques for removing threats and governments they don't like but after Iraq everyone seems to have given up on trying to stabilise a country.

 

[Brunswick Trap King]

^ This demonstrates the US foreign policy failings of the past decades quite well.

Leave a power vacuum, then look surprised when it is filled by someone you didn't want filling it.

See Iran, Iraq 2.0 (after sending the entire Iraqi army home unemployed with their weapons, armed and angry), Afghanistan, South America in the 70s when Friedman's Chicago Schoolers ran amok, the Arab Spring, etc etc.

If it wasn't so devastating, it'd be quite humorous. Especially when you consider that the US mainstream media often play the ineptitude card when discussing the latest US calamity. 'Oh, we accidentally dropped a bomb on that hospital, whereas the Russians did it intentionally.'

Despite that, their attempts at labelling US decisions as inept rather than calculated then ignores the fact that their calculated decisions are still inept. They're just inept in a way that the US never predicts.

 

[Nuggs Bunny]

^ This demonstrates the US foreign policy failings of the past decades quite well.

Leave a power vacuum, then look surprised when it is filled by someone you didn't want filling it.

See Iran, Iraq 2.0 (after sending the entire Iraqi army home unemployed with their weapons, armed and angry), Afghanistan, South America in the 70s when Friedman's Chicago Schoolers ran amok, the Arab Spring, etc etc.

The United States' global influence was always going to turn out to be impossible to maintain when the cold war dust settled and no minnow country felt the need to choose between two superpowers anymore. The last few Presidents before Trump have been progressively shedding the deadweight of maintaining a presence in South America, Africa and the Middle East in that order; all nations of token importance to China and Russia. The real mistakes have only started recently; Trump prioritizing peace with a loud but harmless hermit kingdom over maintaining a relationship with SK and Japan will almost certainly backfire on the US when it comes to trade and a failure to keep the EU as a relatively united front against Russia will also have consequences.

I'm amazed that for all the hardline talk that Trump carried into the election, his response to the rapidly growing confidence of two autocratic great powers is to pretend that they just don't exist.

It's a flawed policy, but it is much better than the ideological alternative which is isolationism. WW2 was so long ago that people have forgotten that war can and will break out when a country has enough confidence that no other will hold it responsible for it's actions.

 

[Seeds]

^ This demonstrates the US foreign policy failings of the past decades quite well.

Leave a power vacuum, then look surprised when it is filled by someone you didn't want filling it.

See Iran, Iraq 2.0 (after sending the entire Iraqi army home unemployed with their weapons, armed and angry), Afghanistan, South America in the 70s when Friedman's Chicago Schoolers ran amok, the Arab Spring, etc etc.

where exactly are you getting your history from? Friedman schoolers only had influence on economic policy and nothing else. And their policies saved chile from the hyperinflation fate that plagued most other sth american countries in the eighties. I hate the chicago school but seriously give credit where credit is due. They were a massive success story and the other things that happened in that country was nothing to do with them.

 

[Ned_Flanders]

where exactly are you getting your history from? Friedman schoolers only had influence on economic policy and nothing else. And their policies saved chile from the hyperinflation fate that plagued most other sth american countries in the eighties. I hate the chicago school but seriously give credit where credit is due. They were a massive success story and the other things that happened in that country was nothing to do with them.

The benefit that they had for local chileans can be argued. Yes inflation was controlled, but at what price. GDP growth that was non existent for a decade, and below other south american nations. Negative wage growth for over a decade. Unemployment between 10-20% for over a decade.

Yes, foreign investors and the elite got their return on investment, but local workers got the pointy end of a 14 inch strap on

As for "the other things", they knew what was.going on, and continued to support Pinochet. At a bare minimum, that makes them complicit

 

[Mofra]

where exactly are you getting your history from? Friedman schoolers only had influence on economic policy and nothing else. And their policies saved chile from the hyperinflation fate that plagued most other sth american countries in the eighties. I hate the chicago school but seriously give credit where credit is due. They were a massive success story and the other things that happened in that country was nothing to do with them.

I'm a big fan of Amartya Sen's work (in multiple fields), including his work on South Amercia. Klein also outlines the strong ties very well in a more tabloid sense (Shock Doctrine).
The spike in unemployment of Pinechet's dictatorship hurt as many as it helped - inequality soared and many have argued the banking crisis of the early 80s (Pinochet had been in power for 10 years by that point) was as big a crisis as any Chile faced during the 70s - except by that stage human rights were non-existant for large swathes of the population.

 

[Seeds]

I'm a big fan of Amartya Sen's work (in multiple fields), including his work on South Amercia. Klein also outlines the strong ties very well in a more tabloid sense (Shock Doctrine).
The spike in unemployment of Pinechet's dictatorship hurt as many as it helped - inequality soared and many have argued the banking crisis of the early 80s (Pinochet had been in power for 10 years by that point) was as big a crisis as any Chile faced during the 70s - except by that stage human rights were non-existant for large swathes of the population.

Most economists today suggest the crisis in the eighties was largely caused by the decision to fix the exchange rate in 1979. which was not what the chicago school advocated. They advocated the opposite in fact. Pinochet implemented some of their policies but not all of them.

Note I am not an advocate of the chicago school as a lot of the problems in todays society have been created by the simplified neoclassical view advocated by the chicago school. But the chicago school certainly did help the Pinochet government fix some of the problems that plagued Chile and many other latin american countries such as high inflation, low productivity created by inefficient state run enterprises and external debt.

 

[smokingjacket]

There’s a lot about China threat in the media at the moment, this speech from Bob Carr provides an alternative argument. Interesting to balance the Australian national interest debate.

 

[Brunswick Trap King]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-06/chinese-hackers-infilitrate-anu-it-systems/9951210?pfm=ms

'Hackers based in China have infiltrated one of Australia's most prestigious universities, and the threat is yet to be shut down.

The ABC has been told the Australian National University (ANU) system was first compromised last year.

In a statement, the ANU said it had been working with intelligence agencies for several months to minimise the impact of the threat.'

We really are China's bitches. After all the Russian haxor shit, surely this deserves some more coverage.

 

[smokingjacket]

It's extra interesting herculez09 because the Chinese have sent out all of their ambassadors recently to repeat three messages, there's nothing wrong, China hasn't done anything, and Australia is racist.

“I don’t think China wants to interfere in another country’s internal affairs – it is China’s policy not to interfere in other countries’ affairs and to oppose other countries’ efforts to meddle in China’s internal affairs.

“The Chinese government probably feels particularly upset when the Australian media claim the Chinese government has a plan to influence Australian politics.

https://www.acbr.com.au/myths-misinformation-plague-australia-china-relationship

This position is increasingly difficult to maintain in the face of all evidence.

 

[Brunswick Trap King]

It's extra interesting herculez09 because the Chinese have sent out all of their ambassadors recently to repeat three messages, there's nothing wrong, China hasn't done anything, and Australia is racist.


https://www.acbr.com.au/myths-misinformation-plague-australia-china-relationship

This position is increasingly difficult to maintain in the face of all evidence.

LOL what a quote. It gets ****ing tiring listening to Asian nations cry racist at Australia e.g. the Philippines in the recent assault saga.

From the article I read on Reddit, someone suggested that they've heard of a number of Chinese nationals being expelled from universities for what was tantamount to espionage yet our politicians are still happily accepting their money.

Honestly, with all the Russian hysteria, I'm surprised that this is still basically ignored by our media.

 

[smokingjacket]

LOL what a quote. It gets ******* tiring listening to Asian nations cry racist at Australia e.g. the Philippines in the recent assault saga.

From the article I read on Reddit, someone suggested that they've heard of a number of Chinese nationals being expelled from universities for what was tantamount to espionage yet our politicians are still happily accepting their money.

Honestly, with all the Russian hysteria, I'm surprised that this is still basically ignored by our media.

Behold, the ultimate Chinese "West is racist" story that contains all the tropes and a few others. Would be interesting to do the numbers on whether Chinese people feel the many Africans in China can be Chinese.
Australia’s paranoia over China smacks of racism
http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1108494.shtml

However, white people no longer enjoy their superior status today. Racial and ethnic diversity is taking place across the globe.

Quite a few people of color are becoming elites in an increasing number of areas while many whites can barely make a living even with the help of their governments' subsidy program. It's time for them to quit living in their imagination. Otherwise, their perceived supremacy will only lead to the denigration of their race, and in Australia's case, a destitute future.

Obvious answer is obvious. China is a country so racist, even their anti-racism propaganda contains racism. Take this globaltimes piece where the author says, you should respect us and treat us as equals because our "race" has risen to the levels of elites in your own country and your own "race" is inferior.

 

[Brunswick Trap King]

Behold, the ultimate Chinese "West is racist" story that contains all the tropes and a few others. Would be interesting to do the numbers on whether Chinese people feel the many Africans in China can be Chinese.
Australia’s paranoia over China smacks of racism
http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1108494.shtml



Obvious answer is obvious. China is a country so racist, even their anti-racism propaganda contains racism. Take this globaltimes piece where the author says, you should respect us and treat us as equals because our "race" has risen to the levels of elites in your own country and your own "race" is inferior.

It's only a matter of time until China claims Africa on the basis of historical rights.

If racism is predicated on power, doesn't their article suggest we can't be racist anymore?

I have virtually no Chinese friends. How does their propaganda hold up once Chinese nationals come to Australia? Does the Chinese supremacy remain?

 

[smokingjacket]

It's only a matter of time until China claims Africa on the basis of historical rights.

If racism is predicated on power, doesn't their article suggest we can't be racist anymore?

I have virtually no Chinese friends. How does their propaganda hold up once Chinese nationals come to Australia? Does the Chinese supremacy remain?

I'm not close to any mainland communities here either but my experience has been that it depends on when they came here and their social class.

 

[smokingjacket]

Australia’s China reset
https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2018/august/1533045600/john-garnaut/australia-s-china-reset

New piece from the Monthly, not behind a paywall. One of the best pieces on the Australian response to Chinese influence written so far. Helps that the author was very inside the shop, but also a long memory of Chinese politics. Not a blow in to the topic.