Peaceful conquest

Post Reply New Topic

An article in today's New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/busin ... ml?_r=1&hp indicates that China is using its newly acquired technological expertise and it's cheap manpower to take over a section of the solar power industry. Obama had proclaimed that green power was a field ripe for US industrial development but the people in power in government in the USA have lagged considerably in providing government funds for support of this relatively young and not terribly profitable industry. The technology and labor situation has permitted China to ravage a good deal of US industry which seems to have concentrated a good deal of its genius and wealth on the basically useless military end of things which makes wonderful death technology but provides relatively little in the direction of general public benefit. China seems to have grasped the conquest concept from a different angle and is rapidly becoming a world power by using ts new wealth and industrial competence and very able population to gain control of those elements of the economy that underlie all productivity while the USA is pissing away its power fighting insurgents in countries with no cultural future at all. I applaud the spread of green power but am not happy about the totalitarian Chinese government.

The U.S. is really I think wasting way more time with both sides of the court taking the political dialog further off its base, one talking about what it can give people and the other wanting to return to old fashion economic values supposedly while not cracking down hard enough on speculators and the idea of a service-based economy. The U.S. is falling apart more from its own trajectory in that sense that's been evolving ever since the Great Depression and WWII.

China though, I have my doubts. They're relatively landlocked. Geography as strange as it sounds is everything. China can gain some economic progress and prosperity on its boarders with the sea, then it causes too much political discord, then they have to withdraw, then they start it back up again. Everything else in China is landlocked and the cheapest mode of transportation - water - is thousands of miles away for many places in China. They may have a billion able workers but the governments ability and will to educate a large enough workforce to compete in the marketplace is lacking and - the more it becomes first world the more it will seem to fall victim to the same problems of America which is exporting its manufacturing to the third world which would end up helping to unravel them at the same time.

Another map which is probably more fair to China but may also go well beyond utilizable water routes:

Hmm, four to one (licks his finger and puts it in the air) - yep, I'm wrong. It's been fun.

is this not a false dichotomy? I thought that a great deal of China's industrial development was funded by western and US capital (at least in terms of the nationality of the citizens possessing it). And if it is threatening to outstrip the US, China's comparative weakness militarily will inevitably tell when the fighting over market share reaches the level of proxy wars.

If it is US capital in China then I think it's more likely that they'll ally American capital + Chinese workforce - and militarily. Labour is far cheaper in China and there is astronomically more potential for profitable investment in Chinese industry than American or European. I'd have thought you were more likely to see a China/US vs. Europe/Russia/Brazil state of affairs. I doubt the US government would let a little problem like Taiwan get in the way of things.