On November 03 2010 02:37 domovoi wrote: China and India are simply way too large in population to not be in top eventually. They simply need to raise living standards to the world average, which is feasible with the right infrastructure. If Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong can do it, so can China and India.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. While your argument is certainly logical and feasible, the big difference is Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and even Hong Kong are all capitalism-based societies. The pure inefficiency of capital allocation that goes hand-in-hand with communism will be a tough headwind for mainland China to overcome, even if they manage to not implode upon themselves.
o_O, you REALLY think mainland China is still a "communist" state? The authoritarian government calls itself communist, but there is almost nothing communist about its open-market policies. The sense of property ownership in China is as strong, if not stronger, than anywhere in the Western world.
You're right man. Nothing communist at all about their complete lack of private property rights, little respect for the rule of law (unless it is favorable to the government), and the masses of unnecessarily state-run enterprises crowding out what might be a thriving areas for private investment. Not to mention how capitalist their nepotism-based society is, when capitalism thrives on the concept of meritocracy (yes, there is tons of nepotism in US, that's not the point, it's all relative).
... You're trolling right? 1.) Where in the Chinese legal system is there a lack of property rights?
2.) When are there ever laws that are unfavorable to the government in any country? I understand that certain countries have a "Bill of Rights" that delineates the boundaries of government power on the individual, and China's general lack of protections for civil liberties is a valid criticism... But you're making an overly broad generalization that implies anarchy. And don't pretend that the United States has never infringed on civil liberties. I'm not saying the US does it on the same scale (though on a per capita basis, it is definitely comparable), but rather that your argument is completely irrelevant to whether or not the Chinese state is in fact a "communist state."
3.) Unnecessary state-run enterprises? Most of the enterprises that foreigners consider "state run" are not in fact state run, but privately run under a public charter. They are still motivated by economic optimization and are, in fact, profit-seeking entities. Analagous would be a U.S. government defense/space contract.
4.) Regarding nepotism, you even admit that it is also a big problem in the United States, and your only argument lies in the word "relative." Do you have any statistics supporting the "relative" prevalence of nepotism in either country? Even so, countries in Asia and much of Europe are a lot more "meritocratic" than US in terms of education being more directly correlated with the quality of jobs one can expect to get, and more specifically, in education itself, with entrance being determined almost entirely by academic performance as opposed to application padding.
Communism is an economic system that, as you say, determines capital allocation centrally rather than through the recursive self-optimal decision making that enforces free markets. China's economic policy is not consistent with that characterization except on the: 1.) City planning level. 2.) Foreign trade level.
Both of these "non free market" activities, however, are fully acceptable in American law (i.e. imminent domain cases/ Fed open-market-operations, respectively).
Again, the purpose of my post is not to argue qualitatively about whether China's system is "good" or "bad" but rather to clear up very obvious factual misconceptions that many people, who are not familiar with China, continue to believe as truth.
Knowing the nature of those who post so ignorantly, I highly doubt this post will even be read in its entirety, but since I still hold hope for humanity, I post this nonetheless.
You're welcome.
Oh boy. Here we go.
1) You're trolling right? China never even acknowledged the concept of an individual's right to own private property until their 2004 constitution. In 2007 they passed a law further defining the right to "own property" in China, yet is not really owning the property. The government still owns 100% of the land in China, people just own "land-use rights" with little legal recourse if the government decides that your house should be knocked down because it was obstructing the view from the home of some prominent government official.
You cannot compare this with any intellectual honesty to eminent domain in the USA. First, the ability to exercise eminent domain in the USA rests in the legislative branch which is by itself a check on its power that does not exist to any real degree in China. The government must be able to prove in court that the purpose for which the land was taken away was truly in the public interest and must meet various other requirements. Second, landowners in the USA receive fair-market compensation for their property, something impossible to do in a country without free private-land ownership markets. In China you get what the government decides to give you (if anything) with no recourse if you don't like it. There are many other considerations here, but since this is already going on too long, let it suffice to say that the statement "The sense of property ownership in China is as strong, if not stronger, than anywhere in the Western world" is absurdly laughable.
2) You refute your own point in attempting to refute mine. My original argument with this specific train of thought is to disprove the statement that China is a Capitalist society, not specifically to support the otherwise overwhelming evidence that they are indeed a communist society. You state yourself China lacks civil liberties, an essential ingredient for capitalism. Without civil liberties and the private property rights that go with them, you cannot have a functional capitalist system.
3) If you don't believe that the government has the final say on what goes on in their state-controlled companies than I don't know what to tell you.
4) So you attack my logic on the basis that it is 'relative' then proceed to make another relative comparison between two regions of the world completely unrelated to the topic of Chinese comparison to American capitalism. Nice.
"Do you have any statistics supporting the "relative" prevalence of nepotism in either country?" Yea, how about the fact that all the positions of power in China are determined by those already in power? That is about as nepotistic as it gets. This applies most obviously to political leadership, but is extremely prevalent in Chinese business structures as well.
In America, the citizens of the country determines who leads the country and a person's ability to add value to a company or organization determines whether or not they are hired. Why do you think America got its reputation as the land of opportunity? Why do you think Barack Obama is our president? Why do you think America has been and continues to be one of the most desirable places for aspiring immigrants. This is not meant as an ignorant "Go USA! We da Best!" chant, but more as anecdotal evidence of the meritocracy the country is built upon. Are you ever going to eliminate some rich guy's ability to hire his son and pay him a salary for next-to-useless work? No, that's his right to do so, but it is far less of an issue in America than it is in China.
The last issue I will address, as my motivation to continue writing decreases, is your comparison of the Fed's open market operation to China's currency manipulation. Purchasing your own government's securities for the purpose of setting the Federal Funds Rate in order to set Monetary Policy is not analogous to China's manipulation of foreign reserves to prevent their currency from floating on the open market. Making these kinds of claims is patently silly.
Ok, let us all agree China is a totalitarian, corrupt country.
And sure the government technically owns all the land, but leaseholds are still property interests and foreign investment would dry up if there wasn't some implicit or explicit guarantee of respect for property rights.
But the very fact that a lot of China's industry is owned by private persons and not the state makes it capitalist and not communist. Perhaps not as capitalist as the US, or Europe, or other rich East Asian nations, but certainly way beyond the Communist/Capitalist threshold.
Rubbish. The Chinese will suffer a reduction in exports and the loans will be worthless. Why would they want to do that to themselves? A weakening dollar is detrimental to the United States. How would you like it to go to a foreign country and they refuse to accept your american dollars cause they are worthless? Don't listen to morons that type garbage like that. There are already discussions in the rise of prices when you buy food in the next year if this continues.
We need more sound economic policies and americans need to take that job picking fruit or digging a ditch. I know I sure have when I couldn't find better work.
Mr. Dtown: Seeing as you do not actually make an effort to engage my points but merely offer "red herrings" or irrelevant, but plausible statements proves that it is a waste of my time to continue arguing with you, Mr. Dtown, since your entire point revolves around this faulty notion that authoritarian = communist. Are african dictatorships not capitalist? Of course they are.
Continue believing as you like, however, as I have wasted enough of my time trying to enlighten somebody who clearly has ulterior motives for his/her beliefs and who therefore does not want to be enlightened.
Edit: Screw this, Somebody on the internet is WRONG and it is my civic duty as a good American to make sure he/she is corrected! If in fact you are trolling, take my response as a token of headstrong kindness and blind optimism toward my country and its people.
After 50 years, the net value (as an accountant would mark it) in the Chinese case is just the market value of the property. In the American case, you've already spent at least 150% of your original property value, assuming you're in a state where property taxes are based on value at purchase and not market value prices... Which system is more "capitalist" in their protection of property rights?
Your argument comes down to an issue of the practical protections offered by the rights in the two countries, but rather their enforceability. In America, these property rights are protected by the interests of the 3 branches. In China, these property rights are protected by an authoritarian state. Considering both governments as firms that act in their own self-interest, I would *personally* not be too wary of the authoritarian state, since the prices it has paid for property used for the 3-gorges dam or the Olympics or the Shanghai Expo, has been significantly ABOVE market price. In fact, there were many speculators who bought property that they knew was about to be demolished just so that they could get some extra buck from the government's recompensation program. And as I was saying earlier, it's clearly in the government's best interest to keep a large number of citizens happy to avoid public destabilization, since they are the same officials, more or less, that would have to deal with any riots that would break out otherwise. In the case of America, the court's decisions would not have any realizable negative payoff in terms of the seizure of property. As far as the game theory analysis goes, the Chinese government has a much more personal interest in your not getting pissed in an eminent domain matter than the United States judicial system...
Additionally, the restrictions on free speech in China might be accurately described as "irrelevant" to the market. They will only go after you for statements that are destabilizing or that attack the government. I cannot think of any "free market communication of information" that is restricted by this particular lack of protections. If you can raise an example, I'd be glad to discuss it.
2.) Irrelevant statement still irrelevant. Communist /= authoritarian. This is just a simply incorrect warrant for your argument.
3.) Government has final say, everywhere, not just China. FDA, USDA, etc... And in this sense, which is not a good sense, China is far less hindered by government regulations than the US is. But insofar as the government's only role in a "free market society" should be to enforce contracts, China is closer to this model than the U.S.
4.) My "relative" notion is a systemic difference. Yes, in Europe and asian countries your exam scores very much determine whether you get into a top school. In America, this is simply not the case. In China, particularly, you get a score on the "Gao Kao" and you get maybe points amounting to 10-20% of your score if you are a minority or an athlete or whatever. The process is quantifiable and transparent. Is it fair? Maybe not, but that is meritocracy in its most quintessential form. But this is still irrelevant, because your original point still is completely unsubstantiated. You still have offered no evidence regarding the
And OOOs are _literally_ the same thing, albeit the objectives are different. There is, in macroeconomics, the notion of an "impossible triangle." The United States chooses to forego a fixed exchange rate, while China chooses to forego free capital flows. This reflects the state of the economies' respective developments rather than any communist vs. capitalist concern. It is in fact recommended practice by the IMF and world bank for developing economies to keep their exchange rates fixed, as developing economies are generally manufacturing/export oriented, with their growth heavily dependent on the stability of exchange rates.
And even if all that were somehow ignored, China officially changed its stance on fixed rate exchange rates in 2005, and despite a cursory glance at American political talking points, the value of the currency has appreciated significantly from 8.25 in 2005, to roughly 6.7 now.
You keep making arguments that say "China bad, America good" that in most cases are correct in a qualitative sense but that are completely irrelevant to the question at hand, which is whether China is a "communist" economy or a "free market" economy. Truth-being told all economies in the world are "mixed" economies. This is, in fact, econ 101, but even so far as the mixing goes, I would argue that China is as "free market" an economy, in practice, as one can find in the modern age.
On November 01 2010 11:44 ace246 wrote: One of the negative effects of globalisation is the import and export of culture ( source wikipedia). Hypothetically, if China was to become the leading superpower, then alot of the other countries that rely on China might become pro-communist and thats obviously not a good thing. So this commercial has some good side to it, that is, to preserve the ideals of democracy. Note i said hypothetical because this might not be the case, but could be.
That's obviously not a good thing? Why is that obviously not a good thing? You imply it's a bad thing, why is it bad?
Let's really sit down and think about this for a second. Pretend you're from another planet or something and don't know any history. If China is Communist, and China goes on to become the leading superpower, completely outpacing neo-liberal capitalist countries, how does this logically lead to Communism being bad? Ignoring, for the sake of argument, the fact that China's economy is not even purely Communist.
Let's not just spew empty McCarthyist rhetoric here, don't make the assumption that everyone in the discussion is from the same western propagandized background as yourself. Elaborate on why you would make such a bold claim as "that's obviously not a good thing". Let's see if you can throw together an argument here somehow not involving Stalin or Mao.
Yeah lets allow "the great firewall of china" to be implemented in other countries. I doubt the chinese people themselves feel satisfied about this. And im not gonna involve stalin or mao because they are too pathetic to for me to mention but also because its rather irrational to assume in this context that the past predicts the future. And i have to agree to some extent that china's economy is not communist (whatever happened to integrity).
On November 04 2010 16:39 ace246 wrote: Yeah lets allow "the great firewall of china" to be implemented in other countries. I doubt the chinese people themselves feel satisfied about this. And im not gonna involve stalin or mao because they are too pathetic to for me to mention but also because its rather irrational to assume in this context that the past predicts the future. And i have to agree to some extent that china's economy is not communist (whatever happened to integrity).
So basically when you said "pro-Communist", you really meant "pro-authoritarian single-party totalitarian government". Well, if that's what you meant, why didn't you just say that? Can't you see Communism and unitary authoritarianism are two entirely different and ideologically unrelated things?
And I'm afraid I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with your scare-mongering arguments regarding a country that has become increasingly liberalised since the 1980s.
China is hardly Communist anymore. If you have spent any time there at all, you would understand that there's a monstrous gap between the rich and the poor. Why do you think all those assaults on children earlier in the year happened? Some nutjobs got so jealous over people they had no chance of touching, so they decided to go after their kids.
There really has never been a pure Communist state in the world. Socialist, many, however they never really transition into communism. Most so-called communist countries are just authoritarian, one party states which oppress, if not kill, the workers who they claim to represent.
Sadly the problem with the point of that video is that if the USA goes down in flames, it drags down the entire world economic and political system with it. So there is no collapse of the empire, 'rome style'
However, it is actually very likely that the USA will follow a British descent from world hegemony for several reasons.
First is that China does actually own more than $9 Trillion of US debt, and a large proportion of US treasury bonds, so the US is more and more shackled to China. It will be significantly harder to control the exponential growth of China with economic bullying (such as happened in the 80's + 90's) when they have so much power over the US.
Secondly, In the History of world empires, there is published and tested geoplotical theories where things go in 100 year cycles (Kondratieff waves), where - cut short - one power will rise and decline in a cyclical nature. It has happened with Portugese (15-16th century), Spanish (16th-17th century) and British (18th-20th century, two cycles, many reasons), and the American cycle started off after WW2.
It also isn't mentioning that China holds over 90% of the world's 'rare earths' - mostly with the acquisition of Tibet. You can see the value of these when you consider that Japan recently traded nuclear power secrets with Vietnam in return for securing a supply of these minerals that are so essential in technological devices and high-level manufacturing.
The ad isn't racist, it's just stupid. It relies on stereotypes and misunderstandings to put a bogus point across - that China is eager to supplant America, and subjugate us to whatever degree possible.
In reality, the great bulk of the Chinese people have no reason to dislike the U.S., and, like most people, are much more concerned with their own affairs and station in society. The Chinese government and power-elite are the real problem - plutocrats fashioning their country into a belligerent proto-superpower to further increase their own wealth and power.
Come to think of it, China and the U.S. have a lot in common, don't they?
Pretty cheap propaganda I'd say. Although China's different marketing/currency system sure is screwing the rest of the world over, thats for sure. But its obvious something like this will never happen.
Off topic btw but what happened to that Chinese nobel prize winner? Is he still in prison?
On November 01 2010 01:51 Beef Noodles wrote: Yes, this is racist. Yes, this is only trying to scare Americans into voting republican -- which 1) is a horrible tactic and 2) no single American political party is responsible for the rise of China.
That being said, it IS pretty scary for Americans to see our country fall into so much debt. America is pretty clearly going to fall into the 2nd slot in terms of world powers. Unless China is lying out their economic growth, or their is a major civil rights movement/rebellion, China will surpass America rather quickly (not that either one of those senarios is extremely likely...).
In 50 years, I definitely see China playing the role that America played in the 70's, 80's, and 90's, but instead of using armed forces (like America did), they will be able to force countries into submission by threatening economic repercussions.
China has a near monopoly on cheap production capacity. This will not change over the next decade or so, because China is still experiencing the largest migration of people OF ALL TIME as rural Chinese peasants poor into the cities and drive down the cost of labor.
China will eventually see an increase in their standard of living as they experience more success, and their labor pool starts to dry up. When this happens, Chinese will start pushing for more rights, and we will see the development of a more liberal Chinese nation. Unfortunately, this will take quite some time given the following factors: 1) the power and conservatism of the Communist Party 2) the generally passive stance of the Chinese culture toward fighting for personal rights 3) the time it will take for the average Chinese standard of living to increase to a point where they start to demand more rights
Anyway, these are merely my thoughts after a year of examining Chinese economics, politics, and culture. I am not to worried as I think the Chinese will be very practical in their enforcement of power (as they have already shown to be). I only wish they already respected individual rights as much as America.
AS a Chinese ,i have to say,you are pretty intelligent.
I think the term everyone is trying to reach for here is crony capitalism. A link to wikipedia article might include some more enlightenment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism. This argument of communist/socialist/chinese flavor capitalism is just spin.
On November 01 2010 01:51 Beef Noodles wrote: Yes, this is racist. Yes, this is only trying to scare Americans into voting republican -- which 1) is a horrible tactic and 2) no single American political party is responsible for the rise of China.
That being said, it IS pretty scary for Americans to see our country fall into so much debt. America is pretty clearly going to fall into the 2nd slot in terms of world powers. Unless China is lying out their economic growth, or their is a major civil rights movement/rebellion, China will surpass America rather quickly (not that either one of those senarios is extremely likely...).
In 50 years, I definitely see China playing the role that America played in the 70's, 80's, and 90's, but instead of using armed forces (like America did), they will be able to force countries into submission by threatening economic repercussions.
China has a near monopoly on cheap production capacity. This will not change over the next decade or so, because China is still experiencing the largest migration of people OF ALL TIME as rural Chinese peasants poor into the cities and drive down the cost of labor.
China will eventually see an increase in their standard of living as they experience more success, and their labor pool starts to dry up. When this happens, Chinese will start pushing for more rights, and we will see the development of a more liberal Chinese nation. Unfortunately, this will take quite some time given the following factors: 1) the power and conservatism of the Communist Party 2) the generally passive stance of the Chinese culture toward fighting for personal rights 3) the time it will take for the average Chinese standard of living to increase to a point where they start to demand more rights
Anyway, these are merely my thoughts after a year of examining Chinese economics, politics, and culture. I am not to worried as I think the Chinese will be very practical in their enforcement of power (as they have already shown to be). I only wish they already respected individual rights as much as America.
AS a Chinese ,i have to say,you are pretty intelligent.