On democracy.
I’m dubious it exists anywhere. It’s greatest patron defender, the US is an outright plutocracy, or rule of the elite – with a song and dance pop music democracy -
On China –
Hardly the winners – the US is playing a game of global economic conquest, systematically securing the world’s oil, through which they may soon be able to math-manage economic development just about anywhere –
The China isn’t the ‘outright winner’ – unless they develop alternative power sources.
They’ve already got power shortages.

Re: War – seems the triumphant defenders of Truth Justice and the American Way prevail – look forward to giant war marches, and soaring Republican ratings.

Keep an eye on Venezuela and Indonesia…

“China will be lucky if the country doesn’t boil down into revolution and chaos. They have no money, they have no infrastructure they have no credit.”

1- China will be lucky if it DOES boil down into revolution and chaos!
2- America is not in much better standing. It’s money is virtual and dwindling, it’s infrastrucutre is corrupt and it’s about to have it’s credit rating severly marred.

Cheers.

I think some of you China drum-thumpers ought to have a closer look at the Chinese economy. Frontline, the PBS series, recently aired an episode entitled “China in the Red”. You may be able to find it on their web site, or a re-run.

From the description of China’s economy from that episode, I would neither invest money in China, nor worry about a so-called “competing superpower”. The Chinese economy seems to be in such dire straits, corruption, pollution and human rights abuses being the rule, not the exception. Most American industrial areas (think Long Beach, if you’ve ever seen it) seem like National Parks compared to the environmental damage caused by industry in China.

China will be lucky if the country doesn’t boil down into revolution and chaos. They have no money, they have no infrastructure they have no credit.

It doesn’t matter what we think of China. They are emerging as an economic super power. There was already more capital flowing into China than US in 2002.

Bush is pushing the US deficit up and at the same time shutting down innovation through the support of re-monopolization of most industries, instilling fear where courage is needed and all round being a retro kind of leader. So we are going to have this huge deficit, a sluggish economy and a world who generally dislikes our government.

Who will loan us the money to pay for our deficit. In the past our deficits were carried by loans (treasury bills and such) bought by foriegn countires. Why will they do that again? Why won’t they put more of their capital into China which has much more growth than the US?

This will make the cost of the Bush Deficit even higher and slow the growth of the US economy even further. This could set up a cycle where the US will fall further behind and China further ahead. And this doesn’t even take into account the Bush Adminstration’s faith based anti-scientific attitude that is driving biotech researchs from the US and into China and India. (Biotech will probably be the next big technology growth area).

Scof, what the world needs is not a counterweight to the U.S. That’s a wrongheaded notion. You might as well argue that we need to introduce cancer cells into our bodies as counterweights to healthy living cells.

What the world needs is a recognition that all totalitarian regimes are illegitimate, have no right to exist, and need to be assertively brought to an end and replaced with democracies. It’s time to stop allowing the sovereignty of the countries these thugs rule to stand in the way of the spread of democracy.

Today China pointing out US human rights abuses. It’d laughable if not for the serious subject matter, but they are trying to act as a counterweight.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/east/04/03/china.rights.reut/index.html

“consider how you may feel when China holds the position”

maybe you would feel like an Iraqi feels now.

Oil war: 23 years in the making – consider this link when pondering whether China really benefits from the Iraq war. China is reported to be low on strategic oil reserves. The folks at newamericancentury.org haven’t forgotten about China as strategic competitor. With things settling down in Europe, and the pacification of the Middle East, more U.S. forces will be relocated to the SouthEast-Asia theater. The first Gulf War was said to have put a big fear into the Chinese military leadership, dismayed at the total failure of Soviet style weaponry and tactics before the U.S. military onslaught. After that first adventure in Iraq, two Chinese colonels wrote a white paper called “Unrestricted Warfare”, in which they advocate that “there are no rules, nothing is forbidden” when fighting against an overwhelmingly technologically advanced opponent (i.e., the U.S.) If the U.S. pulls victory out of the weakening jaws of the a very well executed Stalinist style defense by the Iraqi leadership, then perhaps there will be a revision to that Chinese strategy. (Not to over bash on the Chinese – my wife is from Xi’an, actually, but widely under reported is the amount of assistance that China has given to Iraq in constructing fiber optic communication systems that were designed to survive U.S. bombing. And we also saw the one successful missile attack on Kuwait city, thanks to a Chinese anti-shipping missile. I’m sure there has been some military advice available to Iraq from China as well, though I don’t know if the Iraqi leadership would listen to it.)

Anyway, I understand from reading the “Rebuilding Americas Defenses” report that one of the hoped for outcomes of this daring grab to secure a “Pax Americana” for the next 100 years is to exert pressure on countries like China to opt more for continued democratic and economic reform to increase their standing in the world, rather than militaristic adventures. Leave those to the U.S.

I can’t say I’m entirely opposed to this arrogant and daring strategy, though it is definitey “fraught with peril”

the PRC of China as a “balancing superpower” to the US? What wacky weed have some of you been SMOKING? That is the worst idea since promulgating Stalin as a balancing power to the US. After all the Chinese government has done recently to block websites, lie and obfuscate about SARS is there really anybody who thinks the world would actually be safer with a greater Chinese influence? If so, maybe you need to spend some time in a Chinese prison camp doing forced labor and then maybe you’ll get a grip. Sheesh, what a blatantly stupid idea…

There are also reasons why US will gain economically because of the war and why China (and India) will gain strategically. US is dropping bombs worth $100 billion on Iraq, so the reconstruction will also be much higher than that. Maybe Bush hoped that the sudden surge of work at Iraq would boost the economy and set the stocks at a higher level.
Ok, now china (Also India) will gain strategically because of the war as they can now argue that they can be more proactive in their actions towards Taiwan (Pakistan). What US has been saying to India till now was to solve the matter by mutual dialogue. India is in a position to push up the tensions with Pakistan and bomb all the militant camps in Pakistan.
We have to wait and see to find out who actually gains more from this war.