A Growing Chinese Confidence
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
bladerunner
Banned Idiot
Well maybe one day I'll choose something different , such as "Reviving values of an egalitarian society""
While suggesting that the West takes itself far too seriously when they feel they have the moral right in directing such comments about "human rights" at China, Mrs F/China, takes the said comments far too seriously as well. Who doesn't know that it's nothing but empty rhetoric, theirs and China's responses are respectively played out for their respective population back home.
She could have been as dismissive of such comments as the ones made by the West against China's handling of An Wei Wei. Actually I think the CCP of the old days never tooks comments directed at them by the West, lying down.
RE Martin Jacques
A true professional person who did not let his personal tragedy at the hands of the Hong Kong medical environment ( )
get in the way of presenting a pretty interesting objective viewpoint on China's destiny .However while he does not believe that China will behave in the same aggressive and bellicose manner as that of the West, he does suggest it will develop its own feeling of superiority.
solarz
Brigadier
I don't think an interview in English is aimed at the Chinese population back home.
Certainly, the Chinese government's position has always been to play down or censor the West's criticisms of China. It says something that US politicians need to "act tough" in order to play to their audience back home, while Chinese politicians don't.
Hopefully this doesn't come across as anti american or overly pro chinese -- it's an interesting what if scenario which we might even post in this thread in a few decades...
Posted by Emporer over on CDF first.
Here's the write up the article talks about:
Not sure how realistic a few of the scenarios and comparisons seem to be, but it's an interesting read nevertheless.
-----
Warning that America could face its very own Suez crisis
Lessons from when Britain was forced to abandon its pretensions of international power in 1956 could be echoed soon, with China asserting its global dominance
MONITOR
Tom Holland
Aug 31, 2011
The September edition of Foreign Affairs magazine carries an essay entitled "The inevitable superpower: why China's dominance is a sure thing".
Written by Arvind Subramanian, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute in Washington, the article asserts that China is poised not just to catch up with the United States, but utterly to eclipse America as the world's leading economic and geopolitical power.
Over the next two decades, Subramanian argues, China's share of global economic output will climb to 20 per cent, while America's will slump to less than 15 per cent.
What's more, by 2030 China will generate more than twice as much international trade as the US.
"By 2030," writes Subramanian, "relative US decline will have yielded not a multipolar world but a near-unipolar one dominated by China".
There is plenty in Subramanian's projections with which you could argue, not least his assumption that China will be able to sidestep the middle income trap and maintain a rapid 7 per cent average annual growth rate over the next 20 years.
But the most interesting thing about Subramanian's essay is not his belief that China will surpass the US as an economic power, but just how he sees a weakened America losing its geopolitical crown.
The United States, he believes, may be heading for its very own version of the 1956 Suez crisis, in which Britain was forced to abandon its remaining pretensions of international power.
The crisis was precipitated by Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser's decision in July 1956 to nationalise the Suez Canal, which since 1888 had been controlled by the British.
Outraged by what he saw as a threat to Britain's vital trade routes, as well as its international prestige, prime minister Anthony Eden ordered Britain's military to reassert control of the canal by force, which it duly did in November 1956.
The military operation went smoothly enough. But for Britain the crisis precipitated by its seizure of the Suez canal was not military but financial. At the time Britain, like other countries, maintained a fixed exchange rate against the US dollar, with the pound pegged at US$2.80.
Following Britain's seizure of the canal, however, the pound came under heavy selling pressure in the foreign exchange market.
And the Bank of England found itself rapidly selling off its reserves in an attempt to preserve the currency's exchange rate against the US dollar.
By December the situation was unsustainable. Running out of foreign reserves, Britain would either have to go cap in hand to the International Monetary Fund for an emergency loan or be forced to devalue the pound. Devaluation wasn't an option. The government feared any reduction in the value of the pound would simply prompt mass sales of the currency by Britain's former imperial possessions, whose foreign reserves were held in pounds. That would be an economic catastrophe.
But to secure a payout from the IMF, Britain would need to command a majority of votes on the fund's executive board - impossible without American support.
And that wasn't likely. US president Dwight Eisenhower had been infuriated by Britain's seizure of the Suez Canal just days before the US presidential election.
Aggrieved, US officials made it clear to Britain's chancellor of the Exchequer Harold Macmillan that he would get no financial assistance unless Britain declared a ceasefire and agreed to withdraw from the canal zone.
Faced with the threat of a financial disaster, the British government backed down and pulled its forces out of Suez. It was the end of Britain's delusions of international power.
Before long, believes Subramanian, the US could find itself facing its own version of the Suez crisis, only with China playing the role of Eisenhower's America.
He imagines a time, not too many years from now, when China could deploy its economic and financial muscle to force a US military withdrawal from Asia and the Pacific.
At a time of geopolitical tension, Beijing could begin selling down some of its holdings of US Treasury debt. That would not only put the US dollar under pressure, it would scare off lenders, driving the interest rates paid by a heavily indebted US government sharply higher.
Just like Greece or Portugal in recent months, the US would be forced to turn to the IMF for emergency funding to avert a default.
But like Britain in 1956, the US could find that IMF cash comes with political conditions. China, by then the IMF's largest contributor and a benefactor to many of its members, could "easily" block the US request for funds, argues Subramanian, unless, say, the US agreed to withdraw its naval forces from the Asian side of the Pacific.
Facing economic calamity, the US would have little choice but to comply. It would be America's Suez moment, sealing its demise as a global player and confirming China's status as the world's sole economic and geopolitical super-power.
Looking back on 1956, Britain's Harold Macmillan described the Suez crisis as "the last gasp of a declining power", adding that, "perhaps in 200 years the United States would know how we felt".
If Subramanian is right, it could be a lot less than 200 years.
Posted by Emporer over on CDF first.
Here's the write up the article talks about:
Not sure how realistic a few of the scenarios and comparisons seem to be, but it's an interesting read nevertheless.
-----
Warning that America could face its very own Suez crisis
Lessons from when Britain was forced to abandon its pretensions of international power in 1956 could be echoed soon, with China asserting its global dominance
MONITOR
Tom Holland
Aug 31, 2011
The September edition of Foreign Affairs magazine carries an essay entitled "The inevitable superpower: why China's dominance is a sure thing".
Written by Arvind Subramanian, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute in Washington, the article asserts that China is poised not just to catch up with the United States, but utterly to eclipse America as the world's leading economic and geopolitical power.
Over the next two decades, Subramanian argues, China's share of global economic output will climb to 20 per cent, while America's will slump to less than 15 per cent.
What's more, by 2030 China will generate more than twice as much international trade as the US.
"By 2030," writes Subramanian, "relative US decline will have yielded not a multipolar world but a near-unipolar one dominated by China".
There is plenty in Subramanian's projections with which you could argue, not least his assumption that China will be able to sidestep the middle income trap and maintain a rapid 7 per cent average annual growth rate over the next 20 years.
But the most interesting thing about Subramanian's essay is not his belief that China will surpass the US as an economic power, but just how he sees a weakened America losing its geopolitical crown.
The United States, he believes, may be heading for its very own version of the 1956 Suez crisis, in which Britain was forced to abandon its remaining pretensions of international power.
The crisis was precipitated by Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser's decision in July 1956 to nationalise the Suez Canal, which since 1888 had been controlled by the British.
Outraged by what he saw as a threat to Britain's vital trade routes, as well as its international prestige, prime minister Anthony Eden ordered Britain's military to reassert control of the canal by force, which it duly did in November 1956.
The military operation went smoothly enough. But for Britain the crisis precipitated by its seizure of the Suez canal was not military but financial. At the time Britain, like other countries, maintained a fixed exchange rate against the US dollar, with the pound pegged at US$2.80.
Following Britain's seizure of the canal, however, the pound came under heavy selling pressure in the foreign exchange market.
And the Bank of England found itself rapidly selling off its reserves in an attempt to preserve the currency's exchange rate against the US dollar.
By December the situation was unsustainable. Running out of foreign reserves, Britain would either have to go cap in hand to the International Monetary Fund for an emergency loan or be forced to devalue the pound. Devaluation wasn't an option. The government feared any reduction in the value of the pound would simply prompt mass sales of the currency by Britain's former imperial possessions, whose foreign reserves were held in pounds. That would be an economic catastrophe.
But to secure a payout from the IMF, Britain would need to command a majority of votes on the fund's executive board - impossible without American support.
And that wasn't likely. US president Dwight Eisenhower had been infuriated by Britain's seizure of the Suez Canal just days before the US presidential election.
Aggrieved, US officials made it clear to Britain's chancellor of the Exchequer Harold Macmillan that he would get no financial assistance unless Britain declared a ceasefire and agreed to withdraw from the canal zone.
Faced with the threat of a financial disaster, the British government backed down and pulled its forces out of Suez. It was the end of Britain's delusions of international power.
Before long, believes Subramanian, the US could find itself facing its own version of the Suez crisis, only with China playing the role of Eisenhower's America.
He imagines a time, not too many years from now, when China could deploy its economic and financial muscle to force a US military withdrawal from Asia and the Pacific.
At a time of geopolitical tension, Beijing could begin selling down some of its holdings of US Treasury debt. That would not only put the US dollar under pressure, it would scare off lenders, driving the interest rates paid by a heavily indebted US government sharply higher.
Just like Greece or Portugal in recent months, the US would be forced to turn to the IMF for emergency funding to avert a default.
But like Britain in 1956, the US could find that IMF cash comes with political conditions. China, by then the IMF's largest contributor and a benefactor to many of its members, could "easily" block the US request for funds, argues Subramanian, unless, say, the US agreed to withdraw its naval forces from the Asian side of the Pacific.
Facing economic calamity, the US would have little choice but to comply. It would be America's Suez moment, sealing its demise as a global player and confirming China's status as the world's sole economic and geopolitical super-power.
Looking back on 1956, Britain's Harold Macmillan described the Suez crisis as "the last gasp of a declining power", adding that, "perhaps in 200 years the United States would know how we felt".
If Subramanian is right, it could be a lot less than 200 years.
Last edited:
Red___Sword
Junior Member
I don't think that, if it took less than 100 years for America to feel "what the UK felt" at "the last gasp of a declining power.", as of POWER SHIFTING, China, with her own time-tested wisdom, would happy to step in into the same shoese which UK and USA have had, (if at all), and enjoy to be a superpower, like, what, even shorter than USA (if any) and Soviet?
"Superpower" is just a custom made shoe by the current superpower, for the would-be-challenger. - Sorry, Chinese people knows a similar story called 紧箍咒, try harder.
I'm not sure China will quite take on the mantle of a military superpower but it will certainly be capable of doing so and will definitely cement its place as an, if not the world's economic superpower in coming decades.
I think the writer isn't saying China will be the world's hegemon like US and UK in past decades and centuries where military power was as common as economic/political, but China will rely on the latter two more than the former. With this in mind China will definitely be throwing its weight around in future when it needs to. We can already start to see this now.
I think the writer isn't saying China will be the world's hegemon like US and UK in past decades and centuries where military power was as common as economic/political, but China will rely on the latter two more than the former. With this in mind China will definitely be throwing its weight around in future when it needs to. We can already start to see this now.
I'm going to read that pdf. But I remember that crisis. The excuse of the British government was that Egypt would be unable to operate the canal, it's pilots would be incompetent. By very astutely blocking the canal with sunken ships, as they did again during the seven days war, the Egyptians made it impossible for the British to operate the canal better than Egypt did. It took a year and a half to reopen the canal.
It might be worthwhile for many of our members to read up on this episode, especially the special role of Israel in this debacle.
One conclusion: The British government must have felt as if it had stepped on a rake and got hit in the face.
It might be worthwhile for many of our members to read up on this episode, especially the special role of Israel in this debacle.
One conclusion: The British government must have felt as if it had stepped on a rake and got hit in the face.
Last edited:
Subramanian talks when he mentioned public debt only about the debt of the Federal Government. But the debt of the states and lower governments is also very large and don't forget the large amount of delayed maintenance to civil infrastructure, dams, roads, bridges &c, for which these authorities are responsible. Remember the failure of a large road bridge last year (?) when several people in cars died. The financial situation of the US is now worse than he describes it.
Subramaniam's account leaves out not only Israel, but also France. And there was a little bit more "muscle" involved, in my recollection, than mere voting in the IMF.
The US eclipsed Britain as a the worlds maritime power, in the course of WWII, because of its navy. Economically, it was stronger already at the end of the 19th century. But Subramaniam needs to rewrite this story as one of 'financial combat'. Otherwise, how can you paint China as a threat, with only one aircraft carrier?
It's interesting that this type of fiction appears in Foreign Affairs, and written by a "senior fellow" at the Peterson Institute. So who does the real thinking for American foreign policy???
The US eclipsed Britain as a the worlds maritime power, in the course of WWII, because of its navy. Economically, it was stronger already at the end of the 19th century. But Subramaniam needs to rewrite this story as one of 'financial combat'. Otherwise, how can you paint China as a threat, with only one aircraft carrier?
It's interesting that this type of fiction appears in Foreign Affairs, and written by a "senior fellow" at the Peterson Institute. So who does the real thinking for American foreign policy???