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Soviet Collapse Echoes in China’s Belt and Road

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Re: Soviet Collapse Echoes in China’s Belt and Road

#41

Post by bogomipz »

logicx24 wrote: post #20
kiliantics wrote: post #7

Were the West Indies productive before the ports and sugar plantations? Was India productive before its railways were built? Something smells of anti-China propaganda in this highly speculative piece.

India had the world's largest GDP under the Mughals and had continued positive growth, but by the end of the British Raj, was facing stagnant population growth and actually reduced agricultural productivity. So contrary to everything you're saying, India was not only productive before the British, it was actually worsened by Britain's exploitation.

>"India had the world's largest GDP under the Mughals and had continued positive growth."

Do you have a citation for this? For the entire 300 years of the Mughal Empire? How accurate would that information even have been in say the early part of 16th century?

Re: Soviet Collapse Echoes in China’s Belt and Road

#42

Post by taobility »

rgbrenner wrote: post #32
taobility wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

according this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War , the direct spending of DoD on Iraq war is about $757.8 billion, do you think most of that spending on the labor?

I think to look at any particular war and ask that question leads to an inaccurate answer... since there are years of prep work, training, research, etc that the military conducts, then in a short period of time they expend equipment, munitions, etc during a war. But consider, the cost of labor effects everything the military does... Everyone in the entire chain commands a higher wage than they would in China/Russia,…

I agree part of your point. But you forgot another huge difference that, US has involved lots of wars in the past three decades, but China didn't, which spend trillion dollars, either on labor or not, but that money just wasted without any outcoming. You can check out what Jack Ma commented about this in World Economic Forum 2017: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/jack-ma-america-has-w...

Re: Soviet Collapse Echoes in China’s Belt and Road

#43

Post by fspeech »

duxup wrote: post #39
Barrin92 wrote: post #28

I don't see any justification for the Soviet analogy other than wanting to conjure up the image of the impending collapse of China. This sounds like the infrastructure version of the 'financial bubble' prediction that crops up every other year. If one wanted to pick a positive story there would be the example of the American progressive era, the creation of the interstate system, the railway system during the 19th ce…

I think the main point was that the Chinese investment seems to at times fly in the face of where trade really is / is going. The us interstate system was where there was trade already and not many alternate routes / better systems. China's strategic concers are obvious and make sense...and yet if push came to shove and they were cut off from the sea, are they really trading via rail with Europe or others in that sce…

No it doesn't make sense to expect rail to replace sea, however the article failed to note that the Yiwu-Europe rail link is over existing rails and there was very little infrastructure investment other than inland port facilities. The major drive was on the software side -- making trains going through multiple countries less cumbersome. Whatever happens to the BRI the Yiwu-European rail certainly is not to going to be the one to break the bank.

Re: Soviet Collapse Echoes in China’s Belt and Road

#44

Post by seanmcdirmid »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #35
Barrin92 wrote: post #28

I don't see any justification for the Soviet analogy other than wanting to conjure up the image of the impending collapse of China. This sounds like the infrastructure version of the 'financial bubble' prediction that crops up every other year. If one wanted to pick a positive story there would be the example of the American progressive era, the creation of the interstate system, the railway system during the 19th ce…

The comparison to Soviet Union is problematic but definitely more relevant than US investment scenarios that you highlighted. The US scenario you highlighted would be more comparable to Chinese investment in the last 25 years, no? The clear difference between Soviet Union and China is that China has a growing and robust economy, with a firm grip on the situation whereas the Soviet Union was aching away on so many lie…

There are more booms to be found in China, for sure. But corrections/recessions/crashes are needed to wash out the bad elements so the better ones can thrive.

The party has stated they can do this on their own, but given that their families' control of large parts of the economy has become a huge part of the problem they are unwilling to manage (which would have been hard anyways).

Re: Soviet Collapse Echoes in China’s Belt and Road

#45

Post by nickserv »

lwf wrote: post #30
spacehome wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really hard to get a precise number of how much money we spend on military. The budget for the military is snuck into other line items and obscures the true cost. For instance the VA is not included, even though we only need the VA due to having veterans. And the costs for nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants are included in the Department of Energy's budget.

The VA is a weird case — if we had comprehensive medical coverage for all Americans, the because-of-military costs would only be those incurred due to care for wounded veterans. I believe that's a minority of the VA's expenditures, but sometimes it is hard to separate. For example, my grandfather receives a hearing aid from the VA — is that because of too much time spent around jet planes, or just due to age?

It's not uncommon in countries with comprehensive health care for veterans to receive additional benefits (even for non combat/service related injuries).

But you're right that much of the VA could be replaced with a national system.

Re: Soviet Collapse Echoes in China’s Belt and Road

#46

Post by seanmcdirmid »

spacehome wrote: post #25
rgbrenner wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was with you on the first sentence.. but where did you get 7.8%? We only spend 3.5%. [Edit: World bank puts it at 3.1: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locat... ] And according to the military, most of this higher than average spending is due to the military being voluntary, and needing to compete on wages in one of the highest earning countries in the world. Whether you agree with the militar…

It's really hard to get a precise number of how much money we spend on military. The budget for the military is snuck into other line items and obscures the true cost. For instance the VA is not included, even though we only need the VA due to having veterans. And the costs for nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants are included in the Department of Energy's budget.

> It's really hard to get a precise number of how much money we spend on military.

Not as hard as it is to get a precise number on much money China spends on its military.

China's soldier support spending is pretty significant as well, probably much more so than the US.

Re: Soviet Collapse Echoes in China’s Belt and Road

#47

Post by seanmcdirmid »

kyrieeschaton wrote: post #18

Meanwhile, the USA will dump 1 trillion dollars at a time on things like the Obama stimulus to apparently no effect, a decade of massive subsidies to an insolvent financial sector, billions of dollars on failed school districts... China might overpay, eventually, if they actually invest their claimed amount of money (doubtful), but they do appear to at least get a road when they pay for a road.

> the USA will dump 1 trillion dollars at a time on things like the Obama stimulus to apparently no effect

What? The economy recovered, it could have gotten much more worse if Obama did nothing. Even Bush realized that, whatever became Obama's stimulus was planned before Obama took office, and passed with bipartisan support. It only became a whipping boy later because the Republicans saw and took the political opportunity.

> but they do appear to at least get a road when they pay for a road.

Yes, but the villages who live on the road probably can't pay the high tolls to use it.

Re: Soviet Collapse Echoes in China’s Belt and Road

#48

Post by Gibbon1 »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #35
Barrin92 wrote: post #28

I don't see any justification for the Soviet analogy other than wanting to conjure up the image of the impending collapse of China. This sounds like the infrastructure version of the 'financial bubble' prediction that crops up every other year. If one wanted to pick a positive story there would be the example of the American progressive era, the creation of the interstate system, the railway system during the 19th ce…

The comparison to Soviet Union is problematic but definitely more relevant than US investment scenarios that you highlighted. The US scenario you highlighted would be more comparable to Chinese investment in the last 25 years, no? The clear difference between Soviet Union and China is that China has a growing and robust economy, with a firm grip on the situation whereas the Soviet Union was aching away on so many lie…

> Chinese fabricated financials can be papered over with any kind of magic the state wants to apply to it - so long as the economy continues to move forward the numbers will say anything they want them to say.

My feeling is business people and economists are upset that China utterly refuses to follow neoliberal economic polices. Preferring instead to follow old school Keynesian policies. Policy makers thus view China as economically in a state of sin.

Typically countries that try to follow Keynesian economic policies get hammered by western central banks and monetary institutions. However China is way both too large to be 'punished' like that and has iron fisted control of it's own currency. That leaves western and in particular US monetary authorities powerless to do anything.

Hence the constant butthurt blather for the last 30 years that that Chinese expansion only has 5 more years left before it collapses.

Notable: In 2008 the US and Europe followed neoliberal austerity policies to make sure that the banks and paper wealth were made whole. Resulting in a very slow recovery and increasing poverty and political blow back. China responded by building the worlds largest high speed rail network.

Re: Soviet Collapse Echoes in China’s Belt and Road

#49

Post by yostrovs »

duxup wrote: post #38

>In the 1950s, the Soviet economy grew faster than that of any other major country barring Japan. I'd like to read more about what was happening then, was it largely military investment?

So much destruction post 1940s coupled with slave labor (local political prisoners and German prisoners of war) leads to roads and steel plants being built quickly. The population though lived on near nothing till the 60s.

Re: Soviet Collapse Echoes in China’s Belt and Road

#50

Post by rileyphone »

Fjolsvith wrote: post #40
lwf wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The VA is a weird case — if we had comprehensive medical coverage for all Americans, the because-of-military costs would only be those incurred due to care for wounded veterans. I believe that's a minority of the VA's expenditures, but sometimes it is hard to separate. For example, my grandfather receives a hearing aid from the VA — is that because of too much time spent around jet planes, or just due to age?

He probably receives a hearing aid from the VA because he was in the military, irregardless of how he lost his hearing.

The point they are raising is whether that's a negative externality of the military - had he not been in the military, would that hearing aide not have been needed.
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