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Can China Turn the Middle of Nowhere into the Center of the World Economy?

nytimes.com

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Re: Can China Turn the Middle of Nowhere into the Center of the World Economy?

#61

Post by Pharmakon »

yourbandsucks wrote: post #54
forkLding wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The global hegemony is still being maintained, there still is 800 US military bases around the world despite those in Afghanistan and several in the Middle East being shut down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military... https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/us-military-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_oversea...

Could've said the same thing about the British Empire in 1946.

Not really, no. There is a difference between conquering a country and forging an agreement to build a base. The U.S. form of influence, while still questionable in its morality, is a lot less intrusive. For all that America gets a bad rap for subverting world culture, it’s largly the case that it’s the result of selling people things they want, including movies, music, food, etc. for all that the French rant about American Imperialism, they still like McDonald’s fries.

The Brits tried to crush the cultures of their conquered nations through violence and forced indoctrination. If you want to compare that to something in American history, see the treatment of natives. Today there is no real comparison. That’s not to excuse the many downsides of the current U.S. system, but comparing it to the British empire is facetious.

Re: Can China Turn the Middle of Nowhere into the Center of the World Economy?

#62

Post by entity345 »

bassman9000 wrote: post #57
ajmurmann wrote: post #15

This reminds me of Zbigniew Brzezinski's The Grant Chessboard. It describes how the US secured its empire. China is not only building for economic growth but also building up valuable relationships and influence. Also keep in mind that one of Rome's greatest military innovations might have been its roads. Meanwhile the US is seems to be played by everyone from the outside and tearing itself apart from the inside. It…

US economic hegemony will last as long as they retain the strongest Navy, by a huge margin, and world commerce veins remain to be the oceans and seas. Which, unless blimps take over soon, will be until the advent of the space elevator.

The military buys you political influence.

Economic power (and that also buys you political influence) comes from the size of the economy. The size of the economy enables military power.

China (and India) have 4x the US' population. China's land area is the same as the US'. It's simply a matter of time for them to be more powerful economically than the US, and then it's really up to them to also topple the US militarily.

Re: Can China Turn the Middle of Nowhere into the Center of the World Economy?

#63

Post by allemagne »

malandrew wrote: post #40
allemagne wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're criticizing this article as though it was intended to be groundbreaking and authoritative, and then expand your criticisms to the entire New York Times and an entire profession. That may or may not be a fair assessment, but I'm not really convinced. This is a New York Times Magazine article with flashy pictures. It's entertainment for people who are interested in geopolitics. It's not Ben Mauk's fault that he'…

> It's entertainment for people who are interested in geopolitics. And that's the crux of the problem. This entertainment geopolitics is no longer confined to just places like the NYTimes magazine. It has basically blended in with all "journalism" today because it's great for engagement. In the best case scenario, the hallmarks of good journalism like informing the reader with facts and being impartial are mere after…

Is the issue the content itself, or an expectation that any given human writing any given article should be considered an absolute source of truth?

Again, I think it would be really valuable to point out the facts or "spin" that the author got wrong here. Please do this if you have an issue with the article not being impartial or getting facts wrong.

Re: Can China Turn the Middle of Nowhere into the Center of the World Economy?

#64

Post by allemagne »

Joe-Z wrote: post #37
allemagne wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're criticizing this article as though it was intended to be groundbreaking and authoritative, and then expand your criticisms to the entire New York Times and an entire profession. That may or may not be a fair assessment, but I'm not really convinced. This is a New York Times Magazine article with flashy pictures. It's entertainment for people who are interested in geopolitics. It's not Ben Mauk's fault that he'…

>Unless you can expand on why this piece is "propaganda" or what exactly the article got wrong, why not enjoy the piece (or not) as a travel diary with the BRI as a broad geopolitical context? Because it does not market itself as such. It makes some bold claim to answer a question that's probably interesting to a lot of people follwing BRI-developments. Instead it's 'I've visited the Kazakhstan-China border and talke…

I might agree that it isn't marketing itself as such if it wasn't written in the style of a first-person narrative, have "New York Times Magazine" banner across the top, and didn't have panoramic pictures every few paragraphs.

I don't know about you, but I react a lot differently to information presented in that format as opposed to something like this: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/business/china-foreign-po...

Re: Can China Turn the Middle of Nowhere into the Center of the World Economy?

#65

Post by hopler »

whatshisface wrote: post #12
mac01021 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why _do_ people go there, and why don't you think Chinese developers can replicate that?

Dubai is fueled by oil money, something that China doesn't have a lot of (relative to their population size). You can explain a lot by looking at the oil money to population ratio of various polities. The ebb and flow of the balance sheets of Texas, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Venezuela and Norway all have a lot to do with the price of oil and their local production. In many places around the world, successful socialism mea…

Curse of Natural Resources

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

Re: Can China Turn the Middle of Nowhere into the Center of the World Economy?

#66

Post by yourbandsucks »

Pharmakon wrote: post #61
yourbandsucks wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could've said the same thing about the British Empire in 1946.

Not really, no. There is a difference between conquering a country and forging an agreement to build a base. The U.S. form of influence, while still questionable in its morality, is a lot less intrusive. For all that America gets a bad rap for subverting world culture, it’s largly the case that it’s the result of selling people things they want, including movies, music, food, etc. for all that the French rant about A…

This thread isn't about morality, it's about decline. I was comparing the state of American hegemony to that of Britain in 1946.

Re: Can China Turn the Middle of Nowhere into the Center of the World Economy?

#67

Post by Retric »

mc32 wrote: post #60
Retric wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s mostly surface talk. They invaded fewer countries than the US has, sticking mostly to supporting rebellion. The US and Europe squashed home grown communism mostly through things like social security, unemployment insurance, and a helping of good old propaganda. Yet, we where suckered into fighting ideology on foreign soil with military force. I don’t think it was obvious at the time, but going forward we need…

I think you’re missing some history there.

Such as?

Korean War can be viewed North Korea as a separate country attacking South Korea, or a civil war. But, Vietnam war (including invasion of Cambodia) and a host of South American wars where much more clearly started as civil wars with Forein support not really invasions.

PS: Afghanistan is something of a wash with the US also invading the country.

Re: Can China Turn the Middle of Nowhere into the Center of the World Economy?

#68

Post by isostatic »

magduf wrote: post #35
mensetmanusman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. lost claim to leadership with Vietnam, and then doubled down with Iraq. It is common in history for the most powerful leaders to mess things up. It is the cycle of life.

Yep, every powerful nation or empire in the past has collapsed or faded in significance after some time. The question is, in our case, will it be a rapid collapse or a slow fade (like the British empire), and when?

British empire was a rapid collapse. From really starting in the 16th century it reached a peak in 1945 -- nearly 400 years. It collapsed within 20

Rome by comparison took 700 years to grow, and 200-plus to collapse

Re: Can China Turn the Middle of Nowhere into the Center of the World Economy?

#69

Post by seanmcdirmid »

siffland wrote: post #30
ksdale wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could have said the same thing about China 50 years ago. Places aren’t appropriate for investment until they are, and then the change that can take place is staggering.

I agree, the disdain China has for the US and the Tiawan issues and other factors are causing this administration to do some crazy things (it will probably change in 2 years when elections are held again in the U.S.). I mean we (U.S. citizens) are being advised not to travel to China for risk of being detained and prevented from leaving the country (I mean they execute drug traffickers from Canada, pretty harsh). I d…

India has a lot of built-in hostility to overseas investment, especially in manufacturing. The reason software took off before anything else is largely because it avoided that hostility (and even then, challenges remain like income on patents).

Even saying our relations with India are better than China is a bit misleading. The USA always backed Pakistan in any of their wars, while India was always the canonical third-world country that prefers Migs to F16s.

Re: Can China Turn the Middle of Nowhere into the Center of the World Economy?

#70

Post by chriselles »

Hi All, I’m working on a submission envisioning the environment in 2030.

Looking at China’s stated “One Belt, One Road” initiative, is it feasible this could expand?

Soecifically, to include: “One Platform, One Network”

By that I mean the deep integration and alignment between the Chinese government and BAT(Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) enabling a shift from rising Superpower to Superplatform primacy.

Superplatform > Superpower

Geodigital > Geopolitical

Exorbitant Data(superplatform) > Exorbitant Privilege(currency)

Network Effects based thinking > Kinetic Effects based thinking

US/FAANG appear to be cannibalising each other and in constant conflict with the US government and potentially less competitive in a relative, clinical, and Machiavellian sense with China/BAT.

Could we see a war for superplatform primacy?

Thoughts?

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