Can China Be Contained?
wsj.com
Can China Be Contained?
1–10 of 36 posts
Re: Can China Be Contained?
#2What would mean "be contained?"
Can US prevents China's influence to grow and keep bombing and destabilizing governments all around the world while the chinese invest so much in Latin America, Africa and Asia? I don't think so.
Re: Can China Be Contained?
#3The number of actual facts in this article is distressingly small. Paragraphs like this:
Even the U.S. business community, once Beijing’s staunchest advocate in Washington, has lost some of its enthusiasm for engagement. James McGregor, a former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China and now the China chairman of APCO Worldwide, a business consultancy, recalls helping to persuade U.S. trade associations to lobby for China’s admission to the World Trade Organization, which happened in 2001.
make me wince because at any given time you can probably get someone to say business has lost enthusiasm for "engagement" and someone else to say business is as engaged as ever.
More importantly, Andrew Browne misses an extremely obvious point: the USSR had an ideology totally opposed to capitalism, a murderous state machine that killed tens of millions of its own citizens, and an expansionist mindset demonstrated by Russia's control of Eastern Europe. China has none of those things. It is "communist" in name only; to the extent it has an ideology at its heart it might be called crony capitalism, or something like "material goods for all!" It would like to invade Taiwan, which is bad, and it is attempting to claim the South China Sea, which is also bad, but it isn't in the same order of magnitude as taking over half of Europe and flaming proxy wars around the world.
That an article like this even makes it into the WSJ is depressing.
Re: Can China Be Contained?
#4Meanwhile, in China, a headline reads "Can the U.S. be Contained?". On its face this rings of ethnocentrism.
Re: Can China Be Contained?
#5It will require a much different strategy than with the Soviets. We don't have a fundamental political difference in belief with the Chinese. The Chinese are ultra-capitalists with a technocracy leadership (although the u.s. is more lead by lawyers than engineers, so maybe there's a conflict there). It's not even clear if a conflict is necessary.
The Chinese mostly care about resources and economics in China - they are determined to have a minimum percentage of economic growth in order to continue pulling their population out of poverty. They have brought something like 500,000,000 Chinese into the middle class and want to continue doing so, and this requires economic growth. Their military is mostly run by officers that are running factories - not even on the side, it's just normal.
Granted, there's friction in places like in the South China Sea. But the real conflict will be in Africa - there are entire Chinese cities in Africa as they move engineers and resources to take on large engineering projects and exploit the vast resources of the area. But the u.s. has seemingly abandoned Africa (and South America) and instead is putting all of their money into the middle east and Afghanistan/Iraq/Iran.
I wonder if the u.s. will just concede Africa to the Chinese or if there will be conflict in the future.
(If you do a google search you'll come across articles about chinese ghost cities in Africa, but keep in mind that all of these ghost cities, even in china and mongolia, are eventually filled with chinese)
Re: Can China Be Contained?
#6I don't know how much truth there is to this, but from the point of view of the several hundred Chinese netizens I know, a lot of China's current international policy decisions are arising out of desperation. For the past couple of decades, China has experience about 10% growth to its economy per year which has led to a wealth gap that makes ours look small. While the tide was rising, I suppose the average Chinese citizen had hope that perhaps he too can make it big... but with Xi's crack down on corruption (which, for good or evil, was just how business had worked in China), the economy slowed down considerably.
With that slow-down, the feeling of hope that the young unmarried men of China depended on to buoy up their spirits (it needed buoying up because there is tremendous societal pressure for them to find a good wife, but they outnumber girls their age by as many as 17 to 1 in certain cities) just vanished, leaving in its place restlessness and frustration. And if you get a bunch of young, restless, and frustrated men together, you have the historically tried and true recipe for destruction. I guess China's leadership, fearing for government stability, is looking to turn that sentiment outward via war, rather than take it inward via civil disobedience / revolution.
Re: Can China Be Contained?
#7Meanwhile, in China, a headline reads "Can the U.S. be Contained?". On its face this rings of ethnocentrism. * https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnocentrism
It's less ethnocentrism and more realism (the IR theory) and realist scholars proposing a different tack with how the US deals with China going forward.
Re: Can China Be Contained?
#8China has an authoritarian government that produces pollution that threatens the entire world, uses the great firewall to attack tech companies in other countries, prints up to 282% of GDP [1] in order to buy their way into other countries real estate and companies, ignores human rights and free speech, and supports dictators in Russia and Africa. If China gets anymore powerful, the world is doomed. We need to curb commerce with China.
[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/02/11/c...
Re: Can China Be Contained?
#9China has an authoritarian government that produces pollution that threatens the entire world, uses the great firewall to attack tech companies in other countries, prints up to 282% of GDP [1] in order to buy their way into other countries real estate and companies, ignores human rights and free speech, and supports dictators in Russia and Africa. If China gets anymore powerful, the world is doomed. We need to curb c…
I don't know if you realize it or maybe the sarcasm is lost in this medium. However many of the things you just said about China, with the exception of being an authoritarian government, could also be said about the US.
Re: Can China Be Contained?
#10The number of actual facts in this article is distressingly small. Paragraphs like this: Even the U.S. business community, once Beijing’s staunchest advocate in Washington, has lost some of its enthusiasm for engagement. James McGregor, a former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China and now the China chairman of APCO Worldwide, a business consultancy, recalls helping to persuade U.S. trade association…
China will probably not invade Taiwan. Both Taiwan and China agree there is only one China, so what would that look like? Chinese soldiers killing Chinese people to claim territory for a country they are already a part of? Also, the PRC has a pretty strong distaste for imperialism, dating back to Mao. The PRC has substantially more public support for invading Japan than Taiwan.