Another glimpse into the mind of Barack Hussein Obama:     Ensign Ed poses a rhetorical question, then goes ahead and answers it: Does Barack Obama understand the nature of the Beijing regime? The reason that the government can afford……

A candidate who despises the USA and brags up China

I searched the Epoch-Times.

Did anyone else notice that the Chinese stock markets have tumbled? Re-phrase: did the MSM care to report the China crash? Sounds bad enough to make ours sound less bad. Hmmm

China’s stock market plummeted to a Black Monday again on August 18. The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index closed at 2319.87, down 62 per cent from its high at 6124.04 in 2007. The Shenzhen Composite Index closed at 7833.09, down 60 percent from its high at 19600.03 in 2007.

This article gives interesting argument for the crash

Now many people might think wiping out folk’s money with a crash makes it a bad place to live. So it may. But the tastiest meat is on the ribs if you don’t mind gnawing on bones

China, Che and Fidel Hey
How many little people did you eat today?

Hate me for my flag if you must, but don’t hate me for my internationalism for I am a Citizen of the World

Obama surely doesn’t hate the USA or want the USA to emulate China. What he is saying (For those of you that haven’t learned to think for yourselves yet) is that while China was investing in rail roads, roads, bridges,… we were ‘investing’ a trillion in the Iraq occupation. F

If Obama gets a chance to inflict Change on America, he’ll have a ready-made model: communist China, where wages are kept low with slave labor, the government censors the Internet and arrests reporters, the air is unbreathable, and dissidents disappea…

Math_Mage on August 23, 2008 at 4:31 PM

Very good and well thought out post, and I understand where you are coming from. I appreciate your point of view. However, there are a few points you should look into:

You’re missing the distinction between China, the collective, and China, the collection of individuals

My point about the media is that they largely ignore the peasant problem. There is no doubt that this is a huge problem looming over the Chinese people. The Chinese often state this problem in their own economic papers. If you look into it, you will find that they are investing in technology. They are learning from western companies, and once they have learned from them, they start reducing the tax breaks for said company in an effort to slide them out of the country.

As for the individual vs. the collective, I think you are looking at this from a western point of view, not an eastern point of view. Yes, Chinese people are individuals too, but they do not put value on individuality. And, according to the plans in policy for the Chinese government, they will start to shift the economic focus from the cities to the countryside. I don’t know if they will follow through or not, but after the olympics you might see some of this shift. Regardless, your assumption that they seek to maintain the status quo is shaky, and comparing China and Japan is like comparing apples and oranges.

The Chinese government does not have a “culture”, it has an ideology.

It has both. You seem to think that the Chinese government is not Chinese. The Chicoms are not the same animals as the Soviets, or the East Germans, or the North Koreans. They have a socialist ideology, but they are also very much Chinese, and the reason they do what they do is not remote from their culture. The Chinese culture is one that respects its leaders as a father-figure. Only about 5% of Chinese are communist party members, but if you attack the Chinese government, you’ll get 95% of the people defending it. You may only want to attack the government, but in the eyes of Chinese people, you are attacking the entire Chinese people.

Which mistakes from the conception that businesses will not see this government as a great entity to work with?

As I stated above, the Chinese are using western businesses for technology, expertise, and for improved infastructure. When they learn what that company does, they will then make it more difficult for them to do business there, so you are right. In the long term, China is not that attractive for an overseas company because you are giving birth to a competitor company by entering China. Short term, though, the labor is cheaper (not only due to peasants–a Chinese computer programer is also cheaper than an American (India too–that is why when you call tech support it is almost never an American)), the tax-breaks are great, and if you want to dump your waste in the river they’ll look the other way. Plus the market is huge in China. 1.3 billion people with rising income levels and the willingness to buy.

As far as mistakes of declaring all things that come from China as suspicious and all Chinese government policies as wrong and lies, the biggest mistake is making an enemy of the Chinese people. I know, I know, many commenters here could care less what Chinese people think, and I generally agree in regards to our policies, but as far as China’s policies, their opinion should be regarded. We can’t pat them on the head and say, “I know better than you” without risking a huge anti-foreigner movement like you saw in the early 20th century–that movement gave rise to the real monster of the Chinese communist party–Mao.

The enemy is not China or the Chinese people, it is the Chinese government.

Math_Mage on August 23, 2008 at 4:31 PM

I did enjoy the post. My main difference of opinion is that I prefer the word challenge instead of enemy. There is a subtle difference. Enemy implies that you intend war against China, I prefer to think that our issues PERHAPS MAY be settled with out war.

One war was enough for me.

Was your friend’s long process in getting her to the States due to the U.S. side, or the Chinese side. I really don’t know, but I’ve heard that a lot of the hold up is on the U.S. side in that situation.

p40tiger on August 22, 2008 at 3:23 PM

Frankly, it doesn’t really matter. Both sides restrict immigration from China to the US – the US because we can’t handle a constant, large influx of immigrants (witness what happened to France), and the Chinese because they can’t afford to let their talent leave their country. Neither reflects well on China or poorly on the US.

Obama is a fool if he wants to emulate China, but at the same time, China is an attractive place to do business due to cheap labor, lax environmental standards, and huge tax breaks for foreign companies…
…China does not claim to be the powerhouse that our media tries to crown them as. They claim to be what they are: a developing country with a good economic upside.

You’re missing the distinction between China, the collective, and China, the collection of individuals. Collectively, China IS a powerhouse due to its size. Individually, China is a developing country. So both you and the reporters are right. However, far from being an economic upside, this is a real problem for China’s development (both collective and individual); since the collective can generate a lot of power through cheap labor, there’s no incentive to seek a technological advantage. It’s easier to remain a superpower built on the heads of peasants, and as long as China remains that way there is little prospect for improvement. By contrast, look at Japan’s development after WWII; they didn’t have the numbers or space to do what China’s doing, so they had to develop their technology, which was greatly beneficial in the long run.

Yeah, China’s government is corrupt and speaks with two tongues, but they are a lot better than they used to be. China is changing faster than anyone can imagine–I hope for the better, but it remains to be seen.

The main improvement being that instead of sending peasants to die in the fields, China’s government is sending peasants to die in the factories. This is assuming the premise you proposed earlier, that China is bringing business in with the prospect of cheap labor. Collectively, there’s an improvement; individually, not so much.

Each side has its own propaganda, and until we see them without preconception, we will never understand what makes them tick. As Sun zi said, “know your enemy, and you will not be defeated.” As long as we look through jaded glasses, we won’t understand them, their culture, or their people.

I think you’re incorrectly identifying the object of analysis. The enemy is not China or the Chinese people, it is the Chinese government. The Chinese government does not have a “culture”, it has an ideology. And the authoritarian ideology they currently espouse does not bode well for long-term economic growth or political freedom.

I know my views on this matter are not popular here, and I’m not in any way defending atrocities of the communists, but I think that we are in danger of making huge mistakes if we don’t look at China as it really is, not just what we think it is.

p40tiger on August 22, 2008 at 2:25 PM

Which mistakes are we in danger of making that derive from the conception of the Chinese government as an autocratic machine controlling the means of production? Which mistakes from the conception that businesses will not see this government as a great entity to work with?

I know my views on this matter are not popular here, and I’m not in any way defending atrocities of the communists, but I think that we are in danger of making huge mistakes if we don’t look at China as it really is, not just what we think it is.

p40tiger on August 22, 2008 at 2:25 PM

With 39 years experience in and out of Viet Nam including three military tours (two in country one off the coast), I know the feeling. Still I believe that the misconceptions about China on the Left are even more dangerous to America’s future than the misconceptions on the Right.

It seems odd to me that Biden is Obama’s choice for VPOTUS when, at the very least, it should be the other way around. Of course, nobody would vote for Biden, either. I still say their best choice was Hillary….

Controlling production and wealth is socialism, which is about where we are. Ownership of production and wealth is Communism, which is what China is was and where we are headed.

abcurtis on August 23, 2008 at 8:36 AM

The reason that the government can afford all of this spending is that they control own the means of production and the wealth of the nation.

Controlling production and wealth is socialism, which is about where we are. Ownership of production and wealth is Communism, which is what China is and where we are headed.
I heard a socialist democrat politician say a couple of weeks ago that the “people” should own the oil companies. By the “people” he means the federal government.

Seriously.

Everybody’s watching what’s going on in Beijing right now with the Olympics. Think about the amount of money that China has spent on infrastructure. Their ports, their train systems, their airports are vastly the superior to us…

Laughable!

Anyone who just reads The Economist or similar periodicals would know that China faces HUGE infrastructure problems and that their economy (while surging along) is still built on a house of cards.

Fortunately for China, the Chinese banks have done equity swaps in an effort to clean up their non performing loan ratios as a prerequisit to WTO membership and have turned around and securitized the debt to western investors.

China has major social, political and economic problems and significant social unrest.

What a dope.