China and the Final War for Resources

[Helen]

Here's an interesting read. I found this link at Mish's board on the Motley Fool.

http://www.321energy.com/editorials/winston/winston020905.html

-helen

 

[lazyday]

i didn't make it through much of this, but have to wonder if China really would want to destroy the US economy. I'd think it would be devastating to them in both short and long term. If their actions put the US economy into a "tail spin" it would likely cause a worldwide depression, damaging their own economy as well.

 

[Olav23]

There's an interesting documentary about the end of peak oil. Good watch! and scary. Called End of Suburbia. There is a teaser here:

http://www.endofsuburbia.com/

 

[unclemick]

Soooo - they've updated the 1973 version - from that oil crisis I think an Englishman wrote that one.

Still waiting - heh, heh, heh.

Changes happen - but like the slowly boiled frog - they are so gradual we don't notice.

New Orleans RE section occasionally has an article or two about retired suburbanites moving back into the city - and bringing money - real estate people like that - presumably they use less gas also.

 

[Olav23]

Oh, I'll have to check into that. Sounds interesting! (Just to compare)

I think most geological engineers agree about Hubert's Peak. And the general consesus is only between 5-25 years difference, if I'm not mistaken. Something like 2007-2030 or so for peak production and then reduction.

The movie is interesting in that they go through things we don't think about, like Pesticides in food production being petroleum based, trucking of the food, etc. It's one thing to consider paying 3$ at the pump, another thing to think about paying 6$ a head of lettuce!

 

[wildcat]

Didn't people predict similar circumstances with other countries....Soviet Union, Japan when it was kicking butt, etc

 

[Telly]

Didn't people predict similar circumstances with other countries....Soviet Union, Japan when it was kicking butt, etc

Yup! The Japanese were "buying up everything" here, too. We sold them lot's of overpriced real estate. Should have sold them even more 

Saw that the Chinese appliance mfgr Haier dropped out of making a bid for Maytag. Darn! Now just need to get my favorite appliance mfgr Whirlpool to drop out.

I think China will be reaching some very difficult times ahead. Nature seems to provide counter-acting forces in systems. Totalitarian government, that is in a symbiotic relationship with a very large capitalist nation (us) to buy its output.
Meanwhile, cost of production rules, as Mexico and Korea, et al, have discovered. They had some grand plans that fizzled as batch mfgrs pulled out to go to Singapore, Malaysia, etc.
While this is going on, China is changing. We worry about the Bird Flu. They are getting the American Culture Flu... movies, clothes design and accessories, all bow to the Big Mac! Ah, maybe our main output is the corrosion of conformity (yeah, I know, but the phrase fits, I think).

How the powers that be in Beijing react to this evolving  situation is the key for me. Open up and change, and become a world citizen, whatever that means, or rally a disgruntled populace around an external "enemy", ala the Moamar Khadafy of old, or Ayatola Khomeni in 1977-on as a prime example.

Regardless, I expect that a continuing export of China will be people to America.

 

[Michael]

The difference between China and Japan is that Japan is a peaceful nation with no military aspirations. China has been rapidly building up its military, and is potentially very dangerous.

 

[Nords]

They are getting the American Culture Flu... movies, clothes design and accessories, all bow to the Big Mac! Ah, maybe our main output is the corrosion of conformity (yeah, I know, but the phrase fits, I think).
Regardless, I expect that a continuing export of China will be people to America.

Resistance is futile.  China will be assimilated... we need their payroll taxes to fix the Social Security problem.

The difference between China and Japan is that Japan is a peaceful nation with no military aspirations.  China has been rapidly building up its military, and is potentially very dangerous.

Just curious, Michael, have you ever been in a room with a group of Japanese & Korean people?  Or Chinese & Japanese?  Even second-generation American descendents of those cultures?  Statements like yours would sure cause a reaction in those social situations. 

Did you know that even today, 60 years after the end of WWII, the Korean Navy will not participate directly in exercises where the Japanese Navy is present?  The (American) Navy's RIMPAC exercise explicitly makes up two different "coalition" task forces to keep these two nations separate.  I can only imagine the planning conferences if the Chinese rolled up to the curb with their toys.

There's no such thing as a first-world country without military aspirations.  We're all equally dangerous, although some American technology is more dangerous than Chinese technology.

 

[Michael]

I am well aware of Japan's history, and the unwillingness of many of their victims to forgive them. Nevertheless, it is now China that is embarking upon a rapid military build up. The government the US set up in Japan is peaceful, while the dictatorship of the vanguard across the pond is not.

 

[Nords]

I am well aware of Japan's history, and the unwillingness of many of their victims to forgive them.  Nevertheless, it is now China that is embarking upon a rapid military build up.  The government the US set up in Japan is peaceful, while the dictatorship of the vanguard across the pond is not.

I hear ya, but after two decades of service I'd have to conclude that the U.S. buildup is at least on the same pro-rated scale as the Chinese. Yet somehow we're the "good" guys and they're not?

I spent most of that time memorizing scary features of the awesome Russian arsenal. When I deployed on a surveillance submarine I found out that "THE BEAR" was nowhere near as scary as years of NSA, DIA, CIA, and military intelligence had made it sound. But all those scary studies & alarmist testimony were quite lucrative for military-industrial spending (your tax dollars at work).

In the early 1990s the Japanese military was operating at least one covert data-collecting intelligence-gathering system of whose existence they had not informed their civilian government. So while the Japanese govt may indeed be "peaceful", I find it difficult to reach the same conclusion about their military...

FWIW I'm sure the American military is up to the same tricks.

 

[Michael]

Yet somehow we're the "good" guys and they're not?

The Chinese government has tortured and killed vast numbers of their own citizens.  In many cases, their only "crime" was following a religion not approved by the government (such as Christianity).  It is estimated that 10 million Christians alone in China were tortured or killed for their beliefs. The US is not perfect, but at least they don't send secret police to imprison peaceful worshipers.

I don't mind the US spending more on defense than the rest of the world combined, as long as the government doesn't start slaughtering civilians for no good reason.  The mass slaughter in places such as China and the Sudan is pretty appalling.

Just keep the people in charge of China away from here. I don't trust them.

 

[unclemick]

Probably spelling it wrong - any old Cold Warriors remember:

Plausible Deniability

Us - do that? - nah!

Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh - that's a sixer.

 

[Patrick]

Probably spelling it wrong - any old Cold Warriors remember:

Plausible Deniability

Us - do that? - nah!

Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh - that's a sixer.

I have no recollection of that . . . .

 

[REWahoo]

Probably spelling it wrong - any old Cold Warriors remember:

Plausible Deniability

Hmmmmmm..... I thought it was "Deniable Plausibility", but too many weeks sitting on alert probably fogged my memory. (Yep, I was SACumcised. )

REW

 

[Lazarus]

SAC --- Peace is Our Profession.

Anyone remember this?

 

[unclemick]

Yep

Along with - Duck and Cover, I'd rather be dead than Red, Spam in a can(Chuck Yeager), Too cheap to meter(nuclear power), --- and of course "Cookie, Cookie - lend me your comb."

Heh, heh, heh.

BTY - REW is right - I had it backasswards.

 

[Mr._johngalt]

SAC --- Peace is Our Profession.

Anyone remember this?

Are you kidding? I remember "War Bonds" and The "Bull Moose Party"

JG

 

[REWahoo]

SAC --- Peace is Our Profession.

Anyone remember this?

Ah yes. Col. Bat Guano leading his troops against Gen. Jack D. Ripper, Wing Commader of Burpleson AFB...machine gun fire and ordinance exploding in the foreground...pull back to a view of the big "Strategic Air Command: Peace Is Our Profession" sign.

They just don't make movies like that any more....

REW

 

[Eagle43]

Yep, and I have often seen "the light at the end of the tunnel" while enjoying the smell of burning napalm in the morning.

 

[bosco]

The Chinese government has tortured and killed vast numbers of their own citizens. In many cases, their only "crime" was following a religion not approved by the government (such as Christianity). It is estimated that 10 million Christians alone in China were tortured or killed for their beliefs. The US is not perfect, but at least they don't send secret police to imprison peaceful worshipers.

I don't mind the US spending more on defense than the rest of the world combined, as long as the government doesn't start slaughtering civilians for no good reason. The mass slaughter in places such as China and the Sudan is pretty appalling.

Just keep the people in charge of China away from here. I don't trust them.

Interesting world view. Let's see--China is militaristic and dangerous. Their history is xenophobic--why do you think they built the wall? They have a decidedly unmilitaristic history. Do they go around invading other sovereign nations on false pretexts? Well, I guess Tibet counts, so yes. But at least their pretext, as distasteful as it might have been, was based on something resembling truth, unlike the WMD lies the leaders of the US told its population.

China has been a nuclear power for quite a while. As yet, they have not used these weapons (unlike the US, which used nukes on civilian populations). Their per capita oil consumption is some small fraction of an American's, yet Americans are willing to fear-monger and call them greedy?

I don't trust the people in charge of China either, not any further than I trust Bush.

I think as Americans, we'd better be careful who we call aggresive, militaristic, and greedy. The cold hard facts are not kind to America in this regard. What was done to the American Indian to bring about "manifest destiny" can only be described as genocide. In fact, Hitler held it up in Mein Kampf as the perfect example of how Germany should treat the Jews.

Oh yes, imprisonment. Which nation jails the highest proportion of their population for political crimes (meaning crimes with no victims, that are only crimes because the government says so)? One guess. Not pre-war Iraq, not Iran, not China.

Sorry about this long rant. It just never ceases to amaze me how differently people can view the world. I love the US, but feel that Americans have very little justification to be as self-righteous as many are. Just my soon to be revalued $.02.

 

[P.S.]

....Japan is a peaceful nation with no military aspirations. China has been rapidly building up its military, and is potentially very dangerous.

Japan peaceful? I lived there a year. Peaceful would not be the word that comes to mind. Maybe passive-agressive, with no opportunity to act on the agression part. Just because they haven't invaded any countries in the past 50 years does not the equate with peacefulness.

I would be surprised if someone could read first hand GI accounts of fighting in war against the Japanese (say in WWII) or the accounts of the Japanese invasion of China, the raping of women until they died presumably of exhaustion, and still consider the people peaceful. {DELETED}
Then there are the women kidnapped to be passed around as disposable Japanese soldier pleasure.
Or the women, again publicly tied down, who dies {DELETED} from infection {DELETED}
Read any thesis or writing by a lawyer, psychiatrist, or prosecutor specializing in rape; it's not an expression of peace.

To toss babies in the air and catch them on bayonets is not peaceful.
To wantonly chop off innocent civilians' heads is not peaceful.
To round up a group of men and then use their living, breathing bodies for bayonet practice is not peaceful.

W(here) {DELETED}] do you get your supercilious arrogance?

I am well aware of Japan's history, and the unwillingness of many of their victims to forgive them.

Riiiiight. Like how the Jews have trouble forgiving Nazi Germany. Like how african americans have trouble forgiving the slave-owning white man.

What really struck me about the japanese when I lived there was how immensely popular and available is pornography. Walk into any bookstore/newstand and you'll find twice as many different porno rags as on house and garden, finance, etc.
Draw your own conclusions based on your personal feelings about pornography.

The only passport I've ever owned, since the age of four, is American. But I truly don't understand the attitude- only we THE US in the world should have nuclear weapons, or a powerful military, or at least America should dictate who in the world can.

 

[Michael]

Do they go around invading other sovereign nations on false pretexts?

Er, I guess the point that I was trying to make was that China has actively engaged in warfare with the United States since WWII, and Japan has not. There is little danger of Japanese forces launching an attack on the United States, while China regularly threatens to attack US forces in Taiwan. It is not an idle threat.

I am an American, and think in terms of who may try to harm us.

I don't trust the people in charge of China either, not any further than I trust Bush.

I trust Bush not to throw me in prison for being a Christian. China has done just that to their citizens. I don't agree with everything President Bush does, but he is easier to live with than a government that violently persecutes people for their beliefs.

Which nation jails the highest proportion of their population for political crimes (meaning crimes with no victims, that are only crimes because the government says so)?

This is a problem.