On China

I think most of us in the USA have been so concerned with the middle-east that we haven’t really been paying attention to what is going on in China. While the rest of the world has been in the economic doldrums, China has continued to grow. There are many reasons for this: China is a maker of a large amount of the world’s cheap mass-produced goods and in hard economic times cheaper is better for the majority of people; The Chinese government has placed controls on its currency that keep it artificially low and thus helps to fuel the exportation of Chinese goods to other countries; China also does not have as many labor and workplace safety laws that make production more expensive in developed countries, nor is their economy plagued by an abundance of civil law and a culture of litigiousness, complaint, and expectation. Also, the Chinese government has also allowed for a good bit of entrepreneurialism and is very lax in its enforcements of copyright and trademark restrictions – all of which have made their economy grow faster than any other world economy in the past few years. And frankly, China has the most people in the world and is therefore also potentially a larger consumer market than the US.

In addition to economic growth, China is expanding as a world trade partner to countries traditionally under US control. Countries like Brazil and Argentina, who for years had primarily traded with the USA, are now aggressively entering the Chinese markets (especially in sales of wine) and making good profits.

China is also expanding into the car industry as a growing producer and a booming consumer-base. There are several claims (notably by Toyota and Nissan) that Chinese car-makers have already begun to “pirate’ the proprietary designs of other carmakers and may soon undercut those carmakers in the Chinese (and perhaps in the world) market.

China has also successfully sent its first human into space and successfully returned him to earth. They have already announced plans for a moon colony. With their hard work, willingness to sacrifice, willingness to innovate, and willingness to risk in ways the West has seemingly forgotten, I’m of the opinion currently that China will be the next world superpower because the Chinese will finally begin to profitably explore and exploit “the final frontier.” Before I die, I imagine that I will begin to see a Chinese space faring civilization that looks down from the heavens at those of us still caught in the gravity well and tells its children about the time, long ago, when the word “superpower” meant simply military superiority on one small planet.

Ann Coulter would probably say that I am a traitor for saying this, but it isn’t that I want the USA to fall behind and become obsolete, it is just that I think that we will probably do so because we are unwilling to get off our fat, lazy, self-indulgent backsides and put the work and money we need to put into a plan that is good for humanity in the long run. We probably won’t. The sated are rarely desperate enough to take risks.