China... how to deal with them?

[PetalExpress]

You have one person that can’t afford shit, because they get shit compensation for their work. You have another person that is treated so much worse, they build suicide nets at work. Now the first person can’t afford anything, that isn’t made by the country with worse off workers. While the second person can’t afford it’s government programs, without the demand for cheap goods from the first.

Which one is the badie?

- - - Updated - - -



We pay the import tax, not China... what do you even mean kept them in check? Did Walmart end their manufacturing there or something?

Trump increased import taxes.

Which meant manufacturers operating in China had to increase their prices to negate their costs.

It was cheaper for manufacturs to move back to the USA.

Which they did by the hundreds, creating thousands of USA jobs and massive tax revenue for the USA government.

Whilst at the same time stifling Chinese GDP.

But you know, none of you USA citizens wanted that for some bizarre reason, and you voted Biden in who immediately reversed that and sent all the jobs and taxes back to China.

/facepalm

You actually believed the media and thought the world was laughing at you with Trump as your President?

No, we are laughing at you now because Biden is so weak and we are all raping and taking advantage of your economy.

[Mihalik]

Just going to point out that Trump's import taxes kept them in check.

But, you know, everybody hates Trump, so nobody's going to admit he was right.

Right?

First of all.

Trump's regressive tariffs didn't do much to reduce either the US trade deficit or offshoring.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsl...shoring-record

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/0...deficit-466116

Both have actually increased under the Trump years, due to the idiotic nature of regressive tariffs.

It is counter intuitive but 1. the tariffs are actually paid by the domestic consumers, not by the country you're imposing tariffs on, 2. due to economic growth and development the wage and cost gap between the US and China has been shrinking, allowing US companies to compete with Chinese companies on a more equal footing.

With the imposition of regressive tariffs a strong incentive was generated to find new import markets and offshoring locations that would be cheaper than China.

Before we were in a sort of equilibrium point where business costs in China were gradually rising, but were still cheap enough to not worth packing up a factory and moving it away or to go looking for a cheaper supplier.

A lot of these jobs ended up shifting to places that have even worse human rights records than China with even lower wages and worse labor conditions.

But geopolitically and economically this has done exactly fuck all to curtail Chinese ambitions. On the contrary. China has made significant inroads in developing markets during the Trump years, pushes through the Belt and Road project actually connecting Eastern and Central Europe to mainland China and connected China to much of East Africa.

China also expanded its economic and political ties with Pacific rim nations and effectively asserted its control over the South China Sea, which at this point is only contested by the US via the occasional flyover and once in a blue moon presence of the odd destroyer or frigate.

The notion that Trump somehow curtailed Chinese ambitions is as delusional as the notion that Trump cured Covid with bleach and sunlight.

[Slant]

You have one person that can’t afford shit, because they get shit compensation for their work. You have another person that is treated so much worse, they build suicide nets at work. Now the first person can’t afford anything, that isn’t made by the country with worse off workers. While the second person can’t afford it’s government programs, without the demand for cheap goods from the first.

Which one is the badie?

I don't see the validity of the analogy. Which first world country drives its workers into suicide by treating them badly? I'll take the secret option c) the company compensating their workers badly and c) the company that treats their workers as badly as you describe.

- - - Updated - - -

Just chill out with this armed insurrection, civil war and secession talk. The only way China can actually break out of its regional containment is if America is taken out of the picture, which I suspect is exactly why the talk is being ginned up by America's foreign adversaries.

If America keeps its shit together for another 20-30 years China will be well into a demographic death spiral and the problem solves itself.

This is American exceptionalism talking. China has never and is unlikely to ever display expansionistic tendencies beyond the borders it already has and the very, very immediate area surrounding that. I know in the US the prevalent opinion is that the US is keeping China at bay because that's the knee-jerk response to the Soviet Union expansion, but China has existed 2000 years before the US was a thing and never really changed its borders dramatically. More like other people changed its borders.

There is no demographic death spiral. China is said to be in that death spiral for decades already. It's not happening.

The topic at hand is the economic threat and how to get China to turn into a good country without threatening WW3.

[Corvus]

The only way to stop China without resorting to violence is to stop buying their stuff.

That is easier said than done. People like their cheap stuff.

China has a very short window available to them. They know that, which is why they are being so aggressive at the moment. They have a fast looming demographic crisis, debt crisis and above all a climate change crisis coming right at them.

In fact, the predictions are China is going to be just about the hardest hit place in the world due to climate change, soon enough so that most of us will be alive to see it. The North China Plain, home to 400 million people, including Beijing, and the bread basket of China, is predicted to be uninhabitable by about 2070, due to the wet bulb effect. Basically the air gets so hot and humid that you cant cool by sweating and even a fit person just sitting in the shade will die after a few hours. Doing any form of activity shortens that.

If that happens then China is absolutely screwed, having to move hundreds of millions of people on top of not being able to feed its population.

[PC2]

If America keeps its shit together for another 20-30 years China will be well into a demographic death spiral and the problem solves itself.

Not really because if there was about to be a demographic decline in China and they found it to be undesirable then they could simply fix it by changing laws and having more kids and bigger families. Demographic decline is a choice in modern times and it's not a major problem anywhere in the world.

In fact, the predictions are China is going to be just about the hardest hit place in the world due to climate change, soon enough so that most of us will be alive to see it. The North China Plain, home to 400 million people, including Beijing, and the bread basket of China, is predicted to be uninhabitable by about 2070, due to the wet bulb effect. Basically the air gets so hot and humid that you cant cool by sweating and even a fit person just sitting in the shade will die after a few hours. Doing any form of activity shortens that.

If that happens then China is absolutely screwed, having to move hundreds of millions of people on top of not being able to feed its population.

That's largely nonsense based on unsubstantiated prophecies. While populations will always need to move around a bit there's no reason to think they won't be able to feed their people in the future.

[LilSaihah]

The topic at hand is the economic threat and how to get China to turn into a good country without threatening WW3.

I've pruned the rest of it because I don't really agree but I don't know if I know enough to argue about it.

I don't know if this is even possible outside of a situation in which China falls apart like the USSR (any projection of which, economic slowdown or not, would be optimistic to the point of fantastical). Economic sanctions may be seen with the same eye as Japan saw American embargos during WW2 - as a good excuse to become more belligerent.

Not really because if there was about to be a demographic decline in China and they found it to be undesirable then they could simply fix it by changing laws and having more kids and bigger families. Demographic decline is a choice in modern times and it's not a major problem anywhere in the world.

I'm kinda 50/50 on whether the CCP would be able to turn it around. On the one hand, the one-child policy has had such a huge impact on demographics and culture that it'd be incredibly difficult for a nation to turn it around. On the other hand, the CCP would have no compunction about mandating fertility levels - they've already illegalized having more than one kid in the past, I don't see them having any compunction over illegalizing having less than one kid.

[PC2]

I'm kinda 50/50 on whether the CCP would be able to turn it around. On the one hand, the one-child policy has had such a huge impact on demographics and culture that it'd be incredibly difficult for a nation to turn it around. On the other hand, the CCP would have no compunction about mandating fertility levels - they've already illegalized having more than one kid in the past, I don't see them having any compunction over illegalizing having less than one kid.

Yeah for that it depends on if the government chooses to screw up the laws and it depends on what the Chinese people want regarding family size. It's unpredictable but my only argument is that decline is not something that is inevitable that will be forced on them by factors out of their control. Same goes for almost every other country.

[PetalExpress]

The only way to stop China without resorting to violence is to stop buying their stuff.

Exactly what Trump achieved.

Raise import taxes so that it would be cheaper for manufacturers to move back to the USA.

Creating thousands of USA jobs in the process.

Biden went and reversed a policy that was doing exactly what you said.

[Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang]

I don't see the validity of the analogy. Which first world country drives its workers into suicide by treating them badly? I'll take the secret option c) the company compensating their workers badly and c) the company that treats their workers as badly as you describe.

- - - Updated - - -



This is American exceptionalism talking. China has never and is unlikely to ever display expansionistic tendencies beyond the borders it already has and the very, very immediate area surrounding that. I know in the US the prevalent opinion is that the US is keeping China at bay because that's the knee-jerk response to the Soviet Union expansion, but China has existed 2000 years before the US was a thing and never really changed its borders dramatically. More like other people changed its borders.

There is no demographic death spiral. China is said to be in that death spiral for decades already. It's not happening.

The topic at hand is the economic threat and how to get China to turn into a good country without threatening WW3.

Err.. over its thousands years of history, China has shown plenty enough of expansionism. Discarding it as only applying to its very immediate surroundings is like saying Russia has never been expansionist...

The Taiwan, South China Sea and Himalayas shenanigans are enough to paint a clear picture.

The thing with demographic shifts is that those are usually slow phenomenons, which take decades to materialize. Current projections show that China's population will be declining already in a couple decades, and will have halved by the end of the century, when their current "boomers" will all be but dead.

The fate that was awaiting them was already at best what Japan and soon Korea are facing, but their ceaseless social engineering will do nothing but crank those issues to the max : while they are for now reaping the dividends of Mao natalist policies creating a massive boomer generation followed by the One-Child policy reducing the number of dependents, once the former exit the work force they'll have massive social service need combined with an ever dwindling work force. While they recently changed the policy to Two-Child, given how the One-Child has been for so long set as the standard around which society was shaped, combined with the high cost of child rearing and education, it will take much more than their current natalist campaigns to remedy this.
Top this with their current campaign against extreme poverty, which emphasizes relocating poor communities from remote countryside to cities, in order to put them to use for boosting the economy as "producers/consumers", but which will mechanically diminish their fertility due to the massive change in environment.

[postman1782]

Exactly what Trump achieved.

Raise import taxes so that it would be cheaper for manufacturers to move back to the USA.

Creating thousands of USA jobs in the process.

Biden went and reversed a policy that was doing exactly what you said.

But he didn't. All Trump achieved was making everyone pay more for products they were already buying. Especially since none of the stuff that people were buying, like clothing, and electronics, and whatnot, most of it is made in China.

Trump didn't achieve anything other than giving China more leverage.

[Slant]

Err.. over its thousands years of history, China has shown plenty enough of expansionism. Discarding it as only applying to its very immediate surroundings is like saying Russia has never been expansionist...

The Taiwan, South China Sea and Himalayas shenanigans are enough to paint a clear picture.

The thing with demographic shifts is that those are usually slow phenomenons, which take decades to materialize. Current projections show that China's population will be declining already in a couple decades, and will have halved by the end of the century, when their current "boomers" will all be but dead.

The fate that was awaiting them was already at best what Japan and soon Korea are facing, but their ceaseless social engineering will do nothing but crank those issues to the max : while they are for now reaping the dividends of Mao natalist policies creating a massive boomer generation followed by the One-Child policy reducing the number of dependents, once the former exit the work force they'll have massive social service need combined with an ever dwindling work force. While they recently changed the policy to Two-Child, given how the One-Child has been for so long set as the standard around which society was shaped, combined with the high cost of child rearing and education, it will take much more than their current natalist campaigns to remedy this.
Top this with their current campaign against extreme poverty, which emphasizes relocating poor communities from remote countryside to cities, in order to put them to use for boosting the economy as "producers/consumers", but which will mechanically diminish their fertility due to the massive change in environment.

China's border disputes are not expansions. They are consolidations of what China considers Chinese soil. Those are IMMEDIATE border issues contained within hundreds of miles of the existing Chinese border. calling that expansionism is a great exaggeration if you compare it to Japan, European nations, Communism during the Cold War.

I don't think you understand why people have children. Rest assured, if China ever stops the one child policy, they'll have a massive boomer wave coming. Here's a secret for you, the poor and stupid breed like rabbits. It's only the rich and educated that don't procreate. Guess what the percentage of the poor and stupid in the Chinese population is. You know, the one that had the cultural revolution killing educated people. Their demographic decline is not happening in our lifetime. Europe has a bigger problem in that it's an actual decline not policed by the Government.

[Felya]

I don't see the validity of the analogy. Which first world country drives its workers into suicide by treating them badly? I'll take the secret option c) the company compensating their workers badly and c) the company that treats their workers as badly as you describe.

Now apply that to communism. What if the company is ran by the government?

- - - Updated - - -

Trump increased import taxes.

Which is paid for by you...

Which meant manufacturers operating in China had to increase their prices to negate their costs.

China isn’t the one buy, so why do you think them increasing the cost for you, is hurting them? Think about it for 1 min... just one min... How is a store increasing prices, forcing the store to pay more?

How does an increase in cost, negate the costs? That’s not how arithmetic works...

Trump rots your brain man... DARE to just say no to Trump...

It was cheaper for manufacturs to move back to the USA.

Which they did by the hundreds, creating thousands of USA jobs and massive tax revenue for the USA government.

Could you show me where you get this, because it’s hard to trust someone, who doesn’t understand addition. From the stats I have seen, it’s the booming of BIG TECH that has resulted in job spikes, ever since the 90s, where since the 80s, people like Trump have been sending manufacturing to China. Why isn’t Trump corporation, one of the business returning to US, instead maintaining his bank account?

Whilst at the same time stifling Chinese GDP.

The GDP of China grew by 3 trillion during Trump’s term... so did US...

But you know, none of you USA citizens wanted that for some bizarre reason, and you voted Biden in who immediately reversed that and sent all the jobs and taxes back to China.

Yeah, most Americans don’t live in your bubble.

You actually believed the media and thought the world was laughing at you with Trump as your President?

No, we saw 500000 dead Americans, as Trump was saying covid will go away by Easter. After all... Why would a billionaire who owns a bunch of hotels and golf courses, support safety measures for Americans, when it means losing money?

What did Trump say about the lie? That Americans are too weak not to panic? Maybe quote a few recent Herman Cain tweets... he seems to be still posting... after he died from Covid, a week after attending a Trump rally...

No, we are laughing at you now because Biden is so weak and we are all raping and taking advantage of your economy.

Hey... why isn’t Biden holding weekly rallies on the tax payer dime? In fact... now that he has to pay for it... why isn’t Trump holding them?

You can bloviate propaganda all you like... none of us followed Trump to our death during covid... a lot of Trump supporters did. Even after he got it him self and spread it to his own family.

- - - Updated - - -

Exactly what Trump achieved.

Raise import taxes so that it would be cheaper for manufacturers to move back to the USA.

Creating thousands of USA jobs in the process.

Biden went and reversed a policy that was doing exactly what you said.

Unemployment is nearly doubled since Trump took over... it has been the largest wealth shift from middle class, to the wealthy, in US history. While China didn’t dismantle their pandemic response team, as Trump did to pay for tax cuts to billionaires. Heck... China didn’t even lie about the virus, as long as Trump did... in fact... outside of taking credit for a vaccine made in Germany... has Trump ever acknowledged that he likely killed off hundreds, if not 1000s of his supporters by holding rallies and lying about the virus?

But, to some... the only thing they need to be immune to the virus, is by calling it the China virus. It’s like a prayer of dissolving responsibility... just chant China virus a few times into a mirror and the ghost of affluenza will appear...

I’m sure those attacks on China were so harsh... that it was still lucrative for Trump Corporation to maintain a bank account.

So... to conclude my Trump ranting... The way you deal with China is with truth and pragmatism. You don’t act like an ape and pretend, just because you fling shit at China... it’s China that ends up covered in it...

[Themius]

Isnt it kind of a weird take to say HK isn’t China and China is breaking the treaty it has due to the war with the British? Idk if the British forcibly leasing a province suddenly changes all ideas about which country that province belongs to.

[Shadowferal]

Exactly what Trump achieved.
Raise import taxes so that it would be cheaper for manufacturers to move back to the USA.
Creating thousands of USA jobs in the process.

Wow, you're really one of those Trump trolls trying to sell stupidity and ignorance completely disregarding the events of a year ago...and everyone on unemployment.
To say the very least, coal miners would like to have a private word with you.

[Slant]

Now apply that to communism. What if the company is ran by the government?

Felya, I really do not see where you're going with this. Are you telling us communism is bad? I mean, that sounds too obvious. Maybe spell it out for me, I find that analogy is not very clear on what you intend to say. I think.

[PetalExpress]

Wow, you're really one of those Trump trolls trying to sell stupidity and ignorance completely disregarding the events of a year ago...and everyone on unemployment.
To say the very least, coal miners would like to have a private word with you.

So you're saying Trump created policies to reduce fossil fuel mining?

Are you a climate change denier?

[Shadowferal]

So you're saying Trump created policies to reduce fossil fuel mining? Are you a climate change denier?

You mentioned jobs... Typical Trump... Called on your own shit so now you run away from it

[Slant]

Isnt it kind of a weird take to say HK isn’t China and China is breaking the treaty it has due to the war with the British? Idk if the British forcibly leasing a province suddenly changes all ideas about which country that province belongs to.

What's weird is assuming just because a region of land has been in one country at some point in history means that country has a natural right to that land. That would throw Europe into a really bad spot considering some of our lands have changed ownership more than you changed your underwear.

But your point is valid in that is how China thinks about it all. That's why the whole expansionism idea is really silly. China "just" wants to unite what they think is China. Does it include regions that do not strictly show up as "China" on current maps? Yes, and that's the problem for everyone around them. But that doesn't mean they are expansionistic. Unlike Japan going into Korea and China and just taking land, China, for instance, has zero interest in mainland Japan. Or North Korea, as the best example... they COULD just waltz in there and kick lil' Kims ass out. But they don't want to, because NK is not what they consider "China". Tibet, on the other hand, is. Same with HK and Taiwan.

This is also why they reject anything in the SC that even hints at the interference with a nations sovereignity. Take Syria, Assad is technically the leader of that country. So if 50% of the population rises up and brings him to the brink of ruin and then asks "Yo, UN, wanna help out?" China would automatically knee-jerk their veto, because to them there was no transition of power, so Assad is the rightful ruler and if HE doesn't ask for help, Syria isn't asking for help. And any foreign troops in Syria are an invasion force. This is why Russia is tolerated, btw, because of course Assad asked THEM for help.

I mean, it's a bit more complicated than that, but if you get right down to it, this is Americans not understanding even the basics of Chinese thinking.

[PetalExpress]

You mentioned jobs... Typical Trump... Called on your own shit so now you run away from it

Ah...

So you have conflict of interest in this debate.

No further comments from me your honour

[Shadowferal]

Ah... . No further comments from me your honour

That's right...run away. Your sad beliefs have no hold here.
Come back when you can acknowledge the unemployment for the past year.