Why I’m Not Worried About China
I was listening to Glenn Beck on the radio a day or so ago. He was inveighing on China and how one day that country will lumber ashore, like the Cloverfield monster, and rampage all through our economy, leaving us devastated and mostly confused. He was passionate and, as he usually is, pretty reasonable.
Also, he was entirely wrong. China, as it is right now, is never going to be the economic powerhouse that threatens us or anyone else. It’s going to take more than a trade deficit to trounce the most powerful economy on the planet. I’m not worried about the Chinese economy. I have three reasons for thinking the way I do.
The first, and most obvious reason is that China is still a totalitarian communist government. I have a hard time believing that any government that is so repressive that it has to throw pacifist monks in prison and can’t handle a tiny Icelandic pop singer’s outburst is going to become an enduring economic juggernaut. Look at the top economies in the world. Notice how none of them are totalitarian regimes? Notice how none of them go around locking up protestors for nothing more than protesting. Notice how they don’t clamp down on the internet ebcause they’re afraid that someone will say something bad about them?
How in the world is China going to be a world economic power to rival the United States when its response to hosting the Olympics is to set up “death camps” for cats and to crackdown on dissidents? Instead of building lasting commercial relationships, it’s whitewashing its maanifold flaws in a slapdash panic. That’s not how a first-class economy works.
The second reason is that China’s infrastructure just isn’t ready to handle the load of a top economy and it’s not likely to be so for quite a long time. China right now is so polluted that athletes are opting not to compete in the Olympics rather than risk their health during the two-week stay. The problem is so bad that pollution from China forced neighboring South Korea to close its schools. The labor force isn’t likely to be particularly productive either, not when the women in China will be subject to forced abortions for at least another decade, schools have to close for two weeks because of disease, and the government is saying that it’s facing a “very severe” employment problem. Sure, you can whip the workers, but when they start hearing that workers in other countries are making quite a bit more than 30 cents a day and work in places that aren’t likely to kill them, they’re not going to be so eager to slave away for their masters in Beijing. They’re definitely not going to be happy when a few million of their countrymen, who aren’t included in the official unemployment figures, come traipsing in from the countryside looking for work that isn’t there. There is a lot of countryside in China.
It seems to me that the second problem, and all that goes with it, is a direct cause of the first problem. No communist country will ever be able to compete with a free market economy. It just won’t happen. Communism is the antithesis of economic health and national happiness and so long as Red China still exists, which looks like a very long time to me, it will always have fatal limitations preventing it from threatening us in any real or lasting way. I consider that an obvious statement, and I wonder why more people don’t consider that when they look at China.
The third reason is one I’ve not seen discussed very much in all the growing panic over our economy. There is no country that relishes competition like the United States of America. We compete in every way possible. You can’t get two Americans to take a trip to the grocery store without them trying to beat each other to the best bargains or the quickest trip. We prevailed in World War II largely because the population back home resolved that it would not be beaten by the German and Japanese war machines. We prevail everywhere we go because competition is so intrinsically a part of the American character that it is nearly bred into our children (despite our best efforts lately to breed that out of them). We still take a challenge seriously and we’ll use every trick in the book to win. If you do beat us it’s because you outhustled us. We won’t be tricked because we invented the dirty trick. We won’t be outmaneuvered legally because our lawyers are the biggest sharks in the tank. America, as George C Scott growled in Patton, loves a winner and hates a loser.
If China really wants to step up and take us on, I’m pretty confident that the competitive spirit of America will arise as it has for over two centuries and put paid to the tyrants’ notions of economic domination. Yes, China is big and scary. But when it comes to economic competition, it’s a babe in the woods. It’s running an antiquated infrastructure and a bedraggled population as hard as it can and as anyone knows who’s driven an old beater car really hard, it’s only a matter of time before something blows up. We already see signs of serious trouble. Unless it radically change how it does business and how it runs its government, even worse calamities will befall it. Meanwhile, we’re just waiting for the word to trounce them and their world-beating ambitions. All we require is for our politicians to step out of the way and let us do what we do best – win.
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Category: The Economy and Your Money, The World At Large
As much as I'd like to challenge your contention that China cannot compete economically, I feel I should address the issue of China's abuse of Tibetan monks. It's not really that you're wrong on the issue, it's that you, like pretty much everyone else in the world, don't really understand the issue. I have close connections to the Tibetan community and have a little more insight than most people, some of which the Tibetan community is reluctant to address. The Chinese are still wrong on the whole issue, but they're not as wrong as you might think. And the issue is a lot less trivial than most people would ever imagine.
This issue starts with the Fifth Dalai Lama, but to explain it, the nature of the Dalai Lama must be explained. Tenzing Gyatsu currently hold the title: His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, Fourteenth Reincarnation of Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. To make a long story short, Avalokiteshvara is considered the most powerful Bodhisattva in Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism. He is more significant than the Shakyamuni Buddha (born Siddhartha Gautama), the modern Buddha of our time. He is considered to be more enlightened than the Buddha we know, but not a Buddha himself because he continues to reincarnate himself in order to aid mankind (a Buddha is one who breaks the cycle of birth and death- or ends Samsara to achieve Nirvana). The Dalai Lama is believed to be one of his reincarnations. And I don't just mean the current one. All of the Dalai Lamas are believed to be the same reincarnation of Avalokiteshvara.
So why is this important? Well the Fifth Dalai Lama ruled over a very prosperous and technologically advanced empire. Historically, it had been an empire that was feared for its ruthless warriors and had many conflicts with the Chinese. But it had made an alliance with the Mongols a few Dalai Lamas before, and the Chinese were understandably apprehensive about that. I should note that the title 'Dalai Lama' was bestowed by a Mongol king and is Mongol for "master of the ocean." During the Fifth Dalai Lam's rule, China agreed to provide military protection to Tibet in exchange for scientific and philosophical knowledge. China also agreed that the Dalai Lama would be the foremost authority in Chinese Buddhism, which is somewhat strange given that the Chinese were Buddhists 700 years before Buddhism, through Padmasambadva, reached Tibet. Strange as it may be, Chinese Buddhists have a deep respect for the Dalai Lama to this day. And therein lies the problem.
The Chinese are wise enough to understand that ideas can pose very real threats. They aren't the first, of course. The powerful Catholic Church saw a threat in some relatively unknown priest named Martin Luther. And for good reason. Despite having no real power, he sparked a movement that would tear the church apart and result in severe bloodshed for centuries throughout Europe. Ultimately, ideas can be more powerful than any army. And that's why China fears the Dalai Lama so much. He has a bigger following in China than the Communist Party. For that reason, his ideas pose a very serious threat to those in power. They take it seriously enough to outlaw the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama and all other Tibetan Lamas. The law is silly of course, but it says a lot about how much the Chinese really fear the Dalai Lama's ideas. We should understand that the Dalai Lama really does hold a lot of sway in China, and China's concerns are hardly unwarranted. It may all seem silly to Westerners, but it's really no joke in either China or Tibet.
In the end, China has violated any agreement they ever had with Tibet by attempting to control the institution of the Dalai Lama (they want the Communist Party to select the next Dalai Lama and have kidnapped the Panchen Lama- at 7 years old- to push the issue). They are certainly in the wrong here. But they aren't just being overly paranoid in persecuting the Tibetan monastic orders. Those monks really do represent a threat to the leaders of China. Even if they are pacifists.
[...] this is exactly the wrong time to be giving the ChiComs any relief. Right now, Beijing is under growing internal pressure that could very well become existential unless we give them the space they need to quash the [...]