Naw, not really. China has issues with human rights, obviously. But in the international economic they're not really "bullying" anyone. They're leveraging their economic power, but no more than other countries have done, or would do in their shoes. If you have the goods, you call the shots. The most dangerous thing about the populist attitude towards China isn't that they dislike them, it's their arrogance. I prefer a global free market, and the more technology advances, the more that's going to happen. But we still we don't live in a perfect world. So to some extent you still have to see other countries as potential rivals and protect yourself against them. But the idea that China only beats the US or UK or whoever because they violate IP laws or have import/export restrictions or just sell ****ty stuff is bogus. It's a huge country, of course they have unscrupulous dealers. But even then, largely that's because domestic companies are happy to buy cheap crap and sell it on to consumers who are happy to buy them, either because they don't mind cheap ****, or because they are easily duped. You can perhaps stop China from selling cheap crap on Ali Baba, but some other country will just fill the gap. The bigger issue though, is that to a large extent China is just beating us fair and square. Can anyone really say that "Made in GB" or "Made in US" is really a mark of quality? There's a problem with our own countries, in our own market places. It's not like our citizens and businesses are inherently ****. We can point to dozens of smaller companies and custom/high-end producers of things that are fantastic. But that's just it-- they are smaller, high end companies. When it comes to larger mass production, our products are ****. Increasingly, people are buying stuff from Xiaomi, Huawei and others because it's just the better product at the better price point. We're losing on the free market, not because China is cheating. What makes our policies so disastrous is that we fail to recognize both the quality of goods China is producing, and their end game. Being a third world economy that competes only on price point is a ****ty way to go. You have to manipulate your currency to keep prices low, you have mass amounts of workers to abuse, you burn up all of your environmental and other resources by overproducing to gain short-term profits. It's not sustainable. So China is actually trying pretty hard to NOT be the China everyone stereotypes them as. They want to go after Apple and do the same thing that Korea did with Samsung and that Japan has done with their cars. They're trying to reduce their ****ty factories and farm that out to other Asian countries, so that those countries can kill themselves producing $10 motherboards that China turns arounds, slaps into some device, and remarkets for hundreds of dollars. Trump is trying to race China to the bottom. It's a race they are happy to let us win. It's like "We'll show you China. We'll pay billions to get our own Foxconn factory so Terry Gou can screw us over like the ****head he is, and all our workers can work crazy hours and kill themselves." Why would we want to be the ****ty economy that China WAS, instead of racing them to be the good economy China wants to be? And the stupidest part of it all is that we are still winning the race we should be running. We're kind of screwing it up rapidly, but we still haven't thrown away our advantage totally. Until Trump came along with his stupid policies. Now I think we have lost the race.
And Trump is actually playing into China's hands. China would prefer that its people not buy overseas tech products over their own. So they have tariffs. Who pays for the tariff? The population of the country that introduced it. So Trump countered with a tariff from the USA, which penalises his own people. And guess where significant parts of US tech products are made? In China. So the USA is in a lose-lose situation. Trump is simply being out-manouevred all the time. And this is why Tesla, for example, built a wholly owned factory in China [the only company allowed to do so] because they'd like to sell products to the Chinese without tariffs and they don't mind sharing some intellectual property because they give away their patents all the time, and they know the Chinese want their technology. And being vertically integrated, Tesla makes everything of intellectual property value themselves, so effectively they retain absolute control. Trump introducing tariffs to Chinese products almost certainly upped Tesla's priority to get a Shanghai factory built. Something the Chinese were more than happy about.
If you dig a little, I think you will find that China do bend, if not break a fair amount of rules while pushing their exports & promoting their stock. Even using third world country loop holes to set up factories. I'm no expert on the matter, but I have heard of a lot of situations over the years where their behaviour is pretty distasteful in the matter.
Sorry, only read TSS posts, thought this was about the US & China. See, I told myself to never enter this page, and now I've annoyed someone already...............I'm gone!
Yep, China is certainly not innocent. They are investing in coal power plants and factories to be built in various parts of the 3rd world. They have built a new silk road [railway] to London, and building along the way. But along with that, China has invested in Africa where no other country would touch. So there's questionable intentions in China's economic investments. And if African nations say NO to new Chinese investment, is the West going to step in? Of course not. We'll happily let parts of Africa rot.
Of course not. But just to defend HRing a little, the chat was about USA & China only at this moment. You can widen the topic if you want. I've got time to read. I'm still nursing a cough and cold. [atishoo - cough]
Yes, they do. But our countries engage in protectionism as well. For example, we get very angry that Chinese companies are officially owned/sanctioned by their government. But our governments are propping up our big corporations as well. Can we honestly say that big industries aren't getting big subsidies from the government via indirect channels? But really, the point I'm trying to make isn't about moral comparisons. Of course I believe in labor laws and treating workers a lot better than China treats theirs. We should try to enforce human rights everywhere, and I don't have a problem saying that while both our countries have issues, we're better than China. What I'm talking about is raw business strategy. We stereotype the Chinese as making ****ty products, being unscrupulous, and only winning because of that. And so the populists want to fight fire with fire by tariffs and focusing in manufacturing labor and stuff like that. But we ignore the fact that actually China is less bad than it used to be and is in a lot of ways moving forward towards an more first world/high class economy like ours... and they're beating us at it. That's what makes China so dangerous, and why they're becoming a huge economic force. They're getting smarter. For 50 years, China has had ****ty labor laws, devalued their currency, flooded markets with cheap-ass ****. It was never a problem. They were blowing through their human capital and resources just to survive. We took advantage of all that cheap material to make more profitable products. It was in fact, a key part of why we beat them. They killed themselves to build iPad components to get a 5% margin, we sold those iPads at a 200% margin. What's making China dangerous now is that they're doing less of that and more of the **** that we do. Like owning sports teams, and building nice electronics, and producing cutting edge tech. The footballing analogy I would make is like complaining that big clubs tap up players. Well of course they do, and it's wrong. But most clubs probably bend the rules. We do things to Championship clubs that Man U does to PL sides. And tapping up players is not the reason the big clubs are better than us. They're not tapping up players to prevent us from getting them, they're tapping them up to prevent OTHER big clubs from getting them. They don't care about us. A player will pick Man U or Liverpool over Southampton every day for dozens of reasons even if they didn't tap them up. And attempting to tap up players is not going to help us be more competitive against them. They'll say "oh that's nice. No, I will wait until Man U comes at me with an offer." The best way to compete with the big clubs is to find a rich owner who is willing to spend like they can, and then beat them at their own game-- ethical or not. That's how Chelsea and Man City did it, and they've been pretty much the only team that have been successful at joining the elite club ranks. Not that I'm arguing we should ignore morality. Just saying we're clinging pretty tightly to the "We only lose because we play fair" belief, when in fact that's really not why we are losing. I don't condone being dickheads, but if Trump and co. want to be dickheads, at least be intelligent dickheads.
I'm guessing throughout human history the incumbent super power has used the cheap labour from it's newly conquered lands to produce goods for it's wealthy citizens and life is wonderful. Those people in far off lands have to be educated to produce those goods and then get a bit uppity realising they're being exploited. Meanwhile the wealthy country ends up with half it's population being morons and out of work and all the money going to just a few. Civil unrest follows and the morons revolt. The civilisation collapses. It's well documented that the Roman citizens were all taking selfies as Attila the Hun ransacked their empire.
Yep. Exactly. All the third word child labor and sweat shops, pollution and all that other horrible stuff. Them devaluing currency and the government controlling their businesses and the lives of the workers. They were producing things for US companies. And then Nike turned around and sold that $1.50 shoe for $150. No one in the US complained that this was somehow "unfair" competition. We were in fact, exploiting them to our advantage. It's pretty close to the old tradition of using conquered countries as slave labor. It's only when the slaves start trying to compete with Nike that it's suddenly unfair. It was totally fair when we exploited China's workers. But it's not fair when China does it. And now the cheap labor isn't even in China anymore. It's in Malaysia. And China's better equipped to exploit Malaysia than we are, so we think that's unfair as well. It's not like we're too ethical to do it, we're just losing.
Whatever your view on China, the trade war is still hurting the whole rest of the world. Especially Japan who trade heavily with both. Its just a pity they don't enjoy access to the same type of mutually agreed laws and courts we have had to resolve these types of economic disputes within the EU fairly without hurting everyone's economies. Its just a much better way of doing it.
I'm sure we all remember that when we LIKE something on a contentious subject, we don't necessarily like it, but we tend to agree with it. I kind of don't like the LIKE button, if that makes sense.
TPP would have been a first step in getting some countries on the same page with the same rules to challenge China. Just like the EU helps you all cooperate and trade with other European countries on agreed terms and makes you stronger as a unit against outsiders like China and others. But we pulled out of TPP and now you all want EU. Stupid strategy, based again on overconfidence in our country's abilities or worse a racist or semi-racist false sense of inherent native superiority.
I think you're referring to TTIP [Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership], yeah? I know that TPP exists, but's a Trans-Pacific Partnership deal.
Trump pulls troops out of Syria, protecting the Kurds, and Turkey starts an offensive: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-49983357 At the very best this obliterates any chance Turkey had of joining the EU. At worst? Looks like we'll find out.
Incidentally, did you know that Spurs have a Politics thread and Watford have an Environment thread. Good for them.
And by the way, will Hilary Clinton run for President again? There are loud whispers. If she got elected Trump would be finished. It's almost worth it. But not quite. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren please, in that order preferentially. With Andrew Yang offered a major role in that administration. "...and then I go and spoil it all by saying somethin' stupid like I love you." [Frank & Nancy Sinatra, written by C. Carson Parks]
Both, really. TTIP is a partnership between us and you... or at least between us and the EU. TPP is a partnership between the US and other Asian countries which would have put us and some of the labor markets and trading partners in Asia on the same rules, thereby forcing China to also comply if they want to do business with those countries. Or at least it would have been if the US hadn't pulled out. So for example we could tap into the Malaysian labor market and China couldn't. It's also one thing if China can't sell goods to the US but a much bigger thing if China also can't sell goods to other Asian countries, and we are all buying Galaxies and iPhones from each other and not Mates. One more directly impacts China by hitting close to home for them in terms of direct resources they need. The other has potentially just as large an impact but more indirect by forcing China to comply with rules in order to tap into the wealthiest economies in the world. You all pulling out of the EU and us out of TTIP and TPP makes it every country for themselves, which means China will feel no economic pressure to comply or any moral pressure to like, join the world in harmony. It's so stupid. China is a huge country with vast amounts of resources and tons of people. Of course they are going to have a powerful economy. It's crazy to think that we can keep them smaller than us which amounts to them living at like poverty level. On a mano a mano basis, it's hard for anyone to stand up to China. But if we all teamed together, it'd be easy. Except due to our arrogance we're all individually going in the other direction.
There used to be a Dislike button in the old software, but that was a bit ambiguous as well, as you could dislike what the post was about but approve of the fact that someone had posted it.
