(June 29, 2013 at 2:08 am)FifthElement Wrote: Dunno, I always been suspicious about them, they have a very steady approach, on all fronts, thought that in a 30 years we will be so dependent on Chinese economically that they will assimilate us peacefully does not seam so far fetched IMO ...
In a world war they, despite all the men power, would not stand a chance, Russia would not allow it, Russians tend to unite in the spite of the great danger and to be side by side with the rest of the globe
I do not believe that Chinese citizens would go crazy about it ether
Actually that is one of the most specific problems with China. They THOUGHT they could economically outmaneuver us but the problem is that they have stagnated. Sure we still outsource our labor to them but the thing is they aren't getting quite as good of a deal as they thought. We all grumble about cheap shit being made in China but that's exactly the problem is that it's cheap shit. Our current problems aside, we are NOT a third-world nation; it's impossible to control a developed nation by grabbing up its cheapest and most expendable of production needs. Discard the Chinese, and companies in the US will send production to India, or Cambodia, or any of the other dozens of east Asian nations that will gladly produce cheap shit for us for pennies on the dollar without much of an interruption in the flow of production at all. We've more or less reached the maximum threshold of what we can outsource. What can be outsourced largely has been outsourced; there's no more growth there, and in fact some companies are turning elsewhere because, get this, the cost of living in China has gone up because their standard of living is going up...meaning shit's getting more expensive. They built themselves a bubble of making cheap shit. Now they have to start paying out more, which means shit ain't so cheap. Suddenly the biggest factor in their economy is slipping away.
That's the problem with being a cheapskate in a global economy; everyone else is willing to do what you're doing at the same cost if you dare raise your shit by a cent. So you can either wallow in pig shit or you can try to improve your standard of living, and when your nation numbers in the billions...well, a citizen's revolt is the LAST fucking thing you want...so saying no to them when they start demanding higher pay as they are exposed more to the world you've willingly let in in your attempt to get some modicum of control over it? Not an option.
War is their only viable solution. Both the US and China have been walking this road. The fact that so many people have been blissfully unaware and naively assuming that China would just peacefully rise to superpower status through nothing more than building cheap shit only speaks of how ignorant people tend to be when it comes to affairs outside their own little world.
Oh my yes, even the supposedly worldly English have been blathering for years about how China is a fine example of "peaceful power."
Out of touch. The entire friggin' world is out of touch with reality. Fucking hell. How's that old saying go? Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it?
So we didn't learn our lesson with Japan and Germany and Russia...so we make the same fucking mistakes while everyone keeps chirping about how this is gonna be different when it's going the exact same fucking way. Just think about it; they take a plunge and start struggling [WWII was a horrible time for China and the preceding decades hadn't been kind to them, either]. They rise to prominence through nationalistic claims of supremacy, using propaganda and indoctrination to fool the masses into believing in their nation's innate superiority [Mao and the rise of the communist party in China, and the subsequent isolationism]. They gain power through introspective focus and self-improvement, claiming peaceful intentions while building up a military force all the same that is clearly much bigger than for mere self-defense. At a critical moment they petition to have the Olympics hosted in their home country. A grand display is provided and the athletes are groomed by the government to be the best of the best, regardless of whether or not they cheat to do it, followed by deceiving their trade partners and their intended targets and what they consider to be their threats, and then begin annexing other countries while the US tries to pretend like it can just ignore the rest of the world and focus on itself, until it gets a knife in the back [in this case I refer more to Japan than Germany or Russia but Russia can still sort of count itself in on this considering the whole thing involving post WWII...but we kind of expected it from them to be honest, and Germany was something we were trying to ignore until, well, we couldn't] and HAS to act, thus leading to war.
We've been down this fucking road before in the last century. The rest of the world keeps getting hopped up and drags us into their shit and then they bitch about it when we start manipulating affairs in an attempt to prevent it from happening again, and worse is our attempts to prevent it this time have done nothing, if they haven't outright made it worse. This time, at least, they're being open about their future intents. The question is, how will we respond? We're still reeling economically, our military is just getting itself sorted back out after the drawdowns, and American confidence in the military is at an all-time low, not to mention our own nationalism is dimmed because we're now a LOT more wary of what our leaders claim to tell us. Getting us to turn out in droves to volunteer in the military to attack China is out of the question, and conscription...well, conscription doesn't go over very well. Conscription only works for numbers, and we don't have numbers on our side. Militarily, our advantage is professionalism, resources, and technology. Militarily, the Chinese advantage is dumb, blind ultranationalistic zeal, sheer weight of numbers, and the ability to churn out an assload of crap. So conscription won't do very much.
As Min pointed out, our own leadership is fucking us over. While the dumb-shit republicunts force us to quibble over silly, stupid shit like how many Mexicans are pouring into this country [pouring is such a strong word; trickling is more accurate given that most Mexicans have realized this country's economy is in the tank] or whether or not rape can result in pregnancy or how we should totally privatize social security because, fuck, if it ain't broken, then break it so you can claim to fix it while in truth you just fuck it up even more in your favor, the world around us is changing. The European Union isn't as stable as everyone thought it was [another thing I called back in high school on the debate team] and seems like it's going to end up drifting apart here in another ten years at most. China's NOT rising peacefully, it's beating the war drums. The middle-east is turning out to NOT pay out in much AND it's also turning out that ignoring it seems to actually be working out because the people there are taking care of getting their shit together themselves [Arab Spring; didn't call that though]. Russia ISN'T returning to its status as world superpower, its gas reserves proving to not really be as big of a boon as everyone thought, Pakistan is NOT our ally, Afghanistan does NOT love us, Iraq doesn't love us, Africa's still a shithole [the only thing that nobody is surprised by], and Canada's taking the US's place as Batshit Central over in this hemisphere.
The world's changing, the Republicunts are terrified of it, so they're dithering over stupid, silly shit in an attempt to bury their heads in the sand and pretend like the world isn't spinning, and their inability to get the fuck with the program is going to rail us headfirst into fucking national suicide if they don't shut the fuck up and get with the fucking program already. China's a looming threat but it's not immediate, we still have some time if we can get shit in this country back on track...and, we ARE, but it's happening too fucking slowly, and, as Min pointed out, you can thank the republitards for that.
Will 2014 see a change? I sure as fuck hope so. Cuz shit beyond our borders is starting to look a little ugly.
