Capt. James Fanell warns about the rise of China

[Anomalocaris]

This is the first time since the cold war that the west has to play with another dominant power.

What I will say about the Chinese however is that their economy is heavily reliant on exports. If the rest of the world suffers, they do too (as evidenced by the past 5 or so years following the credit crunch in the West). But their colonisation of East Africa has been rapid and almost undocumented. Quite scary really!

Also worth nothing that China is a de facto totalitarian dictatorship, so you can't expect it to play by anyone's rules except it's own when it comes to economics. It's a free market up till a point where the Communist party doesn't want it to be, meaning operating there can be difficult (impossible if you're facebook and google!). History tells us that economies that operate under a system that consistently fluctuates doesn't tend to have much longevity, meaning either a rejection of free market economics (no chance of that happening considering the dramatic rise in wealth and borrowing there) or a gradual, slow decline of authoritarianism. Or a big party, I dunno.

China is remarkably uncontrolled for a totalitarian regime. Highly authoritarian, yes, totalitarian, not in any sense as the word is normally understood, as applied to Nazi German or Soviet Russia, when the word had a descriptive meaning, before the word became a convenient tool for the vilification of those perceived to not eagerly serve the best interests of the unipolar world political and economic system that happen to places United States and its English speaking minions at the center upon a self made pedastal.

One could always forecast the imminent end of Chinese economic growth because of it is so authoritarian. Authoritarianism may yet prove to be China's achille's heel. But it is indisputable that China would still be as poor as, say, philippines, or India, had it not been so authoritarian in the last 35 years or so. The fact remains Chinese authoritarianism mixed with a freewheeling capitalism that oddly pay homage to communism and socialism is what had in the course of 35 years lifted more people out of abject subsistence poverty into something like an existence with disposible income and leisure than all other political economic systems in the world combined during the last 100.


In the chinese view, human rights are very good. But not nearly as good as the ability to live better than in abject poverty, have leisure time and disposible income. They think implimentation of westen concept of human rights is not all together compatible with granting a billion people the right to have disposible income and leisure time sometime within this life time. Being closer to abject poverty, their estimate of which is more valuable - the right vote or the ability to have leisure and disposible income, freedom of speech or freedom from starvation, carries more weight than opinionating gadflies of the west several generations removed from knowing what it exact is like to live a hand to mouth existence always tetering on the edge of starvation.