China and India's Threat to the West
The Drudge Report steered me to a most interesting Daily Mail article about China, by Anthony Browne.
[Thanks to coverbrowser.com for the image.]
Browne notes that "Napoleon III compared China to a sleeping giant and warned: 'When China awakes, she will shake the world.'"
He makes some fine points that bear listing:
1. China and India are emerging out of their third-world status and growing at a speed up to four times that of the US or UK. Examples: "China is spending 35 times as much on crude oil as it did eight years ago, and 23 times as much on copper. As it builds gleaming skyscrapers on its fields, China alone consumes half the world's cement and a third of its steel."
2. The once-self-sufficient Western World can no longer ignore them.
3. China and India's economies are growing rapidly, while we in the West are struggling with a liquidity and/or solvency and/or monetary-policy crisis that will reduce our current GDP to something approaching zero.
4. Their increased consumption is spurring an impressive surge in demand for all raw materials that is contributing to the rise in commodity prices around the world. (I note here that I believe their exploding demand is only one contributing factor behind those price increases, the other factor being the inflating and consequent loss of credibility of many of the world's fiat [unstandardized] paper currencies.)
5. China and India's cultures put much less emphasis on individual liberty and property rights than we do in the West. Example: "At home, [China] holds mass executions of criminals with bullets in the back of the head while transplant surgeons stand by to harvest their still pulsating organs." They have fewer qualms about siding up to brutal dictatorships, such as those found in Africa and South America in their search for trading partnerships.
6. A long-suppressed nationalistic mood is stirring in China and India, and their present government structures are not unamenable to excessive executive power.
7. China and India are taking advantage of the education prospects offered by the West, but they are no longer emigrating to the same degree as in the past. Business and employment opportunities are emerging at home.
Two things come to mind that Browne may have omitted. First, on the positive side, the Chinese and Indians love and respect gold. I would conjecture that they are more aware of its role in monetary history, and they just may find a way to shore up their currencies so as to make them viable competitors for today's two fiat anchors, the weakening dollar and the untested euro.
Secondly, and on the more negative side, Chinese and Indian cultures' long standing lack of respect for human rights may be a stumbling block to their advancement. Cultural stickiness has a way of undermining the game plans of even the most visionary of ideas, to wit America's loss of a good portion of the moral and political underpinnings of the U.S. Constitution. And our struggle to maintain the ideals of our Founding Fathers may be nothing compared to the battle both India and China will face, as push comes to shove between, on the one hand, those concepts of individual freedom, equality of opportunity, and property rights that are the source of the Western World's three centuries of progress, and on the other hand, the centuries of class repression that have weighted upon these Eastern cultures.
But I am an optimist at heart and can imagine that, with the speed and openness of today's flow of information, they will evolve as fast as they possibly can.
[Thanks to coverbrowser.com for the image.]
Browne notes that "Napoleon III compared China to a sleeping giant and warned: 'When China awakes, she will shake the world.'"
He makes some fine points that bear listing:
1. China and India are emerging out of their third-world status and growing at a speed up to four times that of the US or UK. Examples: "China is spending 35 times as much on crude oil as it did eight years ago, and 23 times as much on copper. As it builds gleaming skyscrapers on its fields, China alone consumes half the world's cement and a third of its steel."
2. The once-self-sufficient Western World can no longer ignore them.
3. China and India's economies are growing rapidly, while we in the West are struggling with a liquidity and/or solvency and/or monetary-policy crisis that will reduce our current GDP to something approaching zero.
4. Their increased consumption is spurring an impressive surge in demand for all raw materials that is contributing to the rise in commodity prices around the world. (I note here that I believe their exploding demand is only one contributing factor behind those price increases, the other factor being the inflating and consequent loss of credibility of many of the world's fiat [unstandardized] paper currencies.)
5. China and India's cultures put much less emphasis on individual liberty and property rights than we do in the West. Example: "At home, [China] holds mass executions of criminals with bullets in the back of the head while transplant surgeons stand by to harvest their still pulsating organs." They have fewer qualms about siding up to brutal dictatorships, such as those found in Africa and South America in their search for trading partnerships.
6. A long-suppressed nationalistic mood is stirring in China and India, and their present government structures are not unamenable to excessive executive power.
7. China and India are taking advantage of the education prospects offered by the West, but they are no longer emigrating to the same degree as in the past. Business and employment opportunities are emerging at home.
Two things come to mind that Browne may have omitted. First, on the positive side, the Chinese and Indians love and respect gold. I would conjecture that they are more aware of its role in monetary history, and they just may find a way to shore up their currencies so as to make them viable competitors for today's two fiat anchors, the weakening dollar and the untested euro.
Secondly, and on the more negative side, Chinese and Indian cultures' long standing lack of respect for human rights may be a stumbling block to their advancement. Cultural stickiness has a way of undermining the game plans of even the most visionary of ideas, to wit America's loss of a good portion of the moral and political underpinnings of the U.S. Constitution. And our struggle to maintain the ideals of our Founding Fathers may be nothing compared to the battle both India and China will face, as push comes to shove between, on the one hand, those concepts of individual freedom, equality of opportunity, and property rights that are the source of the Western World's three centuries of progress, and on the other hand, the centuries of class repression that have weighted upon these Eastern cultures.
But I am an optimist at heart and can imagine that, with the speed and openness of today's flow of information, they will evolve as fast as they possibly can.
Labels: China, economics, India, world economies
posted by Katy Delay at 10:16 AM
6 Comments:
The West were imperialists and colonialists that made life brutally miserable for the world, also the cold war was marked by U.S. political manipulations in asia, south america, and middle eastern causing wars and bombing campaigns... slaughtering countless millions globally to "help" them.
Perhaps China & India still have to evolve DOMESTICALLY regarding human rights but perhaps they will also limit the reasons the U.S. always finds to bomb countries on EVERY continent in every decade.
Not to mention that the U.S. have attacked countries whose affairs they meddled with in the first place causing the "reasons" given to invade.
I'm pretty tired of the West ignoring that the rest of the WORLD was THEIR victims while they advocated "Democracy" and "Individual" Human Rights.
Stop being paranoid, while Asia evolves internally, they are not likely to desire conquering the west like the west did to them... unless the west is stupid enough to "pre-emptively" attack countries strong enough to give them more than a bloody nose.
In other words, the era of western "Dominance" also had a brutally evil dark side.
China and India main human rights issues are domestic but the causes of much of the world's escalating wars & conflicts for the past decades and centuries can be traced to mainly direct & indirect western policies.
China and India's influence will be needed to counter western cultural tendencies for military "crackdowns" that has slaughtered foreign civilians around the world just as western governments rule of law will serve as an influence against DOMESTIC crackdowns for Asia.
The West has much to learn from Asia as well.
China and India cannot be put in the same boat. It's ignorance of the highest degree to classify them both as one. They are different in EVERY way. China is a dictatorship, India a democracy. China is communist, India is a free market. China shuns religion, India respects all religions. China is expansionist, India is pacifist. India has a lot in common with the west and still cherishes it's common values with Britain and the commonwealth. India's ambitions are to play a major role in geopolitics but only peacefully. India's foreign policy is almost congruent with that of the west. The problems of human rights and poverty are more a result of an outdated system from the colonial era that is now being reformed. India's only rivals are it's neighbours, Pakistan and China. In fact. the west is already accepting India and the US is trying to use it as a counterweight to china.
shit mn, China, in it's history has never, ever taken land from
anther cntry.
America's different, they have too much self-esteem. Their cntry is so stuffed, the news reporters are always inappropriate, same with their 'STARS' which are totally SHIT mn.
America is whatever the shit is called 'DEMOCRATIC' which I think is total nonsense. In the 911 in America, America said that the terrorists took the lives of the 'innocent' , but however what did they do to the Iraqi's.....
They killed the innocent. 30 years ago, what did they do to the North Koreans, and the Vietnamese?
Saying about the Vietnamese war it was totally not a war of the shit called 'DEMOCRACY' but to form a bloddy threat to china.
Geogrophy telss us the history- look at all the continents excluding europe; americas, africa, australia, asia,- you will find the graves of the so called 'personal freedom' & 'Human dignity' .They were dug in the form of colonisation, genoside of american indians, or wars mongering . I think the west should not worry about India or China, they are matured enough to unlearn & learn.
Please dont point finger at India.
1.2.5 crore year old history
2.Oldest Race ,Aryans in the world
3.Never attacked any country
4.Whoever attacked India before Moghuls, be it Romans,Kushan,Mongols not even one person of that race remain on this Earth
Aryans have one basic quality, They wipe out any race that attacks it.
DONT TEACH HUMAN RIGHTS TO HINDUSTAN-WE ARE MASTERS
JAI HIND
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