A Global military/consumer product "RDA" forming between China and GM?

[Exoblade]

Originally Posted by Clarke

It would be pretty much impossible for China and the US to go to war anyway. War is expensive, and guess who the Chinese are selling all their manufacturing to?

Its more that China owns vast ammounts of US treasury bonds. If they stop buying then or call in their existing debt then the american government stops working since from the 1980's they've funded most of their activities through bonds. This way they've been able to cut taxes while keeping spending up.

Originally Posted by Raiden

I'm kind of surprised that nobody brought up how China is like the poster-child of environmental destruction for industrial gain.

And the US could probably do a lot to stop it. Just tell China to clean up their act, or cut off a certain (as large as possible) amount of trade with them. But that won't happen, because the US government is made of corrupt, old ****stains who care more about their pocketbooks than any other living thing.

This however runs into the fact that the west did the same thing during the industrial revolution. To say that we can industrialise but you can't; smacks of imperialism and of keeping the natives weak.

It also runs counter to Americas view that developing an middle class in china is the best way of undermining the communist party. The best/quickest way to acheive that is to allow rapid industrialisation.

[Niri Te]

Originally Posted by Exoblade

This however runs into the fact that the west did the same thing during the industrial revolution. To say that we can industrialise but you can't; smacks of imperialism and of keeping the natives weak.

It also runs counter to Americas view that developing an middle class in china is the best way of undermining the communist party. The best/quickest way to acheive that is to allow rapid industrialisation.

The two above statements are very VERY true. If we wanted to see their middle class explode, while shrinking their environmental impact, I would suggest the following to them. (Understand that I am NO diplomat, or economist, and have no idea if this would even WORK, but am putting it up to see what others think.

What if in exchange for them PROMISING in a "Treaty" of sorts, to NOT cash in the bonds for fifty years, we would help them bring up their nuclear power safety systems to state of the art levels, and help them build the safety systems of any plant that they chose to build, how ever many they chose to build for the next twenty years.

The trickle down of the Construction dollars paid to the Chinese company's building these plants would, at least in some part reach the construction workers, enriching, and possibly widening the Middle class in China. When the plants came on line, the need to burn the coal would plummet, and the planet would benefit. A little Pollyanna? Perhaps, but I just thought this up while reading your post.
Niri Te

[Exoblade]

Originally Posted by Niri Te

What if in exchange for them PROMISING in a "Treaty" of sorts, to NOT cash in the bonds for fifty years, we would help them bring up their nuclear power safety systems to state of the art levels, and help them build the safety systems of any plant that they chose to build, how ever many they chose to build for the next twenty years.

This wouldn't really work. Not only would it undermine the point of treasury bonds, it might reduce sales of them, hitting the american government ablity to fund itself. If you can't make a profit from the bonds why buy more.

Also the Chinese wants to be self-sufficent technolgically and so want their own scientists/companies to build their reactors. Letting foreign companies build the reactors would undermine this desire since it suggests that china is less advanced than the west.

Also reactor building would not really boast the growth of the middle class since it would be undertaken by a small number of constuction workers using machinery and the reactor itself would be built by highly specialised people who are already highly paid.

In deed a move away from coal for power genoration may have a negative effect for peoples standard of living since so many people are employed in mining and transporting coal for the powerstations. If the power stations go nuclear these people would have to find new jobs, some may actually suffer structural unemployment as the number of mining jobs can't not meet supply as china transfers its mining operations around the world. For this reason you could argue that the government has a reason to keep using coal to keep the workforce employed.

[Raiden]

Originally Posted by Exoblade

smacks of imperialism and of keeping the natives weak.

So it's impossible to pursue industry without skipping the awful dirty phase, then?

I'm disappointed in you.