China - emerging threat, peaceful riser, or paper tiger?

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Lancer
China will soon be attacking other countries to steal their women.

There is actually a problem in North Vietnam with Chinese villagers stealing Viet girls to be their wives.

Americans are stealing Russian women, but they have plenty to go around:

[Donegeal]

Originally posted by Lancer
"I've already stolen one of their women "

They have few enough to spare. I'm not sure of the details but it is my understanding that Chinese population control methods will result in a scarcity of women in China in the future. Because parents were (are?) only allowed one child, and because male children are preferable for economic reasons, (helping out with the farm, working in the factory...) alot of female babies end up dead. This gives the parents another chance at a male child. So, one of these days millions of average Chinese guys are going to get pretty damned horny. What effect that will have on geo politics and imperial ambitions I won't hazard a guess, but keep your powder dry and your women well bunkered down.

This is why the whole "Smoking is good for your health" deal the Chinese government is pushing is a good thing!!!

[Dracon II]

I see a mission for the Queer Eye team emerging...

[mindseye]

Personally I think China's greatest threat to the world is pollution.

I also worry that it's economy will become so large that it's business culture influences international standards. Ditto for its politics.

I see little likelihood of any kind of aggressive military expansion.

[Dracon II]

Originally posted by Agathon
Australia toast?

Great, suits us across the Tasman.

You might be able to make some money selling sheep to lonely single Chinese men... a great opportunity to promote Kiwi culture

[Dr Strangelove]

The oil fields of the middle east are too far away for them to grasp and also there is no great power vacuum for them to reach out and fill.

[Wraith]

--"Read Joseph Stiglitz's Globalization and its discontent. He explains how free-market ideologues have created more problems than good solutions."

Rather ironic, considering that the source is a hardline Keynesian, and most of the discontent could quite readily be traced to their fallacies.

But hey, expansionary monetary policy obviously works so well. I mean, look at the US... Ah, well, the magic of hedonics will stop anyone from noticing for a while, and by then the next few elections should be passed.

Wraith
"Economic history is a long record of government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics."
-- Ludwig von Mises

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Ted Striker


There is actually a problem in North Vietnam with Chinese villagers stealing Viet girls to be their wives.

Americans are stealing Russian women, but they have plenty to go around:

It seemed like Russian women made up most of the high end call girls you saw walking around in Korea, Japan, and the middle east. They wanted white chicks and the former USSR was the source.

[Drake Tungsten]

The Russian girls I see ain't that high end...

[Dinner]

The girls aren't high end but the prices the Asian guys are willing to pay them are. I guess they all have a blond girl fantasy they want to fulfill.

[Drake Tungsten]

Japanese guys pay high end prices for any girl, not just the white ones.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Wraith
--"Read Joseph Stiglitz's Globalization and its discontent. He explains how free-market ideologues have created more problems than good solutions."

Rather ironic, considering that the source is a hardline Keynesian, and most of the discontent could quite readily be traced to their fallacies.

How did Keysian policies cause the 1997 East Asian economic crisis? The short answer is they didn't.

Your ideological blanket statement is exactly the type of problem that Stiglitz identifies in the IMF.

The IMF applies one-size-fits-all policies that do not take into account the reality of a given economy. These policies have tended to create more problems than benefits. The IMF repsonse to the 1997 crisis, which was caused largely by IMF policies, is a prime example of this problem.

[Dracon II]

It should be noted too that one of the problems creating the crisis was that financial liberalization occurred in these countries before they had developed strong legal and financial infrastructures to sustain it. Indonesia, for example, had over 100 banks... none of which were big enough to deal with the crisis.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Tingkai
The IMF repsonse to the 1997 crisis, which was caused largely by IMF policies, is a prime example of this problem.

Sorry but the cause was something even more fundimental then you're pointing at. The root cause of the 1997 crisis was governments borrowing far more then they could afford. They borrowed in dollar denominated loans which became progressively harder for them to service. You can finger point at the IMF but the real problem was government borrowing.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Sorry but the cause was something even more fundimental then you're pointing at. The root cause of the 1997 crisis was governments borrowing far more then they could afford. They borrowed in dollar denominated loans which became progressively harder for them to service. You can finger point at the IMF but the real problem was government borrowing.

Sorry, that's not true. Most of the Asian governments were operating with surpluses. For examplein Thailand, where the crisis started:

"Until 1996, Thailand’s success in stimulating growth while maintaining stability was attributed to its prudent macroeconomic management. The country had nine years of fiscal surplus and public debt was only 15 percent of GDP (1977), making Thailand one of the least publicly indebted countries in the world (TDRI 1997)."

http://www.thaieconwatch.com/articles/m98_1/m98_1.htm\

The problems was private companies borrowing dollar-dominated loans. And that problem started when the Thai gov't opened its currency markets in 1993, on the advice and pressure from the IMF.

Stiglitz, and many others, have argued that this was unnecessary. East Asia has a high savings rate so there was no pressing need for foreign investment. More importantly, the financial infrastructure required to properly regulate loans was missing.

This was the root cause of the 1997 crisis. Countries that maintained currency controls through the 90s, such as China and Taiwan, largely avoided the damage of the crisis.