Will China take over?

[Lord Percy]

It's often talked about and seems to be a relatively new or rising topic.

What are peoples' thoughts on China's place in the world right now, where China is headed, how it affects the UK and how we're getting involved at the moment?

https://www.eadt.co.uk/polopoly_fs/1.4304364.1447149530!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/image.jpg
https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xaf1/v/t1.0-9/12642509_10153953354074604_897887985227839000_n.jpg?oh=396137b9a1d9cc20c3b2c069639947df&oe=56FCDCA4
https://www.essexchronicle.co.uk/images/localworld/ugc-images/276422/Article/images/27810381/10958169-large.jpg
https://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01876/china_1876897c.jpg

[Lord Percy]

Personally I'm seeing kowtowing to China from all sides at the moment, not just the UK. Most Hollywood blockbusters seem to bring China in at some point. The Martian had NASA being rescued by China, and look at this breakdown of the newest Transformers movie - https://youtu.be/Zz5vEfa7UvI?t=164I

Can't imagine that being the case 5 or 10 years ago!

I think, in terms of international standings, the only thing the UK has left is its legacy, which is currently pretty strong but give it a few more decades and we'll be nothing more than another European tourism destination for the increasing amount of wealthy Chinese. This is already happening actually - PM announces significant changes to visitor visas for Chinese tourists for the benefit of the British economy. And the Chinese are only more wealthy because that's where all the world trade is going. And, as economics dictates, for one entity to rise others have to fall! Interesting times ahead.

[Sload]

Who knows for absolute? Certainly not those in the know. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=china%27s+faltering+economy&oq=china+faltering&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0.5242j0j4&client=ms-android-htc-rev&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8
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[Itchy]

You called?

This sounds a lot like discussions about Japan in the 1980s. Then Japan imploded and has been shrinking ever since. They're onto their 3rd lost decade and their economy has been stuck in molasses since then.

Anyway if you can't see it China is playing a simple, deadly and super effective game against your economies. Waging economic war in fact.

A whole load of people can't actually see it and they are happy to keep buying rope. The rope of course is used to hang themselves. As any good hangman knows too short a rope and you strangle the hangee, too long and the head comes off. You've been buying rope for a LONG TIME.

What is this game? It's simply the monopoly model and that of looking to the long term. This is deadly against the short term western outlook.

Anybody who has played transport tycoon should understand this. The one that survives the longest is ultimately the winner. The government and people can simply run their industries (remember Jap crap? sound familiar) and be the last ones standing.

Take for instance steel. Tata has shed 1050 jobs recently and 2000 jobs in October.

Or Solar panels (something high tech) the German industry has suffered because of this.

In the end all your industry even the high end stuff will be stripped away and there will be very little left. There isn't exactly a whole load left now.

The infrastructure? Being purchased..

Knowledge and skills? Tsinghua university just beat MIT in engineering on some measures. On other measures it's 9th or 13th best engineering university in the world.


Right now China's economy is lunching itself, there are some fundamental differences though to the Japanese model. There are still 600-700 million rather poor people. They can build transformational infrastructure to bring the quality of their lives up to modern standards. Which further increases competitive advantage. The 8GW of solar (every quarter) and 22 nuclear plants under construction are testament to this. Therefore they can go turtle like Japan did without hitting the bridges to nowhere problem like Japan did. OTOH the US, UK? They borrow money to simply pay the day to day bills. This has no ultimate pay off. The transformational infrastructure potentially has pay off (it didn't always in Japan sometimes it did sometimes it didn't).


Add in command economy aspects where 1 child policy was ended for 49% of the population. Ability to simply shut things down like coal plants (reducing pollution 10% by turning on the nuclear power plants). Add in the can do attitude for instance Beijing is dry. Lets built 5000 miles of pipes spend £80bn on making Beijing less dry...

The debt problem is also less of an issue as Chinese buy houses in cash, I did... all my family did. It's funny when you bring suit cases of money and people's jaw's drop. AND all the factories, power plants, roads, railways will still exist even if the value on balance sheets vaporise.


Add in the long term outlook rather than short term profit outlook, nationalistic feelings (refugees for instance are punished yes punished) and it looks like a very strong hand China is playing.



It's also less take over... more get back to the position China has ALWAYS occupied as #1 since well forever.
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[Im-a-Ridah]

As China approaches western standards, and as it's population starts to age, is going to run cripplingly short on cheap labour which fuels its boom. As that happens Western countries will start employing their own people doing more jobs like working in steel plants or making iPhones. China can indeed buy a British steel firm, but anyone can start up another steel firm.

Also remember it's not the Chinese that are responsible for most negative effects to Britain and other western countries, it's the MBA graduates at our own companies trying to make a quick buck, and who really are the best personification of knowing the price of everything and value of nothing.

People also tend to exaggerate China sub-consciously by saying "China", but meaning numerous Asian countries like China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand etc collectively. Clearly though they are not one unit. It would be like grouping North America and Western Europe, calling it collectively "America" and then saying "oooh isn't that America place powerful and producing a lot of stuff?".

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Chinapop.svg/800px-Chinapop.svg.png

[Lord Percy]

[Lord Percy]

[Im-a-Ridah]

[Robby]

China will have a job holding itself together as the standard of living - and therefore education and internet access - rise.

We talk about China likes it's a single cohesive country that loves getting along, like Belgium but bigger. It isn't, it has enough regional diversity to be a bit like the USA or Europe. We all know that holding together a conglomerate like the USA or Europe is difficult (Texas and it's right to secede, Brexit). China will face similar pressures when a rich province feels that it's paying too much to support/develop a useless, poor desert.

Empires will rise and fall. The global living standard will slowly improve. China doesn't seem to have any interest in starting a global war, so I'm happy with it.

[RPM]

Tiger head, snake tails.....
Interesting, if you're interested.

[Rogerborg]

[Omega]

They'll do just fine for a while and then people will start wanting rights and an improved lifestyle. All developed countries have been through the same process. It wont be long until they're more concerned about energy saving light bulbs than raking in the cash.

China is like the 16 year old apprentice. He thinks he's God's gift to the workplace but really he's really just cheap labour with no rights. As soon as he knows what he's doing and deserves an equal share of the pie he'll be replaced.

[Itchy]

[WULFSTAN]

Am sure in 300bc people said the same about cathage. China becoming the worlds dominant power isn't written in stone. Things that we can't predict will always happen.
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[Im-a-Ridah]

[Lord Percy]

[Im-a-Ridah]

[Sun Wukong]

[Lord Percy]

Not really related to China 'taking over the world' but I've just discovered of something interest...

On the 'economy' wikipedia page for every country there's a stat on the right hand side saying what percentage of the population is living below the poverty line. The poverty line in this case is defined as being the amount required to live a comfortable life in your own country.

So, for example, a poor person in the UK is still part of the top 5% on earth but that means nothing if they can't afford the cost of living at home, hence they would be in 'poverty' in their own country.

The ones I looked at for comparison:
Economy of China
Economy of the United States of America
Economy of the United Kingdom

China poverty: 5%
USA poverty: 14%
UK poverty: 15%

!!!

And totally beside the point but I do believe this is also a nice slap in the face for a certain wr1633 who, quite a while ago, was totally insistent on me being wrong when I said life in China seems relatively comfortable for most people even on a modest wage.

[Sun Wukong]

[Rogerborg]

Yup.

Food and goods aren't too bad, you can live fairly thrifty if you're careful and lucky.

But paying someone else to do anything is crippling. Couple of hundred for a central heating boiler, couple of grand to fit it. If you want a few bricks thrown together, start thinking in terms of the price of a car.

Why is stuff cheap, but people expensive? Because <trigger warning> tax.

Gubmint man steals ~30% of what I earn straight out of my pocket every year. That directly increases the amount that I need to charge in order to be able to live on what I'm allowed to keep.

Same for Peter Plumber or Brian Brickie, they need to crank up their prices to compensate. So in essence I get to pay their tax out of my after-tax earnings. Oh, and remember to slap another 20% on top of the final bill, straight to the Exchequer.

If I pay you £100 for services, £17 of that gets stolen as VAT and £25 as income and NI. Enjoy the £58 that you're graciously allowed to keep. Or viewed another way, if you need £100 in your pocket, it costs me £156 out of mine.

The State is fastened on like a leech, ramping up costs and sucking away the incentive for anyone to actually do anything for anyone else.
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[Lord Percy]

Something we (sort of) agree on

[Ribenapigeon]

Answer to the question. NO, China will fuck up like they fuck everything up.

[Ribenapigeon]

[Ribenapigeon]