US allies defect as new world order tips towards China

[copa8]

Some of us already don't buy "MADE IN CHINA". Whether in my home country or in Thailand, I try to look at the label carefully. If it's made in China, I look for another product. That's not always possible, but I have had very, very bad luck with things made in China. Absolutely atrocious workmanship.

Didn't they say the same thing about "Made in Japan/Korea/Taiwan" back in the day? Shoot, some of the crap coming out of Italy ain't all that either, e.g. FIAT (Fix It Again Tony).

[copa8]

Signs of outr times. The centers of power are changing and whatever one's attitude towards China - only a fool will still ignore its economic power.

As Malcolm Turnbull once said, the rise of China is a return to the natural order of things. China and India had the largest economies and led the world for most of the past few thousand years.

[BKResort]

So china's ghost cities and unmanageable air quality is going to lead the way.

One ? What will china do if the US no longer buy's, MADE IN CHINA !!!!!!

What the US will resell if cannot make its goods in China? No average American can afford MADE IN USA anymore.

Edited March 20, 2015 by BKResort

[MJP]

So china's ghost cities and unmanageable air quality is going to lead the way.

One ? What will china do if the US no longer buy's, MADE IN CHINA !!!!!!

What the US will resell if cannot make its goods in China? No average American can afford MADE IN USA anymore.

My camera bags and Leatherman multi-tools are made in the USA.

So is my Stetson.

[NeverSure]

So china's ghost cities and unmanageable air quality is going to lead the way.

One ? What will china do if the US no longer buy's, MADE IN CHINA !!!!!!

What the US will resell if cannot make its goods in China? No average American can afford MADE IN USA anymore.

Not true. Toyota, Honda, BMW, Mercedes, and many other foreign brands all manufacture cars in the US.

List of auto plants in the US.

[MilesofSmiles]

If Thailand was so hell bent on cosying up to China, why haven't they joined ?

[Jingthing]

Relating directly to the OP topic from a U.S.-centric perspective.

The best kind of perspective ... ha ha ha.

Absent an unforeseen catastrophe, Pax Americana won’t suffer the same sudden end that Pax Britannica did. But over time it will be challenged, which raises a key question: Can the American psyche, and the American political system, adapt to a new reality in which the United States retains its position of leadership but no longer enjoys unquestioned dominance? So far, some of the signs are encouraging, while others are worrying.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/the-biggest-threat-to-americas-future-is-america

[bangkapi]

The handful of psychopaths who control all of the currencies and central banks, the globalists, don't care if they are running the show from London, NYC, or Beijing.

Just expect the patriotic people of all countries who work for their debt based fiat currency under any name to have to work harder for less of it.

Kind of sad that it had to come to this. They are just trying to preserve control at any cost.

[tsigane]

This is the same anti-American conspiracy theorist who a short while back was writing article after article about how Russia was going to lead the way and destroy the US. Now that the Russian economy is in shambles, he's latching on to China. All that Chinese financial clout? Backed by the world's worst pollution, massive corruption, ghost cities, tofu bridges, buildings, and overapasses, and a middle in class in a debt trap that is pushing them to oblivion. Yeah, China's the answer alright.

Ah, nothing hurts more than the truth. USD is a walking dead. Just matter of time when even the US will dump USD.

Tofu bridges? Tofu bridges must be pretty good because they rank pretty high on this list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_bridges_in_the_world

Do you know that Chinese build bridges in the US, San Francisco of all the places:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8602786/New-San-Francisco-bridge-built-in-China-to-be-shipped-to-US.html

Comparing middle class in China and US is the best example of your ignorance. Chinese are savers, Americans spenders.

There simply is NO comparison (Chinese household debt is 17% vs 136% in the US, or 266% if national debt taken into account):

http://www.forbes.com/sites/moneybuilder/2010/06/24/one-big-difference-between-chinese-and-american-households-debt/

Ignorant and proud of it!

[tsigane]

So china's ghost cities and unmanageable air quality is going to lead the way.

One ? What will china do if the US no longer buy's, MADE IN CHINA !!!!!!

What the US will resell if cannot make its goods in China? No average American can afford MADE IN USA anymore.

Not true. Toyota, Honda, BMW, Mercedes, and many other foreign brands all manufacture cars in the US.

List of auto plants in the US.

Yes because before they were manufactured in the US, people were going around damaging non-US made cars (in some states).

This is not just some urban legend, it happened to me.

At the time, driving non-US made car was non-patriotic.

They don't do it any more since Americans are employed by these Japanese companies. Problem solved.

[Publicus]

Signs of outr times. The centers of power are changing and whatever one's attitude towards China - only a fool will still ignore its economic power.

As Malcolm Turnbull once said, the rise of China is a return to the natural order of things. China and India had the largest economies and led the world for most of the past few thousand years.

During the 12,000 year Age of Agriculture.

While China is the size of the United States, China is now pushing 2 billion teeming people and its looking around for lebensraum....the United States has lots of wide open spaces and Beijing thinks Australia's open spaces can be made inhabitable....some ghost cities there too perhaps.

We're in the IT Age and going forward. China is still carrying the grueling baggage of 5000 years of dictatorship, authoritarianism, autocracy, corruption, regionalism verses centralist government, among other national inteferences. The Chinese have the self-limiting trait of always being insular.

Then there's the language. Mandarin Chinese for the English word (symbol) 'here' has 10 separate and individual strokes, . In other words, it's how one thinks that matters. Think obscurely, act off center too....it's a human equation.

In middle school Chinese students spend more time writing than anything else because they need to get used to doing all of that hard work that is laborious, tedious to do. They complain that it hurts but are told it builds character, a truly ancient and convoluted notion. That's time lost also from, well, doing the rote memorizing of some other ancient nonsense.

The very few Chinese fluent in English and in the culture of the English language told me they see how Chinese thinking has harmed the development of their civilization. (This inverse relationship also applies in respect of any language based in the Roman (Latin) alphabet and the use of symbols instead of over done signs.)

Btw, there's more than one set of strokes to communicate 'here': which has all of 11 strokes to also mean time and now and which, frankly, is absurd.

I'd also mention the People's Republic of China is a cultural and entertainment wasteland with only patriotic programming, songs, shows. The PRChinese who recoil at this call it the "washed brain" in their rather inventive Chinglish. The 'washed brain' is more soft than power. American soft power derives from the people and their culture, whereas PRChinese soft power is a miserable failure because it issues from the CCP in Beijing.

As for Malcolm Turnbull and also current developments, I don't know, but among the English speaking cultures Brits seem the most obsessed about China as the fairy tale Middle Kingdom, which might be due to their 19th century imperial interaction and to 20th century factors. Canadians on the whole abhor the People's Republic of China, the Aussies are, again on the whole, deeply apprehensive, while many Americans used to hope to combine the best of both worlds, but the reality is that most in the US have long since abandoned the wishful notion of a ChiAmerica, aka, the G-2.

The CCP again btw teaches in the schools that America is the mortal enemy of the PRC and that the matter must be decided in either or terms that are final. The Chinese consider that they go way out of their way to accommodate America, and Americans consider that we go way out of our way to accommodate China. It would seem each side has its point in this respect. As to which will have to get out of the way of the other, I haven't any doubt.

Think G-1.

.http://www.mandarintools.com/cgi-bin/charlook.pl

[Tongdee]

Some of us already don't buy "MADE IN CHINA". Whether in my home country or in Thailand, I try to look at the label carefully. If it's made in China, I look for another product. That's not always possible, but I have had very, very bad luck with things made in China. Absolutely atrocious workmanship.

Didn't they say the same thing about "Made in Japan/Korea/Taiwan" back in the day? Shoot, some of the crap coming out of Italy ain't all that either, e.g. FIAT (Fix It Again Tony).

DO NOT knock FIATS. They have done wonders for the Italian soccer teams... ... ... Pushin the things back to Tony AGAIN, builds up powerful leg muscles... ... ...

[Credo]

Some of us already don't buy "MADE IN CHINA". Whether in my home country or in Thailand, I try to look at the label carefully. If it's made in China, I look for another product. That's not always possible, but I have had very, very bad luck with things made in China. Absolutely atrocious workmanship.

Didn't they say the same thing about "Made in Japan/Korea/Taiwan" back in the day? Shoot, some of the crap coming out of Italy ain't all that either, e.g. FIAT (Fix It Again Tony).

They did say that, but most of those countries started out at the bottom of the manufacturing rung with things like toys. China is making supposedly sophisticated equipment such as computers, printers and other high-tech items.

When I see what they have done with pet food and baby food, it scares me.

Not a credible country to be trusted.

[Berkshire]

This is the same anti-American conspiracy theorist who a short while back was writing article after article about how Russia was going to lead the way and destroy the US. Now that the Russian economy is in shambles, he's latching on to China. All that Chinese financial clout? Backed by the world's worst pollution, massive corruption, ghost cities, tofu bridges, buildings, and overapasses, and a middle in class in a debt trap that is pushing them to oblivion. Yeah, China's the answer alright.

Agree. As soon as I saw the title, I immediately checked to see who wrote it and sure enough, it was this guy Thanong. He's extremely anti-American for whatever reason and is simply not credible. It's one thing to report reality and trends and such, but to leap to outrageous conclusions is irresponsible.

Sorry to burst your bubble but! it is all true and is going to happen.

What's going to happen? Some countries joining a financial consortium led by China is one thing. But to leap to the conclusion that US allies are defecting? You buy into this?

Look, I've suggested before that 100 years from now, things may look very different. Maybe China becomes the lone superpower, maybe not. Perhaps Muslims take over the world. Who knows? But today, China is not ready. They've got huge issues. They're not even a democracy, for one. There's massive corruption going on in China. Political cronies are bleeding that country dry. I feel for the average Chinese. The current leadership is tackling this problem but it's systemic. I hope they can fix the problem because the world needs a healthy China.

[Publicus]

Worshipers of the CCP censoring and punishing dictatorship in Beijing actually think the United States and its allies in the EU and in Asia have been obliviously sitting on their hands and snoozing while the CCP Boyz in Beijing have been racking up the world into their back pocket while discharging, dismissing, destroying the United States and the West.

The dim and dopey OP and his tiny band of saggy followers need to look at the reality of the present and forward moving world of markets, democracy, technology, R&D, progress.

Negotiations to create a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal involving a dozen countries from Asia and the Americas are quietly nearing the finishing line this year. Another historic agreement, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the United States and the European Union, also is nearing the completion of several years of comprehensive negotiations.

The two trans-oceanic economic development agreements will link the United States and Canada to Asia and Europe.They would also deliver considerable economic benefits. The Trans-Pacific deal (TPP) will boost U.S. annual gains by $77 billion, and Japan’s by $104 billion. The TTIP deal, by integrating markets in the U.S. and the EU, would generate $130 billion annually in economic gains for the United States, and $162 billion for Europe.

The EU-US TransAtlantic Partnership free trade agreement currently being negotiated will join economies that account for almost 50% of global GDP, the vast amount of the world's wealth creation and a third of global trade.

The TransPacific Partnership free trade agreement involving 12 Pacific Rim countries excluding the CCP-PRC is in its final stages of negotiations and will integrate economies totaling more than $24 trillion.

Saliently stated, this is the global integration of market economics, democratic systems, the rule of law. Beijing is consciously excluded so that it must join later, after the rules of the road had already been written.

EU-US Free Trade Agreement: End of the Asian Century?

http://thediplomat.com/2013/02/eu-us-free-trade-agreement-end-of-the-asian-century/

(Many people agree the first headline the Diplomat wrote to later change it to the above one is actually much better: "EU-US Free Trade Agreement: End of the Asian Century Before It Began?")

Today, a huge global free trade area is being forged to shape and define the future. The FTA between the United States and the EU and the TPP Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement, constitute an effective U.S.-EU-Japan economic common market. Russia with the Eurasian Union, China, India, and all other countries in Eurasia will have to dance with this market economics and big bucks of finance behemoth.

http://carnegie.ru/eurasiaoutlook/?fa=54030

http://carnegieendowment.org/2012/07/09/southeast-asia-will-markets-and-geography-trump-tpp/cn3k

Apec: in search of an interjection

The group of nations known as the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) has always been a bit of a mystery. Is Apec a community, a union or a summit? It seems the Pacific countries wanted to avoid all three titles.

One of Australia’s foreign ministers Gareth Evans called it, “four adjectives in search of a noun”. (A nice gag, with the slight hitch that co-operation is a noun.) Meaner critics would say they were in search of a verb: what do they do?

http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2013/10/07/apec-in-search-of-an-interjection/

Others have also mentioned that Asean is a collection of ten cats in search of both common ground and a purpose.

Edited by Publicus for spacing.

Edited March 21, 2015 by Publicus

[Publicus]

This is the same anti-American conspiracy theorist who a short while back was writing article after article about how Russia was going to lead the way and destroy the US. Now that the Russian economy is in shambles, he's latching on to China. All that Chinese financial clout? Backed by the world's worst pollution, massive corruption, ghost cities, tofu bridges, buildings, and overapasses, and a middle in class in a debt trap that is pushing them to oblivion. Yeah, China's the answer alright.

Ah, nothing hurts more than the truth. USD is a walking dead. Just matter of time when even the US will dump USD.

Tofu bridges? Tofu bridges must be pretty good because they rank pretty high on this list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_bridges_in_the_world

Do you know that Chinese build bridges in the US, San Francisco of all the places:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8602786/New-San-Francisco-bridge-built-in-China-to-be-shipped-to-US.html

Comparing middle class in China and US is the best example of your ignorance. Chinese are savers, Americans spenders.

There simply is NO comparison (Chinese household debt is 17% vs 136% in the US, or 266% if national debt taken into account):

http://www.forbes.com/sites/moneybuilder/2010/06/24/one-big-difference-between-chinese-and-american-households-debt/

Ignorant and proud of it!

According to a report by Wei Shangjin, chief economist of the Asian Development Bank , the number of Chinese people living under poverty line is of more than 400 million, or 30% of the population.

200,000,000 Chinese live on US $2 a day.....or less.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/china-more-82-million-people-live-below-poverty-line-1470313

In April, researchers at the University of Michigan said that China’s Gini coefficient, a measure of income distribution, stood at a high 0.55. The higher the figure, the higher the inequality, with perfect equality at 0 and total inequality at 1.

According to an excerpt from the report, “they found that the Gini coefficient for family income in China is now around 0.55 compared to 0.45 in the U.S.”

“In 1980, China’s Gini coefficient was 0.30,” it said. “In 2012, the Chinese government refused to release the country’s Gini coefficient. Generally, when the coefficient reaches 0.5, it indicates that the gap between rich and poor is severe.”

And in July, the Institute of Social Science Survey at Peking University published a report with a higher Gini figure of 0.73. In its report, the institute found that about 1 percent of families owned one-third of the country’s wealth.

http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/17/despite-poverty-efforts-china-still-faces-wealth-gap/?_r=0

Edited March 21, 2015 by Publicus

[Neurath]

More often than not, the US on a bad day is better than China on good day.

[boomerangutang]

The Nation newspaper focuses so often on money, money, money. It's as if the world was made of variations of printed paper currency bills, concrete, with the glue that binds it made from crude oil mixed with MSG. Thailand needs a newspaper that devotes some column inches to environmental issues - but not 'greenwash' (corporate policies which appear to be environmental, but are just window dressing), .....but tangible/real issues for establishing/protecting natural habitat for forests and animals and sea life.

[Pakboong]

I don't think it is really about China in the OP's context but about getting a fair shake in IMF voting. Right now, the US controls 17% of the vote while China controls only 4%. Those numbers were established in 40s and were based upon GDP at that time. Now, China has closed that gap and will simply not settle for 4% and perhaps rightly so.

Many do not know that China purchases 25% of the world's luxury items.

[impulse]

Count the number of Americans who have given up their homes and citizenship to become "Chinese"

Divide that by the number of Chinese who have given up their home and citizenship to become "Americans"

That tells the entire story in one number...

Edited March 21, 2015 by impulse

[Anthony5]

like rats deserting a sinking ship

At least they realise in time the ship is sinking.

[Publicus]

This is the same anti-American conspiracy theorist who a short while back was writing article after article about how Russia was going to lead the way and destroy the US. Now that the Russian economy is in shambles, he's latching on to China. All that Chinese financial clout? Backed by the world's worst pollution, massive corruption, ghost cities, tofu bridges, buildings, and overapasses, and a middle in class in a debt trap that is pushing them to oblivion. Yeah, China's the answer alright.

Ah, nothing hurts more than the truth. USD is a walking dead. Just matter of time when even the US will dump USD.

Tofu bridges? Tofu bridges must be pretty good because they rank pretty high on this list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_bridges_in_the_world

Do you know that Chinese build bridges in the US, San Francisco of all the places:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8602786/New-San-Francisco-bridge-built-in-China-to-be-shipped-to-US.html

Comparing middle class in China and US is the best example of your ignorance. Chinese are savers, Americans spenders.

There simply is NO comparison (Chinese household debt is 17% vs 136% in the US, or 266% if national debt taken into account):

http://www.forbes.com/sites/moneybuilder/2010/06/24/one-big-difference-between-chinese-and-american-households-debt/

Ignorant and proud of it!

Read and weep, from the Asia Society in New York.....

Will China’s Renminbi Replace the Dollar as the World’s Top Currency?

A ChinaFile Conversation

http://www.chinafile.com/conversation/will-chinas-renminbi-replace-dollar-worlds-top-currency

[zydeco]

This is the same anti-American conspiracy theorist who a short while back was writing article after article about how Russia was going to lead the way and destroy the US. Now that the Russian economy is in shambles, he's latching on to China. All that Chinese financial clout? Backed by the world's worst pollution, massive corruption, ghost cities, tofu bridges, buildings, and overapasses, and a middle in class in a debt trap that is pushing them to oblivion. Yeah, China's the answer alright.

Ah, nothing hurts more than the truth. USD is a walking dead. Just matter of time when even the US will dump USD.

Tofu bridges? Tofu bridges must be pretty good because they rank pretty high on this list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_bridges_in_the_world

Do you know that Chinese build bridges in the US, San Francisco of all the places:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8602786/New-San-Francisco-bridge-built-in-China-to-be-shipped-to-US.html

Comparing middle class in China and US is the best example of your ignorance. Chinese are savers, Americans spenders.

There simply is NO comparison (Chinese household debt is 17% vs 136% in the US, or 266% if national debt taken into account):

http://www.forbes.com/sites/moneybuilder/2010/06/24/one-big-difference-between-chinese-and-american-households-debt/

Ignorant and proud of it!

Anybody that wants to know the truth can simply google up "tofu construction." In the US, a bridge collapsed a few years ago because it was over 50 years old. This made headline news, because these sort of events are extremely rare in America. It also caused soul searching and public infrastructure initiatives. In China, on the other hand, newly constructed high rise buildings fall on their side, entire lanes of bridges drop to the ground during construction. And whenever there is an earthquake, the devastation is thorough because of shoddy, cheap, corruption riven construction. http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/08/strong-earthquake-china-vs-u-s/

[Publicus]

Entire New 13-Story Building Tips Over in Shanghai

This past Saturday, an entire apartment building in Shanghai collapsed. To be fair, the building was under construction and thus unoccupied, but it's still a minor miracle that there was only one fatality.

Sounds like there was a problem with some nearby flood prevention walls at the Dianpu River, but there's no hard evidence as to why this huge building simply fell over. Anyway, here are some pictures of the architectural carnage. [Cellar.org via Twitter]

http://gizmodo.com/5304233/entire-new-13-story-building-tips-over-in-shanghai/

Edited March 21, 2015 by Publicus

[boomerangutang]

Entire New 13-Story Building Tips Over in Shanghai

This past Saturday, an entire apartment building in Shanghai collapsed. To be fair, the building was under construction and thus unoccupied, but it's still a minor miracle that there was only one fatality.

Sounds like there was a problem with some nearby flood prevention walls at the Dianpu River, but there's no hard evidence as to why this huge building simply fell over. Anyway, here are some pictures of the architectural carnage. [Cellar.org via Twitter]

http://gizmodo.com/5304233/entire-new-13-story-building-tips-over-in-shanghai/

Sounds like some architectural student skipped class the day they taught about strong foundations. Seriously though, those 2 apartments, still standing, are the same project. I sure wouldn't be in a hurry to buy a flat there. And the cost of an apartment in Shanghai is probably 'through the roof' - pun intended.

[Robby nz]

Entire New 13-Story Building Tips Over in Shanghai

This past Saturday, an entire apartment building in Shanghai collapsed. To be fair, the building was under construction and thus unoccupied, but it's still a minor miracle that there was only one fatality.

Sounds like there was a problem with some nearby flood prevention walls at the Dianpu River, but there's no hard evidence as to why this huge building simply fell over. Anyway, here are some pictures of the architectural carnage. [Cellar.org via Twitter]

http://gizmodo.com/5304233/entire-new-13-story-building-tips-over-in-shanghai/

You have made a big thing out of that without bothering to explain the reason.

They were digging alongside the building to make an underground parking place and undermined the foundations of the building on one side, that combined with heavy rain that softened the ground caused it to topple.

You should note that the building didn't break apart when it hit the ground.

[Robby nz]

It would seem that resistance is growing to being forced to trade in US$, as per, if you want to buy oil you must first buy our dollars.

After all the billions that have been spent and the millions of lives it has cost to retain the $ as the reserve and oil trading currency it would now seem that its time is almost over, bombs and bullets will not be able to be used this time.

[rijb]

Compared to the lower oil prices, there's probably more money in selling bombs and bullets.

[Pakboong]

Looks like Japan is on the bubble right now.

[Anthony5]

Entire New 13-Story Building Tips Over in Shanghai

This past Saturday, an entire apartment building in Shanghai collapsed. To be fair, the building was under construction and thus unoccupied, but it's still a minor miracle that there was only one fatality.

Sounds like there was a problem with some nearby flood prevention walls at the Dianpu River, but there's no hard evidence as to why this huge building simply fell over. Anyway, here are some pictures of the architectural carnage. [Cellar.org via Twitter]

http://gizmodo.com/5304233/entire-new-13-story-building-tips-over-in-shanghai/

You have made a big thing out of that without bothering to explain the reason.

They were digging alongside the building to make an underground parking place and undermined the foundations of the building on one side, that combined with heavy rain that softened the ground caused it to topple.

You should note that the building didn't break apart when it hit the ground.

I guess they just lifted it up again then and repaired some minor paint damages