Superpower Denied: Why China's Rise has Peaked...

China has been called the next superpower. People marvel at its amazing progress, huge growth, and fast moving economy. The media though has not covered what comes next...its economy is slowing, it is getting older at a fast rate- thanks to its one child policy, it has large debts equal to the US. In short, China is a myth...it will never be a Superpower....

thediplomat.com...

If China did become a super power and global economic leader and their currency was fairly valued their economy would be ruined. Everything is based around how it's cheaper to have your business in china, pay the workers less, manufacture cheap items for less. When it becomes more expensive to produce things in China for foreign companies they will pull out, and it will leave a lot of Chinese people out of work and put an end to everything being made in China.

China doesn't want that.. so they try to keep their currency valued low against the dollar and euro.

Can't lend without having debts? As you have no money really...but they do have 2.6billion people...

YEah. Most chinese don't care about being a super power either. Walk the streets in any chinese city and you'll see that they are too busy trying to live their lives, are actually pretty insulated (and don't mind) and don't really think about what the rest of the world is doing or care.

They are patriotic though and will go to almost any extreme to prove that their peoples are not backwards and unsophisticated (goes back to having low self esteem) hence their showing at the olympics. They want to prove that they are par with the rest of the modern world and yet at the same time are happy continuing on like they have for thousands of years.

reply to post by travis911


Wow...How I couldn't disagree more! When I was growing up China was still a largely agrarian based economy back when the word primitive was used, it really fit in some ways. Particularly the more rural areas. In short, your statement would have been 100% correct just a couple decades ago. It would ...and was...the accepted gospel, 30 years ago. They were big and they had many people...but a Super-Power, that doesn't make.


Now they build fully operational ghost cities, apparently because they have nothing better to do with their time and vast fortune (WE have largely given them, by buying everything to their lowest bidder..). They have a power problem? Flooding problems? Heck.. No problem for the Chinese these days, they just build the worldest largest dam, blocking a waterway that would...and was...laughed at for an idea before they just went and did it.

In the material I read (China Inc. was the book title), I'd seen where their migrant work force was equal to our ENTIRE population. At that time anyway. This was years ago and the estimate was 300 MILLION Chinese is just the segment which tends to go where the work is these days and how chasing the harvests used to work here.

The Chinese started as rice farmers capable of defending themselves and made the trip in about 15-20 years that it took the United States 120 to make. God knows where they are 10 years from now. We're almost celebrating mediocrity and being average while they are going for all they can get.

reply to post by travis911


Oh my stars and garters!
Certain China huggers on this site are going to be hopping around madder than rumplestiltskin with St. Vitus dance in his pants!

At least now we know why China was building all those ghost cities now.
They were using them to fuel growth.
Unsustainable growth at that.

So much for them as a super power.

reply to post by travis911


Indeed, anyone who uses the current debt based monetary system is doomed for economic failure... it's guaranteed in fact

A lot of people (read: average joe "normal" people) still believe China is going to become the economic power house of the world or something silly like that. Once people truly start to understand this debt based monetary system they should be able to understand how China isn't going to become economically powerful anytime soon. When people start to understand the debt based monetary system then they will understand that this crisis is global in scale and that there really isn't anyone on the planet that can escape it. However, if they decide to use a different more sound monetary system then they could potentially avoid a catastrophe. Of course, if they do so they run the risk of the same system taking their economy back over again in a different form perhaps.

The only sure way to beat back this system is to make it so individual transactions (individuals) cause inflation and not a centralized power or bank. Deflation should be based on time as always. But yeah, individuals need to be the ones to create inflation otherwise we will just see some sort of debt based monetary system take over again and again. This is the reason one of the founding fathers of the United States said we would have to fight this thing again and again seeing as if we didn't allow individuals to take over the power of inflation it would take over again and again.

However, I don't think they had the thought (I know, how presumptuous of me) that individuals should be in control of inflation as that is the only way to have a true monetary system of the people for the people. The only monetary system the people could control is one they actually have direct control over, get it?

China Huggers? it is what it is. their culture is different from the wests. They see things differently from their perspective. They really don't care about being a superpower. Not the average chinese person.

Heck part of china are great. Other parts are deplorable. I can mention all the great places to visit. But since you think we are china huggers let me expand on some of my observations while traveling through rural china. Watched a little boy get teased by other school kids. They kept making fun of him because his family was so poor that they survived off of eating the neighborhood rats. Turned out to be true. The boy and his family did actually survive off of capturing rats running around their back alleys.

Saw a village doctor who rented out as a home for him and his family a cupboard under a more wealthy families staircase Harry Potter style.

Stayed in one village where the only bathroom was a set of outhouses arranged over the pig paddock in the towns square. the toilets had simple holes in the bottom. The pigs would stick their snouts in the holes and eat your poop as you sat there. You could actually feel on occasion the pigs breath as it snorted. Guess what yo were eating for dinner that night? you guessed right if you thought....um the pig that was just eating your poop?

Went to another city that had a population of about 40,000 in Honan. as standing outside what passed as their local nightlife scene. Suddenly a really hot girl squats down lifts up her dress and craps all over the sidewalk. I look at her strange and she looks back at me with a "what?" kind of expression. Its simply normal to squat down in public on a sidewalk and take a crap there. Don't even let me start on all the spitting.

WHen I was there I could here some of the old men calling me stupid monkey in mandarin. The kids loved me though and called me catapillar all the time while pointing at my fingers. They were pointing out how my finger knuckles were hairy like a catapillar. They also thought I was the local jungle gym and would run out and jump on me two at a time climbing all over me as I tried to walk down the street. No they weren't trying to pick my pockets.

SO this is the china I know. A group of very diverse people. Yeah they don't all look the same. most of them not interested in whats going on elsewhere and still living out their days just like their grandparents.

Not generally interested in being a superpower yet insecure enough to want to prove on a world stage that they are on par with everyone else.

China has the means of production, the manpower and the natural resources to do basically anything they want to do. The typical US idea of "superpower" is extremely ethnocentric; it relies mostly on the fact that the US dollar is the reserve currency, and we use that as leverage in combination with unsustainable military spending to dub ourselves a "superpower."

However when the US can't pay its debts (which it can't) and the international banking system collapses on itself (which it is), the dollar will lose its status as the reserve currency, and the whole game of "superpower" will change.

If and when this happens, China will lose the advantage of milking the rest of the world, but so will the United States. China will emerge from the United States' crusade against communism still in possession of massive resources, manpower and means of production. Meanwhile most Western capitalist countries will be in shambles.

Translation: post-collapse China will be a superpower in comparison to the post-collapse West.