Why Does China has So Much Clout Over the US?

g under p

Why is it that it appears China gets away with selling us bad seafood, recalled toys and now bad tires? I mean if this administration has said it will search out enemy combatants and terrorist states why do we back off of China?

Is it because they're a superpower too with nuclear weapons or that the USA is so in debt to this country? Here's a couple articles on China's rising economic power and treasury bonds.

Peace
Earle

Ahnimus

China isn't a superpower. And actually China is trying to peacefully rise to it's former status as a superpower. But the U.S. doesn't want this and is beligerently trying to stop any other country from acheiving equal power.

RolandTD20Kdrummer

I think China has attained the model. Complete censorship...control of it's citizens...workers that run the treadmill to their deaths in factories like no other.

It's fucking utopia for the ultra wealthy.

Would you believe farmers have to ship in all the earth, and water in order to grow their crops in immense greenhouses i.e. it can't rain on the food... just so they can eat the food without getting sick?

Do you know they postpone the Olympic runs due to insane almost ground level smog because the runners refuse to run in it. It's true. National Geographic just posted an article on it...actually there are a couple now..
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/80743027.html

...yeah...that's smog...not clouds or fog.. imagine that!?

I believe China is the model the US is working towards from a worker and societal control/censorship perspective.

Bu2

that showed marathon runners passing out and needing oxygen long before the finish line. Great place for the next Olympics, eh?

beachdweller

China has us by the balls, Iran & North Korean are more dangerous than ever..unchecked rogue nations..but hey the wealthy in the U S are wealthier than ever.

I think both of the articles are good information to be aware of. I think it's one of the reasons we have no pull with China to get them to pressure peace in Darfor.

Maybe nothing will become of the current situation, but you can't really argue that we are in a great situation with China.

RolandTD20Kdrummer

Bu2 wrote:

that showed marathon runners passing out and needing oxygen long before the finish line. Great place for the next Olympics, eh?

It's totally nuts, and that's what's supplying us with all our cheap stuff....and it's and considered aok...

There's a huge problem with this picture, and people actually call me crazy for pointing out the hard issues with what is going on.

Where is the intelligence factor in all this?

China's pollution problem should be a full stop. America's health care should be a full stop. Killing people as policy should be a full stop.

Instead we got a war mongering freak show shooting it up for more oil to burn and to make more smoke and mayhem.

Holy fuckstones... where's the fucking morality?

Oh yeah...that's right ...I'm paranoid and insane...

I almost forgot for a second...

250,000 people a year die in China from pollution related illnesses.

maybe there's no hope for clean energy... Who's looking into it?

Oh...they are busy exploiting it...exploding peoples heads for it...

I guess were fucking screwed...

hoo-rah...

searchlightsoul

Funny thing is that retaining communism has largely fast tracked the road to China becoming an industrial superpower.

SundaySilence

searchlightsoul wrote:

Funny thing is that retaining communism has largely fast tracked the road to China becoming an industrial superpower.

They are making the transition out of communism slowly, which is working better than the abrubt transition of the former soviet states. The soviet abrubt transition created a scramble that was siezed upon by the mob and has resulted in economies worse than under communism.

Eliot Rosewater

g under p wrote:

Why is it that it appears China gets away with selling us bad seafood, recalled toys and now bad tires? I mean if this administration has said it will search out enemy combatants and terrorist states why do we back off of China?

Is it because they're a superpower too with nuclear weapons or that the USA is so in debt to this country? Here's a couple articles on China's rising economic power and treasury bonds.

Peace
Earle

please for the love of god stop using bold.

china owns us because we owe them a trillion fucking dollars. thanks gwb, you fucking asshole.

tybird

Bu2 wrote:

that showed marathon runners passing out and needing oxygen long before the finish line. Great place for the next Olympics, eh?

Due to the air quality (i.e. pollution) or were they at a high altitude.......it's not a marathon unless someone passes out.

Mantra Slider

China, along with the Saudi's, owns our debt.
If they ever decide to change their currency standard from the dollar to the Euro we're fucked.
So we play nice.
That's why we are not too interesting in busting them for sending us faulty goods.

Boom The Cat

Ahnimus wrote:

China isn't a superpower. And actually China is trying to peacefully rise to it's former status as a superpower. But the U.S. doesn't want this and is beligerently trying to stop any other country from acheiving equal power.

Exactly

RolandTD20Kdrummer

Mantra Slider wrote:

China, along with the Saudi's, owns our debt.
If they ever decide to change their currency standard from the dollar to the Euro we're fucked.
So we play nice.
That's why we are not too interesting in busting them for sending us faulty goods.

You know how I see this whole Euro/US greenback issue?

Say for example you are a famous artist. You can eat at a restaurant and treat your friends by running up a huge bill. When the bill comes you tell them "hey can I write you a check?" They say of course...most certainly...your money and patronage is always good here

You fill out the cheque, turn it over, and write a little catchy phrase, draw a neat little picture, and then autograph it.

When they look at what you have done they say "holy crap!!! a personalized self autographed so and so...I will never cash this cheque...it's priceless, worth so much more than the tab for the meal itself."

That is what being famous gets you. The ability to write off endless debt and never have it come back on you......until you lose your popularity that is....then you're washed up and bankrupt.

This is what the US is doing right now. Writing off trillions because the US dollar is the "famous" dollar in the world. Exact same scenario.

If it all goes Euro....America will crumble.

godpt3

WWIII isn't going to involve the middle east. It'll be China.


REMEMBER TIANANMEN!!!!! BOYCOTT THE OLYMPICS!!!!

searchlightsoul

godpt3 wrote:

WWIII isn't going to involve the middle east. It'll be China.


REMEMBER TIANANMEN!!!!! BOYCOTT THE OLYMPICS!!!!

Pales in comparison to Tibet.

mhterrapin

I think this article describes it really well, especially concerning the economic changes currently taking place.

In the Hole to China

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Early this morning China let the idiots in Washington, and on Wall Street, know that it has them by the short hairs. Two senior spokesmen for the Chinese government observed that China’s considerable holdings of US dollars and Treasury bonds “contributes a great deal to maintaining the position of the dollar as a reserve currency.”

Should the US proceed with sanctions intended to cause the Chinese currency to appreciate, “the Chinese central bank will be forced to sell dollars, which might lead to a mass depreciation of the dollar.”

If Western financial markets are sufficiently intelligent to comprehend the message, US interest rates will rise regardless of any further action by China. At this point, China does not need to sell a single bond. In an instant, China has made it clear that US interest rates depend on China, not on the Federal Reserve.

The precarious position of the US dollar as reserve currency has been thoroughly ignored and denied. The delusion that the US is “the world’s sole superpower,” whose currency is desirable regardless of its excess supply, reflects American hubris, not reality. This hubris is so extreme that only 6 weeks ago McKinsey Global Institute published a study that concluded that even a doubling of the US current account deficit to $1.6 trillion would pose no problem.

Strategic thinkers, if any remain who have not been purged by neocons, will quickly conclude that China’s power over the value of the dollar and US interest rates also gives China power over US foreign policy. The US was able to attack Afghanistan and Iraq only because China provided the largest part of the financing for Bush’s wars.

If China ceased to buy US Treasuries, Bush’s wars would end. The savings rate of US consumers is essentially zero, and several million are afflicted with mortgages that they cannot afford. With Bush’s budget in deficit and with no room in the US consumer’s budget for a tax increase, Bush’s wars can only be financed by foreigners.

No country on earth, except for Israel, supports the Bush regimes’ desire to attack Iran. It is China’s decision whether it calls in the US ambassador, and delivers the message that there will be no attack on Iran or further war unless the US is prepared to buy back $900 billion in US Treasury bonds and other dollar assets.

The US, of course, has no foreign reserves with which to make the purchase. The impact of such a large sale on US interest rates would wreck the US economy and effectively end Bush’s war-making capability. Moreover, other governments would likely follow the Chinese lead, as the main support for the US dollar has been China’s willingness to accumulate them. If the largest holder dumped the dollar, other countries would dump dollars, too.

The value and purchasing power of the US dollar would fall. When hard-pressed Americans went to Wal-Mart to make their purchases, the new prices would make them think they had wandered into Nieman Marcus. Americans would not be able to maintain their current living standard.

Simultaneously, Americans would be hit either with tax increases in order to close a budget deficit that foreigners will no longer finance or with large cuts in income security programs. The only other source of budgetary finance would be for the government to print money to pay its bills. In this event, Americans would experience inflation in addition to higher prices from dollar devaluation.

This is a grim outlook. We got in this position because our leaders are ignorant fools. So are our economists, many of whom are paid shills for some interest group. So are our corporate leaders whose greed gave China power over the US by offshoring the US production of goods and services to China. It was the corporate fat cats who turned US Gross Domestic Product into Chinese imports, and it was the “free trade, free market economists” who egged it on.

How did a people as stupid as Americans get so full of hubris?

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com

RolandTD20Kdrummer

^^ nice article thanks.. Interesting read.

MLC2006

interesting article. but I guess the author forgot to put in the part about how China exports 4 times more TO the US than they import FROM the US. so when they dump the dollar, we dump the trade, and their economy collapses as soon as the US economy collapses. this is NOT a one way street where China has the US by the balls....this is a 2 way street where 2 bullies are holding onto each other by the balls.

godpt3

MLC2006 wrote:

we dump the trade, and their economy collapses as soon as the US economy collapses.

except that China can always find other markets to buy their cheap goods. They can call in their trade debts and smile all the way to the bank while the American economy collapses. And then the parasitic chinese will find some other host to feed off of.

MLC2006

godpt3 wrote:

except that China can always find other markets to buy their cheap goods. They can call in their trade debts and smile all the way to the bank while the American economy collapses. And then the parasitic chinese will find some other host to feed off of.

I don't agree with that at all. If you think about it, the US is really the only nation where the people blow ungodly amounts of money on worthless China made junk like elmo dolls, and happy meal crap etc. hell, my 1 year daughter has 20 freaking Elmo toys that were made in China, don't think I could live without that at $20 a pop?? So I don't agree at all that China will find another country to replace the US' trade. and the essential products and services that China DOES supply to the US could be provided right here in the US or at the very least, in a more US-friendly country. so we'd feel a pinch for 2-5 years, but the economy would come back probably stronger than ever because of the jobs that would be put back in North America. but I don't believe for one minute that China's economy would make such a recovery. and they're all smart enough to know this, they're just blowhards. this isn't even high ranking Chinese officials talking shit, it a bunch of "intellectuals".

I think the numbers I heard were something like $550B of imports from China and $150B exports to China each year. and us buying all the worthless junk they produce is really just to pay them back for what they provide for us. so if they really want to play hardball and see who's really holding the cards, I think they'd find out quick. like I said, it would hurt our economy for 2-5 years, but it would cripple China unless they could find somebody to spend an equally outrageous amount on worthless goods and services.