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Posts: 3269

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Q: Duped into crashing and burning?

We all know the CCP struck a deal with the population after Tiananmen square: wealth in exchange for unquestioning obedience. When th government's credibility was gone and any other country would have rebelled and replaced the regime, the greedy and craven mainland decided to stick with it.

Reagan opened up trade relations with China a while later, and since then the economy has filled the vacuum. Growth is a great source of national pride now, as more and more people are getting access to luxury goods.

But China is still far behind, even in consumption. Ivory and endangered animal trade is banned, peak oil has passed already, modern culture values individualism and frowns upon conspicuous consumption.

More and more people are realizing that our current economic system is unworkable. Everything is still set up to chase that 17th century dream of colonial trade profits. Yes, even today there are new niches opportunities and markets in which people can make tremendous profits, but often it's just because things are set up to generate these opportunities. Consumer culture is promoted, loans and creditcards allow people to consume beyond their means if they are willing to be that stupid. And Chinese consumers are nothing if not stupid.

China also has an obsession with possessions. Cargo cult and gift-giving culture. There seems to be a belief that having nice things automatically makes you a good person without further effort. It comes as no surprise that China is now a massive producer of trinkets, and gets profit from their export.

What I wonder, is whether this was what Reagan planned from the start. Offering the CCP a way to deliver the promised wealth by creating an insane consumer culture in China. But it can't last forever, because resources are dwindling.

While the west is focusing on energy efficiency, alternative fuel sources, recycling and environmentalism, China is still massively polluting, lighting up city skylines like decorated Christmas trees, wasting lots of resources on poor-quality cyclical consumption goods, burning coal, you name it.

Will this end in disaster for the people here? Once resources become depleted, China will face poverty and turmoil while the west has shifted to more durable paradigms.

8 years 49 weeks ago in  Money & Banking - China

 
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Consumer societies mean more debt....and that seems to be China's big plan.

 

The west is still ladling on debt, but increasingly its debt to survive not to consume.

The whole keeping up with the Joneses is magnified 1000x in China thanks to Mianxi.

The better your shit the better you are...shallow, immature and pathetic, so 1980s.

 

I've never wanted to keep up with the Joneses, I'd much rather break into their house and butcher them in their sleep.

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8 years 49 weeks ago
 
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I'll c&p article I just read:

 

http://www.globalresearch.ca/5000-silver-the-mathematics-of-a-potential-...

 

A year before Reagan, but you can get an idea why Reagan opened the trade with China, or better words could be 'debt with China':

 

To begin, let’s look at what happened in 1980 and why gold traded up to $875 in the first place.  As Jim Sinclair has said many times, gold “moved in a manner to cover the value of foreign held debt of the U.S.”.  He has also said “$50,000 gold is possible and it may turn out that this figure is far too low”.  Before you laugh and start firing spitballs at me or Mr. Sinclair, I remind you of his call of “gold at $1,650 per ounce by Jan. 2011″.  He said this when gold was $350 per ounce or so and the year was around 2004 if memory serves me correctly.  He was called a nutjob and far worse …he was correct in retrospect and off in his timing by about eight months …SEVEN YEARS AHEAD OF TIME!

To refresh your memory, let’s do some basic mathematics.  The U.S. purportedly has 262 million ounces of gold.  (As a side note, if you understand how much gold China has imported just over the last six years and compare that to global production, then you understand the U.S. has in all likelihood “dishoarded” much of this gold).  We can compare this 262 million ounces to our national debt rounded off at $18 trillion.  Doing the math, if we had to back our debt with the gold we supposedly have, the number currently comes up to $68,700 per ounce!

 

 

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8 years 49 weeks ago
 
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People only change when they have to or when it concerns something people love more than themselves (usually their children)... greed will always prevail. Chinese are starting to realize this and I think they will more so in the next decade... especially now that the greedy officials can't just shit in their beds and run off.

 

Btw - are you still in China?

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8 years 49 weeks ago
 
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I could hardly agree more with Mike whom certain "smarties" downvoted.
China is now climbing on the top and clearly goes through the phases Europe also went through.
It was mentioned her by ScotAlan that UK was a while ago similar and I can confirm the same for former Czechoslovakia.
Europe has the system which clearly has no future and will be changed.
But apparently some people have certain trouble to distinguish between a dream and reality ...

coineineagh:

my point is that China is climbing to the top on an old ladder, set against a dilapidated building full of asbestos that will soon be demolished because it doesn't meet the safety specs. And most of China's leaders know this. That's why they'll be in another building when the wrecking ball hits.

8 years 49 weeks ago
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8 years 49 weeks ago
 
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Chinese people don't want to buy Chinese products so when the rest of the doesn't want go either the sh** will really hit the fan. Added to that the housing bubble: people defaulting on their loans. I can see things getting very ugly here. Manufacturing is way down so what hope does China have? 

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8 years 49 weeks ago
 
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Consumer societies mean more debt....and that seems to be China's big plan.

 

The west is still ladling on debt, but increasingly its debt to survive not to consume.

The whole keeping up with the Joneses is magnified 1000x in China thanks to Mianxi.

The better your shit the better you are...shallow, immature and pathetic, so 1980s.

 

I've never wanted to keep up with the Joneses, I'd much rather break into their house and butcher them in their sleep.

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8 years 49 weeks ago
 
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I think the CCP is now a glorified pyramid/Ponzi scheme. The top of the pyramid is already abroad with their ill-gotten gains. Those lower down need to keep things in motion a little longer, so they can also emigrate in comfort. But I think the mass exodus of government officials says it all.

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8 years 49 weeks ago
 
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Is there a perfect system?  No, of course not.

 

So, as usual, I will defend the Chinese Government, and it's system of Governence.

 

Why? Do I think it's the best?  Of course not, it's just no worse than any other.

 

In the west we are taught that it is the individual that is important, that the rights of the individual outweigh the rights of Government to rule us. The Government belongs to us, they represent us and act on our behalf.

 

Is this true.....  ha ha of course not.  Because in a democracy the number one job of any Government is to stay in power.

 

Now here is the thing. TS was bad. Really really bad.  A Government should never use an army against it's own people.  But wait... last year, the Army was on the streets of Ferguson.

 

Ah yes, the wumao fights accusations of oppression with counter allegations of similar in the west. Is that what I am doing?  No. Because, quite simply, I am sick to the back teeth with the west claiming the moral high over "oppressive regimes".

 

I see no evidence of the west doing everything in there power for world peace and equality. What I see is self interest, and war, death and destruction..... just so people can have cheap petrol to put in their cars.

 

Here is an example of the rights of the individual over the rights of the masses. Take the Sentinelese people of the Andaman islands.  The most isolated people on the planet. Uncontacted, they still live in the stone age. The world as a whole agrees to leave them alone to live their stone age existance. Why? Do they not care about infant mortalilty of the Sentinelese? Should the sentinelese not be entitled to have an iphone if they should want one?

 

It's the same with China.  Many people see China become a consumer society and they don't like it.  They don't like the consumer society at home, so they feel their own ideals should be enforced here.

 

I disagree. It's freedom of choice. Having an iphone or a BMW, being a consumer or an idealist is a personal choice. If a person wants to be a shallow consumer, who am I to tell them they are wrong.

 

Ha ha... rant over .

 

 

rasklnik:

It is no worse than any other...

Journalist Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and The Vatican, Falun Gong, and the Nobel Prize Committee would all disagree with you. Did you think Stalin and Hitler were no worse than any other leader?

8 years 49 weeks ago
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coineineagh:

You discussed a great many things in here. I'd just like to emphasize that although I disapprove of consumer culture and the Chinese variety in particular, that my question is not some warped form of wishful thinking, hoping bad things will happen here. I see real sustainability problems, and China is the most poorly equipped major economy to deal with them. And although China is anti-individualism in principal, their leaders show no concern about the sustainability of their country. Theyare more interested in personal enrichment, and staying in absolute power for the short term..

8 years 49 weeks ago
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Mateusz:

All governments have skeletons in their closets, but China has a friggin' boneyard.

8 years 49 weeks ago
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ScotsAlan:

My biggest thing is that the state should not have the right to take a human life.

 

Does China do this? Yes it does.

 

So yup, for me China fails that test. So do a lot of countries. But you know, I don't see the UK Government trying to enforce a regime change in Saudi Arabia. Why is that?  When the Saudi King recently died the world leaders went. One of the most oppressive places in the world, where women are not even allowed to drive, where people have their hands chopped off and political agitators are flogged.

 

If you believe in freedom and democracy, why do your own democratic Governments support the Saudi regeime?  I bet 99.99% of people in democratic nations think it's a massive breach of human rights for women not to be able to drive is SA, but the Governments support them.  Are they representing you, the voters? No of course not.

 

That's what I can't figure out. Western propaganda demonizes some nations, yet supports others that are even worse.

 

Now lets take the environment. Yup, it's pretty shitty. Where I live, there are nicely laid pavements (some of them) etc, but it's a mess. People just dump their rubbish everywhere, they pour their old cooking oil down the road drains, they drop food wrappers, nut shells, animal guts... everything... everywhere.

 

The local Government employ street cleaners to clean the mess up. And a good thing they do too, otherwise we would be chest deep in rubbish within a few months. Is all the mess really the Government's fault? 

 

 

8 years 49 weeks ago
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gouxiong:

ScotsAlan,

I would guess the biggest problem is in the age structure. In average young people are full of ideals and enthusiasm (avoiding now the word naivety laugh) and want to change the world. I am sure it's good this way.

The older person gets the more is confronted with the real examples that the things are frequently presented differently than they in reality are.

In the west we of course have no democracy (or at least very very limited). If it would not be that way so majority of the people in a lot of EU countries could not be so dissatisfied with their governments.

Also the chance to really effect something is at best very very limited.

EU governments generally adopted ancient Rome system - bread and circuses. Therefore EU welfare is so extravagant.

And therefore the immigration is such a huge problem for EU (thousands and thousands of people dying now on the way to EU just because EU is not brave enough to say what kind of refugees will be accepted and what will not - and subsequently also implement and enforce the program).

At the moment majority of EU governments are spending more money than they are able to earn. When one would compare it with a family so for how long would a family continuously spending more than is their income survive?

China has against Europe one big advantage. Their economical model motivates the people to try to achieve better. Unfortunately this is not the case of Europe anymore.

Will the European approach change? For sure, otherwise no future.

Is China a perfect system? Of course not. 

But I still prefer the freedom together with responsibility which Chinese system offers emphasized by the big tolerance of Chinese (some people call it negligence about the other people situation ...).

Does China has many problems - of course, plenty!

But we are not here to change this country, right?

I think that majority of people around the world has the same goal - live happy life. But happy may have for everybody a bit different meaning.

I just guess that majority of people here has certain troubles to accept that China is really different world and that implementing 'Western' approaches to deal with every day life issues may not work too well.

Probably the most natural behavior is then search for another people sharing similar points of view or having similar trouble to get self assurance that it's not them who s wrong but that it's the 'bad' environment.

Someone wrote on this site that he is afraid to release any more details about planned departure from China as 'somebody watches and could make troubles on the airport' - if you search for advanced paranoia case so it's this one. On one had this guy certainly believes that everything in China is under control and supervision (what is probably to big extent true and therefore for anybody connected with right organs would be piece of cake to find who he is and all other details) and on the other hand he believes that the problem would be only in case he would mention when he leaves ...

Nevertheless as a lot of contributions to this site shows it clearly is not the way how to make yourself happy. 

8 years 49 weeks ago
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8 years 49 weeks ago
 
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