a good thing in the long haul?

rubycodez

Fri Jul 04 09:58:06 -0700 2008

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 will China grow their empire again, this time as a "communist" one?

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zogger

Fri Jul 04 13:00:53 -0700 2008

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They are just going around buying it. No reason to try and build and support a western styled empire when you can pull off the same thing more or less for around 10% of the cost by being just smarter. For instance in Africa they are just overwhelmingly throwing cash and aid at nations where they need raw materials and food from, and they apparently couldn't care less about the local politics as long as they get what they want. And they have the cash to do it, and the manpower to ship over as many engineers and so on as is required. The western way is apparently try to first get in a puppet government that is controllable, then be stuck with imperial occupation forces forever until they get kicked out eventually (like say..iraq.. gonna take 50 years to get any sort of investment return if you count what has been dropped so far just to get there. It would have been much cheaper to just pay saddam off in the first place). The Chinese are eliminating all those unnecessary stupid and painful steps and just going with what is there, and signing contracts and using a lot of their own labor and doing some sort of profit sharing. And they *really* don't care what the current regime is, they'll just keep doing deals with the next guys if there is some sort of coup at nation x or y. That's my best guess anyway, takeover with the sack of cash, not the gun.

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Charles E Hill

Fri Jul 04 16:59:46 -0700 2008

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As far as I can tell, that is the most Libertarian approach to foreign affairs any nation currently has.

And they're going to kick our ass that way.

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President4242

Mon Jul 07 11:28:55 -0700 2008

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Maybe, if they don't poison themselves first.

The problem with the Libertarian approach is this:  prevention of fouling one's own nest requires PLANNING.  Planning requires ORDER.  Socialism gives up freedom for order, capitalism gives up order for freedom.  Libertarianism is about achieving maximum freedom, and thus minimizes order, thus assures that long term interests such as having a country your kids or any other mammals can live in gets subjugated to short term profit.

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Charles E Hill

Mon Jul 07 11:33:03 -0700 2008

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Maybe, but they seem to be focusing on fouling everyone else's nest in this case.  Yes, they're one of the worst on environmental issues and are turing large sections of their own country into cesspools.  But, I was talking about their foreign policy and not their domestic one.

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President4242

Mon Jul 07 12:04:09 -0700 2008

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The thing with depending on outside resources for natural resources is this:  Their nest *becomes* your nest.

If nobody can live in their country, then there's nobody around to mine/drill for the natural resources YOUR economy needs to survive.

We're all in this together, and forgetting that (much as I'd like to, see my posts on isolationist policies) is a pretty bad mistake.

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rubycodez

Sat Jul 05 08:47:24 -0700 2008

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that could be step one, step two to have military bases with your trade allies to ensure nothing disrupts trade, step three cram world view down allies' throats.

 

the U.S. has done similar with oil interests