China's Blueprint For Global Power

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

Where did you get these?

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

China.  Can't remember where exactly, but probably Guangzhou, as that is the region I've been to the most in China over the years.

 

/ edit     Trying to remember all of the places I've been to in China over the years, and in 7 trips.  Most trips were to several regions.

Guangzhou
Hong Kong
Tianjin
Suzhou
Shenzhen

There are more cities, but I can't recall them at the moment.

 

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

I’ll eventually get there with my wife, she’ll make an excellent tour guide and translator.

[Guest]

You can tell Tom is still unpacking ... well, when he's not boasting on Oil Price haha

I've been to HK and Macau. In HK I don't think I've moved my neck so much in a month. Everyone was stunning. 

[Otis11 + 551]

On 11/1/2019 at 2:27 PM, remake it said:

This was about you making a claim that China's basis for territorial expansion was bogus, despite you providing the very justification for their claims from your initial post in the the thread, and then declaring at every opportunity your words were being twisted when it was pointed out to you that this is what you had done,

You are either a troll purposefully taking quotes out of context, or don't speak english well enough to understand my post. I referred back to myself... I'm very aware of what I wrote and no it doesnt contradict.

Multiple native english speakers on this form have confirmed this. None have agreed with you.

Period.

Oh, and I've cited multiple lies from you that you failed to address...  but you call me a liar and attack me.

Yeah. No.

Edited November 3, 2019 by Otis11

[remake it + 288]

3 hours ago, Otis11 said:

You are either a troll purposefully taking quotes out of context, or don't speak english well enough to understand my post. I referred back to myself... I'm very aware of what I wrote and no it doesnt contradict.

Multiple native english speakers on this form have confirmed this. None have agreed with you.

Period.

Oh, and I've cited multiple lies from you that you failed to address...  but you call me a liar and attack me.

Yeah. No.

What you wrote remains in the thread, and the context is available to all readers so here it is from page 1 (with added emphasis in bolded-red)

On 10/15/2019 at 5:34 AM, Otis11 said:

Other than these two dynasties, (each spanning about 120 years - so 240 years total) - China has been less than 1/3rd it's current size for >2700 of the 3000 years of it's history. 

It's claims to 'historical' lands are completely bogus.

Given that the Qing dynasty alone was was over 260 years duration and encompassed a territory over one million square miles more than modern day China, and was immediately followed by constitutional China in 1912 and later modern China it is very difficult to see how you arrived at your position.

[Guest]

Err ... but Trump

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

On 10/19/2019 at 9:22 PM, PE Scott said:

As this article point out, based on WikiLeaks, there was plenty of evidence of WMD's, just not the manufacturing facilities the Bush administration had spoke of.

Side note for anyone who has been following the Wikileaks / Julian Assange saga over the last few years, you may be interested in having a look at this, gives new meaning to the phrase "we have it all".  I can't vouch for authenticity, but for anyone interested, you may have some fun poking around:

Alleged Contents of Entire Wikileaks Original Server Captuted Before Assange Lost Internet Access, Published

“Captured before Julian lost internet access, before NSA took over and bleached files from the internet and from WL server. Much has been scrubbed. Links on the internet give a 404 error. Now you can read them all. Newer dated files up to 2018 are also here.”

George M. Nasif, Twitter, Nov. 8

Entire Wikileaks Server HERE.

Questions have arisen as to whether this is legit. Time will tell. We can all, in the meantime, read the documents, consider, and discuss.

 

============================

Direct link to files:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1jcq9lcqrwnip68/AACp8Tfg3fOELLNcxc_TCE3Ea?dl=0

 

Random sample of one of the files attached below.

commanders-handbook-for-antiterrorism-readiness.pdf

 

==============================

/ edit  - after poking around a bit, I recognize a number of the documents that I read years ago, including some of the docs that anons (who I knew online and their IRL names) leaked to Wikileaks.  Legit leaks.

So far, this seems like a fairly legit backup dump of Wikileaks docs, before the U.S. feds intervened and scrubbed a bunch of docs.

 

 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

On 10/31/2019 at 6:07 PM, Marcin said:

My interests are focused on current geopolitical situation, and fascinating pursue of hegemony and conflict of US vs China and how this conflict impacts all other countries.

Marcin, I am going to jump in here, for the limited purpose of correcting a common enough misconception.  US President trump is NOT in conflict with China.  The issue, for him, for me, and most Americans, is that China has, and is, abusing the US-China trade and intellectual-property arrangement.

Go back to the Vietnam war and the looming problem of Chinese involvement, and just how tinder-box world relations were at that time.  Nixon and Henry Kissinger made the tactical and strategic decision to alter the Communist Chinese ideas of the West by inviting them to become part of the global community, by way of world trade.  So they sent in a ping-pong team to go play the Chines, and "Ping Pong Diplomacy" was born.  Out of that opening, which by the way was brilliant politics, real political theatre, the Chinese were nudged off their war postures and over to the idea that they would become the workshop of the world. 

Well, that turned out to be an understatement.  the Chinese went after that idea with a vengeance and have become, quite literally, the Workshop of the World.  Now the Americans were good with this as long as it meant the Chinese would be come responsible trading partners and give up these ideas of world conquest, and the militarism that goes with it.  Unfortunately the Workshop part worked, but the Chinese have maintained this vast army of 2,000,000 men and now a bigger Navy, and are threatening their neighbors in the South China Sea. So the bargain, which had a big price on Americans, has not been met.

The USA basically shipped some 50,000 factories to China and let the Communist Chinese go employ their people instead of Americans building the same stuff, albeit at greater cost levels, all to the detriment of Americans.  It became a gigantic wealth transfer.  Now Trump comes along and says: Hey, that's not fair, you cannot go take away our factories with a mercantilist trade pattern and behavior and at the same time go threaten your neighbors, so I am calling a halt to that arrangement.    Keep in mind that Europe is perfectly happy to continue the arrangement so the Chinese continue to exploit Europe, but since Europe has no vested interests in the area of SE Asia they don't much care, and their internal aging population makes keeping those European factories running problematic in the longer term.  So the Chinese have taken a bit of a constriction in their expansionist ideas, and they will have to conform to a more equal trade relationship with the USA, which so far they have been unwilling to do. 

That, in short, is where it stands:  who is going to blink first?  Will it be the Chinese Communist leadership, or will it be Donald Trump?  I am betting that Trump is stronger than the Chinese leadership, and the USA has the capacity to replace or repatriate the manufacturing and especially the tooling that is sitting in China.  Will the USA be stronger because of Trump's posture?  Of course it will. 

You don't have to like Trump, indeed you can both loathe and despise the man, but you do have to give him credit for facing squarely the conundrum of handing the Chinese Communists the keys to US manufacturing, and then taking them back.  Good move, in my opinion.  Cheers.

[remake it + 288]

8 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

I am betting that Trump is stronger than the Chinese leadership, and the USA has the capacity to replace or repatriate the manufacturing and especially the tooling that is sitting in China.  Will the USA be stronger because of Trump's posture?  Of course it will. 

Using recent history as a guide (as distinct from personal bias), especially in relation to international trade, it is difficult to see manufacturing flow back to high wage countries unless there is some magical offset, so what might that be?

Edited November 9, 2019 by remake it
added brackets

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

45 minutes ago, remake it said:

Using recent history as a guide (as distinct from personal bias), especially in relation to international trade, it is difficult to see manufacturing flow back to high wage countries unless there is some magical offset, so what might that be?

To understand that high wages are not remotely the determinant factor in the selection of manufacturing siting, I invite you to ponder the situation with Meyer Werft, a premier shipyard in North Germany.  I recall it to sit on the Papenburg River, a rather narrow one that flows North into the North Sea.  The shipyard is some distance from the sea and the whole exercise strikes an outsider as awkward.  The wages in that part of Germany are among that nation's highest.  Nonetheless, if you want a fancy cruise ship built, one of those monsters that holds say 3,500 or 5,000 guests in a floating palace, you go to Meyer Werft, or you can forget the exercise. Now, why is that?

And the answer lies in the accumulated skill sets of the workforce and of management, to design and build your big billion-dollar boat on time and within budget.  Yes, you can go to say Romania and have shipyard labor at 1/10th the wage rate in Papenburg, but your boat will not get built, and if they manage to finish it, you will not be happy with the result.  Neither will your customers.  See, a high-wage environment suggests a high skill set, and in modern manufacturing you need that.  Everything today is done with CNC machines, automatic welders, all kinds of fancy machinery and equipment, and the labor cost is not determinant. Take a good, serious look at Meyer Werft and that operation and think about it the next time you go on some mega-cruise ship.  Those guys will have built it.

Now for other, more humdrum goods, what drives successful manufacturing in some higher-wage country, such as the USA, will be the tariffs.  A tariff acts as a barrier and ups the costs of the exporter in a competing country.  For example, right now the overall tariff against Chinese manufactured goods is running at 25%.  That is huge.  It gives a domestic US manufacturer a ton of room to maneuver in, because additional to that 25% the US mfr. is not constrained by inventory sitting on some boat for a month, and does not face the transport costs back and forth some 14,000 miles.  So the imposition of the Trump tariffs shifts work back to the USA and out from underneath the Chinese, just on that point alone. 

The third thing that will drive mfg in a high-wage country is the currency exchange rate.  That should be obvious, so I shall not belabor it.  If the exchange rate favors the domestic fabricator, then the exporter has to eat that rate in addition to the tariffs.  Gets expensive fast, and what happens is that the domestic market in that high-wage country is surrendered to those domestic manufacturers. 

You can also have non-tariff barriers, and typically those are used by Chinese authorities to hold shipments for paperwork clearances on the port docks.  If the paperwork barriers are sufficient and your shipment is perishable, then you risk having your entire shipment value go to zero while it sits on the port docks. And that happens, with perishables.  Other forms of non-tariff barriers include prohibitions against various medications given to cattle, to GMO-modified seed in corn, that sort of thing.  They are all designed to protect the workers and manufacturers/growers in high-wage countries, from low-wage competition. 

Today, actual direct hands-on labor costs tend to be sufficiently low that they are not really a factor.  Indeed, corporate taxes and management costs override direct labor costs.  Even though direct labor in the US auto industry is lower in Canada than in the USA, the Detroit Three are abandoning Canadian manufacturing, and I predict no Big 3 assembly plants will exist in Canada within the next two years.  All gone. 

https://www.meyerwerft.de/en/meyerwerft_de/index.jsp

 

Highest wages on the planet, and this is what you get:

[remake it + 288]

21 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

To understand that high wages are not remotely the determinant factor in the selection of manufacturing siting, I invite you to ponder the situation with Meyer Werft, a premier shipyard in North Germany.

The point related to your position that "the USA has the capacity to replace or repatriate the manufacturing," however you only indicated that some types of industries (in your case one with a high skill component and significant entry barrier cost) can still do ok, so it remains difficult to see what magic formula will achieve what you believe will occur.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

11 minutes ago, remake it said:

The point related to your position that "the USA has the capacity to replace or repatriate the manufacturing," however you only indicated that some types of industries (in your case one with a high skill component and significant entry barrier cost) can still do ok, so it remains difficult to see what magic formula will achieve what you believe will occur.

I write you a nice long cogent reply and you do not give it so much as a "like," tells me you really don't much appreciate the effort, so on that basis I find it difficult to see why you would expect me to continue to explain the intricacies of Trump manufacturing strategies.  Cheers. 

[remake it + 288]

16 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

I write you a nice long cogent reply and you do not give it so much as a "like," tells me you really don't much appreciate the effort, so on that basis I find it difficult to see why you would expect me to continue to explain the intricacies of Trump manufacturing strategies.  Cheers. 

It was a detailed reply, however, it never showed what would lead to manufacturing returning to the USA, which is what you believe will occur.

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

6 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

I write you a nice long cogent reply and you do not give it so much as a "like," tells me you really don't much appreciate the effort, so on that basis I find it difficult to see why you would expect me to continue to explain the intricacies of Trump manufacturing strategies.  Cheers. 

Jan,

I fear you are flogging the same horse that others beat to death while discussing other issues.

Keeping with the ‘horse motif’, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.

[remake it + 288]

2 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

Jan,

I fear you are flogging the same horse that others beat to death while discussing other issues.

Keeping with the ‘horse motif’, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.

Jan believes the USA can repatriate lost manufacturing and expended a lot of effort not saying how this would or could happen, so it is his horse being flogged to death.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

5 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

Jan,

I fear you are flogging the same horse that others beat to death while discussing other issues.

Keeping with the ‘horse motif’, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.

I make it a point to try to be courteous and I try to explain matters that fall within my area of expertise with rather lengthy posts.  When I run into someone who is rude or who refuses to sift through what I write, and then is unappreciative, well, then that person goes onto my shit list and I ignore anything further from that quarter.  You can criticize that as whatever you like, but hey, there are only so many hours in the day and I have my business enterprise to go run.  Only so much I can do.

Douglas, it is always a pleasure to correspond with you.  Always.  And I thank you for sharing your expertise, which is prodigious.

Edited November 10, 2019 by Jan van Eck

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

3 hours ago, remake it said:

Jan believes the USA can repatriate lost manufacturing and expended a lot of effort not saying how this would or could happen, so it is his horse being flogged to death.

Readers may note the rubbish inherent in that post by looking at the current situation in the reconstruction of US steel mills and the opening of closed plants in the aluminum industry.  Those are just two very small components of the US manufacturing scene that have benefited greatly from the Trump approach, specifically including tariffs and quotas.  Again, you don't have to like the guy [President Trump] and you can criticize him all day long if you like, but he gets results - and the rest of the pack does not.  Nothing like success. Beats failure all day long.

[remake it + 288]

7 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

Readers may note the rubbish inherent in that post by looking at the current situation in the reconstruction of US steel mills and the opening of closed plants in the aluminum industry.  Those are just two very small components of the US manufacturing scene that have benefited greatly from the Trump approach, specifically including tariffs and quotas.  Again, you don't have to like the guy [President Trump] and you can criticize him all day long if you like, but he gets results - and the rest of the pack does not.  Nothing like success. Beats failure all day long.

If that is your claim, why is it not supported by actual data?

Edited November 10, 2019 by remake it
added links

[Rasmus Jorgensen + 1,169]

8 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

Again, you don't have to like the guy [President Trump] and you can criticize him all day long if you like, but he gets results - and the rest of the pack does not.  Nothing like success. Beats failure all day long.

Despite being labelled a "Trump hater" I actually believe that Trump deserve credit for changing the narrative around China. And I think history will record that as a really big Trump win. However, whilst I think Trump deserves credit for opening the worlds eyes I remain sceptical what actual results Trumps policies will achieve. 

I personally  believe that if Trump really wanted to create results he would have united the world against China based on a semi green / enviromental platform... That would have created results and he would have gotten most of the world onboard.... 

@DayTrader - this is whats called a balanced view. 

[remake it + 288]

12 minutes ago, Rasmus Jorgensen said:

Despite being labelled a "Trump hater" I actually believe that Trump deserve credit for changing the narrative around China. And I think history will record that as a really big Trump win.

This "narrative" seems largely predicated on one's nationality as generally speaking the European region seems comparatively well informed, the South East Asian region "affected," and the USA's conflicted by misinformation (if this forum is seen as a microcosm), and history does not reflect kindly on those who have a track record of exaggeration ( à la the WMD fiasco).

[Rasmus Jorgensen + 1,169]

6 minutes ago, remake it said:

This "narrative" seems largely predicated on one's nationality as generally speaking the European region seems comparatively well informed, the South East Asian region "affected," and the USA's conflicted by misinformation (if this forum is seen as a microcosm), and history does not reflect kindly on those who have a track record of exaggeration ( à la the WMD fiasco).

In fairness - from a European perspective : view on China is changed since Trump. And it is changing graudally. Not to directly hostile, but in my opinion at least less naive.

what is really sad - if Trump would go up against China from a enviromental platform (i.e. do something about pollution or we tariff the crap out of you, Europe would follow). 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

40 minutes ago, Rasmus Jorgensen said:

Despite being labelled a "Trump hater" I actually believe that Trump deserve credit for changing the narrative around China. And I think history will record that as a really big Trump win. However, whilst I think Trump deserves credit for opening the worlds eyes I remain sceptical what actual results Trumps policies will achieve. 

Hi there, Rasmus, and it is unclear whom you perceive as labelling you a "Trump Hater," certainly not me. Mr. Trump is a bit of a lightning rod, he attracts both sharp supporters and sharp denigrators. I would be pressed to place you in either camp!  Getting past that, you are quite correct in noting that he has "changed the narrative" around China.  While you question how much "results" that will achieve, I wouold point you to what is happening in Hong Kong.  Further, the idea that Taiwan would be able to resist the pressure to amalgamate with the mainland, absent Trump and the US Navy, is a non-starter.  So, Trump both changes the narrative and also changes the perception, and the actions, of others around him. 

The real question for Americans (and Europeans) to ponder is:  how would it have all turned out if Hillary were in there running the show?  And unfortunately, the answer to that is: quite badly. There would be zero support for HK and for Taiwan, and zero support for funding the Navy, and zero support for either tariffs or quotas, and the USA would still be flooded with cheap steel and aluminum.  It is a question of mind-set, and the Democrats cannot get out of the mind track that they have buried themselves in about "free trade," which is not free trade at all, but predatory trade.  Amazing, as "free trade" has historically been a Republican objective - that is, until comparative advantage went out the window and was replaced by absolute advantage. 

Trump's policies will hit their stride when he couples the tariffs with import quotas.  That has not yet happened, but it will, I predict.  At that point, the US economy will just take off with a gigantic roar. Most importantly, you will see the shuttered factories in the US Midwest and rural America open up, and new life into the towns there.  And that will make a huge difference socially. 

[remake it + 288]

8 minutes ago, Rasmus Jorgensen said:

In fairness - from a European perspective : view on China is changed since Trump. And it is changing graudally. Not to directly hostile, but in my opinion at least less naive.

what is really sad - if Trump would go up against China from a enviromental platform (i.e. do something about pollution or we tariff the crap out of you, Europe would follow). 

World leaders can do that, but as you point out it is getting the direction right which is most important for global immediacy, and that is what history will tell: the contradistinction being that Xi Jinping seems to be putting fewer offside than Trump.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Rasmus Jorgensen said:

I personally  believe that if Trump really wanted to create results he would have united the world against China based on a semi green / enviromental platform... That would have created results and he would have gotten most of the world onboard.... 

@DayTrader - this is whats called a balanced view. 

Err... ok?   Do you want a medal?

Not even here and getting abuse. Zzz

Edited November 10, 2019 by Guest