Is the Rise of China beneficial to US Interests?

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Luke Skywalker
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Is the Rise of China beneficial to US Interests?

Post by Luke Skywalker »

I'm on my high school's debate team. The NFL's (national forensic league, not...) next resolution is:

Resolved: On balance, the rise of China is beneficial to the interests
of the United States.

Does anyone have any potential arguments, preferably back by statistics, for or against the assertion?
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Re: Is the Rise of China beneficial to US Interests?

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Yes. But I wouldn't want to take away your fun of finding this out by yourself.

Have a very nice day.
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Re: Is the Rise of China beneficial to US Interests?

Post by Esquire »

First line of inquiry: what are the US' interests?
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Re: Is the Rise of China beneficial to US Interests?

Post by Dominarch's Hope »

Luke Skywalker wrote:I'm on my high school's debate team. The NFL's (national forensic league, not...) next resolution is:

Resolved: On balance, the rise of China is beneficial to the interests
of the United States.

Does anyone have any potential arguments, preferably back by statistics, for or against the assertion?
It represents an awesome market to export to. Shame we dont have stuff to export to them. :cry:

In reality, China's Industrialization and Modernization was inevitable, the speed of it less so, but without occupying armies and civil wars, China is simply a massive and coherent and cohesive entity that is more than capable of competition. India is a little different, since India in effect is operating on an insane amount of momentum, to the point that the momentum is in fact a major motive force.

Both India and China will surpass America in power within this century. But it wont quite be the same as America and Russia/USSR eclipsing the British Empire. Because America will still be incredibly powerful and wealthy and is unlikely to disintegrate the way Britain did. America will remain a superpower. Just not the most absolutely dominant.
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Re: Is the Rise of China beneficial to US Interests?

Post by spaceviking »

Really? The U.S still has probably the largest area of arable land, great natural ports and river, and hospitable neighbors. China is still very much the economic underdog, and they are facing a demographic shit far worse then the one facing the U.S. China also has large hurdles to face as its population in its less devolved areas tire of the growing disparity between them and the more modern areas. China may be on the rise;but, inevitable surpassing the U.S? That is not a given.
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Re: Is the Rise of China beneficial to US Interests?

Post by UnderAGreySky »

"Both India and China will surpass America in power within this century."

Speaking as an Indian, this would require a massive loss of power on the USA's side and a massive upgrade of power on the Indian side. As much as I appreciate the progress in India over the last 20 years, we're not going to be a superpower for a long, long time.
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Re: Is the Rise of China beneficial to US Interests?

Post by GoldenBough »

The more participation China has in the world economy, the more they will push for economic stability. Same with India. We (the US) want these huge population centers to have a vested interest in keeping the peace world wide (better for trade), so we can back off as the sole world police.
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Re: Is the Rise of China beneficial to US Interests?

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Esquire wrote:First line of inquiry: what are the US' interests?
If we define US interests as expansion of economic hegemony and protection of current economic interests worldwide, does the 'rise' of China have an impact? Does a Chinese carrier or tank division have any more impact than China's participation in world markets?
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Re: Is the Rise of China beneficial to US Interests?

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Money and population. Sure, China is undergoing an age demographic shift, but if they even get to half of the PPP of the US, India included, they will be far surpass the US in amoint of money available.

And India is in that weight class, but it isnt undergoing those demographic shifts. And unless America jacks up its birthrate, its population raw numbers arent going to hit a billion anytime soon.


India's main problem is and will be water. Nuclear and Solar power desalination could help. Maybe.

China can mostly feed its own population and has more secure access to water. China's issue is being boxed in in the naval aspect. Just kind of a problem. India however is golden in that respect though. Will address furthher.
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Re: Is the Rise of China beneficial to US Interests?

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It represents an awesome market to export to. Shame we dont have stuff to export to them.
No it's not a possible market. China is advanced enough to cover their markets with domestic products, and if anybody tried to import anything the state would just tax all profitability out of it. Jesus people, we aren't in the 19th century anymore when the British said "if we genocide them just enough, they will buy our merchandise".
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Re: Is the Rise of China beneficial to US Interests?

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You think China does not import goods? At the very least grain, oil etc.
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Re: Is the Rise of China beneficial to US Interests?

Post by GoldenBough »

Commodities of course, but not as many finished products. They can produce those domestically. Luxury goods and such will continue to pour in, but I imagine we'll see a shrink there as home brands start to swing more weight.
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Re: Is the Rise of China beneficial to US Interests?

Post by mr friendly guy »

Dominarch's Hope wrote:Money and population. Sure, China is undergoing an age demographic shift, but if they even get to half of the PPP of the US, India included, they will be far surpass the US in amoint of money available.
Presumably you mean half the GDP per capita by PPP rather than Purchasing power parity of the US. Because they reached half the PPP of the US a long time ago, something the Soviet Union failed to do (depending on your source). In fact, the IMF estimates China's 2012 GDP Nominal (nominal, not PPP) would be around 54% of the US.

Second I find this age demographic shift claim very alarmist, with only HALF the relevant numbers. For example they will say by 2030 China will have x% of population over a certain age and reduce like one third the workers or something compared to the year 2000. What they can't be bothered to do is show the economic output of the workers by 2030. Hint, if you look at the economic output of a worker in China today, vs the year 2000, you might notice that they have ALREADY more than increased their output compared to the decrease number of workers they are predicted to have by 2030. But I will let you find those statistics.
And India is in that weight class, but it isnt undergoing those demographic shifts. And unless America jacks up its birthrate, its population raw numbers arent going to hit a billion anytime soon.
Certainly it has the population, but its economic figures are nowhere near China's no matter how much over enthusiastic Indians talk about it. It just hasn't manifested. They will most likely be a regional power, but nowhere in China's weight class anytime soon. Fortunately this "Asian century" means they have several more decades to catch up, so who knows.
India's main problem is and will be water. Nuclear and Solar power desalination could help. Maybe.

China can mostly feed its own population and has more secure access to water. China's issue is being boxed in in the naval aspect. Just kind of a problem. India however is golden in that respect though. Will address furthher.
China also has a water problem. Its particularly with distribution. The north is parched. The south has plenty. So they are working to fix that with massive infrastructure projects. The other problem is the north is where coal is. Coal is converted into oil, but the process is water heavy. Presumably if people can use less oil, ie more efficient or hybrid cars, and finally fully electric cars can help.
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Re: Is the Rise of China beneficial to US Interests?

Post by mr friendly guy »

https://www.uschina.org/statistics/tradetable.html

One can see the trade growth in what the US exports to China. Notice the double digit growth, which is growing even faster in % terms than the Chinese economy. Because I sure do.

Now back to the OP. If you define US interests in the way Stuart Slade will see it - ie international geopolitics is a zero sum game, and it being all about relative influence, then the rise of any nation which doesn't suck the US's cock is by definition going to be against US interest. If you see things as more than a zero sum game, then the answer to the OP is yes. And the trade figures prove it.
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Re: Is the Rise of China beneficial to US Interests?

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UnderAGreySky wrote:"Both India and China will surpass America in power within this century."

Speaking as an Indian, this would require a massive loss of power on the USA's side and a massive upgrade of power on the Indian side. As much as I appreciate the progress in India over the last 20 years, we're not going to be a superpower for a long, long time.
He most probably got this from a Goldman Sachs report, which predicted India would be the second largest economy by 2050, with China the largest.

Of course being a superpower also implies military capabilities. Even when the US had a larger economy than the British, the Royal Navy was still churning out the Dreadnought which made other ships (including her own) obsolete. So it takes time for military capabilities to match economic ones. In fact IIRC the Economist predicted China's economy will match the US around the 2020s, but its military spending won't be so until the 2030s.
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Re: Is the Rise of China beneficial to US Interests?

Post by GoldenBough »

Technology advances are going to obsolete a lot of our notions of warfare over the next decade or so. We have flying robot death drones already. Military spending is going to be far more about intelligence than force projection. I don't know how much of a lead the US has in that theater, but I'd wager it's substantial.
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Re: Is the Rise of China beneficial to US Interests?

Post by mr friendly guy »

Assuming both side in the debate do their home work (unlike say some newspapers), I suspect it will get bog down into what constitutes US interests. :D
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Re: Is the Rise of China beneficial to US Interests?

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Its a bit sad that people cannot even think about 'good for US y/n' without following it up with paranoid 'how long until they STRONGER THAN US OMG'. I'm internet psychology convinced this is driven by a fear of comeuppance. :V
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Re: Is the Rise of China beneficial to US Interests?

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UnderAGreySky wrote:"Both India and China will surpass America in power within this century."

Speaking as an Indian, this would require a massive loss of power on the USA's side and a massive upgrade of power on the Indian side. As much as I appreciate the progress in India over the last 20 years, we're not going to be a superpower for a long, long time.
Considering how far the US went from 1900 to 2000 (let alone 1850 to 1950), this isn't totally out of the question. It is merely... very, very difficult. I would think that by 2100 it is almost certain that India will be a developed nation, or as developed as anyone else manages to be in that era.
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Re: Is the Rise of China beneficial to US Interests?

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I think it's a major positive to US interests.

1. Lower costs of Chinese production have led to lower prices for a wide range of consumer goods, and lower prices than what would be the prices if integrating Chinese production into international supply chains was impossible. It also forces companies still doing production in the Developed World to be more competitive and efficient in their production there.

2. The Chinese represent a current and potential massive market for US products and services.

3. Even increasing Chinese geopolitical strength has been good for the US, after a fashion. It's pushed a number of the countries in the region (the Philippines. Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand) into greater cooperation with the US on economic and military matters.
GoldenBough wrote:Commodities of course, but not as many finished products. They can produce those domestically. Luxury goods and such will continue to pour in, but I imagine we'll see a shrink there as home brands start to swing more weight.
China imports a fair amount of products from the rich countries, but it's worth pointing out that just focusing on "finished products" can be misleading. A lot of China's export production is "final assembly" stuff, where they take components sourced from all over the world and combine them into finished products (they have a big advantage because of relatively cheap labor and robots being not quite dexterous enough yet to do this kind of work on a wide range of different products).
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Re: Is the Rise of China beneficial to US Interests?

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I ran out of edit time.

One thing that does trouble me about China's growth is the not-so-great domestic technological innovation. If you look at the US industrializing after Great Britain in the 19th Century, the US was stealing British innovation left, right, and center (along with everybody else), but it was also doing a ton of local technological innovation at the same time (partially based off of British technology, but quickly growing into different areas with lots of genuinely original technological advancement). Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan did a fair amount of that during their catch-up growth in the second half of the twentieth century, particularly in semiconductors, computers, automobiles, and consumer electronics.

But I'm not really seeing that with China's catch-up growth, not yet. There's been massive growth in patent application and scientific papers, but much of those are dubious (particularly since there's a huge incentive just to get scientific papers published, regardless of the quality of their data). Sure, you can say, "But China's still a poor country!", but not all of it is super poor - there are a number of areas where GDP Per Capita is above $10,000 USD (such as Shenzhen, which is even higher with PPP).

That's why I held off from also adding "will provide a new potentially huge source of technological and scientific innovation" as one of my points.
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Re: Is the Rise of China beneficial to US Interests?

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To my mind, China's innovation is in areas where perhaps we are less interested in, so its largely unnoticed. For example hybrid rice to increase yields? Rice. That's what Asians eat, who cares about that. Or making advances on the German pebble bed nukes. Nuclear reactors? Coal is cheaper, and nukes are TEH EVEL (unless you are France, where it is good). Obviously they seek to be world players in other technological areas, and if they succeed we will notice more of it.
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Re: Is the Rise of China beneficial to US Interests?

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Guardsman Bass wrote:I ran out of edit time.

One thing that does trouble me about China's growth is the not-so-great domestic technological innovation. If you look at the US industrializing after Great Britain in the 19th Century, the US was stealing British innovation left, right, and center (along with everybody else), but it was also doing a ton of local technological innovation at the same time (partially based off of British technology, but quickly growing into different areas with lots of genuinely original technological advancement).
This was in a time when basically any clever guy with his own workshop could invent a new machine from scratch in a year or two.

By the mid-20th century it was harder: all the easy stuff had been invented and most innovation required either a very skilled engineer or a team thereof, working for an established lab or company. Countries like Japan took at least 50-70 years from the start of catchup industrialization to get to a place where they could really innovate and design things ahead of what everyone else was doing.

(Remember that you're measuring not from WWII to the rise of innovation in Japan, but from the Meiji Restoration to that time)

China has only been seriously trying to mass-industrialize its society for about as long as Japan's had, and it's got more to catch up with. I suspect that they'll get a lot more mileage in terms of innovation once the next generation of engineering graduates matures into the workforce.
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Re: Is the Rise of China beneficial to US Interests?

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Japan was stealing US superconductors and doing lots of stealing. I see no reason to say China is not doing well. It takes a German high-speed train, then produces a domestic version with improved characteristics.
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Re: Is the Rise of China beneficial to US Interests?

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mr friendly guy wrote:
UnderAGreySky wrote:"Both India and China will surpass America in power within this century."

Speaking as an Indian, this would require a massive loss of power on the USA's side and a massive upgrade of power on the Indian side. As much as I appreciate the progress in India over the last 20 years, we're not going to be a superpower for a long, long time.
He most probably got this from a Goldman Sachs report, which predicted India would be the second largest economy by 2050, with China the largest.

Of course being a superpower also implies military capabilities. Even when the US had a larger economy than the British, the Royal Navy was still churning out the Dreadnought which made other ships (including her own) obsolete. So it takes time for military capabilities to match economic ones. In fact IIRC the Economist predicted China's economy will match the US around the 2020s, but its military spending won't be so until the 2030s.
Both money and reason to have a military. Currently, the Indian Navy is the one doing international missions, even if its just Somali pirate hunting here and there.


China is the one with poor naval power projection, which is half the issue in regards to the squabbles in the south china sea.

And I beleive there is a difference in having a problem of availability and a problem of transportation. Not to mention that the Chinese Northwest is comparatively uninhabited.
Stark wrote:Its a bit sad that people cannot even think about 'good for US y/n' without following it up with paranoid 'how long until they STRONGER THAN US OMG'. I'm internet psychology convinced this is driven by a fear of comeuppance. :V
About the worst part about this post is the fear of comeuppance part. America isnt the one who forcefully shoved opium down their throats. America didnt occupy them quite as brutally pre WWI. America isnt the one who waged a bloodthirsty and brutal war of conquest.


And America is the world leader in Laser and Railgun technology and has shitloads of nukes.


Sorry Stark, try again.
Dr. Trainwreck wrote:
It represents an awesome market to export to. Shame we dont have stuff to export to them.
No it's not a possible market. China is advanced enough to cover their markets with domestic products, and if anybody tried to import anything the state would just tax all profitability out of it. Jesus people, we aren't in the 19th century anymore when the British said "if we genocide them just enough, they will buy our merchandise".
What in the fuck? America's history with China is waaaay different than Britain's. They like us way more because we werent so cartoonishly evil to them.

So...stuff it up your ass.

And you are saying they have protectionists policies that favor domestic production and jobs? Gee, its almost as if thats a good thing for developing economies. Nearly required for their internal development against foreign competition.
Because, Murrica, thats why.
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