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CHINA'S LIABILITY?

Your a funny guy!
Deadly serious. Do you think any country would not want to be the ones making the critical decisions on how the world works?

Most of their behaviour falls into place once you understand this point - they want rules, but ones which benefit them; and they want to be the ones deciding the interpretation of those rules.
 
Deadly serious. Do you think any country would not want to be the ones making the critical decisions on how the world works?

Most of their behaviour falls into place once you understand this point - they want rules, but ones which benefit them; and they want to be the ones deciding the interpretation of those rules.
It was the bit about Beiijing being onside with a rules based international order that made me laugh. They break any international rule they think they can get away with as they believe that they are big enough, strong enough and rich enough.

Even you can't deny that although no doubt you will.
 
It was the bit about Beiijing being onside with a rules based international order that made me laugh. They break any international rule they think they can get away with as they believe that they are big enough, strong enough and rich enough.
Not any rule, just the ones the breaking of benefits themselves.

Like I said, they want to be the ones making and interpreting the rules so they can make and interpret them to suit themselves. Think of it as replacing the Washington Consensus with a Beijing one.
 
Well mornin, I have to say, that from what I see from afar is certainly what Smart as says they are trying to be the new world order. The speech at DAvos should be taken as a warning. But then the West did shift a lot of manufacturing out to the Far East back in the 80’s and nineties, that on the back of ....DAvos. The Chinese ain’t gonna let that go, plus it’s strategic, something I did wonder a about as it happened.

there is a logic to creating their version of a rules based order, but that doesn’t mean it will work.
 
there is a logic to creating their version of a rules based order, but that doesn’t mean it will work.
If it also works in sufficiently-many other countries' benefits sufficiently often, it will. Money talks.

That's a fundamental of Chinese statecraft throughout history - arrange things so that the broadest possible swathe of interests are served by doing what you want and other people will do what you want while serving their own interests.
 
If it also works in sufficiently-many other countries' benefits sufficiently often, it will. Money talks.

That's a fundamental of Chinese statecraft throughout history - arrange things so that the broadest possible swathe of interests are served by doing what you want and other people will do what you want while serving their own interests.
The flaw in that argument isn't much the sentiment it's the fact that they don't control the three or four major currencies on the globe, they may have a lot of it, but they don't control and they also depend on the investments already made staying. If they want to know how to frighten investment off Russia's dealings with BP might give a clue.
 
The flaw in that argument isn't much the sentiment it's the fact that they don't control the three or four major currencies on the globe
I don't recall that doing the US's prospects any harm. They had the advantage of controlling only one, the world's reserve currency of choice.

The reason the world chose the USD was that, for the most part, the US was the one making the rules of international trade and finance.
 
There's a certain school of thought that it's right and proper when we and our mates do it but wrong and evil when someone else does it to our disadvantage.

Big boys' games should apparently only be played by the one set of big boys.
I have a very dear friend who has a significant hatred of China, and rightly so, but he has an equally evangelical view of the USA.

Personally I am more selfish. I think a US hegemony benefits me over a Chinese hegemony and so I will choose the lesser of two evils.

both hegemonies, without doubt, having winners, losers and evils
 
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I have a very dear friend who has a significant hatred of China, and rightly so, but he has an equally evangelical view of the USA.

Personally I am more selfish. I think a US hegemony benefits me over a Chinese hegemony and so I will choose the lesser of two evils.

both hegemonies, without doubt, having winners, losers and evils
It may come as a surprise to the unimaginative but I have reservations too. Based on their historic precedent, I can see positives in that their preferred scheme for international order relies on co-option rather than compulsion, and the creation of win-win scenarios to achieve their aim has been their preferred tool. I think that would make for greater stability in the long term. The negatives are that their preferred ordering of world affairs won't be to our immediate liking and will require quite a lot of uncomfortable adaptation on our part.

The thing is, seeing them as 'one country amongst many' only takes us so far and then in limited fields. For anything that relies on human factors, it's far more instructive to use a different viewpoint - that the PRC population constitutes around one-fifth of the sum total of humanity. As a result, it can't help but have an impact on the world regardless of who's in charge or what their policies are.

It may sound fatalistic, but I don't see how (all else being equal) the PRC with its massive and well-coordinated population won't be the biggest single factor in world affairs in the remarkably near future. Wealth, power, prestige and influence are all generated by people.
 
I don't recall that doing the US's prospects any harm. They had the advantage of controlling only one, the world's reserve currency of choice.

The reason the world chose the USD was that, for the most part, the US was the one making the rules of international trade and finance.
But that’s the point, of course it didn’t harm the US. Let’s put it like this the US despite its nature is specifically a European country, therefore it’s the biggest of the European countries. It thinks European, it’s benefitted from Europe tearing itself apart for a century, it effectively took our place.
 
But that’s the point, of course it didn’t harm the US. Let’s put it like this the US despite its nature is specifically a European country, therefore it’s the biggest of the European countries. It thinks European, it’s benefitted from Europe tearing itself apart for a century, it effectively took our place.
I don't agree that the US is fundamentally 'European' in outlook, and certainly not that it will remain that way given demographic changes. I don't beleve there's even a single outlook that can encompass Europe.

In any case, as you noted, Empires rise and fall. Ours filled the gap left by the Spanish and Portuguese, theirs filled the gap left by the Holy Roman Empire and the Ottomans, etc.

With the US is currently tearing its ability to influence world affairs apart there will be a vacuum into which someone else will step. The question isn't if that will change global affairs, it's to what extent.
 

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