Ok people, I’ve heard different arguments over this one. Are we headed into another Cold War, this time with China?
Yes.
Should we fear them?
No.
Listen, I don’t like communists any more than anyone else does. Do I think that they’re backwards? To a degree. The Mao-Lenin Theory quit working some time ago. And they’ve obviously not found effective poplulation control methods.
The thing is that people are afraid that China will nuke the living sht out of us. (Ex.-George Dubya and his “Missile Defense System” or what I like to call “Shoot and Pray”) As much as I’d like to call China backwards primitives, they’re not in this subject. They’re not going to launch a nuclear attack on us, or Taiwan, because if they do, we’ll retaliate and then all hell breaks loose, the sht hits the fan…you get the point. They’re not that stupid. They want to live as much as we do and to remain sovreign as much as we do.
The Cold War, however, is soon to come. My best guess would be that neither side has realized that they’re both logistical thinkers. We’ll threaten each other, but nothing will come of it. China is our trading partner, they need our hard cash and we need their cheap plastic toys.
I don’t understand why people just don’t sit down and think about stuff. Geeez, if only I were president…Sad to say that I support Bush. Don’t worry George, they won’t mess with Texas.
Just as a series of US Presidents from Truman to Reagan are given credit for winning and ending the cold war with the USSR, I believe Clinton deserves credit for starting a new cold war with China, by helping them to arm themselves with advanced weapons.
Although this is stated in the form of a joke, I don’t actually find it funny.
While I hate to encourage another Cold War mentality, YES! Oh, YES! Give the Right something else to focus on that doesn’t involve domestic social morality, please! The more time they spend watching Beijing, the less time everyone but the Phelpses have to watch for signs of the Gay and Feminist Takeover of America (GAFTA). And the less time they spend worrying about us, the safer I feel.
All these Cold War veterans have been driving us crazy since the defeat of the Evil Empire…
In case you missed it, China has been moving rapidly to a market economy. While the state has remained politically quite totalitarian, I don’t think one can argue that it is particularly communist or socialist economically at present.
Here again, I believe that you may be behind the times somewhat. My impression is that China has been fairly effective at lowering their birth rate, although much more so in the cities than in the rural regions. (Can someone help me out with statistics here? I’m too lazy to look.) And that, as a result, India is closing in pretty quickly on being the most populous country.
As you noted, China and the U.S. are very economically dependent on each other and thus it is to neither’s advantage to have a Cold War. On the other hand, George Jr. and company seem bent on doing things that would play into the hands of the military hardliners in China and may cause the Chinese to greatly increase their rather small and old stock of nuclear missiles.
Shagadelicmysteryman, do you think you could cram any more misconceptions, inaccuracies, stereotypes, prejudices, and loaded questions into your OP? I don’t think there’s quite enough in there yet!
Seriously, how can you expect a reasonable debate to be founded on an OP riddled with phrases like:
“I don’t like communists any more than anyone else does”
“As much as I’d like to call China backwards primitives…”
“They’re not that stupid”
“they need our hard cash and we need their cheap plastic toys”
Those are just a few problems. Let me also add that many of your assumptions are erroneous. The CIA estimated China’s population growth rate at 0.9% for the year 2000–that is 0.1% lower than the US’s estimated population growth rate for the same year, just for comparison to something you may find more familiar. The National Bureau of Statistics (of China) reported that the population growth for 1990-2000 was about 1.07%, indicating they have the situation more or less under control. Read that article at: http://english.china.com/cdc/en/home/news/0,1073,21211-100000,00.html
By contrast, the world’s largest democracy (since we dislike commies here!) had an estimated population growth rate of 1.58% in 2000, and hit the billion population mark in that year.
And you don’t really think that the trade relationship the US has with a country that has the second-largest GDP in the world is just about “cheap plastic toys”, do you?
I’m sure a GD on Cold War II might be interesting, but we’re off to a bit of a bumpy start.
Do you like communism? I sure don’t. I like democracies where the people choose and people have common rights such as Freedom of Speech. Just remember, In a Communistic state such as China, you’re freedom of speech would be seriously hindered if not completely. Then there would be no Straight Dope! We wouldn’t want that now would we?
I know that you’re thinking that I called the citizens of China backward primitives. I wasn’t. I was referring to the government. My fault, should have clarified that a bit. I called it that because of their “prestigious” record of human rights and the likes. And no, I’m not racist.
For crying out loud, I gave them a compliment, give me some credit. They aren’t stupid. They lack no common sense. They know well of the chain reaction that will occur in the event of a nuclear launch.
In other words, we need each other. Sorry you couldn’t see through that. China and America are trading partners.
You wonder why we can’t start a debate with all this “garbage” of mine. You just need to try to understand me. I realize I’m not exactly clear some times.
Shag, I defended you against charges that you were a bigot, but unless you stop backpedalling all over the place, I won’t be able to defend you against charges that you are a weasel.
Shag, I repeat: your post was packed with misconceptions, inaccuracies, stereotypes, prejudices, and loaded questions.
Before you debate something like this, you ought to make sure you have the information you need. Having an opinion is not quite the same thing as having information (you clearly have opinions about communists, the Chinese economy, their leadership, etc., but you need more information).
For example, look at this:
There are a few problems here. Freedom of Speech is not something exclusively reserved for democracies. You may like democracy, and I would tend to agree with you, but there are many people who don’t and who will disagree. Therefore the airing of such opinions is not much of a debating technique, and should be avoided unless you can suppport it better or if the situation calls for it.
As I said, Cold War II would be a very interesting thread, but this was a very bumpy start. Perhaps you can repost the topic as a more concise question, and omit the rather biased perception of China?
communism and democracy. these are not mutually exclusive. some communist countries chose communism. eg: russia, yugoslavia, china. they may not have gotten what they asked for, or been happy with what they got, but i’m not sure the average russian or yugoslav is any more happy with the non-communism they have today. china is not communist at this point, rather a blend of socialist and capitalist.
communism and totalitarianism do not have to be a package deal. but when they are, the thing that is worthy of fear is totalitarianism.
as for nuking the us, afaik, china does not have nuclear missles capable of striking the us. they have never expressed interest in territory ouside their immediate neighborhood. contrast that with american territories around the globe, nuclear missles capable of striking anywhere on the globe, and wars fought around the globe. who is the aggressor?? who is more powerful?? who is therefore more to be feared??
I refuse to read the whole if this thread, I was almost sick reading through the entire op.
All I want to ask you is: How in the world did you arrive at the conclusion that China has not been able to control it’s population increase? By the latest estimates published there would be between 300 and 500 million more Chinese in the world without the unpopular measures taken by the Communist party in China, the one child policy did not pass in democratic India. (I don’t suppose you’ve ever been to China, or read Chinese newspapers and scholarly reports on a regular basis?)
India will soon surpass the “backwards” Chinese in population, despite being a couple of hundred million behind at the moment.
If you ever come to China, please come by my house. I love smacking ignorant people around
Was it really Clinton who started allowing high tech arms sales to China? I seem to recall this being blamed in the past on Bush (the elder), which makes me think it probably has been going on since before Reagan. Anybody have any hard facts about this?
The point is that China is still one of the most overpopulated countries in the world. I wasn’t referring to the current birth rate, but the people living now. My basic point is that there are a lot of people in CHINA.
You SAID, that they had not found effective population controlsm, not “there are a lot of Chinese in the world”. The fact that a lot of people happened to be there long before the communist regime ever took over has nothing at all to do with this statement.
The fact remains, that there would be almost half a billion more of them if it wasn’t for the most effective population control measures put into place in recorded history. That’s not to say it’s perfect, or that their goal is to actually REDUCE their population.
Read up on Sociology and the history of population control before you claim them to be backwards in that department. The one child policy may be debateable ethically, but it has shown better results than anything else that has been attempted in the field.
