# What if China decides it wants American Land?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-china-decides-it-wants-american-land/491985>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [April 4, 2009, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-china-decides-it-wants-american-land/491985 "2009-04-04T17:20:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2009, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-china-decides-it-wants-american-land/491985/21 "2009-04-05T02:34:45Z")

</div>

When you owe someone a hundred bucks, you have a problem.

When you owe someone $500,000,000,000, _he_ has a problem.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2009, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-china-decides-it-wants-american-land/491985/22 "2009-04-05T03:36:12Z")

</div>

> [@](#):
>
> Well, something vaguely similar to the OP’s scenario was the plot of the 1981 thriller Rollover, the title of which, as I recall, refers to the practice of foreign investors to automatically reinvest when the debts they hold mature. They system starts to come apart when “the Arabs” begin not reinvesting larger and larger percentages, thus taking money out of the American system and threatening its eventual collapse.

American treasury bonds sell because they’re an attractive investment. The Chinese buy a lot of them because they’ve got a lot of investment capital. But if the Chinese government decided to put the screws to the American government by forbidding the purchase of American treasury bonds, it wouldn’t have a huge effect on the American economy. There are still plenty of other investors who would buy the bonds the Chinese foregoed. They’d admittedly lose some value due to the loss of a large group of purchasers but it wouldn’t be anywhere near a collapse.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2009, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-china-decides-it-wants-american-land/491985/23 "2009-04-05T06:10:35Z")

</div>

Of course, China is re-selling the profit off our T-Bills as their own T-bills at 1% more interest, making huge profits of their own.

(As I understand it.)

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-china-decides-it-wants-american-land/491985.md?page=1)