China’s wish to have an aircraft carrier has nothing to do with the US, it’s for the same reason the US has them, to project “fear” (sorry “power projection”) into 3rd rate dictatorships with 2nd rate airforces. Eg local conflicts in Asia that effect China’s interests. Specifically it’s border disputes with Vietnam, the Phillipines and to a lesser extend Japan.
If China and the US ever go to war the aircraft carriers are irrelevant, nuclear warheads would take them out in the first few hours of the conflict.
You are missing the point (and you are wrong about why the US has carriers as well, but that’s for another thread)…I was responding to Lust4Life’s laughable assertion about a whiff of panic in this thread because the Chinese have a manned space program. There is no more fear or panic involved than the fear and panic about China’s retread air craft carrier (which was brought up in a thread not to long ago).
No one has suggested that the US is panicking about the Chinese catching up with the US in military power. But yes a lot of people on this thread are panicking about the broader picture with China, their relentless economic growth and the fact that they can spend money on infrastructure projects that take 20-50 years to pay off. Arguably the manned space program is one of those, the pay off may be mineral resources in the far future or it may be other technology spinoffs, who knows?
It’s undeniable that in the current political climate in the US neither party can commit to any infrastructure projects that have more than a 4-5 year payoff and that’s a serious structural problem for the US economy.
Isn’t the same true for one cubic kilometer of any average igneous rock found in the Earth’s crust? We’re not talking about asteroids with nuggets of pure metal or even ore. We’re talking about rocks. As in 98% ordinary silicate. If taconite is considered a “poor” grade iron ore, try extracting iron from granite.
ETA: less important than China’s aircraft carrier is it’s large and advanced arsenal of carrier-killing missiles. If enough missiles to kill a carrier are cheaper than a replacement carrier, then it’s battleships circa 1942 all over again.
Specifically the republican’s will attack ANY proposal of the democrats even if it’s clearly in the US long term interest. This isn’t true of most two party systems I’m aware of. There are infrastructure projects that have support from both parties in Australia. There really does seem something screwy with the political climate in the US right now.
It wasn’t true for all of the US history, plenty of long term infrastructure got built, eg the interstate highway system, but since the 1990’s it seems impossible. Maybe it’s all Fox news fault (eg Rupert Murdoch is screwing ya and laughing his ass off).
I’m familiar wth the book. The author, who is still a prominent China commentator, makes some good points about the tricky water China was negotiating as it bcame part of thw WTO. Clever marketing, too. Even today, a book whose title makes a big Cold War retro claim about China is going to get attention.
I do believe that should China’s economy slow down (which will happen eventually) a whole host of social and political problems- currently smoothedby everyone’s desire to focus on getting rich as long as possible- will start demanding attention.
But here my main goal is to snap some reality into what has apparently been a successful marketing campaign. China has been brandng itself to the developing world under the slogan of “Democracy is messy and slow, autocracy gets stuff done.” This is true for stuff like high speed rail lines that 99% of the people couldn’t use if they wanted to, but less true for things like “peacefully projecting power into border regions” and “supplying safe drinking water.”
China is good at some thing, less good at others. It’s not ruled by magic technocrats who turn everything they touch into gold. It is ruled by smart guys who put economic growth above everything except maybe national pride. This has been working pretty well at sustaining economic growth, but there are some very real sacrifices. China is far from a magic wonderland where smart and kind planners make everyhing work.
Nor is it true that the party “doesn’t have to be popular.” If that were true, they wouldn’t spend so much time banning pictures of old men and names of flowers. The party is very relient on channeling and managing people’s discontent. As the only game in town, they need the goodwill of people more than a democracy, which can at least burn off anger through infighting. Added to that is that China has never united easily, and local party franchises can gain enourmous power and need to be placated. The party also need to take the needs of the military an the more powerful SOEs very seriouslt. They are not above petty politics. They are constantly struggling to maintain the unity they’ve become relient on in the face of special interest groups that are nearly as powerful as they are.
In short, if what you have to say about China is straightforward, it is probably wrong. Either way, I don’tthink they will be laughing at us from a moon base any time soon.
It’s true of a very specific flavor of autocracy, if it can avoid the worst excesses of nepotism, corruption etc. Read about the history of Singapore. Modern China since 1995 or so seems to be deliberately basing it’s development model on Singapore’s success.
No you’er not panicing about those subjects at all. and I totally agree.
What you’re actually panicing about is the fear that the U.S. having once been the nation ascendant over the world, is now being relegated to the ranks of the hasbeens.
The high school jock, hero worshipped by his schoolmates fast becoming a future shoesalesman.
The U.S. achieved what is; and was, IMO, the greatest feat in humanitys history.
Landing men on the Moon.
But it IS history now, the future will look back on Americas endeavours in space exploration in the same way that we look at Hero of Alexandrias invention of the steam engine, or the Norsemen discovering America.
Interesting, innovative even, but not the good stuff.
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned in this thread is that China is not the only developing nation with a space programme and ambitions around man in space. India has it’s own programme.
It’s unprovable but I suspect the (multiple) motivations are much the same in both cases. Both counties are nuclear powers, as nuclear powers you need a delivery system and that means missiles. Without close allies - or not wanting to rely on others - that means you need to develop expertise in rocketry. Once you have these skills you think about launching civilian satellites - observation, communications etc - with obvious national benefits. All this has good, practical advantages both in military power and in developing a high tech industrial base (you don’t want your economy to rely for ever on operating low cost sweat jobs!).
It’s at this stage the national prestige thing starts to kick in. For the foreseeable future manned space flight is not going to be profitable but it does make you part of a very exclusive club. Getting your own man in space shows the world you have arrived and internally lifts your nation (remember both China and India are countries with very long histoies whose national pride took a massive knock over the last few centuries). Talking about moon and Mars missions is an easy extension - talk is cheap.
Another point to note is that for all the talk the Chinese manned programme is not exactly rushing ahead. China has launched three manned missions since 2003 - in the eight years after the Soviet and American first manned flights they launched something like 15 or 16 missions each and - in case of America - had orbited the moon.
From some of the posts there appears to be an air of quiet desperation, with the posters almost WILLING China not to want to go ahead with their programme.
Does the CSNA not exist? http://www.cnsa.gov.cn/n615709/cindex.html
It’s estimated it has a 1.3 Billion US budget, sure that’s tiny compared to NASA’s 18 billion budget, but they also have lower costs in China and CSNA’s will go up as China’s GDP goes up. Considering the lower costs in China’s it can buy more than the 1.6 billion NASA is spending with Space X. No other US commercial space partner is close.
Is it a fantasy that China has massive national savings and a huge trade surplus?
(50% of GDP goes into savings, trade surplus is more then $250 billion per year).
China has the resources and the political will, it remains to be seen if they have the staying power and the technical expertise.
The Chinese space program has hardly got anyone shaking in their boots. They haven’t really done anything all that substantial as yet…it’s mostly been talk, with a few short orbital flights that are on par with what the US and Russia was doing in the 60’s. If they actually manage to land someone on the moon, something I’m highly skeptical I’ll see in my lifetime, then THAT will be something. Or if they go to Mars (even less chance) that will REALLY be something. Heck, if they put up a permanent space station that would be something. Thus far they haven’t done any of those things, just talked about them. When/if they DO manage to do any of that stuff, I’ll be thrilled because at least someone will be doing something I personally think is important…continuing manned space flights and pushing the envelop of manned exploration of space, learning lessons on how to do stuff in space that will only come by doing it, etc etc. Far from shaking in my shoes it will be thrilling if the Chinese go to the Moon, go to Mars or even toss up a viable, working space station and man it.
However, thus far I’m not seeing a lot more than talk. Their budget is not even a 10th of what the US budget is, and our budget for space exploration sucks…it could be 10 times what it is today and still be inadequate IMHO. I don’t care how cheap you think things are in China, but basic economics is still in play…the actual costs to launch a payload are about the same, whether you use Russian rockets or US rockets or home grown rockets from China. Their budget is such that they aren’t going to the Moon any time soon…or any time within their own timelines (IIRC they were predicting a Moon mission sometime in the late 2020’s). Even assuming that they continue to grow like they have been, which I highly doubt. And even assuming they don’t hit other economic or sociopolitical stumbling blocks, which again, I highly doubt…EVERY country hits such stumbling blocks and economic downturns. No one gets a clear and open path that is always upward…and the Chinese have more baggage than most countries, and have a lot of unfinished or glossed over problems that they will have to solve to continue to climb. Just getting the average persons standard of living in China up to, oh, say Mexico’s standards is going to be a challenge.
You need to update your right wing soundbites. Chinas GDP per capita is 7500 and mexicos is 11500. Hardly a huge difference. But numbers don’t tell the full story. For “quality” of life china has already surpassed Mexico. Lower crime rate much better infrastructure, lower unemployment. If you gave me a choice I’d much rather live on $5000 us a year in china than I would in Mexico. Heck I could even enjoy life on $5000 a year in china. Considering the many subsidized transport housing etc available i’n china it wouldn’t be such a bad lifestyle.
