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dmbfan
Joined: 09 Mar 2006
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 Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 10:26 pm Post subject: Masters of the Universe...(article). |
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Why China is the REAL master of the universe
By ANTHONY BROWNE -
11th April 2008
Cecil Rhodes, the businessman-imperialist of Africa, the creator of Rhodesia, suffered no flicker of doubt about who were the masters.
"To be born an Englishman," he mused, "Is to win first prize in the lottery of life."
It wasn't idle boasting. In the jingoistic triumphalism of the late 19th century, when waving the Union Jack was a simple pleasure, people sang: "Rule Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves" without any irony. It was a statement of fact.
A quarter of mankind lived under the British flag in the largest empire the world had ever known.
And many of those parts that weren't under Britain's rule - such as the U.S. - had been created by Britain.
British missionaries had opened up the Dark Continent almost unchallenged.
Eastern promise: Chinese factory workers line up for their morning roll call
The British Army found it easier to invade troublesome nations - or most of them - than it does nowadays.
Britain was the workshop of the world, dominating science, manufacturing and trade.
To many Victorians, unquestioning of the ideology that underpinned much imperialism, British supremacy was a simple matter of racial supremacy - Europeans, and the English in particular, were fated to be the masters.
The truth is that we are masters of the world no more.
The global power shift from the West to the East is no longer just a matter of debate confined to learned journals and newspaper columns - it is a reality that is beginning to have a huge impact on our daily lives.
What would those Victorian masters of old have made of the fact that Chinese security men were on the streets of London this week, ordering our own police about and fighting running battles with British protesters while bewildered athletes carried the Olympic torch on its relay through the capital?
It was a brazen display of how confident China has become of its new place in the world, just as the British Government's failure to take a firm stand on Chinese abuses of human rights shows how craven we have become.
The dire warnings from the International Monetary Fund this week that the West now faces the largest financial shock since the Great Depression, while the Asian economies are still powering ahead, simply underlines our vulnerability in this new world order.
The desperately weakened American dollar appears to be on the verge of losing its global dominance, in the same way as sterling lost it a lifetime ago.
The credit crunch has brought home to all of us in Britain how over-reliant our country has become on financial services. Meanwhile, the loss of our manufacturing industries to Asia continues unabated.
Last month, an Indian company, Tata, bought up what was once the cream of British manufacturing - Jaguar and Land Rover.
A couple of years ago, Nanjing Automotive, a Chinese company, snapped up MG Rover.
Just as the 19th century was the British century, and the 20th century was the American century, the 21st century is the Asian century.
But the handover of global power from the UK to the U.S. was trivial compared to what is happening now.
The U.S. was Britain's offspring, based on the same values and the same language.
The boys in blue: Chinese security men escorting the Olympic torch on the streets of London last weekend. Many were shocked by their heavy-handed tactics
It, too, was an Anglo-Saxon country, and passing the baton across the Atlantic ensured the continuation of the Anglo-Saxon world order, based on democracy, free trade and a belief in human rights, upheld through international institutions that both powers supported.
But the world order we have grown used to - and comfortable with - over the last century is coming to an end.
Napoleon III compared China to a sleeping giant and warned: "When China awakes, she will shake the world."
After a long hibernation, China, and her 1.3 billion people - twice the population of the U.S. and EU combined - is awaking almost overnight.
And not just China. The world's second most populous country, India, is industrialising at a historically unprecedented pace.
Their economies are growing on a long-term basis about four times the speed of the UK's and that of the United States. Goldman Sachs, the bank, recently predicted that by 2050, China and India would have overtaken the U.S. to be the world's first and second biggest economies.
We have long heard about the benefits this brings, in terms of plentiful cheap goods from toys to TVs, and huge opportunities for Western companies to sell their wares in these booming markets.
But there are also downsides, which are becoming more apparent. Unskilled workers in the West have become unsettled by the threat to their jobs as production moves East.
The most vulnerable Western workers have found their wages stagnate as they struggle to compete in an increasingly global market place.
And competition for raw materials is pitting East against West.
The economic explosion of China, and to a lesser extent India, has given them an almost overpowering hunger for raw materials with which to build their factories, homes and cars.
Wherever you turn, the rise of Asia is making its impact felt on our existence.
Every time you complain about the price of petrol being over �1 a litre, it is to the Far East you have to look to find the culprits.
Traditional image: The Great Wall of China stands tribute to its turbulent past ...
There are even reports that manholes in Britain have been disappearing to feed the monstrous appetite for scrap steel in the other side of the world.
China is spending 35 times as much on crude oil as it did eight years ago, and 23 times as much on copper.
As it builds gleaming skyscrapers on its fields, China alone consumes half the world's cement and a third of its steel.
What is happening is so extraordinary that economists have had to invent a new word for it - this is not an economic cycle, but a supercycle, a shift in the world economy of historic proportions.
When demand increases and supply stands still, prices shoot up. Iron, wheat and oil are all at record prices, despite slackening demand in the faltering Western economies.
The cost of living in Britain is now rising faster than wages, making the British on average poorer year on year.
Asia's expansion means that its influence is starting to be felt more directly around the world.
Asian countries are not just buying up foreign raw materials, but as their companies try to become global leaders, they are buying up Western companies.
It is not just Land Rover, Jaguar and MG Rover. The Malaysian company Proton owns Lotus. Indian company Tata owns Corus, once British Steel, as well as Tetley Tea.
The hunger for raw materials is also making China lose its shyness and venture out into the world. Like Germany and Russia, China has traditionally been a land empire, focusing its expansionist energies on countries it had borders with, and it eschewed the world-conquering exploits of Europe's sea-faring maritime nations.
Europeans have, for half a millennium, been unchallenged as the global colonisers, but last month the respected Economist magazine dubbed the Chinese "The New Colonists".
While the Congo in central Africa was once over-run by Belgians, it is now the Chinese that can be found wondering around its mining belts.
In Lubumbashi, the capital of the Congo's copper-rich region Katanga, the Economist reported "a sudden Chinese invasion".
Troubled Angola recently shunned Western financial aid because of the amount of Chinese money pouring into it, in return for commodities.
From Kazakhstan to Indonesia to Latin America, Chinese firms are gobbling up oil, gas, coal and metals.
... while horrific traffic jams are a sign of its present and future
Canadian authorities were recently alarmed to find the Chinese interested in exploring the Arctic Ocean, in a bid to get a share of the minerals beneath the thawing icecap.
In eastern Siberia, Russians worry that China is by default taking over their empty land.
The West has long seen Africa as its backyard, but Western diplomats now worry that not just Africa, but South America, too, is being lost to China.
And Western governments are concerned that the rules of the game are changing. Most worryingly, as China's brutal suppression of the once independent Tibet shows, this is not a superpower that respects Western standards on human rights.
From Darfur to Myanmar, China is cuddling up to murderous dictators.
At home, it holds mass executions of criminals with bullets in the back of the head while transplant surgeons stand by to harvest their still pulsating organs.
Yet Western governments have been in such awe of China's looming power that their response has not been to challenge its abuses, but to try to silence their own protesters at home.
From the UN to the IMF to the World Bank, the international institutions that attempt to govern the planet were made in the image of the victors of World War II. Now power is shifting from West to East, the whole liberal democratic world order will face its first serious challenge in decades.
Many fear that things could get ugly.
There is only one thing worse than an unchallenged superpower - it is a superpower with a victim mentality, which feels the world owes it a favour.
And the bitter truth is that, after centuries of humiliation in foreign affairs, there is a nationalist mood in China that the country's time has come again, that it can again claim its rightful place as the world's most powerful country.
Its comparative weakness over the last few centuries is, in fact, but a blip in the last 2,000 years, during which China was the world's most economically and culturally advanced nation. |
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greedy_bones
Joined: 01 Jul 2007
Location: not quite sure anymore
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dmbfan
Joined: 09 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2008 11:19 am Post subject: |
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnrXiaPVeHY
better to be a prince of the Universe than Master IMHO. |
Though I did find that amusing, I don't really know exactly what you are trying to say.
1. You like Queen?
1. You wish you were Freddy Mercury?
3. You Are Freddy Mercury?
4. You wish you were a prince?
5. Queen as a band, should have been called 'Prince'?
6. You are making fun of China?
Help me out.
dmbfan |
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Czarjorge
Joined: 01 May 2007
Location: I now have the same moustache, and it is glorious.
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| Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2008 2:00 pm Post subject: |
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I'm starting to grow bored with all the "The Chinese are coming, the Chinese are coming" doomsayers. They're right, but I haven't read an analysis that didn't seem more alarmist than accurate. And this poor fellow makes himself questionable right off for playing the "we used to rule the world" card.
Ultimately, the west and China will likely find a middle ground. Look at the changes happening in India. The notion of borders is starting to pass, and I think the resurgence in nationalism and religious extremism is more of a last gasp of the old way rather than a return to it. I could be wrong, though, but probably not more wrong than this guy. |
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bassexpander
Joined: 13 Sep 2007
Location: Someplace you'd rather be.
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| Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2008 12:06 am Post subject: |
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Chinese success is linked with the ability of the West to buy its products.
The real question here is how long will China be able to keep chugging along paying its workers next to nothing before they revolt?
We're well-aware that Britian has given up its power in the world, and sold its future to Muslim control. The China thing was just a demonstration of how weak the country has become. |
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Justin Hale
Joined: 24 Nov 2007
Location: the Straight Talk Express
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| Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2008 12:47 am Post subject: |
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dmbfan, may I have the link please? Overall, seemingly an excellent article. However, this point
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| [India's and China's] economies are growing on a long-term basis about four times the speed of the UK's and that of the United States. |
is trivial. Of course their economies are growing faster than the US and UK. The latter are developed countries. China and India are not. The very definition of a developing country is rapid economic growth.
Lest we forget....
China population: 20% of world
China GDP: 6% of world
UK population: 0.9% of world
UK GDP: 5% of world
The US has 4.5% of world population and 27% of world GDP. And I'm to start pooping my pants about the Chinese? For heaven's sake.
Don't trust my math? See for yourself!
| Bassexpander wrote: |
| We're well-aware that Britian has given up its power in the world, and sold its future to Muslim control |
This statement is as baseless as it is offensive.
| Bassexpander wrote: |
| The China thing was just a demonstration of how weak the country has become. |
That's a bit of an exaggeration. The UK is the world's 6th richest country with an area and population a miniscule fraction (and a nuclear power). It's also a major player in machine tools, industrial equipment, scientific equipment, shipbuilding, aircrafts, motor vehicles and parts, electronic machinery, and computers.
% of UK imports from China? 4% |
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dmbfan
Joined: 09 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2008 11:09 am Post subject: |
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dmbfan, may I have the link please? Overall, seemingly an excellent article. However, this point
Quote:
[India's and China's] economies are growing on a long-term basis about four times the speed of the UK's and that of the United States.
is trivial. Of course their economies are growing faster than the US and UK. The latter are developed countries. China and India are not. The very definition of a developing country is rapid economic growth.
Lest we forget....
China population: 20% of world
China GDP: 6% of world
UK population: 0.9% of world
UK GDP: 5% of world
The US has 4.5% of world population and 27% of world GDP. And I'm to start pooping my pants about the Chinese? For heaven's sake.
Don't trust my math? See for yourself!
Bassexpander wrote:
We're well-aware that Britian has given up its power in the world, and sold its future to Muslim control
This statement is as baseless as it is offensive.
Bassexpander wrote:
The China thing was just a demonstration of how weak the country has become.
That's a bit of an exaggeration. The UK is the world's 6th richest country with an area and population a miniscule fraction (and a nuclear power). It's also a major player in machine tools, industrial equipment, scientific equipment, shipbuilding, aircrafts, motor vehicles and parts, electronic machinery, and computers.
% of UK imports from China? 4% |
Good points, there.
I think you can still find the article on.........www.drudgereport.com |
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Jeju Rocks
Joined: 23 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 5:55 am Post subject: |
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 I thought that this was going to be a thread about Hawkwind. Too bad. |
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