How China and the United States are different!

[mdb]

China is getting ready to kick our ass. They have us by the short hairs and they know it. They have no set date. They think in hundreds of years, not next quarter.

[Rhone Man]

I get what your client was saying, though. We have viewed China as the enemy ever since we dragged them out of isolation, seated them in the Security Council in lieu of a trusted ally, exported our manufacturing base and our technological base to them to save a few bucks an hour in wages (that we end up paying in welfare anyway), and served as their principal export market while a few hundred million of their citizens emerged from abject poverty. We really hate them.

As if the trillions of dollars in T-bills were purchased in the spirit of friendship, rather than to manipulate the exchange rate. And as if there were so many attractive reserve alternatives to the US Dollar.

If the reader comments in The Economist are any indication, the Chinese are at least as delusional as the most fervently nationalistic Americans.

That would be the "glass half empty version".

The "glass half full" version might read that China works extremely hard to provide the goods that Americans want to buy cheaper than anyone else in the world can produce them, and they lend extraordinary quantities of money to the US to fund its own seemingly irreconcilable budget deficit. Nice kind of enemy to have, really.

[vladimir]

The "glass half full" version might read that China works extremely hard to provide the goods that Americans want to buy cheaper than anyone else in the world can produce them,

I wouldn't begrudge China the fruits of its industry--it's a free market out there, after all. Oh. wait, no--it's not a free market at all. US exports come at the price of technology transfer, lop-sided joint ventures, outright theft, and a stack of trade-barriers-in-disguise right out of the Japanese playbook from the 1980s. Chinese exporters, in contrast, have been taken by the hand and led to the shelves of Walmart from day one.

China has disciplined, mercantilist industrial and trade policies for the whole economy. The United States has a bunch of CEOs lining up to trade technological advantages built over generations in return for sales that plump up the next quarter's profits and hopefully push their stock options into the money.

And they lend extraordinary quantities of money to the US to fund its own seemingly irreconcilable budget deficit. Nice kind of enemy to have, really.

If you consider the guy who gives you a layaway plan to buy goods you don't need and can't afford a friend, okay. I wouldn't consider him an enemy--just an opportunist, taking advantage of my weakness. And I don't kid myself--I'd be better off without him.

[DiverBeth]

IMO everyone so far has missed the real determining factor. In China Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer is sold and marketed as a premium product. I think that pretty well sums it all up.