QUOTE (Jatopian @ Sep 30 2005, 11:52 PM)
QUOTE (Overfriendly_Kitten @ Sep 29 2005, 04:40 PM)
Not every global threat has had to rely on capitalism, the British Empire was initially founded on slavery and then indentured servitude (slavery by another name) so capitalism wasn't such a big deal then.
Ever heard of the East and West India Companies, who sponsored all those colonies and created the Empire in the first place? Slaves are a commodity as well.
Yes, funnily enough I have
heard of those companies... but their influence over the British Empire was divisive at best. And, if you recall, neither company sponsored the colonies as owned by the Crown. Both were private companies that were initially only answerable
in part to the Crown. They owned the colonies / countries they operated within. There is nothing like this in China today.
1. The East and West India companies were hardly efficient as vehicles of capitalist expansion for the
Empire, they expanded for themselves, right up until the early 1800s they weren't ultimately part of the British Empire... from 1799 to the late 1850s the East India Company in particular was more of a
mega special interest than part of the State. At the height of their power (during the Franco British hostilities) the company became more influential over government than the other way around. It still didn't
serve the British Empire, it controlled large parts of the globe independently of the Crown. It could be argued that Capitalism had weakened the State to the point whereby a large Translational Mega Corporation was the dominant player in British politics for that period.
2. They certainly laid the groundwork for the Empire, but after the Fox / North mess over the Americas
(the East India Company was granted an effective monopoly over trade to the Americas to help with their own financial difficulties - this led to an almost inevitable abuse of their position where the company was only interested in its profit rather than the position of the American Colonists - and resulted in the Boston Tea Party; it has been argued that much of the Americas would have remained in British hands had the East India Company not interfered so badly) and their corruption at on home issues at the hands of the East India Co., the eventual nationalisation of these companies and the gradual state ownership of the colonies meant that the Companies behind the British global expansion were replaced by the Crown.
3. At this stage, where the Crown owns almost everything (from colonies through to the extended Imperial Civil Service that run them), this is
not a capitalist system. It is a Monarchical system.
Although the post 1859 Empire was
state controlled with state sponsored trade under the British being hyper effective, the gradual decline of the monarchy in later years (1890s to 1918) and rise of the mercantile middle classes through capitalism,
weakened the Empire rather than bolster it. The British Empire at it's height was a military super power (like the Roman, Greek and Egyptian Empires of antiquity). When Capitalism eventually replaced military strength within the British Empire it was Central Imperial control that lost out, as capitalism offered a chance for economic control (and the linked political element of a strong economy) to be taken away from Britain and regionalised in the hands of the local governors, and then to locally elected rule at a smaller level.
4. Further, the main reason for Britain's
Imperial success lay
more in it's Navy than in it's business and economic structure (which had been very well established and put in place by the Companies previously, but relied almost exclusively on Naval dominance to continue to trade effectively). Other fledgling empires like the Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese did not do so well as the British due to their inferior naval strength, even though (for example) the Dutch East India Company was just as efficient a capitalist entity as it's British rival.
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B. When looking at Slavery, yes, slaves were traded as chattels, but that level of capitalism was far too concentrated in the hands of the few (notably the handful of Aristocrats, successful trade barons / independent privately chartered companies and ultimately the Government / Crown). This illustrates that the system was more
feudal than capitalist. The notion of Capitalism
as outlined in the wikipedia online encyclopędia explains capitalism thus:
QUOTE
In common usage capitalism refers to an economic system in which all or most of the means of production are privately owned and operated, and where investment and the production, distribution and prices of commodities (goods and services) are determined privately in a free market, rather than by the state.
_____________QUOTE (Jatopian @ Sep 30 2005, 11:52 PM)
QUOTE (Overfriendly_Kitten @ Sep 29 2005, 04:40 PM)
And the economics of Nazi Germany were far from the capitalist ideal. Even the former USSR didn't have capitalism, though it possessed a significant military presence. You don't need capitalism to be a threat, and China getting more capitalist won't significantly increase or decrease the threat it has posed for the past 50 or so years.
Yes, like socialism, the ideal of capitalism never happens. However, Hitler did rely upon German business to fuel his war effort...
As for the USSR, the major reason we won instead of having a perpetual stalemate was that it imploded due to its bureaucratic inefficiency and black market, both products of Communism. Like Hitler was, China will need to be beaten with sheer military force and good strategy if it becomes such a threat.
The USSR was defeated by a mixture of:
- Stalin's legacy of supercentral control, coupled with his purges of the bureaucracy, which left the USSR depleted of many of it's brightest minds and most efficient bureaucrats;
- The inherent corruption within the Politburo that then filtered down through the various layers of USSR civil / public / military service;
- Ineffective and often incompetently managed industry at every level;
- The arms and space races that America successfully goaded the USSR into competing against - which effectively bankrupted their entire economy and;
- Gorbachev, who gradually liberalised the whole system effecting the changes necessary to introduce democracy and economic liberalism Russian style.
__________
B. If China becomes a threat it will need to be defeated with a lot more than just sheer military force and good strategy.
1. The threat it may pose will
not be like that of Nazi Germany. It will be more
Communist in nature, and rather than look to systematic aggrandisement
(as typified by Nazism - where the 3rd Reich sought to further it's economic interests purely through military acquisition of other 'resource rich' countries, and not through capitalist / trade based development... As you point out the Nazi government utilised German industry, but it used German business almost exclusively for the war effort - and not for independent economic growth - this is not Capitalism, this is economic fascism - which is not about free market trade of goods, but about seizing the wealth of others rather than developing your own through trade etc; many historians argue that if Nazi Germany had concentrated less on arms and armaments then Germany would have become more of a superpower and stabilised earlier thus possibly ensuring their eventual vicitory), China's economic growth will not rely on invasion. It doesn't need to.
2. The military threat it poses will be (at least initially) over Taiwan and then the Spratly Islands - which - although economically rich pickings, are both targets because of a supposed historical ownership that China has over them, unlike Nazi Germany, China doesn't need to take Taiwan to become a superpower. China (so far) has no other interest in military expansion, but even if it did I refute your suggestion that 'China will need to be beaten with sheer military force and good strategy'.
3. Seriously, short of dropping nukes, what do you suggest can be done through military force? What kind of aggression do you suggest is taken? Invading China? A protracted bombing campaign? What about the Nuclear threat China poses? NATO and SEATO don't have enough troops to deal with China's already massive army - without seriously over committing; and it is highly unlikely that there will be many countries who will trust America to lead any future military adventure of this scale - so exactly
who is going to 'beat' China back?
4. I would suggest that careful diplomacy, trade incentives and
honest political interaction backed up with the threat of significant military force, will have a greater chance of success in dealing with a Chinese threat - than sending in the Marines. Though I suggest that the real threat that China is going to pose is an Economic one.
C. Up until then America will dominate as the world's only real superpower, and the threat that the US poses most countries is not a military one, but an economic one. The massive debt many countries owe is to the US, the crippling trade agreements (often linked to much needed humanitarian aid) that swamp local industry throughout the third and developing world, and the power of US translational mega corporations - all establish the economic threat that the US poses globally. This is the sort of threat that China will potentially pose. Outside of Taiwan and the Spratlys I can't see China engaging in an Iraq II or Afghanistan war. However as China gets richer and more politically powerful on the global market I can see China soon superseding the US in terms of economic dominance.
For example:
QUOTE
"American auto companies are selling their production at zero interest rates, because there is excess capacity. But China is building auto plants to make hundreds of thousands of vehicles, so we have extra capacity being brought into a market where we already have excess capacity. So the trend is towards 40 cents an hour wages and top quality competing against the US."
Arnold Schmeidler.
At the moment China currently is lending the US the money to buy Chinese production. And as the boom in the US economy takes off the jobs it is supposed to be creating are actually being created in China, not in the US - where cities like Detroit, the former heart of Autocar America, are facing almost total unemployment and fiscal bankruptcy on a district, city and even state level. This shows the real threat that China poses at the moment.
QUOTE
China recycles trade surplus into US Treasury bonds
...One simple basis for that Bush boom is that China is recycling its US$100 billion-plus trade surplus with the US back into dollars, and especially into US Treasury bonds. Almost half of the US Treasury bonds are now owned in Asia. So China is financing Bush's bold economic experiment: running two or more wars simultaneously with a huge budget and trade deficit, and equally huge tax handouts for the richest Americans...
...One has to question the long-term economic rationale for China of putting its long-term assets into very low-interest bonds in a currency that has already dropped recently by a third - and is going to drop even more. It certainly makes strategic sense: if push came to shove over, for example, the Taiwan Strait, all Beijing has to do is to mention the possibility of a sell order going down the wires. It would devastate the US economy more than any nuclear strike the Chinese could manage at the moment...
Asia Times (last year)
, very often. She for example didn't know why she had periods, or what contraceptions exist. She was unaware of the human rights abuses China had commited in the past. She told me about times in school where they made her stand outside in the heat to.. "teach me the value of humility".
