rickc rickc:
For the sake of argument, lets say that North Americans are hooked on the cheap crap being imported from China. We just can't live without it. Where is it written in stone that all the cheap crap has to be manufactured in China? The world is full of third world countries that would love to have western corporations set up sweat shops in thier country. Countries whose population does not comprise 1/4 of the worlds population. Countries that do not posess nuclear weopons, and are pursuing a blue water navy to project power around the globe. Countries that are not stealing our intellectial property , hacking our computors, disregarding copyright and patent laws. I read somewhere that China is the number one source for counterfeight products in the world. These are not the type of people I want to do business with. China is acting more like an adversarial power every day. I say it is high time to start treating them like an adversary.
When we were fighting the cold war, we were not setting up manufacturing plants,and moving jobs to Warsaw Pact countries. It was and still is illegal to export advanced tech. to unapproved countries. I cannot legally visit Cuba. I would be charged under the aiding the enemy act. What a joke that is! However I can visit China. I can send them thousands of Dollars a year by buying their products to help them build up their military,and steal our tech. Who is going to be the bigger threat in 50 years, Cuba or China? I say lets starting treating China the same way we did the Soviet Union. Order American companies to pull up stakes and move elsewhere. Put massive tarrifs on products coming from China, or an outright ban. Lets do our best to run China in the ground the same way we did the U.S.S.R. Americans are at their best when they are united behind a common cause. Mustafa riding his camel to work in the desert every day is not cutting it any more. That has ran its course. We need a new boogyman, a real threat if you will. Who better fits the job descpription than China? If China wants to challenge America for world dominance, go for it.We Americans need a challenge. We have grown lazy after the fall of the Soviet Union. We need to awaken from our malaise. Lets see how well China fares when we are not financing their accent. I think we can easily prolong the empire for a few hundred more years if we quit assisting our potential enemies, and get our financial house in order.
As Dan noted, there is nothing 'written in stone' that says products need to be manufactured in China.
China became a dominant manufacturer for three big reasons. First they liberalized their economy and allowed foreign investment - the first of which came from Hong Kong and later Taiwan. Many western companies were already getting manufactured goods from Hong Kong/Taiwan and those suppliers suddenly saw a massive, cheap labour market to get their goods from, and so they built factories in coastal areas (Guandong, Shanghai, Fujian, Qingdao, etc.). Second, China spent every penny it possibly could on building up their infrastructure, including building cities specifically geared towards exports (Shenzen for example). Finally, China had a massive labour force that worked for pennies a day.
However, as time goes on, China's labour costs have increased (especially in coastal provinces/cities), and low tech industries (like textiles) can now be made for even less in other places (Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand, etc). That will increase over the next couple of decades, and other industries will shift from China to some other place with cheap labour (maybe Africa as Dan said, or maybe SE Asia or even Latin America), simply because shifting those industries farther inland to access cheap pools of labour (like maybe Xinjinag province) would probably be a zero-sum game once transportation costs are added in.
Frankly, I don't foresee China becoming a major naval power, mostly because they are a continental power, not an oceanic power. China has Russia on its northern flank, India on its southern flank, and a whack of Muslim nations on its western flank. A huge navy would be of limited use in fighting those neighbours. A navy is a great prestige thing, and they can use it to bully weaker neighbours, but I can't foresee a day when the PLAN is a match for the USN. Sure, they'll invest in subs, a few carriers, etc, but they'll never have a force capable of matching the USN anytime soon.
Finally, China is a distant threat, and I don't really see it as one with global domination issues. China has never really had a leader like Napoleon, Alexander, Genghis Khan, etc. They do see themselves as the centre of the universe, and I'm sure that someday they'd love to see the West kowtowing to them, but if that ever happens, it will be far more likely in an economic sense than a military one - which unfortunately is the path down which the West is currently heading.
This is off-topic, but for all that is said on CKA (and elsewhere) about Canada leaching off US protection, the fact is that the US gains too from having Canada as its neighbour. Imagine if Russia or China was here instead of Canada? The US would need to constantly maintain a large ground army to protect itself, and that would have limited the size of its naval power. Development in the US would also have occurred very differently, simply because it would be suicide to place your most of your manufacturing (Detroit, Pittsburgh, etc) so close to the border with a potentially hostile nation.