Reading Daily Pundit is sort of like reading The National Enquirer - addictive if only for the unbelievably, shockingly sloppy reasoning behind gross political outbursts.
Here’s one such example from today. Quote:
The US Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, warned that China’s steady military and economic expansion may ultimately lead to Beijing attaining superpower status on a par with the United States.
"Globalization is causing a shift of momentum and energy to greater Asia, where China has steadily expanding reach and may become a peer competitor to the United States at some point,” Negroponte said at a hearing of the US Senate Armed Services Committee on global security threats."
The Daily Pundit opines in response to this:
As long as it is a communist tyranny, China will never attain true superpower status. The old USSR never did. At base, the soviet commies were a third world country bankrupting itself to pay for a nuclear arsenal and a huge army.
There are several things I find odd about this.
First, I wonder: has the author ever even been to China? This is not a rhetorical question, neither is it one designed to provoke, but it strikes me as somewhat naive to assume one can declare a country that has given the world much of the cultural richness we enjoy today (not to mention many of the heavily discounted goods and hence savings we also enjoy) as a “communist tyranny” if one has never seen it for oneself.
Secondly, stating that a country cannot become a “superpower” because it adheres to a particular political model smacks of an ignorance of macroeconomic understanding: superpower staus is achieved in large part by the level of currency reserves a particular country’s economy has - seeing as many of China’s are currently propping up the gross U.S. deficit, it is a slighly bizzare statement.
Edited: [!--GH--]
Article comments
1 - Dave Nalle
The idea that China is any kind of true communist system is highly debatable, as is the idea that it's on the soviet model. They're more like syndicalist oligarchs of some sort, which isn't entirely incompatible with competition in the world marketplace.
Dave
2 - Chuck Simmins
The Chinese economy is a Ponzi scheme. Commodities are priced below cost. Half of all bank debt is bad. Most of the people live in thrid world poverty while knowing full well that their leaders live in first world splendor. Yeah, there's a successful nation!
The Chinese leadership has about 8-10 years left. In that time, they either have to acquire natural resources via conquoring the Russian Far East and acquire real currency reserves by annexing Free China, or they die in yet another of the social revolutions that have swept China for thousands of years. Their current economic position is not sustainable.
The Soviet Union, in its last two decades, was an oligarchy as well. Just as in China today, Communism was for the masses not the rulers.
The vaunted Chinese currency reserves aproximate the estimated bad debt that the Chinese banking system is stuck with. For all intents and purposes, China is broke. In order to continue, it must sell increasing amounts of goods abroad. Thus the Ponzi scheme analogy. Should world commodity prices climb, overseas sales fall, or the ability of China to have commodities shipped to it be affected, down comes the pyramid.
3 - Chris
superpower staus is achieved in large part by the level of currency reserves a particular country's economy has.
Very odd statement. Indeed, crazy. Bizarre claim. From where does it possibly come?