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China and Japan Covet the Same Rare-Earth Metals
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from The Australian: "Japan's increasingly frantic efforts to lead the world in green technology have put it on a collision course with the ambitions of China and dragged both government and industry into the murky realm of large-scale mineral smuggling."
At least it's breeding competition to do something good for once. This is the kind of stuff governments should be doing.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." --Mark Twain
are only rare on Earth. Time to start asteroid mining.
All currency is backed by trust, even gold/oil. Gold has little intrinsic worth and oil's intrinsic value is that is can be burnt to do usefull work, with any currency you are simply trusting that your fellow man will see it as a token that can be swapped for something with intrinsic value such as food, shelter, oil, etc. China is the modern equivalent of the Medici family, they may well end up printing the default currency one day but that will be because the huge government deficits around the globe are largely funded by China's massive trade surplus. They have not yet threatened to derail the gravy train but Hu has stated several times that he will only continue to fund deficits in the west while it's "economically sustainable" to do so.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
What really stood out to me in TFA:
there are now a lot of [green] technologies that can't work without rare earths, and China is currently in effective control of the global supply.
So I am thinking to myself: 1) The U.S. is amassing trillions and debt, much of it held by the Chinese, and 2) The Chinese own the key elements required by certain Green technology - which the U.S. government is pushing toward.
Did I just catch a glimpse of the slow arc of the decline of the U.S.? Is the U.S. grabbing its own ankles, or what!?
Mine is Good
If the parent actually said something of doubtable factual accuracy, then it would be at least a little appropriate.
If someone disagrees, then it's doubtable. As to whether it's factual:
Are you expecting everyone to footnote their opinions with "1. My Brain. A couple minutes ago."?
At least on Wikipedia, you're not supposed to post original research, including original syntheses. You can post opinions if you cite a reliable source stating that someone else holds that opinion.
But of course, Slashdot is not Wikipedia. Is this what you were trying to get at?
Is it really flamebait when the post is so absurd that no one can take it as anything other than a joke?
Well, then good luck borrowing money from anybody ever again, after a default on that scale.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Aside from the moral issue of literally stealing the life's savings of millions of chinese peasants?
No, this money comes from the Chinese government not Chinese citizens. Sure at one point, Chinese peasants might have had some of this money, but it isn't theirs any more.
Having said that, defaulting on hundreds of billions or trillions of debt ultimately won't help the US's reputation or financial condition. It'd just be another nail in the coffin. Chinese could always sell its debt to another party (like Japan or the UK) in order to damage the US further. Will the US continue its default when the UK owns the debt? That would also generate massive inflation in the US dollar since a considerable portion of dollar-valued assets lost most or all of their value. And I'm ignoring the WTO-style retaliations. While the US can ignore them, seizure of assets, tariffs, trade embargoes, etc are going to hurt the US.
Finally, I'm not that concerned about the Chinese government strategy. They aren't that good. A near monopoly on rare earths, for example, only makes sense if a) you have the power to enforce the monopoly and b) rare earths become important enough strategically to warrant the effort of creating the monopoly. My view is that China's current inability to enforce these contracts is only the tip of the iceberg. We still have yet to consider whether the contracts have been made in good faith. For example, if a contract has been made with a corrupt government (eg, Burma), then there's a good chance that the contract isn't enforceable without considerably more military power than China will have for decades.
Similarly, China's purchase of massive amounts of US debt just doesn't make that much sense. Even if one is correct in the assumption that the US will pay off its debts, it's still pretty obvious that the US government is engaging in near-suicidal levels of spending and entitlement. My view is that China does so only to support its export industries. I believe that to be a inferior strategy in the long run as well since they lose the benefit of imports from even cheaper places.
My view is that the US could, if it were to keep to sensible levels of government spending, maintain trade deficits indefinitely. There is tremendous wealth creation going on in the US (even during recessions). In good years, only part of this wealth is used to buy imported goods and services. China, by eschewing the benefits of imports, is weakening its economy and depriving its citizens of wealth.
Hitler already tried that. Apart from starting another world war, you will have demonstrated to everyone (including your allies) you are not to be trusted and your currency will end up in the toilet.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I didn't mean it was completely useless, what I was trying to say is that you can't eat it. I agree Issac Newton's "gold standard" was a brilliant step forward in economics, he understood that gold was usefull as a token because it's hard to come by and because everyone has trust in the idea that it will always be hard to come by and can be swapped for food, etc. However it's value collapses when it occasionally becomes easier to obtain, take a look at what occured across Europe when Spain doubled the available gold supply in a very short space of time by looting the Myan empire. All that gold didn't make Europe twice as rich, it simply made gold half as valuable basically wiping out 50% of peoples existing savings.
With so called "fait currency" governments can have absolute control over the supply and thus control infalation (something they can't do with gold, silver, etc), the down side is governments sometimes collapse, when that happens the currency becomes fancy toilet paper (ie: it wipes out 100% of peoples savings, eg:Zimbabwe). The smart thing to do is treat currency itself as a kind of commodity and turn the fluctuating value of it's various forms into personal profit, not that I know how to do that but those who do are extremely wealthy.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Gold has little intrinsic worth
There is no such thing as intrinsic worth, at all, for anything, including food. There are only desirable properties, and the desire for those properties changes on a second by second basis for each individual and their circumstance. If I own a dozen palaces, then the "intrinsic value" of an additional hovel for shelter is close to zero for me.
Gold is scarce; it is difficult to counterfeit and difficult to mine.
Gold doesn't oxidize or otherwise degrade.
Gold is easily divisible.
Gold is easily moved and hidden.
Gold is shiny and pleasing in jewelry.
Gold has a high price per unit weight.
Gold is easily exchanged for other currencies.
Gold has a 3,000 year history as a currency in it's own right.
Deleted
Given the weakness and corruption of late Qing dynasty China, they were hardly expanding anywhere. In fact, China endured over a century of humiliation by foreign powers, including Russia, France, Germany, the US, and Japan, as they carved up "spheres of influence" and took Chinese land (Hong Kong by Britain, Jiaotong Peninsula by Germans, Taiwan by Japanese in the 1890s). Japan and Russia fought for control in Manchuria; the Japanese won that war, and had de-facto control of Manchuria until they allowed it to declare "independence", as a Japanese puppet state.
While claims of Chinese *Communist* expansion into Tibet and consolidation of power in Western China is another issue entirely, the idea of Chinese expansion from 1800-1949 is simply propagandist bullshit. Through the Opium Wars, Taiping Rebellion and other civil strife, to the Nationalist/Communist Civil War, China couldn't control its own territory, much less expand.
We were carving China up, hence calling it the "sick man of the East". Claiming pre-1945 China was expanding or looking for "Lebensraum" is simply rediculous.
Claiming post-Communist China has imperial ambitions is another argument entirely, and perhaps one worth discussing. But trying to use "Manchukuo" as an example, or saying the China was a dominant empire (it was an empire in decline, corrupt and feeble) discredits much of the rest of your argument. "The secret and reclusive Middle Kingdom"? It was the Republic of China at that point, and currently involved in both civil war and trying to repel invasion from the Japanese.
For the rest, Modern Chinese leaders do not view their industrial usage of the territories as expansion, but as using territories that rightfully belong to them, just like the US drilling for oil in Alaska (which we purchased from Russia in the mid 1800s).
Using adjectives like âoesinister policy" and "consolidate de facto Chinese rule for an eternity" does not help your case, either. Makes you sound paranoid at best. I am not even Chinese; but the historical inaccuracies and misrepresentations in your post would make anyone weep.