NASA Banned From Working With China

astroengine writes "In the wake of the Chinese cyber-threat and claims of espionage, a clause included in the US spending bill approved by Congress to avert a government shutdown a few weeks ago has prohibited NASA from coordinating any joint scientific activity with China. The clause also extends to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy."

Comments

ha ha ha

[roman_mir]

Yeah, if China was actually interested in hurting USA in one place, it would really hit hard, they'd just stop buying US bonds and also stop rolling over the ones they have already, and never mind NASA, US wouldn't even have money to run its military.

Re:ha ha ha

[antifoidulus]

And the Chinese economy would collapse as the $1.4 trillion of US debt that China currently holds would quickly become worthless. Sort of like ripping off the nose to spite the face.

Re:ha ha ha

[roman_mir]

And the Chinese economy would collapse as the $1.4 trillion of US debt that China currently holds would quickly become worthless. Sort of like ripping off the nose to spite the face.

- what a huge misunderstanding of economics, that the education systems of the West have perpetrated upon their population. Very sad.

Chinese economy is not about the cash, the money. Chinese economy is an actual real economy - producing economy.

You see, when the Keynesian gods tell you that economy is about consumption, they are full of it, completely wrong. Consumption is a trivial consequence of production. If nothing is produced, nothing will be consumed. Production IS economy.

When USA borrowed money in 19 century, it borrowed the money to build factories and infrastructure, and when it used the money to build, it started producing, and the products it built were then sold to pay off the debts. Today, when USA borrows money, it only uses the money to consume, and it consumes foreign made products.

Irony is of-course that it borrows money from China and buys the Chinese made products, and the population of USA is convinced by their useless 'economists', who are really charlatans, that the US consumer is the actual engine behind this entire economic activity.

No. What China needs to do is to let their currency appreciate, so that it becomes cheaper for Chinese to both: buy raw materials (as they are hit hard with price inflation, which in the case of producers follows immediately after the self inflicted money inflation) and it becomes cheaper for the Chinese to buy foreign products and their own manufactured products as well, and China has plenty of potential for consumption, they do have over a billion people after all.

What is funny, is how Geithner calls China to let their currency appreciate, and it looks like he is just trying to play reverse psychology game (if he understands anything about economics at all), because either US dollar can be strong or Chinese currency can be strong, but they both cannot be strong at the same time.

If China lets the currency appreciate, it will become nearly impossible for the US consumers to buy Chinese products. That's good for USA in the long run, because USA has to be hit with very high interest rates on their money, Americans need to start saving and creating capital that can be applied for building things again, so that it starts producing again. But in the short term it's going to be disastrous for USA, not for China.

Sure, China will lose that debt. But it's going to lose that debt ANYWAY!

Do you think USA can pay that debt back? EVER? :)

USA doesn't produce anything of any value except for the raw materials, that Chinese would want to buy. USA can NEVER pay the debts back. These particular debts need to be restructured, but instead US Fed will keep printing, and all that useless paper, that ends up in Chinese banks, and causes the Chinese to print their currency as well only is hurting China right now.

USA has it great as long as other countries keep buying its debt and keep printing their own currencies into oblivion and keep price inflation inside their own economies and don't export it back to US.

However this will stop. Sure, many manufacturers in China and other exporting nations will cry murder, but they will have to deal with this, as their own currencies appreciate, they will start selling in the country rather than exporting so much. There will be some pain for China as well, but they have the production - which is what matters.

Do not be mistaken - US debts will never be repaid in anything that's valuable. US can print the dollar and 'repay' in worthless paper, but that's just as much of a default as a real bankruptcy would be.

Re:ha ha ha

[whipnet]

ha ha ha is right. China is not paying for our military. The U.S.'s economy is still MUCH larger than China. The U.S. still manufacturers more than China and unlike China, manufacturing is a very small part of the U.S. economy. As far as the bonds, the U.S. could make those almost worthless in seconds crushing China. A few protectionist laws and they're done too. China is rising, but they are still a leach economy to the U.S. To indicate they own us is simply without merit. * *

Re:ha ha ha

[mprindle]

Sigh... There are to many statements in this that are way to true. I miss the day when the US was a production powerhouse. If you wanted something then you got it at your local store and it was stamped Made in America. Of all the times to not have any mod points....

Re:ha ha ha

[Anonymous Coward]

China's GDP is propped up by its constant construction projects that have no one to use them.

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2010/12/21/ghost-town-mongolia-inside-chinas-empty-cities/

China tells its districts/provinces/cities to increase GDP, so they do it the easiest way possible: Build more stuff.

It's a problem of having something, but no one to use it. No one's visiting shops in these empty malls. No ones' buying these apartments in cities that have no jobs.

It may implode, it may fix itself, but it can't last forever.

Re:ha ha ha

[MightyYar]

Sure, China will lose that debt. But it's going to lose that debt ANYWAY!

That's not the point. All those "cheap" products that China produces aren't actually so cheap. Without buying huge numbers of debt with imported US dollars, the dollar would fall in value.

What do you think the Chinese would do with all of that "production" if they couldn't sell it overseas?

The US and China are linked economically. There's no shame in that. China placates their population with jobs and develops their country and the US is happy to get physical goods in exchange for otherwise worthless paper. If not for the whole crushing debt and runaway inflation nightmare, it would be win-win.

Re:ha ha ha

[TheCRAIGGERS]

You see, when the Keynesian gods tell you that economy is about consumption, they are full of it, completely wrong. Consumption is a trivial consequence of production. If nothing is produced, nothing will be consumed. Production IS economy.

I'd like to see how well an economy works when nobody buys anything it's producing.

Currently, China holds power because of the gap between [how cheap they can make a product], and [how much we rich folk will pay for said product]. If we weren't around to buy their stuff, or if we didn't spend an order of magnitude more to buy it than they paid to have it made, their economy as we know it wouldn't exist either.

Re:ha ha ha

[vlm]

USA doesn't produce anything of any value except for the raw materials, that Chinese would want to buy.

From a consumer point of view, yes, absolutely. Aside from plastic trash from walmart, we vary from complete utter domination to merely being major players in aerospace, heavy construction, and especially weapons. There are still plenty of plants that OSHA and EPA and NAFTA have not managed to shut down yet, although our govt is trying their hardest to destroy our middle class.

One Very important point you missed, is the US is the "saudi arabia" of food... we stop exporting and hundreds of millions will starve, probably mostly in Africa rather than China, but still... practically every nation either directly eats our food, or benefits secondarily from other folks eating our food instead of us. Its a simplification, but block the Mississippi river, or do the same thing by screwing up the economy so we can't export, and about 2 billion of the world's poorest will pretty much starve to death as a result... How that benefits China is not entirely clear, it might even be mostly neutral.

Re:ha ha ha

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize that China relies on artificial currency manipulation - which it achieves by buying up tons and tons of US dollars, right? How well do you think China's production economy would fare when suddenly its goods are as expensive in Europe and America as European and American goods?

Without the US dollar, China's economy implodes. That's why they're panicking about QE2; they're terrified the US dollar will weaken.

PS: Almost all of our debt is from the economic recession and the wars. These are all temporary. Economic growth reduces the debt even if you don't pay on it (ty inflation). And finally, we do have the lowest taxes in more than a half-century. If millionaires have to return to a 90% tax rate, cry me a river.

Our debt is not a problem, but good job on playing Chicken Little.

Re:ha ha ha

[vlm]

US not being able to fund their government defecit and either having to print money the more old fashioned way

What exactly do you think the recent "quantitative easing" programs have been, if not that?

Re:ha ha ha

[TheCRAIGGERS]

Contrary to many people's belief otherwise, I do not need a new smartphone to survive.

Re:ha ha ha

[TheEyes]

Sigh... There are to many statements in this that are way to true. I miss the day when the US was a production powerhouse. If you wanted something then you got it at your local store and it was stamped Made in America. Of all the times to not have any mod points....

America still produces more, both in raw materials and finished goods, than China (though this will likely be reversed in the next two years or so). What we don't produce here are the cheap consumer-level goods that places like China and Vietnam are currently specializing in, because we don't pay our workers $5 a day here.

As China continues to modernize and the US continues to decline this dynamic will shift; their one-child policy will greatly increase labor costs in the coming decades, and the US's focus on tax breaks for the rich as economic stimulus will continue to cause median wages to decrease, as they have over the past decade, until Chinese workers and American workers are making comparable amounts of money. Times are changing, but for now it's still mostly true that if it has to work you build it in the US; if it has to be cheap you build it in China.

This actually hurts NASA more than China

[dbIII]

This actually hurts NASA more than China, and as NASA gets hurt and sheds jobs where do you think the best are going to go if they want to get paid? I really do not understand why some in politics are trying to replay the end of the cold war and get the USA to play the part of the crumbling USSR.

Re:This actually hurts NASA more than China

[CaptainLard]

The best will go to SpaceX or Boeing. Are you suggesting that Joe Engineer who has worked 20 years at JPL is going to pack up his family and leave the sun beaches and smog of Southern California for the smog and human rights oppression of Beijing?

Re:This actually hurts NASA more than China

[jank1887]

forget about it hurting NASA, what does "also extends to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy" mean for everything else under the executive branch? or is it just one particular executive branch office?

a bit of googling:
from Forbes.com:
"Although the ban will expire at the end of the current fiscal year in October, Wolf will seek to make the prohibition on any scientific collaboration between U.S. research agencies and China permanent.... the Obama Administration has taken the position that the ban does not apply to any U.S. scientific interactions with China conducted as part of foreign policy"

Too late for that...

[Haedrian]

The US already made china the next superpower. It doesn't need to steal US research, it can do everything on its own in probably a more efficient manner.

This way the US cripples its research, and we'll cut off another reason for the US to exist for this economy.

Re:Too late for that...

[Infiniti2000]

[China] doesn't need to steal US research....

Then, why does it? For shits and giggles?

Re:Too late for that...

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

I would say that while the US certainly helped make China the next superpower, and unwittingly helped it a lot, we need to give China credit for having leaders able to recognize an opportunity when they saw it and being able to take advantage of it. I'm not in any way suggesting that China is a perfect society though. I know people who live in China who certainly feel that things could be a lot better there in the lives of ordinary people and who feel that the government cares too much about making money.

US research could certainly be better but China for the most part is in the position of "steal and copy" rather than producing original research. I have to grudgingly admit that costs are probably a lot lower if you just let the US develop it and pay someone to spy and send you the information so you can create a knockoff later.

Re:Too late for that...

[green1]

How long can the US count on this though? The education system in China isn't THAT horrible, they are bound to produce some brilliant minds, and China has proven time and time again that they can apply themselves to a problem when faced with it. If anything, limiting collaboration with China may be what causes China to start a major shift towards research and innovation. If they have the ability to come up with the ideas, and we already know they can implement them, what does that leave for the US?

The US has for the past few years been betting everything on "Intellectual Property" because in a lot of ways it's the only export the US has left, but if China decides it no longer needs US "IP" then what does the US have left? And if the only answer is "consumers" then the US is in a worse position than most people want to believe.

And so

[Dunbal]

China says: and nothing of value was lost. "See Yu onna moon, sucka!"

Re:kool aid

[Bill_the_Engineer]

You're swallowing his kool aid. The fact is without US technology and US raw materials China would have a LOT less to produce.

US technology doesn't originate from the US government. It originates from bright individuals that live in the US. They can migrate to other countries, just like they have all their technology mass produced in other countries.

China is two decades away (at least) from having trees to support its production of lumber, furniture and other such goods, They're also dependant upon western (often american) technology which they essentially clone and sell domestically. They have demonstrated a great ability to produce but little in the way of useful original ideas when it comes to those gadgets and geegaws.

Lumber is available from Russia. As for technology, you have South Korea, Japan, Great Britain, and Germany to name a few. I think you don't grasp the gravity of the situation.

Re:Racism

[jellomizer]

Well this is institutionalize racism not individual racism.
Why is it as a culture we accept immigrants from Europe much more favorably then from China or India?
I have seen commercials where they say in pride they they got some guy from Europe to work on this.
While if they are from China or India, they give them americanized names and make sure their accent is a clean as possible, as well as people debating if we should let these people immigration or not.
Done fool yourself racism is still here. It has changed but it is still there.

Re:Racism

[RazzleFrog]

I am guessing you live in the Midwest because on the coasts Indian and Chinese food, culture, religion, etc is very much accepted and embraced.

And the US doesn't Americanize names anymore. The people choose to do that themselves to make their lives easier.

Re:Why should anyone be surprised?

[internerdj]

I work in a town with plenty of NASA engineers. The difficult part of working for or contracting to NASA is not solving some of the toughest engineering challenges in the world; it is putting your passion into a project for 4 to 8 years only to have it all your work scrapped after an election swings an office from one party to the other.

Re:kool aid

[JosKarith]

"They can migrate to other countries,"
Up until some bright spark in the legislature realises what's happening and then suddenly people who are deemed to be a National Resource find themselves unable to travel out of the country.
After all you've already been softened up to the idea of people being on a list that they don't have the right to know if they're on (and asking about it will get you on said list) that means you are basically denied the right of free travel.