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China's Engineering Mega-Projects Dwarf the Great Wall
HughPickens.com writes:
David Barboza has an interesting article in the NYT about China's engineering megaprojects. For example, there's the world's longest underwater tunnel, which will run twice the length of the one under the English Channel, and bore deep into one of Asia's active earthquake zones, creating a rail link between two northern port cities, Dalian and Yantai. Throughout China, equally ambitious projects with multibillion-dollar price tags are already underway. The world's largest bridge. The biggest airport. The longest gas pipeline. Such enormous infrastructure projects are a Chinese tradition. From the Great Wall to the Grand Canal and the Three Gorges Dam, this nation for centuries has used colossal public-works projects to showcase its engineering prowess and project its economic might.
In November, for example, the powerful National Development and Reform Commission approved plans to spend nearly $115 billion on 21 supersize infrastructure projects, including new airports and high-speed rail lines. "Clearly, China's cost advantages are going to shrink somewhat over the longer-term and prices for projects are only going to rise," says Victor Chuan Chen. "I think the government has done an admirable job in getting many of these projects off the ground while the economics were still very favorable." China is pushing the boundaries of infrastructure-building, with ever bolder proposals. The Dalian tunnel looks small compared with the latest idea to build an "international railway" that would link China to the United States by burrowing under the Bering Strait and creating a tunnel between Russia and Alaska.
But whether China really needs this much big infrastructure — or can even afford it — is a contentious issue. Some economists worry that China might eventually be mired in enormous debt (PDF) and many experts say such projects also exact a heavy toll on local communities and the environment, as builders displace people, clear forests, reroute rivers and erect dams. "It makes sense to accelerate infrastructure spending during a downturn, when capital and labor are underemployed," says David Dollar. But "if the growth rate is propped up through building unnecessary infrastructure, eventually there could be a sharp slowdown that reveals that the infrastructure was really not needed at all."
In November, for example, the powerful National Development and Reform Commission approved plans to spend nearly $115 billion on 21 supersize infrastructure projects, including new airports and high-speed rail lines. "Clearly, China's cost advantages are going to shrink somewhat over the longer-term and prices for projects are only going to rise," says Victor Chuan Chen. "I think the government has done an admirable job in getting many of these projects off the ground while the economics were still very favorable." China is pushing the boundaries of infrastructure-building, with ever bolder proposals. The Dalian tunnel looks small compared with the latest idea to build an "international railway" that would link China to the United States by burrowing under the Bering Strait and creating a tunnel between Russia and Alaska.
But whether China really needs this much big infrastructure — or can even afford it — is a contentious issue. Some economists worry that China might eventually be mired in enormous debt (PDF) and many experts say such projects also exact a heavy toll on local communities and the environment, as builders displace people, clear forests, reroute rivers and erect dams. "It makes sense to accelerate infrastructure spending during a downturn, when capital and labor are underemployed," says David Dollar. But "if the growth rate is propped up through building unnecessary infrastructure, eventually there could be a sharp slowdown that reveals that the infrastructure was really not needed at all."
It's easy for us in the US to decry China building massive projects, when we already have our transcontinental rail, interstate highways, panama canal, etc. which would require so much 'environmental review' today, (just look at the difficulty of building modern nuclear power plants.)
China might go into 'enormous debt' to build things? Every other country has already gone into 'enormous debt,' why shouldn't they take advantage of the opportunity while they still can? Get while the getting is good.
At least they'll have something built to show for it, unlike spending that money to bail out banks (and if anyone wants to protest that the banks paid back TARP, I'm well aware of that, and also aware they got their government money through other channels).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You said it as a joke, but China's debt isn't small. They buy US treasury bonds, but issue their own bonds to pay for them. So yes, in fact, the Chinese government is borrowing from the Chinese people.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
If China lands hard, things will difficult everywhere, at best.
Sort of like Apollo. Oh no! Sorry! *THAT* was for the _species_ because it was white Christian middle-aged men with crew cuts!
Sorry, sorry.
Yes, yes, exploration, the Death asteroid, the species, this rock, yes, Apollo was all that.
But OTHER countries are just ridiculous! Point and laugh! Ah ha ha ha ha!
In November, for example, the powerful National Development and Reform Commission approved plans to spend nearly $115 billion on 21 supersize infrastructure projects,
There is an estimate that the China-Russia-Canada-US line may cost $2T or almost 17 times the budget for those projects. I doubt it will ever be built. I love one of the quotes from the article;
Who would ever take a two-day train journey from Beijing to San Francisco when they could fly there in 12 hours?
There may be a few but I doubt enough to pay for and support 13,000km of track through some very harsh terrain which gets worse in winter and a 200km tunnel under water.
As is usual, there's always an appropriate metal song warning of the folly of man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Today the warning came in the flood
Architects and fools never cared for poor men's blood
Cursed to repeat the past they are
The river dragon swims upstream
They've built another wall.
Ironically based on Chinese myth to.
In contrast in America, republican hopeful Governor Chris Christie refused to allow a new tunnel to be built linking New Jersey and New York.
It showed this humongous mall that they had built, but remains mostly unoccupied, and hardly any shoppers. Well they wouldn't stop building on account of that now
Clearly the Times is doing all the work.....
Am I right in thinking there are many empty cities in China, with more being build all the time?
This may be more about keeping people working than anything.
For those of you who have not been to China, what China does in terms of infrastructure projects is quite laudable. For a population of that size and country of that size, they need such projects for faster development. In the US, we are more interested in political scoring than building infrastructure or other developmental projects. Is it a sign of decay for us?
Really, what is any other country going to do about it? At some point they will stop lending them money, but at that point China has already had half its nation reconstructed for free.
They can always have more kids to use it, and you can't grow an economy without growing the population.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I hardly think so. For one thing, it is wrong to talk about "a" great wall, it is actually a sprawling agglomeration of many walls built over hundreds of years. Its primary function was a matter of survival, a military means of countering attacks from various upstarts in the north.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
So is the ISS.
Some economists worry that China might eventually be mired in enormous debt
copycat
Nothing Exceeds Like Excess!
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Think of the possibilities. That could fill 230 potholes in California!
By definition, communism is government control of productive capacity - the ability to create anything.
It means worker control of productive capacity.
Further, there is no one in a position to seriously question the government.
This is definitely not true, sometimes it happens in communism, but it doesn't need to be (and shouldn't be, freedom of speech is extremely important).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
>. Civil rights are orthogonal to the economic system. You can have civil rights in a communist country. You can have private property. You just can't have private ownership of the production facilities
You can have private property, you say. Can an individual own a cordless drill? Well, a cordless drill can be used to produce a table, so it's a means of production. In pure communism, that wouldn't be allowed.
Suppose I own a drill, and enjoy making tables. My neighbor enjoys working on cars. Can he buy one of the tables I made? No, that would be a private business. Can he help me work on my car, and I give him a table. We'd both be exchanging items of value - doing business. I'd be producing tables, and only the government may produce anything. So double no, that would be two private businesses. See where this starts to be incompatible with human rights? But it gets worse:
You're not allowed to make money by building tables, or otherwise using the productive capacity of whatever is around, right, so you must work for the government. Everybody gets a government check, with the amount decided by the government. Given that all jobs are working for the government, guess who decides what job you spend your life doing? That's right, the government. That doesn't tend to produce a booming economy, so people struggle - they are poor. (See any communist country in all of history for confirmation.). What does a father struggling to provide for his kids do when a neighbor offers to buy a table from him, if he'll build it? He builds the damn thing, of course. All up and down the block mothers and fathers are working their illegal side jobs to try to provide something more for their family than the meager existence offered by the government check. The communist government can't have EVERYONE running black market businesses. If everyone is permitted to run their own little business, that's a free market, the opposite of communism. So the government has to crack down on all of these people building tables, fixing cars, and baking bread for their neighbors. When the government feels the need to keep a close eye on what each person is baking in their own kitchen do you see where this is incompatible with freedom and liberty?
They buy US treasury bonds, but issue their own bonds to pay for them. So yes, in fact, the Chinese government is borrowing from the Chinese people.
Before marking this down as a problem for China, you'd have to factor in the economic benefits of keeping the Yuan mostly pegged to the dollar.
If the Yuan really floated free, China's exports would get get much more expensive and their status as a manufacturing hub could evaporate.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
That's the theory, right? Keep your currency down to keep your workers poor? The alternative is to let it float free, and allow your workers to earn what they're worth. China's already lost the low end of manufacturing as textiles have gone to south-east asia. Labor's too expensive in China.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
(See any communist country in all of history for confirmation.).
There has never been one. Even the soviet union was merely socialist (and they never claimed to be communist).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
By definition, communism is government control of productive capacity
Are people this uninformed? by definition communism does not have a government. As others have pointed out, there has never been a communist nation state, just socialist and socialism comes in many varieties form authoritarian to libertarian, government ownership to things like co-ops and credit unions.
The problem is the huge amount of successful propaganda that has been used on the people of America and that it has leaked to the rest of the world. Propaganda like Obama empowering the insurance industry even more by implementing a right wing medical system is socialist or communist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Yeah, the article reads as if written out of jealousy.
Infrastructure is a good thing to build, as long as it is necessary. When it will be used, infrastructure is an economic multiplier. The article suggests that China is building far too much infrastructure, and then gives examples of unused infrastructure. But looking at their map (picture in article), they are building mostly subways in megacities (good idea), container terminals (good idea, the Dutch do the same), high speed rail (good idea), canals for irrigation (debatable, but hopefully low maintenance and long lifetime once completed), and a few crazy projects which may eventually flop.
The funny thing is that China does not care if a handful of multi-billion dollar projects fail to deliver, and fail to have an economic payback. As long as the majority of the projects perform, they win.
The Western economies are stuck somewhere between economic conservatism and economic fear. Corporations do not dare to invest this big, because for a corporation this can be a make or break, and that risk is too big. Also, corporations require a 3-5 year economic payback, whereas infrastructure typically has a much longer lifetime, and is only an enabler, causing economic growth, not immediate profit. Western governments do not dare to invest this big, because every dollar spent is analysed and they must win the next elections.
Basically, we cannot do these kinds of projects, because we all fear for our pension and fear that we lose what we have. And we are jealous of the Chinese who can do this, and we talk ourselves to sleep with articles like this that predict that the Chinese got it wrong after all.
by definition communism does not have a government.
By definition:
a way of organizing a society in which the government owns the things that are used to make and transport products (such as land, oil, factories, ships, etc.) and there is no privately owned property
So no.
Some economists worry that China might eventually be mired in enormous debt
While any country can over stretch itself and find itself mired in unsustainable debt, it is hard not to roll one's eyes when one reads the report's really, really, really, remote scenarios for how China could get itself into such a situation. Given the current global geo-economic reality, spending as much time as the report does on the likelihood of this scenario coming to pass almost discredits the rest of what is actually a great report.
Chinese foreign reserves are almost US$4 trillion (as at September 2014) - more than the combined total foreign reserves held by the next 7 largest holders of foreign reserves (i.e.Japan, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Taiwan, Russia, Brazil and Republic of Korea). The United States foreign reserves, by comparison, are a paltry US$134 billion
At the other end of the scale, United States foreign debt stands at a staggering US$18 trillion - about US1 trillion of that borrowed from the Chinese - more than that of the United Kingdom and Germany combined.
The report then nonchalantly skims over the distinction between the mega-, giga-, tera- projects around the world and lumps them together as if they all pose the same systemic risks to each respective economy. This may serve the purpose of highlighting the manic pace of development taking place in China, but the author's US corollary to China's mega airports, rail infrastructure, city expansion, ports, malls, urban housing (albeit many of which still lie empty), are what I would call vanity mega-projects, such as the Joint Strike Fighter aircraft program, the International Space Station, etc.
If I were worried about a major global economy (and the US and China now the two largest economies in the world, by a long shot) "eventually being mired in enormous debt", it would be the one that is spending trillions of dollars on projects that cannot be used to further grow the country's economy in future. Spending billions on improving the county's economic efficiency (such as rail infrastructure, ports, airports, housing for migrant workers, renewable energy, manufacturing, education, etc.) cannot be equated to spending billions on improving the efficiency with which one can obliterate one's adversaries from the sky.
China's debt is 62% of its GPD. The US is at 104%, and the UK is at 96%. China is actually going pretty well, especially since its economy is still rapidly expanding.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You should read more about communism, then you won't make such silly assertions about drills not being allowed under it.
What you are describing is some caricature of socialism.
One of the primary concerns of Marx was that while in the past the workers owned tools of their trade (such as the drill you mention), industrialization changed that dynamic (why would your neighbour buy a table from you when he could buy one from factory for half the prize... and the profits go to the person who owns the factory while pre-unionization workers toil without ever earning enought to buy one of those increasingly expensive factory machines). Marx thus called for a system where society (Note: I do not use the word "government" for a reason) owns the means of (mass) production.
So your "In pure communism you wouldn't be allowed to own a drill" example is quite silly when Marx effectively said "The problem with capitalism is that we are going towards a society where you can no longer provide yourself with the tools you own" (something that you call "a private business" which supposedly "wouldn't be allowed").
I'm not defending communism, I've moved quite a bit right from my leftist youth, but I really think that you have a very poor understanding of the main concepts you are talking about.
Megaprojects tend to be viewed as impressive or as to impress; as useful or not; as profitable or not. Chinese megaprojects are ALSO, perhaps MOSTLY, about creating and sustaining China as a nation, a people, a unified and long lasting thing. The Great Wall and the Grand Canal both had predecessors, going back to the earliest days of unified China. no megaprojects, no China.
The US is already mired in enormous debt, and everyone knows that so it's hardly news. It's certainly irrelevant to the question of whether China is making bad infrastructure investments.
Say the US goes bust tomorrow. And either renegs on all it's bonds or instantly prints virtual dollars to pay them of. What does China's foreign reserves look like then?
And which do you think is more useful when the shit does hit the fan and the country is bankrupt. A big tunnel to transport the stuff you no longer have? Or weapons that make it easier to simply steal what you want from elsewhere?
>> Further, there is no one in a position to seriously question the government.
> This is definitely not true, sometimes it happens in communism, but it doesn't need to be (and shouldn't be, freedom of speech is extremely important).
ALWAYS. Look at the USSR, communist China, Coba, Cambodia under communism - anywhere and everywhere that communism has gained a foothold in government. Care to name a counter-example? You can't, because there is none.
In THEORY, some being other than humans could have communism and human rights, on some planet other than earth. When you actually try to implement communism with humans, you ALWAYS end up with gulags. You have to, because that's the only way to impose communism upon the human spirit.
And eventually manufacturing will return to the US, just performed by robots.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
> (Note: I do not use the word "government" for a reason) owns the means of production.
And that reason is, if you were to admit that the method by which an entire country is forced to do something all together is called "government", you'd be admitting that full government control of people's lives is a precondition to communism.
"The whole of society does ____" means, in practice, "government does ____". To pretend otherwise is to lie to yourself, to _choose_ to believe falsely.
Do you know what a dictionary is? Hint: they describe the meaning of words as they are used in general language. In other words they give the common meanings of words in the language in question - and hence reflect he successful propaganda mentioned.
Try an economics reference, if you want the actual meaning of the term rather than the common non-technical usage.
You'll also find incorrect definitions in the dictionary for technical terms in other fields, because surprise surprise, common usage of words doesn't always match their specific meanings in specific fields.
Here's Lenin:
Engels:
Communism was really described as a process, the inevitable result of the industrial revolution and capitalism. The end of which was a society without a State. Clearly the theory was a tad flawed - it didn't take into account the reforms of worker conditions under capitalism that made it not so inevitable after all being the obvious truck sized hole. But "communism" is not "government control of productive capacity" - that's a step in the process, one that is supposed to be destroy itself.
American *has* to have the biggest military on Earth.
We spend more on "defense" than the next 10 countries combined. We have spent more on a single fighter plane program (the F-35, which still doesn't work), than the entire defense programs of most other nations on the planet.
We just have our 'infrastructure" in a different way. Instead of building, we're looking to destroy. So when other countries make roads and dams, we make bombs.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Chinese foreign reserves are almost US$4 trillion
That is irrelevant. Are you unaware of the Japanese economic disaster of the 1990s?
Large foreign reserves did not save them from bad internal debts. And many think China is heading for much worse.
Maybe people are just looking at all the governements in history that have called themselves communist?
Not pay the debt? When a few hundred million Chinese citizens see their life saving evaporate, how secure do you think the Party is going to feel?
Really, what is any other country going to do about it?
What do other countries have to do with this?
Communism was really described as a process, the inevitable result of the industrial revolution and capitalism.
In the real world, it was not by definition.
The end of which was a society without a State.
Whithering of the state has never been observed in the real world. Lenin didn't even try when he had the chance. To assume it happens as part of your definition just makes your definition deeply flawed.
WTH are you talking about. San marino isn't communist - nowhere near.
In a capitalist system, businesses are owned by private investors (in modern times, mostly people saving for retirement), and those private owners therefore get any profit the business produces.
In a communist system, the collective (government) owns the businesses and therefore gets any profit made by an enterprise.
Capitalist: private owners get the profit.
Communist: government is the owner, gets the profit.
All real-world countries fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. In the United States, for example, private investors are nominally the owners, but the government takes 39% of the profit, then takes 15% the remainder when it's distributed to the owners. In San Marino, the government takes 17% of the profit.
United States: government has 39% stake, private owners have 61%
San Marino: Government has 17%, private owners have 83%
The United States can therefore be said to be "twice as communist" as San Marino.
I didn't "complain" of propaganda.
And yes as defined by the early communist theorists communism a process made inevitable by capitalism. Wikipedia manages to get it right, it really can't be that hard...
What has been observed in the real world is irrelevant. Communism is a theory, that is has been proven bunk doesn't change the details of the theory.
The Copernican model of the solar system is also wrong, that doesn't make definitions about it "deeply flawed" - they're just clearly incorrect models of the reality, but that doesn't mean you get to pretend they claim whatever you like.
You mean, compared to the US and UK it has a small debt? Is that really considered doing well? US is doing well too........compared to Japan or Argentina.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I'm not aware of any interpretation of communism that matches your description. Socialism is about providing workers with the means of production, which will typically be owned by the workers (individually or collectively) or the government. There's no problem with people running their own little businesses. There is a problem if they try to hire employees, as that allows "exploitation", and hiring people to work with employer-provided machines is anathema. There is typically nothing between one-person businesses and large state industries, and that is not a good way to produce wealth.
Communism is a version of socialism in which everybody works happily for the benefit of all (BTW, this isn't necessarily leftist; it applies similarly to the somewhat right-wing Nationalist movement kicked off by Bellamy's "Looking Backwards"). In other words, socialism with a large dose of utopian fantasy. In that case, somebody who owns his or her own tools is, again, just fine.
Socialism isn't opposed to the idea of a free market, although the inability to form a small capitalist-style company does hinder supply. In socialist countries, people are normally free to buy what they want, as long as it's available and as long as they make enough money (a couple of things that tend to lack in socialist countries in general), and either individuals will try to meet demand or the state-controlled industries will slowly shift.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I think some of us in this thread underestimate the Chinese economy. A good proportion of the Chinese are affluent and they can afford to use, and they do use the high speed rail system. Shanghai-Beijing route is just few hours by high speed rail and a great convenience. In addition, the way they moderate traffic in cities by heavily subsidizing buses (city bus ride in Beijing cost only 2 yuan) help them save a lot of gas and road space, and very helpful for the low income. We, in the US, have the idea that everything must be privatized and must run for a profit. Certain things just dont work like that.
> Communism is not having people like stockholders own the means of production
What does "own the means of production" mean?
It means, in this context, "own a business".
What does it mean to "own" a business? To "own" a business means to get the profits from it. Stockholders get a share of the profits.
Therefore, "government owns the means of production" means "government gets the profit from businesses". That's what "owning" a business means.
If government gets 90% of the profit, for all practical purposes government is 90% owner of the business. Government essentially owns the business is called communism.
In San Marino, businesses are privately owned - stockholders (investors) elect the board of directors and get the profit. Investors get MORE of the profit than they do in the US.
Except 1) the JSF is a piece of crap that underperforms relative to the older F-22 (yes, this is a specific example). 2) If the US renegs on its debts, you'll have bigger problems that what you're saying. It'd be the US vs the rest of the world, and I'm sure the US isn't going to win that one.
AC misses it. Most of the borrowing is internal.
GDP is being diverted from consumption to infrastructure investment.
But there is certainly precedent for what he describes. The US borrowed billions for a housing boom, selling Collateral Debt Obligations and other derivatives to pay for it. Much of the money will never be paid back, and nobody can sue the US government for allowing fraudulent credit ratings.
What does inflation in the US look like in your situation?
http://www.investopedia.com/te...
You must have checked out a few definitions before finding that one. From Google,
communism
kämynizm/
noun
noun: communism; noun: Communism; plural noun: Communisms
a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs.
From dictionary.reference.com
communism definition. An economic and social system envisioned by the nineteenth-century German scholar Karl Marx. In theory, under communism, all means of production are owned in common, rather than by individuals (see Marxism and Marxism-Leninism).
From thefreedictionary.com
A theoretical economic system characterized by the collective ownership of property and by the organization of labor for the common advantage of all members.
Then we get your definition and after we get from wikipedia,
Communism (from Latin communis – common, universal) is a socioeconomic system structured upon the common ownership of the means of production and characterized by the absence of social classes, money, and the state; as well as a social, political and economic ideology and movement that aims to establish this social ...
Then from www.businessdictionary.com
Communism (from Latin communis – common, universal) is a socioeconomic system structured upon the common ownership of the means of production and characterized by the absence of social classes, money, and the state; as well as a social, political and economic ideology and movement that aims to establish this social ...
These were all displayed by Google when searching for "define communism" and I'm too lazy to add all the proper URLs Note that a couple of these definitions include "no state"
https://www.google.ca/search?q...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
It should be obvious from the statement itself. Unless you think that would somehow improve China's reserves, but clearly you don't so why ask?
You mean like the USSR, the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics? Generally what there are are a bunch of countries using (claiming) socialism to strive for communism and it is the propaganda that labels them communist. Socialism like so many political ideologies, comes in many forms and when implemented in countries with a history of authoritarianism usually ends up authoritarian. Similarly countries with a history of freedom usually end up more free.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Ah, you're talking about way back then. Let's be honest about what went down, okay?
The population (a few thousand people) voted for about 25% communists.
The communists struck a deal with the socialists (who also had about 25%) to share power.
Note that most voters didn't vote communist or socialist, but the two parties successfully made a deal.
The communists and socialists ruled together for a few years.
The communists declared it illegal for six people to meet as a committee to remove them. - civil rights?
The communists deployed soldiers who pointed rifles at elected representatives showing up to vote against them. - civil rights?
When communists were unable to fend off the majority of the population who opposed them, they eventually left town.
So in your mind, making it illegal to meet as a committee to oppose the party currently in power is not a violation of civil rights.
It's also okay for the head of state to deploy armed units against the people trying to vote them out.
I'm just curious, did someone lie to you about what happened, or did you make that up yourself? If the latter, this is something a I never quite understood. If you know you have to make up lies to support a position, that means you know that the truth doesn't support that position. Why would you advocate a position that you KNOW to be wrong, to be unsupported by the facts? Is it THAT hard to change your mind, that you have to lie to yourself and others rather than simply say "gee, it looks like that idea isn't right after all. I wonder which idea actually is right"?
"Common ownership" means government ownership at the country-level.
I didn't "complain" of propaganda.
You wrote earlier:
Do you know what a dictionary is? Hint: they describe the meaning of words as they are used in general language. In other words they give the common meanings of words in the language in question - and hence reflect he successful propaganda mentioned.
There is the complaint.
What has been observed in the real world is irrelevant. Communism is a theory, that is has been proven bunk doesn't change the details of the theory.
To the contrary, it is quite relevant. Because why should we use the viewpoint of a "bunk" theory to establish a definition rather than commonly-held real world experience? In the real world, every nation-level attempt at communism has ended up with government control of property (well, more accurately, non-personal property, you sometimes were allowed to own the clothes on your back). This includes the effort by Lenin who you quoted as one of the people with an opinion on what Communism was supposed to be.
There is another thing to keep in mind here. As a dogmatic ideology, Communism like a lot of its fellows, groups terms into good and bad connotation. Defining Communism as a wonderful stateless nirvana is IMHO a propaganda ploy to excuse the built in failure of the scheme. If the eventual outcome turns out terrible, then it's not "Communism" in the Marxist sense, by definition. You can't do anything with such impractical definitions except con people.
Except as noted, several definitions that say common ownership also say there is "no state".
Given that there is a state in real world cases, I don't see the point to the definitions other than to delude and con people.
The United States military protects China's freedom to trade worldwide. It does not protect the economic interests of the people of the United States.
U.S. Foreign debt is not like a bank loan. Regarding China, nearly all is held in the form of U.S. governments bonds specified in U.S. currency. The United States will always be able to pay off its dollar obligations and the only factors keeping it from doing so today are anti-inflation policy and trade policies, both of which at this point favor China more than the United States.
The Romans regarded roadways as military structures. China is currently financing a bigger canal from the Pacific to the Atlantic and it would make sense that they would want reliable transoceanic roads to service their outlying colonies in North America.
It's been a long time since the United States military was dedicated to the interests and the security of the U.S. It protects the gobal economy. Any government dominating the global economy gets to set the military agenda of the United States -- among the many ways it gets to influence the federal government.
China does not have to worry about going broke in the process of establishing a worldwide empire. The colonies are there to finance their own colonialization.
Ha please, when you organise yourself acording to the communist manifesto you're a communist country no matter what you call yourself, end of story. Besides which even marx couldn't figure out how a "fully" communist country would look or work.
I guess we know now.