This is a Stratfor discussion about the Chinese Navy and what the two men in the video think China may do with it.
What I found interesting were George Friedman's comments on the numbers of people in China who are not participating in the Chinese economic miracle: 600 million Chinese live in households earning less than $3/day, 440 million live in households earning between $3 and $6 a day, while 60 million live in households earning $20,000 a year. That's over a billion people in the country who have seen little benefit in China's export-driven economy and who cannot afford to buy the wide range of consumer goods that China makes.
So if Europe implodes economically, which seems to be more likely each day, and that causes America to slip deeper into this lesser depression, then China will see its export markets decimated.
Which may be why there are so many stories about the Chinese government trying to stamp out any hint of Internet enabled dissent on microblogs. The Chinese government will do whatever it takes to keep order and stability and, as history has shown, if that means that they will end up killing a goodly number of people to do it, they will have no qualms about opening fire.
Smarter than
2 days ago
When you have a billion people a million dead here or there to maintain public order is no big deal. (Note: I don't agree with that sentiment, but that's the mindset in China).
ReplyDelete- Badtux the Not-optimistic Penguin
Hell, 50 million dead would be no big deal to the CPC. Thirty million or so died in the Great Leap Forward and over a million died in the Cultural Revolution.
ReplyDeleteThey'd kill a hell of a lot more than 50 million to hold onto power.