China's Emergence as a Superpower (till 2014)

[JeffC]

Hey Jeff !



Well Done...An excellent read !

I've been asked this boring question a gazillion times as a Harley driver: Why did/does China hold the USA's most-favored-nation trade status ? What in creation was Bill thinking about in 94

Great job, Stan

Thanks, Stan. I appreciate it.

Regarding MFN status, it was a vastly different China back in '94. I doubt if anyone could have predicted the way things shifted in only 10 years. And today, the answer for MFN continuing is simple. They own a huge portion of our debt. If we squeeze, they squeeze harder. And American consumers have a low pain tolerance, if you know what I mean.

[bismark17]

Good article! I never did verify this but read on slashdot how one of their subs recently popped up close to one of our carrier groups without being spotted. It wouldn't surprise me with how the U.S. has been neglecting funding in it's ASW capabilities.

[Rob Thornton]

Jeff,
First - my thanks and congratulations for it being 5 pages of concise witting - the stuff coming out of the think tanks always seems to be at least 100 pages. Second - thanks for a very thought provoking piece - lots of questions out there like - Do we work with, or against Chinese goals (where they seem to align with ours) - and how do they view the same question with regards to us? I suspect there is allot of grey depending on who, when and where you are asking.
Best regards, Rob

[JeffC]

Jeff,
First - my thanks and congratulations for it being 5 pages of concise witting - the stuff coming out of the think tanks always seems to be at least 100 pages. Second - thanks for a very thought provoking piece - lots of questions out there like - Do we work with, or against Chinese goal - and how do they view the same question with regards to us? I suspect there is allot of grey depending on who, when and where you are asking.
Best regards, Rob

Thanks, Rob. I think concise writing is a lost art. And unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be one that very many people want to resurrect, at least not in my experience.

Regarding some of the questions that you mentioned, my view is that the U.S. should learn a few lessons from what the Chinese have done, particularly in the Education component. I'd like to see a nation-wide reinvigoration around teaching science and math, and requiring students and teachers to hit basic competency goals or the student doesn't graduate, and the teacher's performance is reviewed with possible repercussions.

[hypo]

I found this 5 page essay to be very simplistic since it came to a certain conclusion (China's superpower status) after only reviewing three unrelated aspects of the entire PRC society (special ops emulation, academic exchanges, and cyber intrusion).

I felt that you gleamed only the very best aspects of the PRC (such as accumulation of US treasury bonds) while completely ignoring any of the massive challenges that they face (such as environmental degradation, widening wealth gap, brain drain, political unrest, government corruption, intellectual property rights, freedom of the press ect.)

You also made a reference to the 2008 Olympics in your conclusion which you had not referred to anywhere else in your analysis. You gave no evidence to back up your opinion that this was going to be the tipping point for superpower status.

A more convincing argument could be made if you had attempted to link the 3 aspects together somehow and provide more strategic depth (what does it mean for us?) to your analysis rather than repeating an event that already happened. For example, by not explaining the context behind the Chinese cyber intrusion (it was into an unclassified military network), you weaken your argument by omitting key facts.

Unfortunately, when analyzing total power of a state, you must analyze all aspects of that state and its civil/military society. I felt your analysis lacked comprehensiveness and also depth/context to make such a sweeping generalization.

[SWJED]

... others jump in - hypo, your comments are appreciated when commenting on a Council member's post, they are, but in such cases (first time poster) we always ask for the new member to introduce himself here. Thanks - House Rules.

[JeffC]

I found this 5 page essay to be very simplistic since it came to a certain conclusion (China's superpower status) after only reviewing three unrelated aspects of the entire PRC society (special ops emulation, academic exchanges, and cyber intrusion).

I felt that you gleamed only the very best aspects of the PRC (such as accumulation of US treasury bonds) while completely ignoring any of the massive challenges that they face (such as environmental degradation, widening wealth gap, brain drain, political unrest, government corruption, intellectual property rights, freedom of the press ect.)

You also made a reference to the 2008 Olympics in your conclusion which you had not referred to anywhere else in your analysis. You gave no evidence to back up your opinion that this was going to be the tipping point for superpower status.

A more convincing argument could be made if you had attempted to link the 3 aspects together somehow and provide more strategic depth (what does it mean for us?) to your analysis rather than repeating an event that already happened. For example, by not explaining the context behind the Chinese cyber intrusion (it was into an unclassified military network), you weaken your argument by omitting key facts.

Unfortunately, when analyzing total power of a state, you must analyze all aspects of that state and its civil/military society. I felt your analysis lacked comprehensiveness and also depth/context to make such a sweeping generalization.

I'm not really sure how to respond to this, since, from what you've written, you don't seem to have actually read my paper. In your opening paragraph, for example, you refer to the cyber espionage problem that I mention in my introduction as one of my 3 components supporting my argument, when, in fact, Cyber Espionage wasn't one of my 3 primary components at all.

You then call out only one aspect of my Military component (Chinese Special Forces) as if it was the only example that I used in my Military section. It wasn't. I also mentioned (via Cozad's testimony) C4ISR, Space and Counter-Space, IO, Electronic warfare, and nuclear weapon delivery systems (ICBMs).

You mis-identified my third component "Educational Development" as simply "academic exchanges", which is incorrect. "Academic exchanges" sounds like some kind of transfer student program.

Finally, you completely failed to identify my second component "Economic Development". I'm not sure how you managed to miss 25% of my essay, but clearly you did.

So, "hypo", since I've demonstrated that your criticism is built upon a pretty serious mis-reading of my analysis (assuming that you actually read it at all), responding to the rest of your post would be redundant. I will, however, offer this. Whether an analysis is 5 pages or 100 pages, it's useless if it isn't understood by the reader. That's why I included about 20 cites in those 5 pages. Just in case a reader, like yourself, was looking for a more thorough understanding of what I was covering.

[Stan]

I'm not really sure how to respond to this...

I'll just borrow one of your quotes real quick for my summation

12. Having DOOMED SPIES, doing certain things openly for
purposes of deception, and allowing our spies to know of them and
report them to the enemy.

[selil]

Jeff,
First - my thanks and congratulations for it being 5 pages of concise witting - the stuff coming out of the think tanks always seems to be at least 100 pages.

The art of concise writing is why I post on my blog and web forums. It helps me practice though I'm still long winded. It seems my academic writing has been growing in length as I try and handle every little nuance and objection I think somebody will come up with.

[JeffC]

Good article! I never did verify this but read on slashdot how one of their subs recently popped up close to one of our carrier groups without being spotted. It wouldn't surprise me with how the U.S. has been neglecting funding in it's ASW capabilities.

I read that it surfaced really REALLY close. Kinda like, tag, you're it. Which, if memory serves, is the kind of game that PLAAF pilots like to play with U.S. spy planes near the Chinese border.