China's Emergence as a Superpower (till 2014)

[Dayuhan]

I suppose the history of the world since the end of the Second World War and the uses to which and not to which American sea power have been put may be unclear to them. I think not. I think it is perfectly clear to them as it is to everybody else out there. We ain't going to bother you if you don't bother us or our buddies. Which leads us back to the beginning, the only reason they could have for building up is if they have a thought of maybe bothering us or our buddies.

Was Saddam Hussein bothering us or our buddies in 2003?

How many times has the US used force against another country, overtly or covertly, since the second world war? How many of those times involved defending someone who was being pushed around? Let's not kid ourselves, we use force to advance our own perceived interests, just like everybody else, and our perception of our own interests is notoriously changeable.

The crux of this disagreement is you trust them to act rationally and weigh the costs. I suspect they are motivated by emotion and the cost isn't that important.

I don't fully trust the Chinese to act rationally, nor do I fully trust the US to act rationally. We are as emotion-drive as they are, and we're also driven by short-term political expedience and a fickle electoral cycle. If anything, they're more predictable than we are, medium to long term. I think the Chinese leadership weighs long term cost, benefit, and risk quite carefully... often more carefully than our leaders, preoccupied by domestic policy and electoral cycles, are likely to do.

By incomplete logic you would be incorrect. However you left out the part that we don't claim Cuba as part of the US. And you left out the part about how the Chinese Civil War ended. And you left out the part about how we didn't chase the Cuban army to that island from soutn Florida.

The US has a long tradition of using force (directly or by proxy) to get its way and to remove perceived enemies in Latin America... in fact we've more recent history of that than the Chinese do.

No there isn't an immediate threat. However, it is prudent to discuss threats that may appear in the future. How many angels on the head of a pin is idleness, discussing what the PRC is up to ref Taiwan, is prudent.

Have we any tangible evidence to suggest that the PRC is up to anything ref Taiwan?

I rather doubt businessmen are running the CCP, which is running China. I think CCP politicos are running the CCP and they are a hard lot.

Remember the golden rule: he who has the gold makes the rules.

Business has huge influence in China, and will as long as the economy is booming and the money is rolling in. A lot of the old politicos and the military chafe over that influence for sure, but as long as the money is flowing they have to deal with it... and the reality that messing with business is likely to generate a domestic explosion is all too evident to everyone in the picture. A successful Chinese business community gives China more capacity to cause trouble, but it also produces an interconnectedness and mutual dependence that creates a disincentive to major disruption.

I'm not terribly worried that China will grow to the point where its success swallows the world. I'm more concerned that an economic failure could cause major civil disturbance, ending with a takeover by military hardliners looking to expel the weak corrupt capitalists, return to the pure ways of mao, and make China great through conquest.