Cross-posted as a comment here:
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The [Chinese] currency manipulation has been going on for at least 10 years. I happen to think it was bad policy, but I understand why it happened. I did not personally gain from it to the extent that others have, for example by occupying an over-leveraged property or working for a company which does. I don't want to see military action with China but I wouldn't doubt that it will come to that.
Years ago, when I worked for a Bay area start-up with the late Henry Taube ("The Conversions with Henry" guy I blog about), we hired a young Chinese guy who worked for us for about a year. He was a hard worker but contributed no patents or publications (intellectual property), and left, returning to China. He ended up (according to my former boss) appropriating a decent chunk of alkane activation technology back to China.
Zhu-lin (I recall his name) spent what little time he socialized talking about how the map of the real China resembled a giant chicken, with Korea being the Korean peninsula as the wattle and Vietnam being the feet and legs. You can see this rightward facing chicken if you look at a map and use a little imagination. He said (ca. 1998) that it was only a matter of time before the chicken was whole again.
China has ancient enemies in Asia which I'm sure you know. They have historically been weaker and may not wish to remain so always, though that may be inevitable.
I have spoken extensively on issues involving the "Chinese mindset" and don't usually throw that sort of thing out on this blog. However Chinese people and the Chinese Government tend to "think ahead" (plan, if you will) for eventualities fifty or one hundred years in the future. Thus the chicken becoming whole again might be a one or even two hundred year process that they envision. And if you engage the "man on the street" in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing or even some distant back water like Guilin or a hamlet in Yunan, they're going to echo that process of thinking.
ReplyDeleteWestern Societies think in terms of a four year election cycle (at best). And while we've done remarkably well to date, the Chinese are behaving like "the Borg" (pardon the Star Trek reference) by buying up every scrap of rare earth material and every bit of strategic metal that they can get their hands on because the supply is limited and they'll need it to meet an envisioned goal in fifty years.