China's President has pledged $124 billion for a new "Silk Road" connecting Asia, Africa, and Europe:
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday urged major multilateral institutions to join his new Belt and Road Initiative, stressing the importance of rejecting protectionism in seeking global economic growth.
Addressing other world leaders at a summit on the initiative in Beijing, Xi said it was necessary to coordinate policies with the development goals of institutions including the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), ASEAN, African Union and the European Union.
Xi pledged $124 billion on Sunday for his new Silk Road which aims to bolster China's global leadership ambitions by expanding links between Asia, Africa, Europe and beyond, as U.S. President Donald Trump promotes "America First".
No one is totally sure. At the most basic level, One Belt, One Road (OBOR) is a collection of interlinking trade deals and infrastructure projects throughout Eurasia and the Pacific, but the definition of what exactly qualifies as an OBOR project or which countries are even involved in the initiative is incredibly fuzzy. "It means everything and it means nothing at the same time," said Christopher Balding, a professor of economics at Peking University. [...] According to Chinese state media, some $1 trillion has already been invested in OBOR, with another several trillion due to be invested over the next decade.
Fuzzier story at CNN. More at Wikipedia.
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(Score: 2) by gawdonblue on Tuesday May 16 2017, @11:11AM (9 children)
So China is spending the equivalent of the next 8 countries worth on building up trade. It could have been on arms instead. Which one will pay off?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 16 2017, @11:45AM (4 children)
So China is spending the equivalent of the next 8 countries worth on building up trade.
I know this is meant merely as literary flourish, but the US and EU probably spend more each on trade than China does, being considerably larger economic zones, and all of this government-level spending on trade is dwarfed by private trade-related spending from any one of the three.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday May 16 2017, @01:42PM (3 children)
What do you mean by "larger"?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 16 2017, @11:05PM (2 children)
What do you mean by "larger"?
Larger GDP.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @04:43AM (1 child)
You would probably like to still revisit that statement.
So they aren't really "considerably" larger economic zones. Keeping aside USA, the next 5 countries in EU altogether are barely larger than China. And don't get me started on area of economic zones, or even population.
This image [wikipedia.org] captures this very well.
Secondly, GDP doesn't measure living costs which is almost 200% lower in China than the topmost EU country - Germany. While this means purchasing power parity of Germany is bigger than China, what it really means is that number of $124 billion is actually a lot more when adjusted to ppp.
So OP is correct to say that China is investing more in building up trade than European countries selling arms.
To OP, you are wrong to say that selling arms is not investing in building up trade. The West owes everything it has today to investing in arms, including NASA, the Internet, almost all of the economy after WW1 and most importantly, the colonial loot.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 17 2017, @01:01PM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Tuesday May 16 2017, @03:24PM (3 children)
History has shown that the largest economies can shift rapidly to being the largest military, without requiring huge standing armies.
The USA's inverse approach of sinking endless amounts of potential economic growth into military forces essentially forces a political necessity of wasting that military wealth on unnecessary, meaningless wars.
The end game for every empire like that in history is to start dumping fiscal assets into mercenaries, and then being dumbfounded when the mercenaries switch sides to the people who want to plunder you a generation or two later.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2017, @03:54PM (1 child)
History has shown that the largest economies can shift rapidly to being the largest military, without requiring huge standing armies.
Can't build 4000 nukes in 30 minutes though.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday May 16 2017, @03:58PM
China has about 5% as many nukes as the US, but it's almost as much deterrent for us to want to not want to fuck with them, the intricacies of Sino-Russian geopolitics notwithstanding.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Wednesday May 17 2017, @04:02AM
We can't build roads because that will induce demand, man.
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