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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Carbon-heavy development in countries part of China's Belt and Road Initiative could render the Paris climate goals unreachable, according to a new analysis on the gargantuan global infrastructure project released Monday.
The massive network of ports, railways, roads and industrial parks spanning Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe will see trillions invested in new infrastructure across 126 countries.
While the Chinese state is putting up a significant part of the cash, the project will also see other national and private-sector investment, and opponents warn of its devastating environmental impact.
An analysis of the possible carbon footprint of infrastructure development in Belt and Road (BRI) countries said there was a significant risk of the initiative alone producing enough greenhouse gas emissions to derail the Paris climate goals.
The 2015 accord enjoins nations to cap temperature rises to "well below" two degrees Celsius (3.6 Farenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 04 2019, @10:50AM (4 children)
China, Europe, Canada, and Mexico have been enjoying lopsided trade with America for several decades. Their economies have grown at the expense of Americans. For a while that was alright because America was so rich and those others weren't. It was deemed positive for world stability and for spreading democracy etc so the powers that be let it continue; if you were a long-time reader of publications like the Economist or Foreign Affairs, which are mouthpieces of those elites, this was their constant refrain. However, the ulterior motive of that same suite of policies was to destroy labor movements and put extreme downward pressure on wages (for the low- to mid-level workers, not the ones at the top, of course). That has produced the same backlash across the West at nearly the same time and produced everything from Brexit to the Gillets Jaunes to Trump.
When it comes to China and their Belt and Roads initiative, it has nothing to do with making sure the world economy functions smoothly. It has to do with making sure China's economy functions smoothly. See, since Deng Xiaoping Chinese elites have been using big dollar construction projects to shovel kuai from government pockets into their personal pockets. Everybody who was anybody had a construction company, a skyscraper, a hotel. Generals in the People's Liberation Army had malls. But now China's all built up and they need another place to build. Voila, the Belt and Roads. Also, it helps China escape the encirclement the US has been building with South Korea, Japan, and ASEAN. The BRICS group is another stratagem of theirs to do the same thing.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday September 04 2019, @07:00PM (3 children)
I totally agree with you. My only point was that given the size of Chinese economy, she should and will be the leader and the policemen of the world with and at some point instead of the US. This is how modern economy works. If the US tries to keep military leadership without changing the current environment, the US will collapse similar to the USSR.
There are very few options available to prevent this, and they are all bad.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 05 2019, @02:22AM (2 children)
There's more to such things than a large economy, though. There's a military large enough and advanced enough to project power wherever you want, whenever you want. China's working on that but they have a long way to go. There're all the forms of soft power, which China has none of and probably will never develop; as an authoritarian state they just don't have the experience or knack of a robust civil society that can manage all that. There's the internal cohesion which is very thin, and very brittle in China; for all the talk of division in the United States it is an order of magnitude more united than Chinese are. There's diplomatic prowess, which China doesn't have. There are cultural ties with other nations, which China doesn't have; there are a couple hundred million overseas Chinese in mainly ASEAN countries, but the natives are deeply suspicious of them so they count as a net negative as far as relations with China go.
If China tried to throw its weight around now it would be duplicating the grievous error that Japan made in trying to precipitously construct its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Apart from raw military and economic power, nobody else was Japanese or spoke Japanese or admired Japanese culture or wanted to be friends with Japanese or had any warm, fuzzy feelings toward Japanese at all and so could only react with hostility to the prospect of being absorbed into their empire.
Brushing China back on trade now sucks, and it may not work ultimately to deter their ambitions, but it's a less bad option than letting them vamp out the US, Europe, Japan, ASEAN, Africa, and South America for another 20 years until they're ready to crush everybody outright. That's why a lot of people are nervously watching what Beijing does with Hong Kong right now, because it will show their true colors in what they have planned for everyone else who has differences of opinion with Beijing but don't have the possibility of gentle treatment because of shared Chinese ethnicity. That is, if Beijing is willing to slaughter ethnic Chinese in Hong Kong because they won't do what they're told, how well would, say, Congolese fare when they complain about high-handedness from Chinese corporations in their country?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by legont on Thursday September 05 2019, @02:45AM (1 child)
So, what you are basically saying is that because Chinese are bad they can't compete with Americans. But what if they do become good, should they rule the world instead of Americans? More to the point, should the US help China to become good (and replace the US) or bad (so they never challenge the US).
Those are rhetorical questions off-course. The real politic is different. The US has basically three choices. Nuke China all out now. Accept half of Chinese as immigrants. Divide China.
The last one is the old British plan and what is probably the most feasible. If the US succeeds in breaking China into 3-5 coastal republics and poor rural center disconnected from the sea, the hegemony of the US is protected.
Everybody in the world understands this play and the whole politics game is about it.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 05 2019, @12:53PM
Of course they can compete with Americans and have been for, oh, 50 years now. As autocrats, though, they are not to be trusted by those who value pluralistic democracy. So, yes, from among all possible choices it's probably best for people who like freedom to not want autocrats to rule the world.
The imbalance of trade with China was the US trying to help China become good, under the theory that once the Chinese people began to prosper economically they would demand greater say in their governance and eventually would insist on democracy. So, in a nutshell, capitalism --> democracy. But, as often happens, Beijing has other ideas what to do with that money and Americans have woken up to that.
I don't think your three choices are the suite of choices China and the world have. China can choose a different path than the one it's on, ie. muscling its way to regional hegemony; it can endeavor to be a good global citizen and build goodwill with humanitarian projects and the like for several decades (at least). It can let the US go broke with its superpower nonsense and stand ready to be a stabilizing presence when America shudders itself to pieces. America and the rest of the world can, for their part, continue encircling China and antagonizing it, or brush it back and say we're willing to play with them, but only if they play fair.
But I don't think carving China up into pieces works for anybody at all.
Washington DC delenda est.