China Is Our Friend!! Part 6837

Well, it had to happen some day:

China surpassed the United States as the world's second-largest exporter last year and now makes more cars than Detroit, among the latest signs that the Asian giant is rapidly ascending to what many analysts expect will be the world's largest and most influential economy as soon as a decade from now.

Currency manipulation, slave/near-slave labor, export incentives, import restrictions, zero ecological restrictions, patent and copyright thefts...

A recent study published by the International Studies Review predicts that China will leverage its size with superior education and technology to surpass the U.S. and become the world's predominant economic power by midcentury.

Maybe that "education" will be superior. Norm Matloff has reported that it ain't necessarily "education;" in fact, it's superior forgeries of 'college degrees' which creates the impression...

"China today is much more capitalist than the U.S.," said John Rutledge, a former Reagan economic adviser who now advises China. Competition in China is robust to the point of cut-throat, and surveys show that nearly three-quarters of Chinese think that the free market is the best economic system -- a higher percentage than in the U.S

Kinda depends on how you define "free market," no?

If "free market" includes the short-list (above) of abuse and frauds--or, more accurately, if money is the highest and best object of life--then any country which applies constraints to its "free traders", by definition, is not "best."

Here, we have such things as Fair Labor Standards, safety concerns, pensions, health benefits, ecological controls, and zero "export assistance," not to mention a less-manipulable currency.

We also have an Administration which can't seem to understand that wars don't have to be fought with M-16's and AK-47's--and that a country can lose a war without a shot being fired.