China is stockpiling – we must do the same
thetimes.com"it is spending about $700 billion"
Where is the number from? Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates China's military expenditure in 2022 to be $292.0 billion, trailing $877.0 billion of US. (source: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_China))
There are not a lot more numbers (let alone numbers with sources) in the article. China has a lot of EV batteries because it is leading in promoting EV usage. It stockpiles a lot of agricultural products because, well, there are a lot of mouths to feed.
Once you realize the goal of these articles is to funnel US money into defense spending, they make a lot more sense.
I think the author genuinely thinks that China plans to invade Taiwan in 2027 (since they’ve said that) and if so the current massive buildup in commodities stocks are preparation for the invasion.
There's an interesting good faith discussion in handicapping that possibility. It sounds crazy, but so did Ukraine, and Xi has done some crazy stuff lately.
I'm saying that articles like this aren't in good faith. More fear = more funding. It doesn't matter what the author believes, they can always find a different author.
The $700bn seems to be adjusted for power purchase parity.
Places like China and India etc have huge human resources and will inevitably [1] catch up the West in terms of economic power.
We have two broad choices
- brutally suppress development in these countries to remain 'top dog' or
- continue to build those international structures that were founded after the second world war - like the UN, that were designed to stop a repeat of WWII.
I fear the current approach of unpicking international norms and constraints in order to be able to do more of option 1 is leading us to WWWIII, not protecting us from it.
[1] If we don't take option 1 above.
Seems like you are presenting a false choice. China has clearly stated its intention to compete and overtake the US as a core power. If the US is able to build and maintain strategic partnerships and military deterrence then that ascension of China would be less risky. I disagree with your whole premise of competition as “brutal suppression”. The most likely outcome of the trade war is that China will eventually have its own chip industries that are on par or more advanced then the US.
Obviously there are ways to muddle through the middle.
However let's be clear there are hawks that see war as a legitimate tool, and they are the people that are trying to undermine international mechanisms that shackle the unilateral action of states - because they want to use that freedom.
Nothing wrong with staying strong - though it can create fear if you don't also talk - and indeed you could argue that's the approach China is taking - it's not been involved in countless foreign wars like the US over the last few decades, but it has been building capability - but wouldn't you given the aggressive behaviour of the US?
The question is - is the solution further escalation or some descalation?
But fair would be to evaluate the success ratio of option 2 as well: look up "league of nations", "concert of Europe" and there have been several organizations before that ... They all are definitely structures founded to prevent war ... and now the consensus is mostly that they caused WW2 (they were the ones organizing the "Treaty of Versailles").
You mean the league of nations from which Germany and Japan withdrew from in 1933?
The notion that it is the UN and other such organisations that led to the period of (relative) peace in the 20th century post-WW2 is very far fetched. I would bet instead on these five horsemen of the peace, in order:
- Mutually Assured Destruction risks
- No unmanageable effects of CO2-induced climate disruption
- Plenty of available oil to burn, with high EROEI
- Plentiful resources and enough growth all-round
- The UN and other such organisations
You've made an important distinction between the real competition for resources - that's needed to survive, like water, food, energy - and simple nationalistic 'top dog' type competition.
And in reality, there is enough energy, food and water to go around - the only thing that creates conflict over those is excessive fear or greed. I'm arguing you need these international organisms to create peer shame on the greed, and reduce the fear through regular contact and peaceful ways to reduce conflict.
what about building robots?
US sanctions on PRC limit what PRC can buy now, may be confiscated pending US admin to prevent PRC spending later.
Meanwhile PRC trade surplus huge -> PRC USD reserves huge -> USD is strong and commodity prices not too whack due to global slow down.
Why not stock up now? Eventual global recovery could trigger expensive commodity super cycle. Would it be helpful in war, sure. But PRC needs to build up nukes first, going to take a few years for 50% parity.
When climate change people have to change, this means migrations, war for resources etc, ANYONE wise do it's best to be as resilient and resourceful as possible. Accidentally this is the opposite of modern nazi-management paradigm.
are you talking about hydra?
Oh no, I just consider how many resources we need to keep a certain standard of living, how many we are on Earth and how many start to be resourceful enough to look for a westerners standard of living while old infra start to fall apart, climate change and wars push people to migrate etc.
To allow any human living like we do in the west we need around 7 Earth, with only one inhabited, to have enough resources. Many live in big cities, with aging infra, we can't re-build in place, exposed more and more to various weather issues, to migrate they'll need new infra and an industrial system to build them and so on.
Most people do not realize but in the world we witness two evolutionary path: some (mostly from middle/middle-high classes) try/have left the city to being able to build new homes in places where today it's good to be for climate, hydro-geological stability, accessibility etc (just as a stupid example in the past we have chose many valley bottoms because even if sometimes there were floods there is also water, nowadays with pumped aqueduct we have no reasons to be there in less nice climate and under flood risks), actually implementing the green new deal. Others, essentially the world ruling classes in their respective countries are experimenting new smart cities, from Indonesia, try and failing to rebuild a sinking and unlivable Jakarta deep in the country, in altitude, to various IMF-founded states with Arkadag, Innopolis, Neom, Prospera, India with the government 100-smart cities projects and so on. Evidently ignoring the old Fordlandia lessons and the present Chinese ghost cities one.
The others sleep in the old settlements witnessing their slow degradation, thinking the first cohort as strange rich nerds who want to be kids for life, and ignoring the ruling class projects classify as sci-fi not so real narrative. Ruling class know that and decide to tell anyone how nice is not owning anything, so they could a day force people without anything in their dream prisons named smart cities, while some understand the move and also understand that there are not enough resources to build smart cities anyway so... Anyone who think expect the next world war for resources advancing with their own agenda.
This guy misses the point (although he is right we should be stockpiling munitions and a bunch of other strategic things). China has to stockpile because they are net importers of almost all raw resources and a decently long list of countries can field a naval force strong enough to, for example, block the strait of malacca which would hobble them in months, not years. There's no equivalent for America on everything (There are pain points like semiconductors but they are pain points for everyone, not just america. The big ticket items (food and energy) can be handled internally at this point).
China is accumulating commodities that will make its currency a dominating one in the global reserve currency space. It's a long term play, and I don't believe it has anything to do with Trump or Taiwan.
So, China which refuses to acknowledge that Taiwan is a country, and which has informed its military to prepare all options for reunification by 2027… are you predicting that they will NOT invade Taiwan? And how much money would you like to put down on your prediction?
Oh I am not claiming that China will not invade Taiwan, only that stockpiling commodities has a simpler explanation which I elucidated.
Regarding Taiwan, China has been running simulations. Recently the US introduced a new aerial weapon to destroy Chinese naval ships, so I would say that the results of China's simulations are not looking too promising for China at this time, but things change.
This opinion piece is so loaded with fear mongering, divisiveness and subtle suggestions of "faits accomplis", that I can't read it without propaganda alarms sounding everywhere
Yes - and mostly completely negated by de-emphasizing the very misnamed "green" agenda.
have you consider a daily meditation practice in place of reading such posts?
Feels like people are starting to realize just how inflated the whole US/China rivalry is: it doesn't really work if you already know how co-dependent and intertwined our economies are.
Yeah, I know these types of articles are just kickbacks to the DoD, they'll always exist. It just seems like nobody actually cares anymore, when it used to be that at least a few people cared.
So engage in a resource war and anything else really than putting any effort in stopping Trump. Got it.