[Sixstrings]

The Case for Swapping Roles With China

In “Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China,” Mr. Roach asserts that it’s time for the two nations to switch identities: that the United States should change its emphasis from consuming to producing, and that China should do the opposite.

If China is to build a consumer society and find jobs for millions of peasants flooding into cities looking for work, it must create a robust services sector. The trick for the United States is to build its exports by helping China meet that need, exploiting American expertise in everything from running retail chains to overnight delivery to professional services.

He says China can probably pull it off — its consumerist goals are already built into its Five-Year Plan. But he wonders, without offering much of a blueprint, whether the American people and their elected leaders can stomach the sacrifices of saving rather than consuming.

Mr. Roach offers an evenhanded, thorough response to the anti-China potshots from Democrats and Republicans alike. It is surprising, though, how matter-of-factly he seems to accept that America is on a downhill slope. In the fresh relationship that he sketches for the two world powers, China is the mature senior partner and America its problematic, less-reliable junior.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/business/the-case-for-swapping-roles-with-china.html?_r=0

Hm.. according to the article, the author says the US can increase its exports to China by helping China grow its consumer sector. So what the heck does that mean. That's one job for one consultant. That's not a real export, not one that will employ vast numbers of Americans, anyhow.

Currently the US imports 4 times as much from China as we export back. And a lot of those exports are agricultural / raw materials.

It's an interesting concept -- China and the US flipping roles. China being the "senior partner" and America "its problematic, less-reliable junior." Lovely.

Is it realistic that the US could ever become a net exporter to China? How poor would we have to get, and how much of a wealthy middle class would China need, for that new arrangement?

Personally I think it's drivel. This book isn't talking about anything that's going to ever employ millions of Americans, unless we're all a bunch of peasants worse off than Chinese peasants. It's fantasy that millions would ever work in consulting jobs in China, teaching them how to do a service sector.

The book doesn't even mention the automation problem. Even if we get manufacturing back and start exporting to China, it's mostly robots anyhow.

What do y'all think of this? US and China "swapping roles?" We toiling in iPhone sweatshops and saving, and they consuming?

Or is it possible that China could get so big, the US could do okay as a satellite raw materials nation -- as Australia does?

[Plantagenet]

It's an interesting concept -- China and the US flipping roles. China being the "senior partner" and America "its problematic, less-reliable junior." Lovely.

Is it realistic that the US could ever become a net exporter to China? How poor would we have to get, and how much of a wealthy middle class would China need, for that new arrangement?

Personally I think it's drivel.

I agree. The US is drowning in debt and on a downward path. There is little chance of stopping the US slide without radical changes to the US welfare state---which ain't gonna happen.

China has absolutely no need to import anything from the US (other than technology that they can copy). When China talks about consuming more, they mean consuming more of what China itself produces.

[rollin]

So America got more like Russia, now it will get more like China?
China has absolutely nothing to offer America. If we go the route of China it would be a terrible mistake from which we will never recover. Warping US society even further in the wrong direction would cripple the chances for the world and set the stage for major collapses.

The book sounds like another treatise made in a vacuum.

[Quinny]

Unlike hanging onto the coat-tails to climb the greasy pole, I suppose this is more like hanging onto the coat-tails to prevent the fall into the abyss!

[americandream]

So essentially, this idiot is suggesting that investors earning 100 on the dollar should take a haircut for what....to help the extension of consumerism (an inevitable) to China!

[Sixstrings]

So essentially, this idiot is suggesting that investors earning 100 on the dollar should take a haircut for what....to help the extension of consumerism (an inevitable) to China!

AD, I know your views by now, so what do you think of this Yale thinktank worldview?

They really do want to see China become a 1980s consumerist American Dream, and the rest of the developing world too, but this time it's not a few hundred million Americans but many billions.

There's a article on the front page of peakoil.com talking about 4.5 billion in the developing world coming up to middle class standards.

Middle-class consumers to increase 4.8b by 2030

Middle-class consumers will increase to 4.8 billion by 2030 and 95% of them will be from developing countries, said United Kingdom Foreign Secretary's special representative on climate change

I'm starting to see your point. 4.8 billion people living the American Dream, AC on in the car with the windows rolled down, would fry the planet.

Personally.. as a humanist I can't begrudge a Chinese or Russian or Brazilian having a better life. Also they come up with cool new things that I like too, that wouldn't have happened if a Mexican remained a dirt poor farmer and never got a chance to be a software engineer.

But.. you are right AD, the planet can't take too many billions living the good life. What can be done about it? Nothing.

I'm really on the fence in three different ways with this globalism:

* the climate change is a problem
* I sure as hell don't want to see MY country become dirt poor and servicing the Chinese consumer, and China the new superpower in the world
* globalism has hollowed out America
* yet, I don't want to be a jingo imperialist jerk either; the rest of the world deserves a shot too -- a Ukrainian getting a job and buying a car. I have to admit too in this post-american age, the rising developing nations are coming up with some things I really enjoy in my life. I fricikin' LOVE kerbal space program (space nerd game). That came out of Mexico, of all places. If NAFTA in any way led to a chain of events to make that possible then I don't care how many jobs we lost over it.

My point with the above is that I'm torn with my views. I'm an American first, but a progressive too and like to see cool new things that rising foreign cultures may come up with. I'm interested in the world. Innovation is good. People in Brazil and Ukraine have a right to some American Dream too. Yet the planet can't take it. And I don't want to see my American town become worse than a Brazilian slum, while Brazil rises. I'm torn.

[americandream]

@ six

He's stating the obvious but from a nationalist point of view to investors who think internationally and over something which will happen anyways!! And he gets paid for this.

[radon1]

What do y'all think of this? US and China "swapping roles?" We toiling in iPhone sweatshops and saving, and they consuming?

Yes, Six. Don't you want to be a "normal" country - like Poland, for example.

[Sixstrings]

Yes, Six. Don't you want to be a "normal" country - like Poland, for example.

Poland was starting from nowhere to go but UP. The jobs coming in really did help them. Poles are doing as well or better than the average Russian. Whereas Ukrainians are not, they've been stuck at the bottom as poorest in Europe -- that means a gold mine for them if they can get trade deals. Cheapest labor will attract jobs in, and those jobs lift people up, just like it did in Poland.

But the US serving China? What on earth would that look like?

That's the topic of this thread. With the cost of living over here, Americans can't get any poorer than we already are (some of us) so I guess it may work out? If some factory jobs come back? Assuming Repubs don't abolish the minimum wage and plunge the country into Chinese peasant status.

It's hard to figure out. China is on the rise, but most Chinese are very poor. But with 1.3 billion people maybe they could get a middle class population as big as the whole US pop. China does like European imports. They like Western goods.

So maybe my Poland argument would work for here too, fine bring some factory jobs back and we can sell to China. The thought is certainly queasy though, that China *really will* replace the USA. With a bigger middle class with more money than we have.

One thing I don't like for sure are the Chinese buying all the pig farms and that's why bacon costs me a fortune at the supermarket. The South has enough hog farms already. So what are we going to do, be covered in pig farms to feed China? I'd rather see that business go to Russia, if you guys would take it, I don't see why my country is the only place that can raise hogs. Why did they have to go and buy Smithfield Ham. Grrr...

I always knew there was a reason bacon keeps costing so much..

Bad news for bacon lovers: China's masses hunger for U.S. pork
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/30/news/la-ol-chinese-buy-american-pork-producer-20130530

And apparently the Chinese are burning down the Amazon jungle for hog feed:

The Bacon Uprising: How China's Top-Secret Strategic Pork Reserve Is Burning Down The Amazon
http://www.fastcoexist.com/1678261/the-bacon-uprising-how-chinas-top-secret-strategic-pork-reserve-is-burning-down-the-amazon

I guess the Chinese want to consume Siberia, next, assuming y'all in Russia oblige them.