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?