Did anyone else watch China Inside Out with Bob Woodruff on ABC last night? It was pretty interesting and a little bit scary.

China's pollution blowing over the Pacific and into our country concerns me. Their population growth will be their demise, eventually.

In the documentary, China's development today was compared to that of the US in the late 19th century, when our economic growth outpaced that of the United Kingdom. The difference that was cited is that because China has a much larger population than the US, the worldwide effects of this economic and consumption growth are going to be felt more widely.

Pollution and use of natural resources are two things that China is having to deal with right now. China is now buying billions of dollars of soybeans, primarily from Brazilian farms, in order to be able to raise livestock for meat. There is now a market for meat products in China that virtually didn't exist ten years ago, as much of the Chinese population has been transitioning from diets heavy in rice and grains to more Western style diets. Chinese companies are also investing a lot of money in Cambodia and other potential sources of cheap labor, as well as investing in African countries that have untapped petroleum resources. I think the figure given was that of the 52 African countries, China is investing in 46 of them.

What I find worrisome is that I don't think that any society, including China considers (or possibly can consider), the long-range impact of its growth. When I saw the footage of modern-day urban China and heard the descriptions of how life is changing there, I thought, "isn't this a lot like the United States in the 1950s?" In other words, here is a society that has become prosperous, and its citizens don't want the peasant lifestyle anymore; they want their meat, their cars, fancy clothes, and shiny new products for their homes. They worked really hard to get there, so can I blame them? However, as they pursue the new Chinese dream, they're creating pollution, generating trash, and using up natural resources at an escalating rate. The question does become whether China is large enough to hit a global "tipping point" of some kind in its use of resources and its production of waste; I think that only time will answer this question.

On the upside, I think that all of these international trading relations and international investments will help to promote peace in the near term.

Like I said, keeping our borders wide open is the only way the United States will remain a superpower.


BTW, China has a huge gap between the haves and have nots. 200 to 300 MILLION relatively poor Chinese citizens is nothing to scoff at.

Whether we like it or not, globalism is here. In watching that documentary, I was surprised to learn that even China is looking for places that it can outsource its labor to; this is why China is investing in Cambodia. Some older Cambodians who remember China's support of the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s hold some resentments, but the Chinese money is too good to pass up.

Another interesting piece of information in that documentary was that American consumers have saved approximately $600 billion by buying Chinese made products. One of the Chinese officials interviewed was upset by the common claim that Chinese industry has "stolen" American jobs, and in a way I have sympathy for him. Manufacturing has been moving over there because today it is more efficient to make stuff there. Maybe it is human nature that we like competition until somebody beats us.

China's demise might not stem from their population explosion over the last half century or so, but the fact that the last couple of generations the Chinese government has forcefully stemmed that growth.

What's going to result is a very rapidly aging population that will have to be taken care of, and nobody to replace them in factories and the like. The whole thing could collapse on them.

> What's going to result is a very rapidly aging population that will have to be taken care of, and
> nobody to replace them in factories and the like.

Although I don't remember it being explicitly stated in the documentary, this might be one of the other reasons that Chinese companies are putting money into industrializing Cambodia and similar countries. Will Cambodia and other newly-industrialized countries be able to pick up the slack for China as its population ages? I think that the next 30 years are going to be interesting (and risky).

Well, that would most certainly help Cambodia, and hurt China in the long run.

All of these free-trade deals are immense help to the lower-economic class country, and the only thing the larger economic nation gets is imported goods for cheaper. Much like what has happened in the United States in the last 25 years.

There are some things about globalization that don't compute for me:

1. It operates under the assumption that we can sustain the aggressive growth in transportation for core, necessary things.

2. Nations have less control over the standard of living their citizens have.

3. Multi-national interests can exploit differences in market rules set by various nations. (that's happening here, right now, BTW)

The sum of those is really being empowered to circumvent regulation, and not all regulation is a bad thing! We have governments to promote the greater good for the people. At least we Americans do. Others haven't entered into that social contract just yet, but that's their deal, not ours.

Getting cheaper goods, without innovation and job growth here, isn't promoting the greater good! What good is cheaper stuff, if there are not good paying jobs that make the cheaper stuff an advantage instead of a necessity?

Really, if this is to work where we get most common goods cheap from other nations wanting to grow and produce, we need to be moving to the next level doing things made possible by the underutilized workforce.

That way, as a nation we are adding value and the entire globe sees the benefit.

Frankly, that's cool, and a leadership position to take.

But, it just isn't happening right now. What is happening is that very large segments of the population are entrapped by the cheap goods, unable to build wealth. Not so good.

If we fix that, I'm cool with the rest of it, and those three factors don't matter so much. If we don't, or worse can't, then I'm not so hot on the idea of a truly global market because the market for our services will get devalued, making the whole deal not a net gain.