[LINK] OT Chinese Ghost cities and us

[Rachel Polanskis]

On 21/08/2011, at 10:50, Kim Holburn <kim at holburn.net> wrote:

> I've been reading about and watching on TV these Chinese ghost cities 
> http://www.reddit.com/search?q=china+ghost+town
> but hadn't fully connected the dots until this week when someone was talking about the possibility of a second and more serious USFC when the US wouldn't have the spare cash to provide social security to its large companies.  
> 
> China (and we) have weathered the first USFC or GFC if you like by China creating its own internal markets.  One of the ways they've done that has been by building these enormous ghost cities.  If the US and the EU really go into recession then that may not continue to work for them both because the cities are not being used and because they probably don't have enough funds to continue to build them.  If other countries are not buying their exports well, they won't need the resources and that's where it will start to affect us.  
> 
> Disclaimer: IANAE...
> 
> 
> -- 
> Kim Holburn
> IT Network & Security Consultant
> T: +61 2 61402408  M: +61 404072753
> mailto:kim at holburn.net  aim://kimholburn
> skype://kholburn - PGP Public Key on request 
> 
> Sent from my steam driven difference engine

That is where my concept of the Shenzen Cruise Missile Factory comes in.  
China has just built an aircraft carrier,  which is a bit of a game changer in global strategy.
They intend to build 5 more.   They have the means to switch production to military capability,
using technology insourced from production contracts that currently make the stuff we use to type email like this.   

America is now at its strategic nadir for a long time.  It is unpopular throughout its reach 
and owes a huge amount of money to China.   America has strategic assets that run from 
Diego Garcia in the southern Indian Ocean, to Guam, American Samoa, Hawaii even and so on.  

China will eventually have to stop building ghost cities when they suddenly have to support
a huge bubble in the form of an emerging middle class.   These people will expect more
and want to invest more in themselves, than the common good aka the party.   
Resources will still need to come in and there will be inflation. China will become a superpower as their growth expands to accomodate the new economy.

They will want to extend their reach, so will come to a deal with America is struck, that sees 
trillions of dollars in debt vaporised (otherwise there would be a flood of cash on the market,
leading to its own problems) and China will suddenly find itself in ownership of the Monopoly cards for the shipping lanes of the South China Sea, the Phillipines, Malaysia and so on.
Taiwan may also perhaps become part of the deal.    

Those 6 aircraft carriers will be quite useful as Chinese regional trade goes from outpost to 
globalised base in the regions of the pacific formerly oversighted by the US.   North Korea
will become a Chinese state after an intervention style exercise in strategic muscle. 

The US aligned Asian states, such as South Korea, Japan, and other directed democracies
such as Malaysia, Philppines, etc will have to make some dire decisions, as their control
will be diminshed by Chinese interests in shipping, between China and the West.

Australia is right on the edge of these shipping lanes.   We have invested a lot of regional
control but since the 1970's it has diminished a lot.  I foresee a divided Pacific region,
where Western influence is greatly diminshed.    China will control the shipping lanes
and therefore the tariffs on oil and other products, in and out of the West.  The rest of us
will have to adjust Globalisation to take into account this new reality...

All of the above would make a good speculative fiction story, so IANAE either....


rachel

--
rachel polanskis 
<r.polanskis at uws.edu.au> 
<grove at zeta.org.au>