This blog contains posts and comments written by students in Dr. Tufte's economics classes at Southern Utah University.
4/15/2009
Is China a threat?
Spurred by the time-deadline placed before me, I read an article in the New York Times about China expanding it's influence in Latin America. This article explained that China has negotiated deals with Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina, and Brazil, giving them large sums of money. This move either shows that China cares, or that they have a lot to gain by doing this. David Rothkopf is quoted in this article as saying, "This is how the balance of power shifts quietly during times of crisis." This comment sort of put me on the edge of my seat thinking that China is secretly taking over the world. Then i thought about it some more and realized that we owe China a lot of money so it's not like we aren't aware just how much influence China already has with us, and in the world in general.
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1 comment:
-1 on Jason for spelling errors.
I think he's right that this is standard operating procedure during crises.
The saving grace of all this is that it's just another form of government planning moving away from balanced growth.
We really don't need to be too worried about how China is investing their money outside their country. From our perspective, this indicates that they don't get as high returns inside their country. This is a good sign for us. Alternatively, if they are getting lower returns doing this, then they are wasting their money, and again it's a good thing.
Of course, the elephant in the room is that the U.S. does a lot more of this than China, and we pour a lot more money into agencies like the IMF that do it on our behalf. So, we're the bigger dummies.
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