
The United States Will Miss China’s Money - paulpauper
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/08/19/the-united-states-will-miss-chinas-money/
======
nugget
Financial capital is so abundant that interest rates are headed to 0%. There
is already too much money chasing too few investment opportunities which leads
to severely mispriced valuations (e.g. WeWork) that are unsustainable and will
simply cause more systemic instability down the road. Why exactly do we need
more investment from China?

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blackflame7000
Yea I think the bigger issue is who's going to take China's money that they
manipulate?

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DeonPenny
Hopefully not the US anymore

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_iyig
Maybe university administrators will miss China’s money. Hopefully they’ll
stop looking the other way on plagiarism for the sake of keeping all-cash,
full-price tuition money flowing.

EDIT: downvotes, really? I saw this firsthand in college, and much ink has
been spilled on the matter in the press. It hurts not only the students who
cheat, but students from China who don't cheat but get tarnished by the
stereotype.

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/foreign-students-seen-
cheating-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/foreign-students-seen-cheating-
more-than-domestic-ones-1465140141)

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arzt
Why aren’t policy experts and the media asking what local/global benefit would
emerge from a democratic China? Why, given its past history promoting
democracy, isn’t the United States, advocating for regime change in China?

~~~
petermcneeley
The united states does not promote democracy for the simple reason that the US
is not a democracy and is foundationally opposed to demos.

The united states is a republic whos purpose (in contrast) is "protect the
minority of the opulent against the majority. "

As for externally the US does not have a track recorded of democracy
promotion. My primary source is of course Noam chomsky but you can find
research on this pretty much everywhere.

"While the U.S. claims to have a tradition of “promoting democracy” in Latin
America, justification for U.S. intervention has been questionable and
inconsistent. U.S. support for Latin American regimes has coincided with
favorable economic policies rather than with the strength of democracy within
a country"

[https://commons.emich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1147&c...](https://commons.emich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1147&context=honors)

EDIT: clarification.

~~~
defertoreptar
> The united states is a republic whos purpose is "protect the minority of the
> opulent against the majority. "

It's true that James Madison was deeply concerned with a tyranny of the
majority supplanting core constitutional rights, a flaw in democracy first
identified by Aristotle.

> In a letter to Thomas Jefferson in October 1788 James Madison expresses
> lukewarm support for the idea of a bill of rights since “repeated violations
> of these parchment barriers have been committed by overbearing majorities in
> every State.”

> [...]

> He continues to believe that the real threat to liberty will come from “the
> majority of the Community” and not from “acts of Government”.

To say that the United State's _purpose_ is to protect the minority is way off
base. After all, the country was born as an opposition to the idea of people
not being represented by its government and instead at the behest of a very
small minority of royalty and aristocrats.

~~~
petermcneeley
Chomsky covers your exact comment quite thoroughly here
[https://youtu.be/6a1yf_PA5Bs?t=165](https://youtu.be/6a1yf_PA5Bs?t=165)

~~~
defertoreptar
So instead of summarizing it and putting it into the context of this
discussion and how it might refute my point, you're just going to link to it
as though to say "look Chompsky said something about this therefore I'm
right"?

~~~
petermcneeley
Im not "right" and Im not refuting your "point". This isnt reddit. This is HN
on a Saturday; a single comment can result in a 20 min video from 1997 from
some old man comparing the views of people that have been dead for hundreds of
years.

~~~
defertoreptar
Your comment was "Chomsky covers your exact comment quite thoroughly here." Is
it really that far a reach for someone to see the attached video as a low
effort stand-in for their argument given that comment?

If you just wanted to post a Chomsky interview video, I of course have no
issue with that.

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api
I won't miss them bidding up house prices by buying them over asking and then
letting them sit or being absentee landlords.

Maybe "property speculators will miss China's money."

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
People might say the cost of durable goods will go up to the trade war, which
makes sense and I agree with, but when you think about your budget, housing
costs far more.

Foreign investment in our property drives up prices by increasing demand. If
you forego the foreign investment so home prices are lower, but accept higher
prices on durable goods, you'd come out ahead. Housing is the #1 expense for
nearly all family budgets.

~~~
raincom
Sadly, CPI doesn't include housing and medical expenses.

~~~
api
Which makes it a fake statistic.

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DeonPenny
I like how the point of the article is that the lack of chinese investment
weakens the US soft power but the trade war which is the US first example of
using such power is heralded as bad. We haven't convinced them to become a
democracy, I haven't convinced them to stop attacking other democracies
(Taiwan, HK, Japan, Norway), we haven't even gotten them to agree to WTO rules
they said they'd comply with.

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jacknews
I think the logic is flawed in this piece

The Chinese had invested in US real-estate in order to move their cash to a
"safer" jurisdiction, and China had bought US companies in order to acquire
expertise, often to be transferred back to China.

Neither afford much leverage for the US. Real-estate is largely individuals,
and companies are better off not drained of their IP.

I don't know about the quality of Chinese tourists to the US, but if it's as
elsewhere, this is also not too much of a loss.

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_edo
> Trump’s unilateral, preemptive trade war...

Is it preemptive? I've been hearing about their intellectual property theft
issues for over 15 years.

~~~
whenchamenia
Yeah, it seems long overdue. Its easy to hate on the orange man, but this is
one of his most solid moves in office imho.

~~~
murphysbooks
I have always thought the way to go was to mimic their practices. If you have
a requirement to partner with a local company majority owner, so do we. If you
require IP transfer, so do we. I think this would be more strategic than a
broad tariff.

~~~
DeonPenny
Problem is they have very little IP. In their economy it's pretty much unwise
to invest in IP because someone will still it so why just make a price elastic
project instead of creating something new.

