Trump to China : Here, take over PacRim, it's yours.

[cytg111]

So. The US is pulling a Brexit? Amexit?

 

[Thump553]

You can blame it on Trump, but really he was just responding to what a lot of Americans wanted.

So many people lament the loss of the US influence in the world, but somehow don't realize that things like TPP are necessary to maintain it. They think it's about trade and only trade.

I think you hit the point right on the head. Trump latched onto the anti-TPP agenda because he saw votes there and that's true, but it's extremely short term thinking. Trump backers claim his main positive point is that he is a brilliant and tough negotiator.

Personally I just don't see the positive aspects of intentionally accelerating USA's decline as the world's leading superpower when that decline could have been arrested, even reversed.

 

[norseamd]

http://thebricspost.com/china-proposes-brics-free-trade-area/#.WDbVXhmvDqA

They have been working on a free trade deal. Wonder if they'll just roll it all into one to replace TPP.

You have to look at long term implications. China is not exacly sitting still. They are the first ones to go on human clinical trial with CRISPR. Given their laxer rules (what rules) they'll make good advance on gene therapy.

Meanwhile Hollywood already has a horror movie in production about CRISPR.

Right, but BRICS isnt some unified bloc. Its a few rising nations & and an old superpower that are occasionally cooperating with each other.

What you need to realize to understand BRICS is the long history of Indian-Chinese relations, and why those 2 countries are in a grouping together, and because of their relationship just exactly what this grouping means and how much cooperation there really is.

 

[sdifox]

Right, but BRICS isnt some unified bloc. Its a few rising nations & and an old superpower that are occasionally cooperating with each other.

What you need to realize to understand BRICS is the long history of Indian-Chinese relations, and why those 2 countries are in a grouping together, and because of their relationship just exactly what this grouping means and how much cooperation there really is.

But they share a common foe, USA. That is what keeps them together.

 

[norseamd]

But they share a common foe, USA. That is what keeps them together.

I take it you havent been following American-Indian relations very closely. There is a common foe, but it isnt America.

 

[Mai72]

If Western consumers (US, EU, others) are gone, commie china is dead meat because they have no one to buy their junks. Let them deal with a few hundred million unemployed chinese. Not a pretty picture.

China isn't stupid. They know that they can't fly this ship forever.

They're making investments in other parts of the world.

 

[norseamd]

If Western consumers (US, EU, others) are gone, commie china is dead meat because they have no one to buy their junks. Let them deal with a few hundred million unemployed chinese. Not a pretty picture.

You really have never left the South now have you?

 

[Triloby]

I take it you havent been following American-Indian relations very closely. There is a common foe, but it isnt America.

India-China relations are good, but they aren't exactly as rosy as some people make them out to be. Chief among them are the border disputes going on between those two nations. Their border disputes have been going on since the 1800's, and it doesn't look like they'll be resolved anytime soon. Mind you, their border disputes are nowhere near as bad today compared to what happened in 1962. Then there's the issue of Pakistan receiving economic support from China (and probably Russia), which worries India quite a bit.

 

[norseamd]

India-China relations are good, but they aren't exactly as rosy as some people make them out to be. Chief among them are the border disputes going on between those two nations. Their border disputes have been going on since the 1800's, and it doesn't look like they'll be resolved anytime soon. Mind you, their border disputes are nowhere near as bad today compared to what happened in 1962. Then there's the issue of Pakistan receiving economic support from China (and probably Russia), which worries India quite a bit.

Its actually a little more harsh than that.

China and Pakistan have been each others best allys for life for decades by now. Obviously the relationship is more favorable to China than the other way around, but both sides benefit, or at least both sides gain advantages against India from the alliance.

And there is a very important reality known as the String of Pearls.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_of_Pearls_(Indian_Ocean)

Of course, there are also the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Island Chains.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_Chain_Strategy

 

[Triloby]

Its actually a little more harsh than that.

China and Pakistan have been each others best allys for life for decades by now. Obviously the relationship is more favorable to China than the other way around, but both sides benefit, or at least both sides gain advantages against India from the alliance.

And there is a very important reality known as the String of Pearls.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_of_Pearls_(Indian_Ocean)

Of course, there are also the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Island Chains.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_Chain_Strategy

I'm not really that surprised that China and Pakistan are on better terms with each other than India is with China. Considering how long both nations have been in conflict with each other, it would make sense for China to forge ties with one of India's closest rivals. If it helps to build China's economic and military power that way, then so be it.

 

[norseamd]

I'm not really that surprised that China and Pakistan are on better terms with each other than India is with China. Considering how long both nations have been in conflict with each other, it would make sense for China to forge ties with one of India's closest rivals. If it helps to build China's economic and military power that way, then so be it.

The China-Pakistan axis plays a central role in Asia's geopolitics, from India's rise to the prospects for a post-American Afghanistan, from the threat of nuclear terrorism to the continent's new map of mines, ports and pipelines. China is Pakistan's great economic hope and its most trusted military partner. Pakistan lies at the heart of China's geostrategic ambitions, from its take-off as a global naval power to its grand plans for a new silk road connecting the energy fields of the Middle East and the markets of Europe to the mega-cities of East Asia. Yet Pakistan is also the battleground for China's encounters with Islamic militancy, the country more than any other where China's rise has turned it into a target.

For decades, each side has been the other's only "all-weather friend", but the relationship is still little understood. The wildest claims about it are widely believed, while many of its most dramatic developments remain closely-guarded secrets. This book explains the ramifications of Sino-Pakistani ties for the West, for India, for Afghanistan, and for Asia as a whole. It tells the stories behind some of the relationship's most sensitive aspects, including Beijing's support for Pakistan's nuclear program, China's dealings with the Taliban, and the Chinese military's planning for crises in Pakistan. From China's involvement in South Asia's wars to the Obama administration's efforts to secure Chinese cooperation in stabilizing the region, it traces the dilemmas Beijing increasingly faces between pursuing its strategic rivalry with India and the United States, and the imperative to address a terrorist threat that has become one of the gravest dangers to China's internal stability.

WHEN China sent swift condolences to Pakistan after the slaughter of over 130 schoolchildren in a terror attack in Peshawar last month, it was more than a perfunctory gesture. The two countries have such a long-standing and harmonious relationship that both sides sometimes come close to believing the official mantra that the ties that bind them really are higher than the highest mountains.

Yet misgivings also abound, as Andrew Small, an Asia expert at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, points out in an impressive account of a little-understood friendship. China is growing increasingly squeamish about the dangers of having Islamist extremists just across the border. Chinese engineers working on aid projects in Pakistan have been killed by Pakistani extremists. In 2007 Chinese massage-parlour employees were held hostage by militants in Islamabad. The authorities in the capital do not do enough, the Chinese complain, to destroy Pakistani havens of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a Muslim separatist group drawn from the Uighur ethnic minority who live in China’s western Xinjiang region.

“China has a good understanding of almost everything in Pakistan, political, security or economic, that might affect the bilateral relationship, but there is one piece they just don’t get: Islam,” Mr Small quotes a Pakistani China specialist as saying. It was especially embarrassing to Pakistan that on the day the retiring head of the army, Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, paid his last visit to China in October 2013 a car with three Uighurs and packed with explosives burst into flames in Tiananmen Square. “The most damning narrative would be hard to shake off—that a Pakistan-based Uighur separatist group masterminded a successful suicide attack in the most visible location in China during the valedictory visit of Pakistan’s army chief,” Mr Small writes.

Still, if there were recriminations they were not made public. Indeed, as Mr Small argues, China’s ties with Pakistan, which were established during Mao’s rule and are based on shared hostility towards India, thrive on many common interests. A long history of secret deals between their two armies—overrides the problems with Islamic extremism.

Six years of research have enabled Mr Small to produce a detailed account of decades of close dealings between the two countries. In that time he won the confidence of many sources in the Chinese army, military intelligence and the security services. Their officials are as tight-lipped as the Pakistanis are garrulous. Yet he managed to loosen them up, at least enough.

Mr Small describes a friendship that is more enduring and has far better prospects than Pakistan’s up-and-down connection with America. The high points of that relationship—as when Pakistan facilitated the groundbreaking visit of Henry Kissinger to China in 1971 which led in turn to Richard Nixon’s historic trip to Beijing and later during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan—have long since passed.

China helped Pakistan acquire the nuclear bomb, and is Pakistan’s biggest supplier of military equipment. Now it is building two sizeable civilian nuclear reactors that should help ease the country’s chronic energy shortfall. As China expands its reach throughout Asia, Pakistan has become central to its plans for a network of ports, pipelines, roads and railways that will bring oil and gas from the Middle East. The Chinese government is offering tens of billions of dollars for Pakistani projects, Mr Small says. As America’s influence recedes, China is stepping in, though officials will doubtless keep a wary eye on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

Part of China’s justification for spending so much is to bring stability to Pakistan, an argument that the Obama administration has also used, though with little success. Mr Small seems to think the Chinese will have better luck. He may be too optimistic about their ability to achieve much, but given the feckless Pakistani governance that he so ably describes, he has every right at least to hope the Chinese will help restore some order to the chaos.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China–Pakistan_relations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China-Pakistan_Axis:_Asia's_New_Geopolitics

https://www.amazon.com/China-Pakistan-Axis-Asias-New-Geopolitics/dp/1849043418

http://www.economist.com/news/books...-little-known-friendship-geopolitical-friends

 

[michal1980]

for years the left has been crying that we stay out of the world. That we should not power play. Now trump might do so, and the left squeals like pigs.

 

[MrSquished]

Trumps biggest concerns as president are

a)his business empire and how to continue to enrich it
b)tax cuts on the wealthy
c)who the hell knows

 

[norseamd]

for years the left has been crying that we stay out of the world. That we should not power play. Now trump might do so, and the left squeals like pigs.

Except Trump isnt about staying out of countries we arent allied with, but not working with & protecting countries that are our allies.

 

[theeedude]

Well played, China, well played.
“If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.” -Sun Tzu

 

[norseamd]

Well played, China, well played.
“If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.” -Sun Tzu

Thats always been their strategy. They are not as rough and ignorant as the Russians, and they are more deliberate and long-term thinking than the Americans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_tactics

 

[Thump553]

for years the left has been crying that we stay out of the world. That we should not power play. Now trump might do so, and the left squeals like pigs.

I don't recall any fellow so-called leftists as being particularly isolationist, and further I think you are confusing opposition to military misadventures with diplomatic actions. Effective diplomacy is vital to the health of any country, and nearly any thinking person recognizes that regardless of their political ideology.

 

[agent00f]

I don't recall any fellow so-called leftists as being particularly isolationist, and further I think you are confusing opposition to military misadventures with diplomatic actions. Effective diplomacy is vital to the health of any country, and nearly any thinking person recognizes that regardless of their political ideology.

Dummies equate bombing shit to intl relations.

 

[michal1980]

I don't recall any fellow so-called leftists as being particularly isolationist, and further I think you are confusing opposition to military misadventures with diplomatic actions. Effective diplomacy is vital to the health of any country, and nearly any thinking person recognizes that regardless of their political ideology.

They are always isolations. The left is always lecturing us against medaling in other countries affairs.

 

[theeedude]

Thats always been their strategy. They are not as rough and ignorant as the Russians, and they are more deliberate and long-term thinking than the Americans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_tactics

Russia played American useful idiots to elect its preferred candidate pretty slickly this election. The problem for Russia is they are very tactical, and not strategic over the time scales that China is strategic over. China patiently seeks a long term stable equilibrium that is favorable to its goals. Russia seeks to score quick victories that often result in short term favorable but unstable situations which eventually resolve not in their favor.They got their own guy elected in Ukraine too, but long term it blew up in their face.

 

[Genx87]

With Trump working on scrapping TPP on his first day of office, many PacRim countries are looking to PRC's trade deal as an alternative. Just give US's influence in PacRim to PRC why don't you.

/n facepalm.

Yup this was one of my biggest facepalms of the election. And one I sided with Clinton. The TPP is in the United States best interest. But we had Drumpf on one side pandering his economic nationalism. And Bernie Bros on the other. Which filtered up to Clinton in the general. For the record if Clinton won, I dont think she backs out of TPP.

This economic nationalism will be bad for this country.

 

[agent00f]

Yup this was one of my biggest facepalms of the election. And one I sided with Clinton. The TPP is in the United States best interest. But we had Drumpf on one side pandering his economic nationalism. And Bernie Bros on the other. Which filtered up to Clinton in the general. For the record if Clinton won, I dont think she backs out of TPP.

This economic nationalism will be bad for this country.

Bad for some/most of this country, but not all. It's basically taxing everyone else for the benefit of rust belt types.

 

[norseamd]

Yup this was one of my biggest facepalms of the election. And one I sided with Clinton. The TPP is in the United States best interest. But we had Drumpf on one side pandering his economic nationalism. And Bernie Bros on the other. Which filtered up to Clinton in the general. For the record if Clinton won, I dont think she backs out of TPP.

This economic nationalism will be bad for this country.

Uh, yes, Hillary probably would have backed out of TPP, there is no way she could pass TPP without major political repercussions.

She probably would have accepted businesses and governments shadowy working on a successor deal in the background.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Uh, yes, Hillary probably would have backed out of TPP, there is no way she could pass TPP without major political repercussions.

She probably would have accepted businesses and governments shadowy working on a successor deal in the background.

Realistically here is what would have happened assuming Hillary won. TPP would be passed in the lame duck session by the smallest minority from people either leaving office or in unquestionably safe districts. Hillary would then just go along with it.

 

[norseamd]

Realistically here is what would have happened assuming Hillary won. TPP would be passed in the lame duck session by the smallest minority from people either leaving office or in unquestionably safe districts. Hillary would then just go along with it.

Doubt it. That would be a huge risk to her prospects for reelection.