Think about this when you shop WalMart

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Chinese dissident on trial for essays. (click)

Are these the people you want to sell the world to for the price of a cheap TV?

Your children will curse you...

What does this have to do with walmart

It's a stretch, but I think he's implying that by shopping at Walmart, you support the chinese government who is getting payed for letting it operate in their low-tax grounds and who provides the cheap workforce at the loss of democracy and human rights. <.<

You don't support the chinese government by shopping at walmart lol. They're a U.S. based monopoly.

Are people in China better off than people in North Korea? Personally, I prefer my oppressed Asians to at least be fed and clothed, so I'll continue to buy Chinese goods guilt free.

It's no stretch. WalMart funnels 100s of billions of dollars to the Chinese thugocracy every year.

The Chinese use this money to repress their people and buy things like anti-satellite missiles and aircraft carriers.

The repression of 1.5 billion humans is a small price to pay for cheap consumer goods.

...not to mention the hollowing out of our own economy.

Do you have any hard evidence?

That's very forward thinking. In a few years maybe you'll get a pat on the head and a bowl of rice when they're running things here.

China lacks the military superpower to even hope of invading America.

Evidence for what?

WalMart sources nearly everything from Asia, and about 80% from China.

You can google pictures of China's new Aircraft carrier.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/70474.html

Try five minutes with a search engine.

or start here...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline ... china.html

China fields the biggest army in the world. They could literally take one to one losses, commit genocide and not even break a sweat.

Oh, I almost forgot about this...

Chinese nukes (click)



PS

Jokes with Dox aside, I'm not saying they are going to invade, but if they did no one could stop them.

Sure we could blow up the world, but we could not stop them with conventional force. And the irony is, all that new military hardware was bought by American wealth.

Why would they do anything to harm their biggest customer? Taking aside the question of why, the how is still tricky for them, as millions of soldiers cannot simply cross the Pacific on rafts, and we have ways of dealing with their numerical superiority in a self preservation situation. I doubt it would even come to nukes or germs or poison though, you simply can't move that many people in force without being observed, and if there's on thing the US is still the best in the world at it's efficient, remote killing.

Regimes like China are not defeated on the battlefield or through isolation, but by engaging their people and showing them that something better exists, that what they have isn't what they have to settle for. That's why the Chinese government is so fanatical about information control, they're terrified of their people rising against them, but their position is untenable if they also need to engage economically with freer nations.

But it does have the economic power to practically "buy out" America bit by bit via the growing national debt and borrowing from China to avert default.

Why would they do anything to harm their biggest customer? Taking aside the question of why, the how is still tricky for them, as millions of soldiers cannot simply cross the Pacific on rafts, and we have ways of dealing with their numerical superiority in a self preservation situation. I doubt it would even come to nukes or germs or poison though, you simply can't move that many people in force without being observed, and if there's on thing the US is still the best in the world at it's efficient, remote killing.

Regimes like China are not defeated on the battlefield or through isolation, but by engaging their people and showing them that something better exists, that what they have isn't what they have to settle for. That's why the Chinese government is so fanatical about information control, they're terrified of their people rising against them, but their position is untenable if they also need to engage economically with freer nations.

How long do you think we can maintain our position as number one customer? We bleed out more than $270 billion in American wealth to China via trade every year. We import sophisticated consumer electronics and export cardboard and scrap metal. That is not a sustainable model. What happens when we are no longer a valuable trading partner? What happens when our only value is in labor and land?

The Chinese are also fanatical about KILLING people who cause problems and don't go along with their program. The Chines position is perfectly tenable as long as they are being funded by the west and they're willing to ruthlessly suppress any dissent.

...and that's the whole point of this thread. The Chinese people already know that something better exists. The government is about to jail a guy (or worse), simply because he made some posts on the internet ABOUT WANTING SOMETHING BETTER.

There will not be a "Chinese Spring." There's sure to be another massacre like the one in 1989 in Tiananmen Square, but no Chinese Spring....

But what do we care? The death of a Chinese peasant or a 1000 or 10,000 Chinese peasants is nothing compared to the tragedy of higher consumer costs or slimmer corporate profit margins.

If we did care, we might insist that the Chinese make political reforms and have some slight regard for the human rights of their own citizens if they want to continue trading with us...


Edit: damn auto correct!

Last edited by GoonSquad on 23 Dec 2011, 4:22 am, edited 1 time in total.

Not understanding economics makes you wrong,

Before China the Confederate States of America provided us with cheap labor.