Quote:
Originally Posted by fiddler
Of course it goes both ways. Economically it would be devastating on both sides. China owns roughly 1.3 trillion of the US's debt, which is not as massively devastating when considered that we owe 6 trillion to ourselves. On the flip side of the same coin, China owes the US roughly 1 trillion. Forbes estimates that China's economy is 175% dependent on ours.
The economic devastation is the main reason that war with China is basically the US military's biggest nightmare. The secondary concern is the massive amount of people that China has. Due to their gov't style, they could just conscript everybody into service. Of course, they wouldn't have anything to pay the soldiers. |
honestly.. when you look at things like the amount of US debt that china owns... you can come to some misleading conclusions. like that china has the money and we don't so they lend it to us. in reality the US in the position to ask for credit on an international basis because the world economy runs in large part on the basis of the US petrol dollar. so the US can say to china hey lets have some credit and china considers this a worthwile investment, because their entire economic infrastructure is based primarily on international trade and largely on trade with the US. so their current economy is literally dependent on the continuing prosperity of the american economy. because we are their consumer base.
as for it being a two- way street.. it might be, but there are more lanes going one way than the other. the US economy benefits from outsourced cheap labor abroad and china is the perfect candidate to fill that role. likewise, the chinese economy benefits from exporting goods to a rich economy, and the US is the perfect candidate to fill that role. however, china isn't the only possible candidate for outsourced cheap labor. they have a lot of potential competition throughout the developing world. on the other hand... while there are other prominent markets to sell their goods to like europe and russia and south america and such, china literally couldn't survive without doing business with the united states.
the US would certainly take a hit as well. the world economy would probably take a hit as a result. but i would wager the US could manage such a hit much better than china could. my guess would be that their civilization would most likely literally collapse, and we'd either see some new revolution to take out the old regime and try to keep china together under a new order or we'd see the country balkanize into several different territories.