It's Friday!! Let's go and talk in a Temple!

Winston, have you seen the documentary The China Hustle yet? It’s from 2017, produced here in the suburbs of Philly (Skippack, PA). It reveals the deep level of accounting fraud in the Chinese Miracle of the past decade, confirming much of what you and C-Milk observe first-hand.

Sean Wieland

That's not true. Expansionist countries that fixed problems at home, after consolidating gains do much better. Hell! Consider Post-60's Red-China for example! They were still busy wiping-away the blood from the Chinese Civil War, Tibet-Invasion, and the Cultural Revolution, when Mao reached out to the West, and was later poisoned by Deng Shao Peng ( :D ), who reaped all the benefits! But this was what made the unprecidented growth of Red-China! Nevermind the Treason of Bill Clinton signing-away all of our Industry! Too bad they just never enacted the reforms they really needed on such matter as: Civil, and Property Ownership Rights! They need the expansion now, because it HIDES... glaring faults within that the Red-Chinese REFUSE to have fixed, nor drawn attention towards!

From an economic perspective the pursuit of imperial goals may be a better way to enrich a country as opposed to fixing things internally. After all, imperial policy brings in raw materials and can increases the value of exports, by creating a larger market. On the other hand domestic investments may not be as efficient, for example fixing the road for the largely agrarian peasants is unlikely to increase their productivity much, and hence is unlikely to increase the GDP of a country o any great extent. Conversely, putting a similar amount of money into building a railroad in an overseas colony (or virtual colony) to reduce the cost and increase the speed of natural resource extraction in a different country, and decrease the shipping costs of finished materials to colony's market is more likely to significantly raise the imperial power's GDP. Of course this implies the imperial power is competent... At the end of the day, it probably doesn't matter. In China, or any other country that aspires to have a market economy, the decisions regarding resource allocation are unlikely to be controlled by the peasants, but rather by the central powers of the imperial seat. So, as long as the peasants are not so unhappy, or so empowered, as to be able to foment a successful revolution imperial policy will carry the day.

Harvey A. Pollack