Reply #96: China's power is mostly potential,

[K-W]

which explains why it has taken this long for it to finally be able to demand seats at the table.

Free trade? What is free trade? Both the US and China have a complex set of trade agreements and regulations. Neither nation has left its economy bare, each protects key markets and key assets from the other and ensures that trade flows in particular ways.

We will be doing a great deal of exploitation of the Chinese exactly because thier unemployment is so low. They are a huge pool of extremeley cheap labor and they will be put to work at the lowest possible wages and they will exploited because they cannot demand more for themselves.

Yes, there is plenty of capital flowing into the pockets of the gatekeepers and owners in China, but none to the people. If the wealth flowed to the people they wouldnt have a 25% unemployment rate and they wouldnt work for peanuts and it wouldnt be profitable to invest in chinese labor anymore. Maybe then working Americans will have suffered enough to depress the wages here and we can have manufacturing jobs again.

The Chinese government wants exactly what the US government does, it wants money for the elites in society that pull its strings it may call this free trade like the US does, but there is nothing particularly free about it.

Of course the exploitation is done by the chinese government, they are getting a cut of the profits to be made in exploiting their own poor citizens.

As far as the US debt to China, if you really think the most powerful nation in the world signed a sucker deal with china, I have a bridge to sell you. China, as a prelude to allowing foriegn firms to extract profit from its resources has extended a generous line of credit to the United States which the United States has used largely to make rich richer boost corporations and engage in expansionist foriegn policy.

When its time to pay the loans it will provide a great execuse to wipe out any social programs that remain in the United States and place the debt on the backs of the US Middle and Working Classes. Meanwhile much of that money that goes back into the Chinese economy will come right back into US corporations who are invested in China.