Oddly enough. The biggest holder of our national debt isn't Japan or China I'm told. It's Americans. Actually pension funds who buy treasuries and unions and state govornments etc.

 Another 1/3 of the national debt is actually inter-govornmental borrowing etc. Money borrowed from a fund with a surplus.. ie- social security. To pay for a balance shortfall in say.. highway  construction funds.

But that reality wont get the talking heads on TV any ratings. So it's non-stop china china commie china. OMG!

Google may be pulling out of china for good april 10th

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=afs43GkjbRG4

"

A pullout by the U.S. company would mean it will probably be unable to return to the world’s biggest Internet market by users, Peter Lui, formerly the company’s financial controller for the Asia Pacific region, said in an interview.

The public manner in which Google announced its intention means it may have “burnt bridges and they’ve burnt the Google brand in China,” Lui, 45, said yesterday. “There is no way Google can ever come back.”"

yes, you are correct. majority of the debt is held by the public ( 8 tril to be exact)

but i think all the talking about china does have some merit in that china's policy may contribute to the loss of american jobs. remember what capitalism is about: competition. winners and losers. this century we will find out who will be the winner and loser

From economic perspective, haven't come across an article related to this. One of the main factors contributed to the current account deficit is the Americans's spending habits.

Though America dominance in world power and its international involvements in various things are frown upon on but I hope they will continue maintating that position or if not the EU. If China will ever become the world dominance likely there will be a castrophe.

REUTERS:

BEIJING (Reuters) - China should build the world's strongest military and move swiftly to topple the United States as the global "champion," a senior Chinese PLA officer says in a new book reflecting swelling nationalist ambitions.

The call for China to abandon modesty about its global goals and "sprint to become world number one" comes from a People's Liberation Army (PLA) Senior Colonel, Liu Mingfu, who warns that his nation's ascent will alarm Washington, risking war despite Beijing's hopes for a "peaceful rise."

"China's big goal in the 21st century is to become world number one, the top power," Liu writes in his newly published Chinese-language book, "The China Dream."

"If China in the 21st century cannot become world number one, cannot become the top power, then inevitably it will become a straggler that is cast aside," writes Liu, a professor at the elite National Defense University, which trains rising officers.

His 303-page book stands out for its boldness even in a recent chorus of strident Chinese voices demanding a hard shove back against Washington over trade, Tibet, human rights, and arms sales to Taiwan, the self-ruled island Beijing claims as its own.

"As long as China seeks to rise to become world number one ... then even if China is even more capitalist than the U.S., the U.S. will still be determined to contain it," writes Liu.

Rivalry between the two powers is a "competition to be the leading country, a conflict over who rises and falls to dominate the world," says Liu. "To save itself, to save the world, China must prepare to become the (world's) helmsman."

godaddy is joining force w/ google to defy china

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100324/wr_nm/us_china_usa_congress

I strongly disagree. Not with you but the general.

First: China is a long long way from being the global superpower the USA is.

2: We are there and have been and have the experience of the cold war under our belt. China has many many MAJOR hurdles to get over, some doubtful, before they can get there.

3: My main disagreement is in this past generations cold war zero sum worldview.. This batch of leaders will soon be gone. A much more globally intigrated generation wil be in charge long before China becomes a global peer to the USA.

I would say that a third way.. a 4th way a 5th...  is far more likely than the generals imagination of an "us or them" and only one can rule, mentality becomes our reality.

if they can build 2,000 skyscrappers in 10 years, they can build a navy that can rival us in 10 years. when china wants to produce anythign, they tend to mass produce. teach them how to build one air craft carrier and they will build 50 in 10 years no matter what the cost is.

as neil furguson would say, china does not need to be the world #1 military to topple us. they just need to be big enough to cause disruption. germany did not have the world #1 military but was able to conquered europe. it was the british that had the largest navy fleet and the most modern military.

while i dont think china will become like germany but i think they will go after taiwan and we will back down.

but i contend the US will still be the world #1 power in the 21st century.

i agree the major hurdles they have to overcome are quite big such as:

-better representation for the people if they ever want to be bigger (they're like a startup company right now, where USA is like a corporation)

-infrastructure like consumer credit agency

-healthcare system that is on par w/ the western world

-just judicial system where you can get appeals without being executed asap

more actvisits, dissidents, etc hacked by chinese gov (allegedly)

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010 by Jordan McCollum

Yahoo Hacked in China (Still Waiting for Other Shoe)

In January, Google reported a coordinated hack attack targeting Chinese human rights activists’ Gmail accounts. In response, Google (eventually) pulled their search engine from China.

And now the hackers are at it again. The Yahoo “e-mail accounts of more than a dozen rights activists, academics and journalists who cover China have been compromised by unknown intruders” last month, according to the New York Times. NYT reporter Andrew Jacobs, one of the targeted journalists, said the “hackers altered e-mail settings so that all correspondence was surreptitiously forwarded to another e-mail address.”

Several of the affected users received messages from Yahoo after problems accessing their accounts, according to the AP.

Yahoo hasn’t yet decided to respond, as Agence France Presse reports. Yesterday, the side stepped the news agency’s questions on the matter, only stating

Yahoo! condemns all cyberattacks regardless of origin or purpose. We are committed to protecting user security and privacy and we take appropriate action in the event of any kind of breach.

However, Yahoo doesn’t really have a whole of options. They left their Chinese business in 2005, selling their interests to Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba (which later had an IPO larger than Google’s). They still own 39% of Alibaba, but don’t have operational control of the company. They may be able to shut down their email offerings, which are routed through Chinese servers.

There’s no indication that these are the same hackers (or not), although the targets are substantially similar. Victims this time included “a law professor in the United States, an analyst who writes about China’s security apparatus and several print journalists based in Beijing and Taipei, the capital of Taiwan,” the NYT reports.

What do you think? Should Yahoo shut down its Chinese email?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/business/global/08rail.html?pagewanted=1&ref=business

China Again Hopes to Drive U.S. Rail Construction

BEIJING — Nearly 150 years after American railroad companies imported thousands of Chinese laborers to build rail lines across the West, China is poised once again to play a role in American rail construction. But this time it would be an entirely different role: supplying the technology and engineers to build high-speed rail lines.

Enlarge This Image

Zhong Nan/European Pressphoto Agency

Workers laying rail tracks in Nanjing, China. The Chinese government has signed agreements with California to help build rail lines in the state.

The Chinese government has signed cooperation agreements with the state of California and General Electric to help build such lines. The agreements, both of which are preliminary, show China’s desire to become a big exporter and licenser of bullet trains traveling 350 kilometers, or about 215 miles, an hour, an environmentally friendly technology in which China has raced past the United States in the past few years.

“We are the most advanced in many fields, and we are willing to share with the United States,” said Zheng Jian, the chief planner and director of high-speed rail at the Chinese Railroad Ministry.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California has closely followed progress in the discussions and hopes to return to China this year for talks with rail ministry officials, said David Crane, the governor’s special adviser for jobs and economic growth and a board member for the California High Speed Rail Authority. China is offering not just to build a railroad in California but to help finance its construction, and Chinese officials have already been shuttling from Beijing to Sacramento to make presentations, Mr. Crane said by telephone.

China is not the only country interested in selling high-speed rail equipment to the United States. Japan, Germany, South Korea, Spain, France and Italy have also approached the state of California.

The state’s high-speed rail authority has made no decisions on whose technology to choose. But Mr. Crane said that there were no apparent weaknesses in the Chinese offer and that Mr. Schwarzenegger particularly wanted to visit China this year for high-speed rail discussions.

Even if an agreement is reached for China to build and help bankroll a high-speed rail system in California, considerable obstacles would remain.

The rail ministry would face independent labor unions and democratically elected politicians, neither of which it has to deal with in China. The United States also has labor and immigration laws stricter than those in China.

In an interview lasting nearly two hours at the rail ministry’s monolithic headquarters in Beijing, Mr. Zheng said repeatedly that any Chinese bid would comply with all American laws and regulations.

China’s rail ministry has an international reputation for speed and low operating costs, and is opening 2,000 kilometers of high-speed rail routes this year alone. China is moving rapidly to connect almost all of its provincial capitals with bullet trains.

But while the ministry has brought costs down through enormous economies of scale, “buy American” pressures could make it hard for China to export the necessary equipment to the United States.

The rail ministry has concluded a framework agreement to license its technology to General Electric, which is a world leader in diesel locomotives but has little experience with the electric locomotives needed for very high speeds.

According to G.E., the agreement calls for at least 80 percent of the components of any locomotives and electronic train control gear to come from American suppliers. Labor-intensive final assembly would be done in the United States. China would license its technology and supply engineers and as much as 20 percent of the components.

State-owned Chinese equipment manufacturers initially licensed many of their designs over the past decade from Japan, Germany and France. While they have gone on to make many changes and innovations, Japanese executives in particular have grumbled that Chinese technology still resembles theirs, raising the possibility of legal challenges if any patents have been violated.

Mr. Zheng said all of the technology would be Chinese.

---

hehe the tide is turning, china sending their engineers to us.

but i like this comment

"Japanese executives in particular have grumbled that Chinese technology still resembles theirs, raising the possibility of legal challenges if any patents have been violated."

i welcome any infrastructure construction here in the US, especially a high speed train, even if they're build by the chinese (like 150  years ago). we need more and more. the traffic here in LA sucks ass.

Yahoo loses credebility when it volunteerily turned over its email user to the Chinese authority some years back. Its founder or co-founder is a chinese ethnic, I'll bet one my communist stars that Yahoo will suck it up. Google on the other hand rightfully deserves praise and respect for their business ethic. Unlike other big corporations who obidiently bend over.

Experts and critics pointed that 1 of the main reasons  of the US economy downfall is the over-consumption and financial greeds. Anyone who studies management or engineering related knows China is a nightmare when it comes to infringing intellectual properities, patents and so on; in other word they discouraged innovation and creativity and there is not alot anyone can do anything about it.

Why are bubbles so harmful? Because three dynamics are at work:

1) Taking advantage of most bubbles are a few insiders who know how to rob ignorant people. This redistribution aspect can haunt an economy for years after a big bubble bursts.

For example, most subprime mortgage brokers knew they were lending to people who could not repay. Wall Street traders who bought mortgages from these brokers and sold them in pools or CDOs knew the brokers were incentivized to sell poor quality stuff. But the traders didn't care because they received bonuses for selling the stuff to someone else. Fund managers who bought the CDOs probably knew they would go bad eventually. But they, too, decided to look toward annual bonuses for each year of performance.

The people who got hurt didn't even know what was coming because they were savers who put money in pension funds, bought insurance products, or invested in bond funds.

The reallocation game isn't restricted to the financial sector. Profits as a share of GDP from corporations – and not just the financial sector – reached historic highs during the bubble period, while relative wages slipped to all-time lows. Thus, the whole corporate sector was monetizing the bubble. And now, the U.S. corporate cash stash as a share of total assets is at a record high.

2) Money tends to be spent in the wrong way or overspent in a bubble. Economists call wrong spending "misallocation of resources," which means the pie doesn't expand as fast as it should. Overspending involves money that one thinks he has but actually doesn't have. So when a bubble bursts, he's chased by creditors.

etc