Rise of China....is the west doomed?

[Kantor]

famousringo said:

Kantor said:

darthdevidem01 said:

Can't we all just be successful

Why does one country doing well have to mean the others are doomed?

Capitalism. One man's profit is, by very definition, another man's loss.

That said, America and China are both doing relatively well now, and if one's economy went up, so would the other's, since they are respectively the largest importers and exporters in the world.

That's the view of 'realism,' and not really anything to do with capitalism. Lots of people who consider themselves capitalists will tell you that greater prosperity for all can be had by trading goods between countries which have a comparitive advantage in producing different goods.

For example, Canada has a comparitive advantage in producing raw materials thanks to all our land, while China has a comparitive advantage in processing those raw materials into goods thanks to their abundant labour. More goods can be made at a lower price by shipping our resources to be processed by their labour than could be made if Chinese labour only worked with Chinese resources and only Canadian labour worked with Canadian resources.

It may seem like it sometimes, but economics isn't actually a zero-sum game.

I was referring to the first part of his post with that comment.

As I said afterwards, by co-operating with trade and such, all countries can achieve growth for the near future. It's just that the downfall of America and the colonisation of the world by India and China seems to be a popular belief at the moment, never mind the fact that they both have ridiculously low GDP/capita, a low HDI, and one has a weak central government while the other has an authoritarian central government.