SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - US drone war in Pakistan prompts fear and anger

We let China in because they won the Chinese civil war :O: It's a bit hard to ignore a nation of god alone knows how many, in preference to a nation which is composed of a tiny island (I know, I know pot kettle black).
However, the primary reason we let China in, the most important one...was because of the Sino-Soviet split. We let the PRC into the UN, and they act as a counterbalance against the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact lackeys. Furthermore, it prevents them teaming up with the Soviets and becoming a dominant military force.

That worked until the Cold War ended. :haha:

Not that Russia and China are exactly BFFs, but they're closer now than the days of Mao and Krushchev, that's for certain, and the likelihood of a 'Bear and the Dragon' scenario remains limited to the works of Clancy.

The American and European house of cards is different to the Chinese one, our economies have been steadily built up over a hundred, to two hundred years of steady industrialisation, admittedly a lot of that industrialisation has been abandoned now, but the groundwork is still there.
China took the short-cut, what we did in two hundred years, they did in two decades. You don't do that without cutting corners, and as any engineer will tell you, you cut corners and the whole thing becomes structurally unstable.
Sticking with that analogy, the American and European houses are houses that are well built but have been neglected, they've lost their shine and they need working on to prevent them from decaying.
The Chinese house is in danger of falling down, it looks great but that's because there's always people working on it to keep it standing. They're shoring it up and in a few years it will be strong enough to stand on its own, but for now a strong gust of wind will knock it over, whereas that same strong gust of wind would probably take out some windows and knock the roofing tiles off the American and European houses, collapse a bit of the roof at worst.
Furthermore, and this is something I think a lot of Americans don't realise...is that China is tied to the US economically, not in the manner that China rules the US as many Americans fear, but that the US rules China, if the US economy falls, Chinas follows shortly afterwards, and the PRC will fall further and hit the bottom harder than America will. The riots in Washington would look like childs play compared to the likelihood of civil war (again) in the PRC, or a succession of military coups. Either way, more blood would be spilt over there than in America.
This does not mean that one should be complacent about American dominance, China is taking its best route...biding its time, only flexing its muscles slightly in regional disputes, trying not to provoke anything that it cannot come out of without damage. This is why there will be nothing other than small coastguard skirmishes over the Senkaku islands, because if Japans economy suffers, then Chinas does too, China and Japan have a BIG trading relationship and China can't risk ruining that, likewise with China and the US, China and Taiwan and in fact, China and most of its neighbours.
So, China bides its time, until it can reach a point where its economy is balanced (which is part of the Five Year Plan beginning this year) and that it can survive a major economic upset...and THEN it will begin any plans it has in the region.
China is a patient nation, it will only act when the conditions favour it, not before, and not after, and right now the conditions do not favour it.