21 ms·

Jack Ma: 'If trade stops, war starts'

161 points by imartin2k 10y ago

WhiteSource1 10y ago
He wasn't the first. It's the whole "Capitalist Peace" theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_peace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_peace proposed by Professor Erik Gartzke, that economically developed countries (capitalist - but in this case even something like China can qualify) don't fight with one another.
- John23832 10y ago
  That's pretty interesting. That also reminds me of what people have called "Pax Americana"[0] which is probably due to America's large influence on modern Capitalism. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana
  - aaron-lebo 10y ago
    I have, therefore, chosen this time and place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth too rarely perceived. And that is the most important topic on earth: peace. What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children -- not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace in all time. - JFK
    - liberte82 10y ago
      "Any negative polls are fake!" - Donald Trump
      - bobmno 10y ago
        "The Russians are responsible!" - Hillary
  - crdb 10y ago
    Related: > On a cold and rainy February afternoon in 1947, one year before the Games Center was established, First Secretary H. M. Sichel of the British Embassy in Washington telephoned Loy Henderson, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and African Affairs. He had two messages from the Foreign Office which were "rather important." They were of a sort that normally should be delivered by the British Ambassador direct to the Secretary of State, George Marshall, but since General Marshall had already left the office for the weekend perhaps, Sichel suggested he could drop off the notes, have a "brief" chat about them, and allow Mr. Henderson a weekend of reflection on them before briefing the Secretary prior to meeting the British Ambassador on Monday morning. > Sichel arrived as State Department employees, after a comparatively dull week, were donning their raincoats and galoshes to take off for an indoor weekend. Loy Henderson, who habitually worked until eight or nine o'clock even on Fridays, had sent off all his secretaries and was alone in the office. The scene was the one of utter calm that skillful dramatists often establish to provide the psychological setting for a shattering announcement. The announcement, which Mr. Sichel delivered in the course of his "brief chat," was certainly shattering. > The two messages were official notification that the Pax Britannica, which had kept order in much of the world for over a century, was at an end. Specifically, His Majesty's Government could no longer afford the $50,000,000 or so that was required to support the resistance of the Greek and Turkish Governments to Communist aggression either, as in the first case, by guerrilla warfare or, in the second, by direct military action of the Soviet Union. Either the United States Government would fill the gap, or it would go unfilled - or it would be left to the Russians. [...] > With the British announcement, delivered so calmly by Mr. Sichel, the United States was given the choice of becoming an active world power - an "on-the-ground" world power, as a lecturer at the State Department's Foreign Service Institute was later to put it - or seeing the Soviets become a more menacing feature of world politics than Nazi Germany could ever have been. Mr. Sichel said, "I hope I haven't spoiled your weekend." - The Game of Nations, Miles Copeland (https://www.amazon.com/Game-Nations-Amorality-Power-Politics/dp/0671205323 https://www.amazon.com/Game-Nations-Amorality-Power-Politics...)
- jgalt212 10y ago
  true, but one should also ask how much trade is necessary to serve as an effective deterrent to war? Must we put everyone factory worker in the midwest on the public dole to avoid war with China, or just some fraction of them?
  - pg314 10y ago
    Even if you start erecting trade barriers, you are not going to get back the jobs lost to automation. Whoever is telling that is lying. A large fraction of the low-skill, well-paying factory jobs of the past are permanently gone. This is not an easy problem to solve, and any easy solution proffered is likely to fail.
    - Arizhel 10y ago
      There's only one solution: Universal Basic Income.
      - jgalt212 10y ago
        UBI won't solve anything. In fact, it will mostly just lead to inflation for basic goods and services with ultimate effect on the poor and working poor being a wash. I liken UBI to easing credit for home mortgages. Easy credit doesn't make houses more affordable, it just makes it easier to borrow more money for a more expensive product. Sam Altman does not understand or appreciate the above point.
        pg314 10y ago
        > Sam Altman does not understand or appreciate the above point. Maybe because the above point is dubious at best? In a complex domain like an economics, it is very hard to make proclamations such as yours with anything resembling your certainty. Depending on how UBI is implemented (and how close to full employment the economy is, how much other government spending there is, how it is financed,...) there might be an effect on inflation. But it would probably be nowhere near enough to 'be a wash'. The debate on UBI isn't settled yet by economists. More experiments are needed and will shed more light on it. Your comparison with easing credit is nonsensical.
- adekok 10y ago
  > that economically developed countries (capitalist - but in this case even something like China can qualify) don't fight with one another. France and Germany? WW1 / WW2? Japan and the US in WW2? IIRC, at the time, Japan and the US were trade partners, and Japan imported the bulk of it's oil from the US. Yet in both cases, they still went to war. I think the lesson is that ideology trumps economics.
  - John23832 10y ago
    I think the word "capitalist" might have been better than "economically developed". One could argue that Capitalism was the reason Japan went to war against the US. Japan was worried that the US would cut off all oil exports to Japan, so they attempted to gain control of the pacific in order to solidify access to oil. They needed to keep their machine going. Idk if I would call (pre-wwII, post rise of Hitler) Germany truly "Capitalist" though.
    - nickik 10y ago
      That seems strange to me. Its not like the west cut of oil from Japan for no reason. Japan was fighting a war with China. They were not willing to give that up and escalated the war. Capitalists (as in profit seeking companies and people) seem to have very little to do with it. That is a political decision on the highest level.
      - John23832 10y ago
        I guess. The way I viewed it Japan made a move to protect their markets. But you could be right.
        nickik 10y ago
        I guess they did it to protect their market and war machine. The question is where did the pressure to do so come from, was it from the political class or the business community.
- baq 10y ago
  capitalism != free market; china is definitely a capitalistic country.
- kristianc 10y ago
  And neither was Gartzke. It's important to note that the "Capitalist Peace" is considered a modern explanation for the "Democratic Peace" theory, an idea that goes back as far as Kant. The democratic people theory is also harder to pick holes in than the capitalist peace - particularly if you restrict it to mature democracies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_peace_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_peace_theory
bbctol 10y ago
I wish I could be more sure that people in power saw that as a bad thing.
- tokenizer 10y ago
  China stands absolutely no chance in a direct war with US and her allies. Not only do we absolutely decimate them in nuclear and naval capabilities, our combined allied forces would decimate them technologically, on the ground, and through strategic embargoing, attrition, psychological warfare, etc. We and our allies literally surround them. Not only that, look into geopolitics, Trump getting a call from Taiwan pisses China off more than giving them weapons. Why? Acknowledging and reaffirming our commitment to protect them, angers them more than physical capability of defense for Taiwan. China enslaves a portion of its citizens, jails activists, kidnaps Taiwanese, support DPRK, among other things. Trump is remapping Asian relations, because China isn't strong, nor are they suicidal. Rewriting our trade relations will help us, and if they continue being friends with us, good for them as well. A restructuring is likely, and a war will only happen if our Asian allies or China forces our hand. If so, we win, based on any strategic viewpoint of might.
  - rdl 10y ago
    I agree we would clearly win, but it would still be a worse outcome by far, even in winning, than the status quo, or virtually any othe non-war situation (even a trade war or Cold War).
  - rtpg 10y ago
    This sort of statement is useless without context. What would be the objective of such a war? Regime change? Iraq and Afghanistan are both much smaller, yet the US wasn't too good with that. Sure, the US could probably protect itself from any nation's military. But there's no universe where a successful incursion into China leads to anything apart from massive pain for everyone involved
    - 67726e 10y ago
      If we could deal with Japan and Germany, why not China? What makes China more comparable to Iraq and Afghanistan? Edit: Since I'm getting downvoted there's obviously some issue with the question which I'd love to hear. What makes the situation more comparable to our recent quagmires and not more "traditional" and, in my mind comparable, situations with Germany and Japan?
carsongross 10y ago
If trade stops (read, if the US trade policy starts giving a shit about its working class, trade is never going to 'stop'), it's certainly bad for Jack Ma. So I would take what he says with a grain of salt.
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  Yet somehow we have unprecedented relative peace since the rise of global capitalism that can only be explained via the long tail of trade policies being a disincentive to conflict and an incentive to working things out peacefully. Worse, Trump supporters have followed nothing but a narrative of appeasement for Russia. Its amusing to see their hypocrisy with China. The bias here is obvious. > giving a shit about its working class The idea that the Trump administration is fighting for the middle class is asinine. From repealing Frank-Dodd, to putting in Goldman Sachs employees into cabinet positions, putting in billionaires into cabinet positions, removing regulations that protect workers, raising mortgages on FHA loans, etc its obvious that the middle class worker can only lose under Trump.
  - gph 10y ago
    >via the long tail of trade policies being a disincentive to conflict and an incentive to work things out peacefully. Can you explain what you mean by long tail in these circumstances? I started taking a course on stats and understand generally what a long tail is, but I can't parse what or how you're applying the concept here.
  - rrggrr 10y ago
    > unprecedented relative peace since the rise of global capitalism This is not as it appears. The 'peace' has come at a tremendous economic and social cost to the United States, and to the people of China. That Ma frames the alternative as war demonstrates how dire the situation must be in China, that stimulating domestic demand and rebalancing their economy is no longer a viable option. The long tail was a fog hiding a crisis.
- dougmwne 10y ago
  As the second richest person in China, he's in a position to know the minds and influence the opinions of party leadership. I absolutely do not take his statement with a grain of salt. I take it as a threat.
laurent123456 10y ago
That was also Victor Hugo's idea in his description of the "United States of Europe": > "A day will come when the only fields of battle will be markets opening up to trade and minds opening up to ideas." http://www.ellopos.net/politics/hugo-addresses-europe.asp http://www.ellopos.net/politics/hugo-addresses-europe.asp
pjc50 10y ago
I think it was the Economist that used to say "no two countries with a McDonald's have gone to war", until the bombing of Serbia by NATO in the 90s. It's a strong argument. Integrating supply chains across borders means that there's a big section of the business community ready to lobby against war that might threaten that investment. Not to mention that modern industry is much less "capturable"; you can capture farmland and mineral resources (especially oil!) in war, but fixed plant and creative businesses are just obliterated, not captured.
- Veen 10y ago
  Often suggested as one of the reasons Europe has experienced its most peaceful period in a thousand years. The EU means we can't afford to go to war with each other. Although some are intent on dismantling that progress, sadly.
  - nickik 10y ago
    The problem is that the EU is far more then that. I support both movement of goods and people, I even support standardization efforts and things like that. However many people want the EU to be far more then that. The EU as a strong central state for Europe. That I do not want, and that's why I am against the EU in its current form, and Im against growth of the EU.
    - piva00 10y ago
      Why?
      - nickik 10y ago
        Unspecific question. There are many reasons. We have seen many of the weaknesses of in the last financial crisis. The EU is just horrible set up economically. The Euro as a EU project is the crown achievement of bad economics has been a total and absolut disaster, the biggest since the Inter-War gold standard. There are many other problems, with debt, enforcement of debt collection and so on. The bad EU setup was totally unclear about how debt management worked and all these problem had to be (and jet have to be) solved on a running system, instead of using a good design in the first place. The EU was used often to push bad laws on countries that they had internally rejected, but the people against it could not stop in on European level (Germany Vorratsdatenspeicherung for example). The EU is not democratic enough, both internally and the way it was created. One can of course argue that many of these problems can be solved with more centralization, but that 'solution' has lots of problems by itself also. I would image a EU should be a club that agrees on trade and the movements of goods. There is no reason to handle every single issue under the EU umbrella, I would rather see independent organisation that deal with certain issues. The EU is like a hammer, and every single problem looks like a nail to it.
docdeek 10y ago
The old saying was ‘If goods don’t cross borders, armies will’.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
rrggrr 10y ago
Ma seems to be saying to the United States: Continue running trade deficits with China, subsidizing China's ill-conceived domestic social and economic policies, or war. If this is what Ma is saying (it essentially is) then war with China is inevitable and better engaged in now, while the US still enjoys a qualitative advantage. Anyone doubting this interpretation of Ma's comments needs to read Michael Pettis' commentary on Chinese economic policy: http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/07/22/chinas-currency-manipulation-actually-enhances-the-global-role-of-the-dollar-sdr-rmb-balance-of-payments/ http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/07/22/chinas-currency-manipula... http://carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/66485 http://carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/66485 UPDATE: Comments claiming Ma only says, "keep trading"... don't understand how trade works between US-China (read Pettis links above), and are not paying attention to coincidental news from China about new DF-16 ICBM's pointed at the United States. Its almost as if China plans to negotiate trade with a gun pointed at the Trump administration's head.
- api 10y ago
  I've felt for a while that more happened behind the scenes in this election than we know, and that part of what occurred is a collapse in the de-facto unwritten alliance between the USA and China that has existed for some time now. Clinton was working to preserve that alliance, and failed. That's dangerous. I do agree that the USA has subsidized China too much to its own detriment, but the alternative could be significantly worse for both countries. A collapse of trade would crash both economies, and given the fragility of the Chinese economy a crash there could be a humanitarian and political disaster. It could also lead to the ascent of crazy hard liners. Honestly I don't see either -- continuing to subsidize China or collapsing trade -- to be a good outcome. It seems we've painted ourselves into a corner.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- mrb 10y ago
  Ma seems... And that's where it stops. Ma made a general observation and that's it. Historically countries who trade less tend to be hostile toward each others, while countries who trade in bigger volumes are friendly. Also Ma isn't saying or implying "keep the trade deficit". He says "keep trading. period" (a surplus or a deficit, doesn't matter in the context of his argument.) By the way it's weird that people seem to think it's China's problem that the US have a trade deficit with them. The deficit can be solved by the US selling products and services to China. It's the US' problem to find what to sell. And only the US can solve it.
squozzer 10y ago
>“Trade is about trade of values. Trade of culture,” Not sure what Mr. Ma means here, considering the barriers the Chinese have erected against foreign culture, e.g. The Great Firewall. The increasing intrusiveness and paranoia of major US institutions - e.g. NSA and Google -- suggests the US is also running a value trade deficit with China.
Keyframe 10y ago
Jack Ma says the darnest things. What is happening now is the (almost) same thing that happened as a prelude to Opium War(s). China want people to buy their stuff, but the other way around only through tight control from China. That's not how trade works. Of course, opium war had such a perverse blowback from the English via India that it's not possible in this day and age, but who knows. One thing is sure, something is going to happen. My bet is on (slight) collapse of economy from within China and then opening up their economy a bit more towards everyone else. This will happen after the currency war. I don't see any actual combat conflict happening. But, who knows.
tossaway322 10y ago
Ma notwithstanding, history shows that trade does not prevent war (and that the idea that it does springs from unbridled optimism about the nature of man). This has been much discussed: "Can Free Trade Really Prevent War?": https://mises.org/library/can-free-trade-really-prevent-war https://mises.org/library/can-free-trade-really-prevent-war "Trade Can Bring War": http://blogs.reuters.com/breakingviews/2015/01/09/review-trade-can-bring-war/ http://blogs.reuters.com/breakingviews/2015/01/09/review-tra...
SFJulie 10y ago
China refused to trade arts, and was stopping to trade its citizens as sweat workers in America, and boom 2 wars. Right on spot! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars
phantarch 10y ago
It's dangerous to assume the contrapositive of this claim is actually true (war doesn't start if trade doesn't stop). The best example of this is World War 1 Europe. It was held as common knowledge then that a world war could never possibly break out because of how interdependent the European economies were becoming. Nobody was going to kill the golden goose over some silly land dispute. We all know how that turned out, and it had nothing to do with whether jobs were being created or destroyed. If the contrapositive isn't true, then the original claim may not hold any actual weight. Dan Carlin talks about this in his Hardcore History podcast and does a great job telling the story of WWI, definitely would recommend.
- mathetic 10y ago
  The contrapositive is "if war doesn't start, trade doesn't stop."
  - phantarch 10y ago
    You're right, thanks.
    - ouid 10y ago
      just edit your comment to say converse instead of contrapositive. The contrapositive of a statement is logically equivalent to the statement itself.
- gspetr 10y ago
  Ferengi Rules of the Acquisition: 34 War is good for business 35 Peace is good for business. 274 Ferengi are not responsible for the stupidity of other races.
fspeech 10y ago
It is a bizarre twist to claim Jack Ma is somehow threatening US with war over trade frictions. After all the highlight of his trip was to donate $20 million to an Australian university (Newcastle), in return for generous help and friendship he received as a young man over 30 years ago from an Australian family (the Morleys). "I am very thankful for Australia and the time I spent there in my youth. The culture, the landscape and most importantly its people had a profound impact on my view of the world at that time," Mr Ma said in a statement on Friday. http://www.theherald.com.au/story/4444710/an-extraordinary-gift/ http://www.theherald.com.au/story/4444710/an-extraordinary-g... http://www.afr.com/leadership/innovation/alibaba-billionaire-founder-jack-ma-gives-26m-to-university-of-newcastle-in-memory-of-australian-mentor-20170202-gu4fg3 http://www.afr.com/leadership/innovation/alibaba-billionaire...
- saycheese 10y ago
  Unclear what Ma's trip has to do with the his statement, is there a connection to you?
  - fspeech 10y ago
    Does it feel like Jack Ma went to Australia to deliver a threat to the US? He went there to unveil headquarters for Alibaba and to make a donation to an Australian university. He talked about how grateful he was to Australia (as a Western country). To read war threat into a cliche comment is too much.
antman 10y ago
I think the original 19th century quote was 'If goods dont cross borders, soldiers will.' Attributed to Bastiat, but hasn't been found in his notes.
jgalt212 10y ago
You clearly A. don't know how to engage in civilized discourse. e.g. " dubious at best" and "Your comparison with easing credit is nonsensical" B. have any grasp of the law of unintended consequences.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 10y ago
  Please don't make personal swipes in comments here. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13584573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13584573 and marked it off-topic.
  - jgalt212 10y ago
    dang--he was the one one who was off topic and not engaging in civil discourse.
    - dang 10y ago
      I took a quick look and didn't see that, other than "Your comparison with easing credit is nonsensical", which I agree is somewhat uncivil and provocative. But what you did was worse, and if you're going to keep commenting here you (i.e. all of us) need the discipline to resist provocation.
      - jgalt212 10y ago
        fair enough
synicalx 10y ago
What exactly is old mate Jack proposing will happen here? Apple moves some of it's manufacturing out of Shenzen death camps and into California, so China attacks mainland USA? China would be very silly to initiate a conflict with America in the next 20 years - they simply don't have the capacity, experience or training to fight a very large and very sophisticated adversary. I know we all like to rag on America, but the fact the US military is staggeringly big, well funded, experienced, and well organised.

161 points by imartin2k 10y ago

He wasn't the first. It's the whole "Capitalist Peace" theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_peace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_peace proposed by Professor Erik Gartzke, that economically developed countries (capitalist - but in this case even something like China can qualify) don't fight with one another.

John23832 10y ago
That's pretty interesting. That also reminds me of what people have called "Pax Americana"[0] which is probably due to America's large influence on modern Capitalism. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  I have, therefore, chosen this time and place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth too rarely perceived. And that is the most important topic on earth: peace. What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children -- not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace in all time. - JFK
  - liberte82 10y ago
    "Any negative polls are fake!" - Donald Trump
    - bobmno 10y ago
      "The Russians are responsible!" - Hillary
- crdb 10y ago
  Related: > On a cold and rainy February afternoon in 1947, one year before the Games Center was established, First Secretary H. M. Sichel of the British Embassy in Washington telephoned Loy Henderson, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and African Affairs. He had two messages from the Foreign Office which were "rather important." They were of a sort that normally should be delivered by the British Ambassador direct to the Secretary of State, George Marshall, but since General Marshall had already left the office for the weekend perhaps, Sichel suggested he could drop off the notes, have a "brief" chat about them, and allow Mr. Henderson a weekend of reflection on them before briefing the Secretary prior to meeting the British Ambassador on Monday morning. > Sichel arrived as State Department employees, after a comparatively dull week, were donning their raincoats and galoshes to take off for an indoor weekend. Loy Henderson, who habitually worked until eight or nine o'clock even on Fridays, had sent off all his secretaries and was alone in the office. The scene was the one of utter calm that skillful dramatists often establish to provide the psychological setting for a shattering announcement. The announcement, which Mr. Sichel delivered in the course of his "brief chat," was certainly shattering. > The two messages were official notification that the Pax Britannica, which had kept order in much of the world for over a century, was at an end. Specifically, His Majesty's Government could no longer afford the $50,000,000 or so that was required to support the resistance of the Greek and Turkish Governments to Communist aggression either, as in the first case, by guerrilla warfare or, in the second, by direct military action of the Soviet Union. Either the United States Government would fill the gap, or it would go unfilled - or it would be left to the Russians. [...] > With the British announcement, delivered so calmly by Mr. Sichel, the United States was given the choice of becoming an active world power - an "on-the-ground" world power, as a lecturer at the State Department's Foreign Service Institute was later to put it - or seeing the Soviets become a more menacing feature of world politics than Nazi Germany could ever have been. Mr. Sichel said, "I hope I haven't spoiled your weekend." - The Game of Nations, Miles Copeland (https://www.amazon.com/Game-Nations-Amorality-Power-Politics/dp/0671205323 https://www.amazon.com/Game-Nations-Amorality-Power-Politics...)
jgalt212 10y ago
true, but one should also ask how much trade is necessary to serve as an effective deterrent to war? Must we put everyone factory worker in the midwest on the public dole to avoid war with China, or just some fraction of them?
- pg314 10y ago
  Even if you start erecting trade barriers, you are not going to get back the jobs lost to automation. Whoever is telling that is lying. A large fraction of the low-skill, well-paying factory jobs of the past are permanently gone. This is not an easy problem to solve, and any easy solution proffered is likely to fail.
  - Arizhel 10y ago
    There's only one solution: Universal Basic Income.
    - jgalt212 10y ago
      UBI won't solve anything. In fact, it will mostly just lead to inflation for basic goods and services with ultimate effect on the poor and working poor being a wash. I liken UBI to easing credit for home mortgages. Easy credit doesn't make houses more affordable, it just makes it easier to borrow more money for a more expensive product. Sam Altman does not understand or appreciate the above point.
      - pg314 10y ago
        > Sam Altman does not understand or appreciate the above point. Maybe because the above point is dubious at best? In a complex domain like an economics, it is very hard to make proclamations such as yours with anything resembling your certainty. Depending on how UBI is implemented (and how close to full employment the economy is, how much other government spending there is, how it is financed,...) there might be an effect on inflation. But it would probably be nowhere near enough to 'be a wash'. The debate on UBI isn't settled yet by economists. More experiments are needed and will shed more light on it. Your comparison with easing credit is nonsensical.
adekok 10y ago
> that economically developed countries (capitalist - but in this case even something like China can qualify) don't fight with one another. France and Germany? WW1 / WW2? Japan and the US in WW2? IIRC, at the time, Japan and the US were trade partners, and Japan imported the bulk of it's oil from the US. Yet in both cases, they still went to war. I think the lesson is that ideology trumps economics.
- John23832 10y ago
  I think the word "capitalist" might have been better than "economically developed". One could argue that Capitalism was the reason Japan went to war against the US. Japan was worried that the US would cut off all oil exports to Japan, so they attempted to gain control of the pacific in order to solidify access to oil. They needed to keep their machine going. Idk if I would call (pre-wwII, post rise of Hitler) Germany truly "Capitalist" though.
  - nickik 10y ago
    That seems strange to me. Its not like the west cut of oil from Japan for no reason. Japan was fighting a war with China. They were not willing to give that up and escalated the war. Capitalists (as in profit seeking companies and people) seem to have very little to do with it. That is a political decision on the highest level.
    - John23832 10y ago
      I guess. The way I viewed it Japan made a move to protect their markets. But you could be right.
      - nickik 10y ago
        I guess they did it to protect their market and war machine. The question is where did the pressure to do so come from, was it from the political class or the business community.
baq 10y ago
capitalism != free market; china is definitely a capitalistic country.
kristianc 10y ago
And neither was Gartzke. It's important to note that the "Capitalist Peace" is considered a modern explanation for the "Democratic Peace" theory, an idea that goes back as far as Kant. The democratic people theory is also harder to pick holes in than the capitalist peace - particularly if you restrict it to mature democracies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_peace_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_peace_theory

bbctol 10y ago

I wish I could be more sure that people in power saw that as a bad thing.

tokenizer 10y ago
China stands absolutely no chance in a direct war with US and her allies. Not only do we absolutely decimate them in nuclear and naval capabilities, our combined allied forces would decimate them technologically, on the ground, and through strategic embargoing, attrition, psychological warfare, etc. We and our allies literally surround them. Not only that, look into geopolitics, Trump getting a call from Taiwan pisses China off more than giving them weapons. Why? Acknowledging and reaffirming our commitment to protect them, angers them more than physical capability of defense for Taiwan. China enslaves a portion of its citizens, jails activists, kidnaps Taiwanese, support DPRK, among other things. Trump is remapping Asian relations, because China isn't strong, nor are they suicidal. Rewriting our trade relations will help us, and if they continue being friends with us, good for them as well. A restructuring is likely, and a war will only happen if our Asian allies or China forces our hand. If so, we win, based on any strategic viewpoint of might.
- rdl 10y ago
  I agree we would clearly win, but it would still be a worse outcome by far, even in winning, than the status quo, or virtually any othe non-war situation (even a trade war or Cold War).
- rtpg 10y ago
  This sort of statement is useless without context. What would be the objective of such a war? Regime change? Iraq and Afghanistan are both much smaller, yet the US wasn't too good with that. Sure, the US could probably protect itself from any nation's military. But there's no universe where a successful incursion into China leads to anything apart from massive pain for everyone involved
  - 67726e 10y ago
    If we could deal with Japan and Germany, why not China? What makes China more comparable to Iraq and Afghanistan? Edit: Since I'm getting downvoted there's obviously some issue with the question which I'd love to hear. What makes the situation more comparable to our recent quagmires and not more "traditional" and, in my mind comparable, situations with Germany and Japan?

carsongross 10y ago

If trade stops (read, if the US trade policy starts giving a shit about its working class, trade is never going to 'stop'), it's certainly bad for Jack Ma. So I would take what he says with a grain of salt.

drzaiusapelord 10y ago
Yet somehow we have unprecedented relative peace since the rise of global capitalism that can only be explained via the long tail of trade policies being a disincentive to conflict and an incentive to working things out peacefully. Worse, Trump supporters have followed nothing but a narrative of appeasement for Russia. Its amusing to see their hypocrisy with China. The bias here is obvious. > giving a shit about its working class The idea that the Trump administration is fighting for the middle class is asinine. From repealing Frank-Dodd, to putting in Goldman Sachs employees into cabinet positions, putting in billionaires into cabinet positions, removing regulations that protect workers, raising mortgages on FHA loans, etc its obvious that the middle class worker can only lose under Trump.
- gph 10y ago
  >via the long tail of trade policies being a disincentive to conflict and an incentive to work things out peacefully. Can you explain what you mean by long tail in these circumstances? I started taking a course on stats and understand generally what a long tail is, but I can't parse what or how you're applying the concept here.
- rrggrr 10y ago
  > unprecedented relative peace since the rise of global capitalism This is not as it appears. The 'peace' has come at a tremendous economic and social cost to the United States, and to the people of China. That Ma frames the alternative as war demonstrates how dire the situation must be in China, that stimulating domestic demand and rebalancing their economy is no longer a viable option. The long tail was a fog hiding a crisis.
dougmwne 10y ago
As the second richest person in China, he's in a position to know the minds and influence the opinions of party leadership. I absolutely do not take his statement with a grain of salt. I take it as a threat.

laurent123456 10y ago

That was also Victor Hugo's idea in his description of the "United States of Europe": > "A day will come when the only fields of battle will be markets opening up to trade and minds opening up to ideas." http://www.ellopos.net/politics/hugo-addresses-europe.asp http://www.ellopos.net/politics/hugo-addresses-europe.asp

pjc50 10y ago

I think it was the Economist that used to say "no two countries with a McDonald's have gone to war", until the bombing of Serbia by NATO in the 90s. It's a strong argument. Integrating supply chains across borders means that there's a big section of the business community ready to lobby against war that might threaten that investment. Not to mention that modern industry is much less "capturable"; you can capture farmland and mineral resources (especially oil!) in war, but fixed plant and creative businesses are just obliterated, not captured.

Veen 10y ago
Often suggested as one of the reasons Europe has experienced its most peaceful period in a thousand years. The EU means we can't afford to go to war with each other. Although some are intent on dismantling that progress, sadly.
- nickik 10y ago
  The problem is that the EU is far more then that. I support both movement of goods and people, I even support standardization efforts and things like that. However many people want the EU to be far more then that. The EU as a strong central state for Europe. That I do not want, and that's why I am against the EU in its current form, and Im against growth of the EU.
  - piva00 10y ago
    Why?
    - nickik 10y ago
      Unspecific question. There are many reasons. We have seen many of the weaknesses of in the last financial crisis. The EU is just horrible set up economically. The Euro as a EU project is the crown achievement of bad economics has been a total and absolut disaster, the biggest since the Inter-War gold standard. There are many other problems, with debt, enforcement of debt collection and so on. The bad EU setup was totally unclear about how debt management worked and all these problem had to be (and jet have to be) solved on a running system, instead of using a good design in the first place. The EU was used often to push bad laws on countries that they had internally rejected, but the people against it could not stop in on European level (Germany Vorratsdatenspeicherung for example). The EU is not democratic enough, both internally and the way it was created. One can of course argue that many of these problems can be solved with more centralization, but that 'solution' has lots of problems by itself also. I would image a EU should be a club that agrees on trade and the movements of goods. There is no reason to handle every single issue under the EU umbrella, I would rather see independent organisation that deal with certain issues. The EU is like a hammer, and every single problem looks like a nail to it.

docdeek 10y ago

The old saying was ‘If goods don’t cross borders, armies will’.

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rrggrr 10y ago

Ma seems to be saying to the United States: Continue running trade deficits with China, subsidizing China's ill-conceived domestic social and economic policies, or war. If this is what Ma is saying (it essentially is) then war with China is inevitable and better engaged in now, while the US still enjoys a qualitative advantage. Anyone doubting this interpretation of Ma's comments needs to read Michael Pettis' commentary on Chinese economic policy: http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/07/22/chinas-currency-manipulation-actually-enhances-the-global-role-of-the-dollar-sdr-rmb-balance-of-payments/ http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/07/22/chinas-currency-manipula... http://carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/66485 http://carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/66485 UPDATE: Comments claiming Ma only says, "keep trading"... don't understand how trade works between US-China (read Pettis links above), and are not paying attention to coincidental news from China about new DF-16 ICBM's pointed at the United States. Its almost as if China plans to negotiate trade with a gun pointed at the Trump administration's head.

api 10y ago
I've felt for a while that more happened behind the scenes in this election than we know, and that part of what occurred is a collapse in the de-facto unwritten alliance between the USA and China that has existed for some time now. Clinton was working to preserve that alliance, and failed. That's dangerous. I do agree that the USA has subsidized China too much to its own detriment, but the alternative could be significantly worse for both countries. A collapse of trade would crash both economies, and given the fragility of the Chinese economy a crash there could be a humanitarian and political disaster. It could also lead to the ascent of crazy hard liners. Honestly I don't see either -- continuing to subsidize China or collapsing trade -- to be a good outcome. It seems we've painted ourselves into a corner.
- deleted 10y ago
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mrb 10y ago
Ma seems... And that's where it stops. Ma made a general observation and that's it. Historically countries who trade less tend to be hostile toward each others, while countries who trade in bigger volumes are friendly. Also Ma isn't saying or implying "keep the trade deficit". He says "keep trading. period" (a surplus or a deficit, doesn't matter in the context of his argument.) By the way it's weird that people seem to think it's China's problem that the US have a trade deficit with them. The deficit can be solved by the US selling products and services to China. It's the US' problem to find what to sell. And only the US can solve it.

squozzer 10y ago

>“Trade is about trade of values. Trade of culture,” Not sure what Mr. Ma means here, considering the barriers the Chinese have erected against foreign culture, e.g. The Great Firewall. The increasing intrusiveness and paranoia of major US institutions - e.g. NSA and Google -- suggests the US is also running a value trade deficit with China.

Keyframe 10y ago

Jack Ma says the darnest things. What is happening now is the (almost) same thing that happened as a prelude to Opium War(s). China want people to buy their stuff, but the other way around only through tight control from China. That's not how trade works. Of course, opium war had such a perverse blowback from the English via India that it's not possible in this day and age, but who knows. One thing is sure, something is going to happen. My bet is on (slight) collapse of economy from within China and then opening up their economy a bit more towards everyone else. This will happen after the currency war. I don't see any actual combat conflict happening. But, who knows.

tossaway322 10y ago

Ma notwithstanding, history shows that trade does not prevent war (and that the idea that it does springs from unbridled optimism about the nature of man). This has been much discussed: "Can Free Trade Really Prevent War?": https://mises.org/library/can-free-trade-really-prevent-war https://mises.org/library/can-free-trade-really-prevent-war "Trade Can Bring War": http://blogs.reuters.com/breakingviews/2015/01/09/review-trade-can-bring-war/ http://blogs.reuters.com/breakingviews/2015/01/09/review-tra...

SFJulie 10y ago

China refused to trade arts, and was stopping to trade its citizens as sweat workers in America, and boom 2 wars. Right on spot! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars

phantarch 10y ago

It's dangerous to assume the contrapositive of this claim is actually true (war doesn't start if trade doesn't stop). The best example of this is World War 1 Europe. It was held as common knowledge then that a world war could never possibly break out because of how interdependent the European economies were becoming. Nobody was going to kill the golden goose over some silly land dispute. We all know how that turned out, and it had nothing to do with whether jobs were being created or destroyed. If the contrapositive isn't true, then the original claim may not hold any actual weight. Dan Carlin talks about this in his Hardcore History podcast and does a great job telling the story of WWI, definitely would recommend.

mathetic 10y ago
The contrapositive is "if war doesn't start, trade doesn't stop."
- phantarch 10y ago
  You're right, thanks.
  - ouid 10y ago
    just edit your comment to say converse instead of contrapositive. The contrapositive of a statement is logically equivalent to the statement itself.
gspetr 10y ago
Ferengi Rules of the Acquisition: 34 War is good for business 35 Peace is good for business. 274 Ferengi are not responsible for the stupidity of other races.

fspeech 10y ago

It is a bizarre twist to claim Jack Ma is somehow threatening US with war over trade frictions. After all the highlight of his trip was to donate $20 million to an Australian university (Newcastle), in return for generous help and friendship he received as a young man over 30 years ago from an Australian family (the Morleys). "I am very thankful for Australia and the time I spent there in my youth. The culture, the landscape and most importantly its people had a profound impact on my view of the world at that time," Mr Ma said in a statement on Friday. http://www.theherald.com.au/story/4444710/an-extraordinary-gift/ http://www.theherald.com.au/story/4444710/an-extraordinary-g... http://www.afr.com/leadership/innovation/alibaba-billionaire-founder-jack-ma-gives-26m-to-university-of-newcastle-in-memory-of-australian-mentor-20170202-gu4fg3 http://www.afr.com/leadership/innovation/alibaba-billionaire...

saycheese 10y ago
Unclear what Ma's trip has to do with the his statement, is there a connection to you?
- fspeech 10y ago
  Does it feel like Jack Ma went to Australia to deliver a threat to the US? He went there to unveil headquarters for Alibaba and to make a donation to an Australian university. He talked about how grateful he was to Australia (as a Western country). To read war threat into a cliche comment is too much.

antman 10y ago

I think the original 19th century quote was 'If goods dont cross borders, soldiers will.' Attributed to Bastiat, but hasn't been found in his notes.

jgalt212 10y ago

You clearly A. don't know how to engage in civilized discourse. e.g. " dubious at best" and "Your comparison with easing credit is nonsensical" B. have any grasp of the law of unintended consequences.

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dang 10y ago
Please don't make personal swipes in comments here. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13584573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13584573 and marked it off-topic.
- jgalt212 10y ago
  dang--he was the one one who was off topic and not engaging in civil discourse.
  - dang 10y ago
    I took a quick look and didn't see that, other than "Your comparison with easing credit is nonsensical", which I agree is somewhat uncivil and provocative. But what you did was worse, and if you're going to keep commenting here you (i.e. all of us) need the discipline to resist provocation.
    - jgalt212 10y ago
      fair enough

synicalx 10y ago

What exactly is old mate Jack proposing will happen here? Apple moves some of it's manufacturing out of Shenzen death camps and into California, so China attacks mainland USA? China would be very silly to initiate a conflict with America in the next 20 years - they simply don't have the capacity, experience or training to fight a very large and very sophisticated adversary. I know we all like to rag on America, but the fact the US military is staggeringly big, well funded, experienced, and well organised.