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Does anyone have an explanation for why China is so successful? We have it pounded into our heads that we need globalization in the form of open markets with no

Does anyone have an explanation for why China is so successful? We have it pounded into our heads that we need globalization in the form of open markets with no protectionism for US companies and immigration, yet china almost completely locks out foreign businesses and takes next to no immigrants and is obviously a quickly growing global superpower.

wheaties 9y ago
Yes, 1 billion people.
- pesfandiar 9y ago
  Off topic, but I like how the rounding error in your statement is more than the population of the US.
friedman23 9y ago
We need globalization for the larger markets and the exchange of goods from other countries that have a comparative advantage. China has one of the largest markets within its own borders so it can afford to be protectionist. (this will quickly change)
- nashashmi 9y ago
  Also to mention, the biggest bottleneck to US economic growth during the Ford era was was the lack of workers which is why opening our doors to crowded Europe gave us a boost. China on the other hand still has plenty of workers to fill its mills.
  - awkwarddaturtle 9y ago
    > Also to mention, the biggest bottleneck to US economic growth during the Ford era was was the lack of workers which is why opening our doors to crowded Europe gave us a boost. Actually during the Ford era, we went on an anti-immigration phase. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924
    - nashashmi 9y ago
      Assuming the Ford era began in 1900, we could say this was towards the end of the Ford era. I guess we had overdone on immigration and started regretting it.
      - awkwarddaturtle 9y ago
        > Assuming the Ford era began in 1900 Why should we "assume"? By Ford era, I'm assuming you meant his introduction of assembly line and mass production right? That started in 1913. > we could say this was towards the end of the Ford era. Can we? You say ford era. What time period are you referring to? Because from 1900 to 1924, the US was highly anti-immigrant. > I guess we had overdone on immigration and started regretting it. I guess? We've always been anti-immigrant as a nation. There really wasn't a time when immigrants were welcome in the US.
thablackbull 9y ago
> We have it pounded into our heads that we need globalization in the form of open markets with no protectionism Because that is false. It works for developed markets with existing strong industries. Dieter Frisch - former Director General for Development at the European Commission says in his La politique de développement de l'Union européenne [1], on page 38 of the PDF: "En effet, on ne connaît historiquement aucun cas où un pays au stade précoce de son évolution économique se serait développé via son ouverture à la concurrence internationale. Le développement s’est toujours amorcé au gré d’une certaine protection qu’on a pu diminuer au fur et à mesure que l’économie s’était suffisamment fortifiée pour affronter la concurrence extérieure. Mais un tel processus s’étend sur de longues années, sans parler du préalable que constituent, dans le cas des ACP, la mise en place et le fonctionnement de structures régionales." Essentially, it means that there are no cases of a country that developed through opening its economy to international competition. It always required protectionism which reduces gradually overtime as it is able to grow and absorb and compete with external competition. Haven't you noticed third world countries that attempt to follow America's advice never escape the poverty trap? What works for America does not imply it'll work for other countries. [1] http://ecdpm.org/wp-content/uploads/PMR-15-Politique-Developpement-Union-Europeenne-2008.pdf http://ecdpm.org/wp-content/uploads/PMR-15-Politique-Develop...
- edpichler 9y ago
  I live in Brazil and we have lots of protectionism. It's really interesting your comment, it changed some of my beliefs.
  - nashashmi 9y ago
    To add a thought, invitations to foreign companies and investments can drown out local cultures with foreign personalities. This can be detrimental to what makes the country special and reduces the purpose of why they should ever prosper.
    - RobertoG 9y ago
      I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. What is that purpose? I though it was so the people of the country have better lives.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dnadler 9y ago
IMO this is because China is still a (massive) developing economy with large swaths of undeveloped resources and untapped labor.
dilemma 9y ago
The US has never had or been a free market. "Free trade" is propaganda used to forcefully open foreign markets to US businesses looking for further growth.
- nine_k 9y ago
  Apparently it's US government involvement that caused companies like Google to be so successful.
  - saimiam 9y ago
    This a false equivalence. The internet was designed from ground up to be borderless and untrammeled. Free trade was an initiative to tear down barriers around trade. The US government never had to request any other government to link up to the internet which is why their involvement in Google was not necessary. Otoh, if you look at an state visit, every head of state brings along a trade delegation whose goal is to ease trade.
cma 9y ago
Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003Z9L4NA/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003Z9L4NA/
mercurysmessage 9y ago
I don't think your comment is sincere. Looks like you've already made up your mind.
jtraffic 9y ago
I could ask the reverse: "why isn't China more successful?" It's such a complicated issue that you could argue almost anything. I think any discussion must acknowledge Hong Kong, however, as an important data point. My opinion is that the Communist party, even despite its "GDP obsession" [1], has gotten in the way more than anything. As an (admittedly, very rough) estimate, if you take Hong Kong's GDP per person and multiply it by China's population, you get $58 trillion. [1] https://www.economist.com/news/china/21689628-chinas-obsession-gdp-targets-threatens-its-economy-grossly-deceptive-plans https://www.economist.com/news/china/21689628-chinas-obsessi...
- RobertoG 9y ago
  "why isn't China more successful?" Compared to what? to a contra-factual or to a real country? Because 500 million people out of extreme poverty sounds pretty successfully to me. Specially if we compare it to any other country following more "open" strategies.
  - logicchains 9y ago
    Compared to South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore or Hong Kong, which started just as poor as mainland China 60 years ago but leapt way ahead. And if the response is that China faced more difficulty due to the larger population, then surely the best approach would have been to split it up into multiple smaller countries?
    - bllguo 9y ago
      I don't even know how to address such a naive argument. Split the country into pieces? It doesn't take a political scientist to see how impractical this is. I didn't realize economic growth became a goal of such paramount importance to the government, that it should consider willingly breaking itself apart to achieve it. Just one counterargument I can see - China floundered economically under Mao, and only in the late 70s did real economic reform under Deng Xiaoping happen. An effective timeframe of <40 years, not 60-70. I'm sure other Asian countries experienced poor leadership at times, but to this degree? To stagnate as heavily as China did under Mao? Lastly, size definitely matters, in terms of both geography and population. Even today a huge number of the population is dispersed across the rural regions. How can economic prosperity reach them? Much easier in other Asian countries for growth to accumulate in centralized economic centers and start improving the welfares of the population at large.
gentro 9y ago
The argument for trade hinges on competitive advantage. Each country should produce what it is most efficient at producing based on its resources. In this way China has indeed rode the wave of globalization because its bountiful cheap labor made it suited to manufacturing small goods for richer economies. The capital accumulated through these activities were reinvested so that Chinese companies could move into more value added industries like electronics, automobiles, aerospace, and services, which is possible because China has a deep well of human capital (i.e. people) who have a strong work ethic and are eager to learn new skills. Moreover, because China has both a gigantic internal market and vast human resources, it's possible that Chinese suppliers can have a competitive advantage in virtually every industry, making the benefits of external trade less obvious. (This was China's attitude towards Europeans during colonial times too - that trade was unnecessary because they had nothing of value to China). Or if Chinese suppliers currently don't have a competitive advantage in terms of price or quality, the government can use protectionist policies to shield those industries until they do have an advantage. You might say that China has played all the right cards in the game of globalization. Donald Trump had been saying it for a long time.
- euyyn 9y ago
  > who have a strong work ethic and are eager to learn new skills. As opposed to the rest? :)
scotchmi_st 9y ago
China's GDP per capita is still somewhere between #70 and #80 in the world[1]. It just happens to be a big country with lots of people. If the US or most other western countries had same number of people is China, they would be doing much better. Also to go out on a limb a bit, you could probably draw a graph which shows a correlation between China relaxing its protectionism and its GDP increasing at a faster rate as a result. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...
- RobertoG 9y ago
  It seems to me that hypothetical graph would be one of GDP increasing and, as a consequence, relaxing protectionism in selected sectors. If you don't have a development plan, capital just create bubbles and then left the country in search of bigger profits. What is important is the creation of infrastructure and knowledge in the country that will work for its citizens. I don't know why this is a proposition so disputed. It seems that having a plan is always good except if we talk about economy. Almost all the increment in the world reduction of poverty are due to China, but it's sold to us as a consequence of less protectionism. Maybe, at the end of the day, what make China successful is that is too big to be bullied.
nine_k 9y ago
Two major factors of China's apparent success are cheap labor and creative reporting. The country's problems, aka the price paid for the industrial success, are a bit less prominently seen. Western countries faced the same problems (pollution, bad work conditions, etc) at the time of their first industrial revolutions, but by now are totally unwilling to pay such a price any more.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
elevensies 9y ago
I believe China's strategy is to allow foreign business to operate to a certain extent to provide a competitive impetus to their local favored companies. Basically I think their strategy is, inside China the foreign company will be allowed to have a market share of 20% to 50%, if it exceeds that they will create obstacles, as their own preferred (i.e. Chinese controlled) companies figure out how to compete. Once it is competitive they will subsidize it (via. redistribution from financial repression of lower & middle class individuals to below market financing of businesses, and compliant regulation i.e. no unions, lax pollution) to give it an advantage to gain market share globally. Regarding immigration, they already have a huge labor supply and if they need more I think they will prefer to do it by exporting their political and managerial apparatus, rather than importing bodies. For example their investments in Africa, and Australia: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/world/australia/china-political-influence-campaign-finance.html?mcubz=1 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/world/australia/china-pol... .
elevensies 9y ago
I believe China's strategy is to allow foreign business to operate to a certain extent to provide a competitive impetus to their local favored companies. Basically I think their strategy is, inside China the foreign company will be allowed to have a market share of 20% to 50%, if it exceeds that they will create obstacles, as their own preferred (i.e. Chinese controlled) companies figure out how to compete. Once it is competitive they will subsidize it (via. redistribution from financial repression of lower & middle class individuals to below market financing of businesses) to give it an advantage to gain market share globally. Regarding immigration, they already have a huge labor supply and if they need more I think they will prefer to do it by exporting their political and managerial apparatus, rather than importing bodies. For example their investments in Africa, and Australia: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/world/australia/china-political-influence-campaign-finance.html?mcubz=1 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/world/australia/china-pol... .
ehsankia 9y ago
I'm curious, I'm a bit ignorant but what kind of novel things has china produced? Has there ever been a huge advance in either software or hardware where the western world copied China? A brand new amazing programming language, a world changing battery technology, a cure for a big disease, etc? I've seen a few interesting CS papers, but I don't keep up to much. As far as I can tell, all the biggest advancements are being done by companies here. China is quite impressive in how they keep up in their own little bubble with their 1B people, but it's one thing to reimplement Google/Youtube, it's another thing to create new world changing technologies.
- rsynnott 9y ago
  Recently? Lots of research, of course. The big recent medical one would probably be artemisinin, an important malaria drug. In terms of novel consumer products, I think the major one is the e-cigarette.
ehsankia 9y ago
I'm curious, I'm a bit ignorant but what kind of novel things has china produced? Has there ever been a huge advance in either software or hardware where the western world copied China? A brand new amazing programming language, a world changing battery technology, a cure for a big disease, etc? I've seen a few interesting CS papers, but I don't keep up to much. As far as I can tell, all the biggest advancements are being done by companies here. China is quite impressive in how they keep up in their own little bubble with their 1B people, but it's one thing to reimplement Google/Youtube, it's another thing to create new world changing technologies.
awkwarddaturtle 9y ago
> We have it pounded into our heads that we need globalization in the form of open markets with no protectionism for US companies and immigration That's because we went through a neoliberal shift after ww2. Prior to ww2, we were leaders of protectionism. "According to Paul Bairoch, since the end of the 18th century, the United States has been "the homeland and bastion of modern protectionism". In fact, the United States never adhered to free trade until 1945." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism_in_the_United_States#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism_in_the_United_St... We needed protectionism in order to protect our much younger companies/industries so that they can develop and grow and compete against more established british/european companies. > yet china almost completely locks out foreign businesses and takes next to no immigrants and is obviously a quickly growing global superpower. They need protectionism in order for their own companies or industries to develop. Otherwise, western corporations would just flood in and own the chinese market. The problem is when chinese industries mature and their own markets get saturated, they are going to be in the same situation as the US/West. They are going to want to open up markets a round the world to sell their goods to and invest their excess capital.

wheaties 9y ago

Yes, 1 billion people.

pesfandiar 9y ago
Off topic, but I like how the rounding error in your statement is more than the population of the US.

friedman23 9y ago

We need globalization for the larger markets and the exchange of goods from other countries that have a comparative advantage. China has one of the largest markets within its own borders so it can afford to be protectionist. (this will quickly change)

nashashmi 9y ago
Also to mention, the biggest bottleneck to US economic growth during the Ford era was was the lack of workers which is why opening our doors to crowded Europe gave us a boost. China on the other hand still has plenty of workers to fill its mills.
- awkwarddaturtle 9y ago
  > Also to mention, the biggest bottleneck to US economic growth during the Ford era was was the lack of workers which is why opening our doors to crowded Europe gave us a boost. Actually during the Ford era, we went on an anti-immigration phase. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924
  - nashashmi 9y ago
    Assuming the Ford era began in 1900, we could say this was towards the end of the Ford era. I guess we had overdone on immigration and started regretting it.
    - awkwarddaturtle 9y ago
      > Assuming the Ford era began in 1900 Why should we "assume"? By Ford era, I'm assuming you meant his introduction of assembly line and mass production right? That started in 1913. > we could say this was towards the end of the Ford era. Can we? You say ford era. What time period are you referring to? Because from 1900 to 1924, the US was highly anti-immigrant. > I guess we had overdone on immigration and started regretting it. I guess? We've always been anti-immigrant as a nation. There really wasn't a time when immigrants were welcome in the US.

thablackbull 9y ago

> We have it pounded into our heads that we need globalization in the form of open markets with no protectionism Because that is false. It works for developed markets with existing strong industries. Dieter Frisch - former Director General for Development at the European Commission says in his La politique de développement de l'Union européenne [1], on page 38 of the PDF: "En effet, on ne connaît historiquement aucun cas où un pays au stade précoce de son évolution économique se serait développé via son ouverture à la concurrence internationale. Le développement s’est toujours amorcé au gré d’une certaine protection qu’on a pu diminuer au fur et à mesure que l’économie s’était suffisamment fortifiée pour affronter la concurrence extérieure. Mais un tel processus s’étend sur de longues années, sans parler du préalable que constituent, dans le cas des ACP, la mise en place et le fonctionnement de structures régionales." Essentially, it means that there are no cases of a country that developed through opening its economy to international competition. It always required protectionism which reduces gradually overtime as it is able to grow and absorb and compete with external competition. Haven't you noticed third world countries that attempt to follow America's advice never escape the poverty trap? What works for America does not imply it'll work for other countries. [1] http://ecdpm.org/wp-content/uploads/PMR-15-Politique-Developpement-Union-Europeenne-2008.pdf http://ecdpm.org/wp-content/uploads/PMR-15-Politique-Develop...

edpichler 9y ago
I live in Brazil and we have lots of protectionism. It's really interesting your comment, it changed some of my beliefs.
- nashashmi 9y ago
  To add a thought, invitations to foreign companies and investments can drown out local cultures with foreign personalities. This can be detrimental to what makes the country special and reduces the purpose of why they should ever prosper.
  - RobertoG 9y ago
    I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. What is that purpose? I though it was so the people of the country have better lives.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

dnadler 9y ago

IMO this is because China is still a (massive) developing economy with large swaths of undeveloped resources and untapped labor.

dilemma 9y ago

The US has never had or been a free market. "Free trade" is propaganda used to forcefully open foreign markets to US businesses looking for further growth.

nine_k 9y ago
Apparently it's US government involvement that caused companies like Google to be so successful.
- saimiam 9y ago
  This a false equivalence. The internet was designed from ground up to be borderless and untrammeled. Free trade was an initiative to tear down barriers around trade. The US government never had to request any other government to link up to the internet which is why their involvement in Google was not necessary. Otoh, if you look at an state visit, every head of state brings along a trade delegation whose goal is to ease trade.

cma 9y ago

Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003Z9L4NA/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003Z9L4NA/

mercurysmessage 9y ago

I don't think your comment is sincere. Looks like you've already made up your mind.

jtraffic 9y ago

I could ask the reverse: "why isn't China more successful?" It's such a complicated issue that you could argue almost anything. I think any discussion must acknowledge Hong Kong, however, as an important data point. My opinion is that the Communist party, even despite its "GDP obsession" [1], has gotten in the way more than anything. As an (admittedly, very rough) estimate, if you take Hong Kong's GDP per person and multiply it by China's population, you get $58 trillion. [1] https://www.economist.com/news/china/21689628-chinas-obsession-gdp-targets-threatens-its-economy-grossly-deceptive-plans https://www.economist.com/news/china/21689628-chinas-obsessi...

RobertoG 9y ago
"why isn't China more successful?" Compared to what? to a contra-factual or to a real country? Because 500 million people out of extreme poverty sounds pretty successfully to me. Specially if we compare it to any other country following more "open" strategies.
- logicchains 9y ago
  Compared to South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore or Hong Kong, which started just as poor as mainland China 60 years ago but leapt way ahead. And if the response is that China faced more difficulty due to the larger population, then surely the best approach would have been to split it up into multiple smaller countries?
  - bllguo 9y ago
    I don't even know how to address such a naive argument. Split the country into pieces? It doesn't take a political scientist to see how impractical this is. I didn't realize economic growth became a goal of such paramount importance to the government, that it should consider willingly breaking itself apart to achieve it. Just one counterargument I can see - China floundered economically under Mao, and only in the late 70s did real economic reform under Deng Xiaoping happen. An effective timeframe of <40 years, not 60-70. I'm sure other Asian countries experienced poor leadership at times, but to this degree? To stagnate as heavily as China did under Mao? Lastly, size definitely matters, in terms of both geography and population. Even today a huge number of the population is dispersed across the rural regions. How can economic prosperity reach them? Much easier in other Asian countries for growth to accumulate in centralized economic centers and start improving the welfares of the population at large.

gentro 9y ago

The argument for trade hinges on competitive advantage. Each country should produce what it is most efficient at producing based on its resources. In this way China has indeed rode the wave of globalization because its bountiful cheap labor made it suited to manufacturing small goods for richer economies. The capital accumulated through these activities were reinvested so that Chinese companies could move into more value added industries like electronics, automobiles, aerospace, and services, which is possible because China has a deep well of human capital (i.e. people) who have a strong work ethic and are eager to learn new skills. Moreover, because China has both a gigantic internal market and vast human resources, it's possible that Chinese suppliers can have a competitive advantage in virtually every industry, making the benefits of external trade less obvious. (This was China's attitude towards Europeans during colonial times too - that trade was unnecessary because they had nothing of value to China). Or if Chinese suppliers currently don't have a competitive advantage in terms of price or quality, the government can use protectionist policies to shield those industries until they do have an advantage. You might say that China has played all the right cards in the game of globalization. Donald Trump had been saying it for a long time.

euyyn 9y ago
> who have a strong work ethic and are eager to learn new skills. As opposed to the rest? :)

scotchmi_st 9y ago

China's GDP per capita is still somewhere between #70 and #80 in the world[1]. It just happens to be a big country with lots of people. If the US or most other western countries had same number of people is China, they would be doing much better. Also to go out on a limb a bit, you could probably draw a graph which shows a correlation between China relaxing its protectionism and its GDP increasing at a faster rate as a result. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

RobertoG 9y ago
It seems to me that hypothetical graph would be one of GDP increasing and, as a consequence, relaxing protectionism in selected sectors. If you don't have a development plan, capital just create bubbles and then left the country in search of bigger profits. What is important is the creation of infrastructure and knowledge in the country that will work for its citizens. I don't know why this is a proposition so disputed. It seems that having a plan is always good except if we talk about economy. Almost all the increment in the world reduction of poverty are due to China, but it's sold to us as a consequence of less protectionism. Maybe, at the end of the day, what make China successful is that is too big to be bullied.

nine_k 9y ago

Two major factors of China's apparent success are cheap labor and creative reporting. The country's problems, aka the price paid for the industrial success, are a bit less prominently seen. Western countries faced the same problems (pollution, bad work conditions, etc) at the time of their first industrial revolutions, but by now are totally unwilling to pay such a price any more.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

elevensies 9y ago

I believe China's strategy is to allow foreign business to operate to a certain extent to provide a competitive impetus to their local favored companies. Basically I think their strategy is, inside China the foreign company will be allowed to have a market share of 20% to 50%, if it exceeds that they will create obstacles, as their own preferred (i.e. Chinese controlled) companies figure out how to compete. Once it is competitive they will subsidize it (via. redistribution from financial repression of lower & middle class individuals to below market financing of businesses, and compliant regulation i.e. no unions, lax pollution) to give it an advantage to gain market share globally. Regarding immigration, they already have a huge labor supply and if they need more I think they will prefer to do it by exporting their political and managerial apparatus, rather than importing bodies. For example their investments in Africa, and Australia: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/world/australia/china-political-influence-campaign-finance.html?mcubz=1 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/world/australia/china-pol... .

elevensies 9y ago

I believe China's strategy is to allow foreign business to operate to a certain extent to provide a competitive impetus to their local favored companies. Basically I think their strategy is, inside China the foreign company will be allowed to have a market share of 20% to 50%, if it exceeds that they will create obstacles, as their own preferred (i.e. Chinese controlled) companies figure out how to compete. Once it is competitive they will subsidize it (via. redistribution from financial repression of lower & middle class individuals to below market financing of businesses) to give it an advantage to gain market share globally. Regarding immigration, they already have a huge labor supply and if they need more I think they will prefer to do it by exporting their political and managerial apparatus, rather than importing bodies. For example their investments in Africa, and Australia: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/world/australia/china-political-influence-campaign-finance.html?mcubz=1 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/world/australia/china-pol... .

ehsankia 9y ago

I'm curious, I'm a bit ignorant but what kind of novel things has china produced? Has there ever been a huge advance in either software or hardware where the western world copied China? A brand new amazing programming language, a world changing battery technology, a cure for a big disease, etc? I've seen a few interesting CS papers, but I don't keep up to much. As far as I can tell, all the biggest advancements are being done by companies here. China is quite impressive in how they keep up in their own little bubble with their 1B people, but it's one thing to reimplement Google/Youtube, it's another thing to create new world changing technologies.

rsynnott 9y ago
Recently? Lots of research, of course. The big recent medical one would probably be artemisinin, an important malaria drug. In terms of novel consumer products, I think the major one is the e-cigarette.

ehsankia 9y ago

awkwarddaturtle 9y ago

> We have it pounded into our heads that we need globalization in the form of open markets with no protectionism for US companies and immigration That's because we went through a neoliberal shift after ww2. Prior to ww2, we were leaders of protectionism. "According to Paul Bairoch, since the end of the 18th century, the United States has been "the homeland and bastion of modern protectionism". In fact, the United States never adhered to free trade until 1945." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism_in_the_United_States#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism_in_the_United_St... We needed protectionism in order to protect our much younger companies/industries so that they can develop and grow and compete against more established british/european companies. > yet china almost completely locks out foreign businesses and takes next to no immigrants and is obviously a quickly growing global superpower. They need protectionism in order for their own companies or industries to develop. Otherwise, western corporations would just flood in and own the chinese market. The problem is when chinese industries mature and their own markets get saturated, they are going to be in the same situation as the US/West. They are going to want to open up markets a round the world to sell their goods to and invest their excess capital.