If You Really Loved Me You'd Let Me Eat Your Brain

From China Replacing the United States as World's Leading Consumer by Lester R. Brown:

Looking at energy use in China means also considering coal, which supplies nearly two thirds of energy demand. Here China’s burning of 800 million tons easily exceeds the 574 million tons burned in the United States. With its coal use far exceeding that of the United States and with its oil and natural gas use climbing fast, it is only a matter of time until China will also be the world’s top emitter of carbon. Soon the world may have two major climate disrupters.

Which begs the question...why is China not included in Kyoto? Perhaps because they would never have been stupid enough to go along with it, and such a slap in the face of the Kyoto crowd would be too harsh a rebuke?

So, I look forward to the day when Brown et. al. stop calling the US the world’s largest polluter. I fully expect them to stop whining about US industry and us piggish, selfish consumers and turn all their attention to China.

China is now importing vast quantities of grain, soybeans, iron ore, aluminum, copper, platinum, phosphates, potash, oil and natural gas, forest products for lumber and paper, and the cotton needed for its world-dominating textile industry. These massive imports have put China at the center of the world raw materials economy. Its voracious appetite for materials is driving up not only commodity prices but ocean shipping rates as well.

He’s wrong about commodity prices, but don’t tell that to futures traders who earn a living knowing which way commodity prices are going. One of Simon's Laws: In the long run all commodity prices fall.

China’s eclipse of the United States as a consumer nation should be seen as another milestone along the path of its evolution as a world economic leader. Its record-high domestic savings and its huge trade surplus with the United States are but two of the more visible manifestations of its economic strength. It is now China, along with Japan, that is buying the U.S. treasury securities that enable the United States to run the largest fiscal deficit in history.

I feel like I'm watching a film strip in grade school: "Let's Meet Our New Chinese Masters!" with that happy 50’s music in the background ala Mr. Burns and Smithers traipsing around the power plant. Brown sounds positively overjoyed that China is set to kick America’s ass! Where are his usual complaints about resource use and overpopulation? Has he nothing to say about the tens of thousands of species driven to extinction by the Three Gorges Dam? Just kidding, of course, but he should try to be more consistent.

The United States, the world’s leading debtor nation, is now heavily dependent on Chinese capital to underwrite its fast-growing debt.

The leading debtor nation? In terms of absolute debt, maybe, but in terms of percentage of GDP we're fine. We're not dependent on Chinese capital but China’s growth is predicated on a pegged currency. If China gets uppity all we need to do is convince Soros & Co. that they can make a few billion by taking down the Yuan. It’s not like they haven't trashed Asian currencies before.