Al Jazeera: 'Empire - The New Arms Race'

Source:Al Jazeera- Welcome to the Communist Republic of Korea. No one will blame you if you try to leave or escape.

"Al Jazeera (Arabic: الجزيرة‎, romanized: al-jazīrah, IPA: [æl (d)ʒæˈziːrɐ], literally "The Island", though referring to the Arabian Peninsula in context)[3] is a state-owned[4] broadcaster based in Doha, Qatar, owned by the Al Jazeera Media Network. Initially launched as an Arabic news and current affairs satellite TV channel, Al Jazeera has since expanded into a network with several outlets, including the internet and specialty television channels in multiple languages.

Al Jazeera Media Network is a global news organization with 80 bureaus around the world. The original Al Jazeera Arabic channel's willingness to broadcast dissenting views, for example on call-in shows, created controversies in the Arab States of the Persian Gulf. One of the station's office was the only channel to cover the War in Afghanistan live." 

From Wikipedia  

"Over the last decade, Washington has doubled its military budget, fuelling massive military build-ups around the world, from the emerging powers in the South China Seas to the multi-billion-dollar arms deals in the Middle East, begging the question where and when this vicious cycle of rising military expenditures will end. Empire asks: what justifies this global military addiction, or, has the world been duped by the multi-national, military industrial complex?"

From Al Jazeera

Does the People's Republic of China (which is the official name of China) I call it the Communist Republic of China (but perhaps thats a different debate) but do they want to be a superpower economically? Yeah, that I think thats obvious by the way they've developed their economy. 

The last thirty plus years or so, China has already created the largest economy in the Asia, the largest continent in the world. They passed Japan a few years ago, but Japan still dwarfs China in per-capita income, something like 5-7 times more. Which is actually more important when it comes to economics: the ability for people to spend money to have money to spend in order to support themselves and their families. Thats what per-capita Income is about and why its more important them the actual size of a GDP. 

The next step for China's economy, how do they translate economic growth into education and job growth that benefits most of the country instead of parts of it and become a developed nation. 

China is a country of 1.5B people and maybe 1/3 of them, which is still 500M people live in the middle class or could be considered wealthy. Does China want to become a military superpower? Again, they are a huge country of 1.5B people, they can already defend themselves quite well and are already an Asian power. As well as having one of the largest militaries in the world and having nuclear weapons. And they are still developing their military and perhaps will be a military superpower within 10-20 years. Fine, so what, it's not a matter if countries are powerful or not, with their military or economy. 

The question is what does China do with that power: India is also moving in this direction as well, they are a country of 1.2B people the second largest country in the world. But I don't believe many countries, except for maybe Pakistan which is another huge country of 150M people, but India dwarfs them in everything. Its about what you do with power not whether you have it or not and China has shown that they are not the Soviet Union, they don't want to own Asia or the world. Unlike Russia that wanted to spread communism around the World. 

America doesn't need to worry about China in the sense that China will own the world or something. If America does what it has to do, which is rebuild our economy, economic and job growth, fixing our fiscal policy by actually having one and getting our debt and deficit under control, exporting our products around the world and having the same trade access in foreign nations that they have in America, with the same low tariff rates, rebuilding and expanding our infrastructure and bringing it into the 21st Century, having an energy policy that moves America towards energy independence, reforming our public education System, etc, then America will again not just be the superpower, but the dominant power in the world.

America has a lot of work to do and we have some time to do it and if we get our work done. We'll still be as powerful as we need to be to address all of our concerns because we'll have the resources to do them. And China will still be China but they won't be America, they'll never be anything like America as far as how great and important as we are, as long as we do what we need to do and China is still a Communist Republic with very limited if any social and political freedom. 

It's not about having power thats the problem, it's about what you do with the power you have. And so far China even though they've done some things we've disagree with like with Taiwan and how they deal with their ethnic and religious minorities, but this is not the Soviet Union thats trying to establish a Communist State for the world. And if America does what America needs to do, then the rest will be taken care of for the better.