How many times can you lie about growth data and get away with it?

[don]

Re: How many times can you lie about growth data and get away with it?

is lying allowed downunder . . .

[c1ue]

Re: How many times can you lie about growth data and get away with it?

China is certainly not the only country to do that in recent times. But would it work? Could a great number of Chinese citizens get so emotional about Japan or Taiwan?

Yes. It isn't hard when grandparents were killed by the Japanese. Still well within living memory.

A California friend who was fluent in Mandarin told me that for many years, the Chinese government made efforts to create anti-american feeling. Presumably, they also worked to promote anti-Japanese feeling.

Big deal. As if China is the only government to do promote antagonism vs. rivals.

But I think these things are less effective as the population becomes more educated and affluent. That's why I am so disappointed with the behavior of the United States in recent years. But our political system sucks. So does China's, I guess.

I disagree. The most fervent anti-Japanese I know are the one's with multiple Master's degrees. This is an emotional, not a rational, subject.

It is not surprising that the ways in which the present political schema in the US works is by repeatedly slamming the emotional issues.

[ST]

Re: How many times can you lie about growth data and get away with it?

That is scary! And they have nuclear weapons, zillions of unmarried young men, etc.!

I think the trick is to keep it mostly to global political posturing, fan the flames of nationalism, but don't do anything stupid. Then again, when you have become the most important buyer in many small countries and a few large, developed new military capabilities, are increasingly bellicose then maybe a strong will to exercise that power materializes; depends who's running the country at the time. EJ has hypothesized about proxy wars - conveniently sized, perhaps. And, what if this occurs while simultaneously western countries hit their credit limits in the bond markets when, as EJ has also pontificated, the only justification for pushing beyond the debt to GDP limits is a wartime scenario?

Strange things happen in times of commodity supply crunch - Japan attacking Pearl Harbor in reaction to the U.S. refusing to further sell them oil, etc... and those may lead to other unpredictable scenarios. When I studied history the thing that become clear was that the narrative in retrospect was easy to put together & rationalize by historians, but that didn't make it correct. Explaining the past is as much of a prediction as predictions of the future are. Often the system is too complex to identify the true cause(s), and I think often there are no discernible ones nor lessons to be learned, except about human nature. Sometimes a politician takes a world altering decision because he had a bad morning - maybe a fight with his mistress.

[Polish_Silver]

Re: How many times can you lie about growth data and get away with it?

Yes silver they do but when was the last time China made any aggressive military offensive? http://www.history.army.mil/brochure...ff/chinoff.htm

.

The only two I can think of are Tibet and the war with India circa 1960. The Korean war was actually the Soviet Union's idea. The chinese government was very reluctant to participate, from what I have read.