Jake Hushka Post 5- U.S.-China tension was the underaddressed theme of Davos

U.S.-China tension was the underaddressed theme of Davos

http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2010/02/02/u-s-china-tension-was-the-underaddressed-theme-of-davos/

I decided to address the article above because of the on going discussion of China becoming a world superpower. A superpower’s responsibilities include: maintaining world stability, intervening in any nation that threatens worldwide balance, and maintaining world order while insuring international stability. I believe that China does not hold these values, which can specifically be seen in the article by the heightened tension between the United States and China. The World Economic Forum gives nation’s the opportunities to address important issues at hand and in my opinion China is not taking their responsibilities seriously.

China’s economic sector has seen significant development over the last decade, specifically in their GDP growth. The United States concern is that it has seen a 10% increase in unemployment over the last year while the Chinese GDP has grown at the same rate. The U.S. feels that due to this growth it is the responsibility of the nation to revalue their currency and Chinese government has refused such suggestions. This situation is also coupled with the vow that China would increase its domestic consumption, which can be taken as China wanting to be less reliant on exports, particularly to the United States. I believe that China took a partnership with the United States knowing the opportunities that would be available to them and now they are going back to the attack on the cultural imperialism of the West. These actions will not go to any avail by the United States and may in fact result in trade barriers. I believe that both sides are taking measures that will be bad in the long term because they are politically popular in the short term and may result in irreparable consequences.

A side note on the article, the forum gave Google the opportunity to allow there concerns to be heard once again. As George stated in a prior post, the Chinese are strongly encouraging the Western journalists to address Google’s threat to abandon China over its disdain for censorship and its computers in China being hacked with help from the Chinese government. Google in fact has been working with the Chinese government to comply with the rules of their censorship, but still strongly believes that the Chinese government had orchestrated the crime of stealing intellectual property.

The main issues the article addresses are the currency dispute and Google’s corporate spying incident. I believe it just shows that as China becomes progressively more powerful, the country increasingly intends to confront the United States. I consider this to be a derelict of their responsibilities of a superpower and they need to start addressing some of the ongoing, worldwide issues at hand.