Conventional wisdom has it that China’s growing economy poses a serious threat to America’s status as a global economic superpower. The media and politicians repeat time and again that the United States is losing much of its manufacturing base to China and that American jobs are disappearing as a result. Many Americans who believe these claims vote for politicians who promise to “protect” American jobs from foreign competition. A look at the numbers reveals that, contrary to the assertion that corporations prefer to invest in low-wage countries like China, the …
Taxpayers will likely shell out another $14.3 million in federal aid to the 1,100 people formerly employed by defunct solar company Solyndra. The Labor Department announced Monday that it had approved Trade Adjustment Assistance payments for those former employees, which may pay out about $13,000 for each. TAA is designed to compensate American workers laid off as a direct result of foreign competition, and to train them for other occupations – though the program has shown few signs of success. The Labor Department’s move is a tacit assertion that Solyndra’s …
Tonight at 8 p.m. ET, eight Republican presidential candidates will take the stage at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., to tell America where they stand on foreign policy and national security in a special debate hosted by The Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, broadcast on CNN and moderated by Wolf Blitzer. The debate marks the first time that either Heritage or AEI — both nonprofit, nonpartisan research institutes — has sponsored a presidential debate. Businessman Herman Cain, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Texas Governor Rick Perry, former Speaker …
Want to hear something disturbing? China has increased its defense budget by double digits every year for the last 20 years. Just as China seems to be gearing up for some undefined enterprise, the U.S. is winding down its defense budget at a similarly rapid pace. Despite the obvious contrast, President Obama said recently that reductions in U.S. defense spending “will not—I repeat, will not—come at the expense of the Asia-Pacific.” Yesterday, Obama visited Australia to announce a renewed U.S. troop presence in coming months, part of a new security …
On November 16, President Barack Obama and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced their intention to increase U.S. Marine Corps and Air Force training in Australia. The expanded U.S. military presence is meant to enhance allied interoperability and reassure friends and allies in the region worried over an increasingly assertive China. The new joint initiative lends credence to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s promise last month that Washington would maintain or even expand its military commitment to Asia. Whether the United States is able to deliver on those promises in …
On November 2nd, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) completed a critical milestone in its young, yet ambitious, space program. China’s unmanned Shenzhou 8, which launched on October 31, successfully completed an automated rendezvous and docking with their prototype space station module, Tiangong 1. This docking exercise is a critical development in China’s quest to launch and operate its own manned space station in Low-Earth Orbit. As China moves ahead with enhancing their space capabilities, the U.S. shuttle program has ended with no successor in place and an unclear future. …
The political debate over China seems familiar because they’ve been on the political table for years. Is China taking American jobs? How cooperative is the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on issues like nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran? China rises; America frets, and Presidential candidates talk about roughly the same things every four years. But what if China is about to change? By the time America holds its presidential election next year, China will have begun a leadership transition of its own. The current leadership group headed by Hu …
The Legatum Institute has just released its 2011 Prosperity Index. The index has a number of strengths, topped by the versatility of its supporting Web site. But Legatum has trumpeted an inaccurate finding that China has eclipsed the U.S. on the narrow economic dimension of its measure of prosperity. This finding demonstrates the problems with comparing China to other countries, as so much Chinese data are unusable. Some of Legatum’s numbers are clearly wrong; others are probably wrong. The Legatum economic sub-index uses data from other sources on 15 economic …
The European press has a death grip on the idea that China will provide the huge sums of money necessary to make a dent in the EU financial crisis. Like most things involving the EU, the crisis has progressed at a snail’s pace. This has given the media the chance to recycle the “China is coming!” story again and again, despite the lack of evidence. In fact, the barriers to a Chinese bailout are daunting for several reasons. 1. The Scale of the Problem The EU does not need €10 …
Recent news reports have highlighted Chinese construction of a system of underground tunnels and raised serious questions about what they might imply regarding China’s nuclear capabilities. One story highlighted that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) may have some 3,000 miles of tunnels, sufficient to move systems underground across the breadth of the country. Much of this was apparently dug by the Second Artillery Force, which is responsible for China’s nuclear forces, so the assumption is that many of these tunnels are related to China’s nuclear deterrent. The most commonly …
