So China Finally Got an Aircraft Carrier...

Congratulations to the Communists in Beijing for the launching of their first aircraft carrier.

While it will not really function as an aircraft carrier for years, the new ship goes a long way to alleviating the fears and trepidations that have occupied their strategic planning sessions for decades.

Put yourself in their neo-Maoist heads over the past 30 years and look at their talking points:


To stay in power, we need to grow our economy at around 10% each and every year, as there are 800 million people here who live on less than $2 a day.


And, while they're terribly poor and ignorant, if they don't see progress, the masses will revolt, like has happened every century or so in China for the past 4,000 years.


We can't grow that fast only making and selling stuff to all these poor people we've got.


So, we have to leverage our competitive advantages- near-slave workers and near-slave wages- to build and export stuff to the rich world.


But we don't know how to make any of the stuff the rich guys want.


Here's the solution: lure in greedy companies from the rich world with promises of boundless opportunity so they will educate and finance us free of charge.


We'll hold on to the cash we earn and invest it in state-run companies that we can use to get rich and dole out favors to our friends.


The high economic growth will keep the near-billion poor placated; and it will spur more greedy foreigners to throw us even greater amounts of their knowledge, technology, and money.


But the big flies in the ointment are the shipping lanes.


If we are going to do all this international trade, then how can we can be assured that our stuff will get to market?


We can't be sure. We don't have a navy to speak of.


We have to trust the American Navy. They ultimately control the world's oceans and all of the cargo that is the mother's milk of our economy.


If the U.S. wanted to shut us down, they could; and we wouldn't be able to do anything about it, except maybe file a protest at the WTO or UN.


The good thing for us is that half of all American's believe their media and leaders. They actually think we are the richest, most powerful nation in the world!


So let's go build a Navy! It will further scare the ignorant Americans about our inevitable rise and their imminent fall.


We can't lose!