unlike usa, china does not run a persistent trade surplus with europe. trade between europe and china is almost completely balanced.

this means that in a trade war, europe will be destroying chinese jobs making toys, textiles, and maybe electronics, while china will be destroying european jobs (of equal value) making high end industry equipment, state of the art semi conductors, etc. this is because those items are what either player is selling to the other.

so it is strange that while no one is going to gain from a china-european trade war (i say again: trade between the two is balanced), the optimal strategies for both side if things deteriorate further is to fight a trade war, not avoid one.

on the european side, there is public opinion. the whole greek drama illustrates that votes trumps money anyway in europe. on the chinese side, while they don't care abt public opinion so much, cutting high tech imports from europe is just going to force their industrial base up the value chain faster, which is what they are trying to do anyway.

Sheer prejudice and banditry. The single biggest investment by a chinese company in europe was PingAn's acquisition of a controlling stake (about 10% I believe) in the then Fortis, a dutch-belgium banking and insurance conglomerate. When the financial crisis hit, the european governments quickly 'saved' the best assets by nationalize its banking and european insurance businesses, and wiped out PingAn's investment, by way of state administrative manuveours. PingAn protested to no avail. No compensation was ever given. This tentamounts to state confiscation by looting. There were also other acquisitions snubed simply because the suitors were chinese companies. Of course there have also been a long list of trade protection grievances suffered by chinese companies as a result of european prejudice or this market status shenanigen.

The europeans may believe they could get their ways as soon as they bring out these human right or democracy or a number of other labels. They believe the mild mannered chinese are all gullible fools.

Sovereign debt crisis hit, and europeans came knocking to beg for help. It all seemed straight from old dumas or dickenson fables, fables the chinese have learned all too well. As all other BRIC countries scoffed at a distance, china was the lone country even hinted at the possibility of extending help. When the chinese rightly requested that the europeans drop their prejudice that under which the chinese had suffered for so long, guess what the europeans did?

The playing field is not level between the USA and China. Our markets are open to them; theirs are - mostly - not open to us. China exploits this imbalance to achieve a huge trade surplus while our industrial base withers and our debt mounts.

Our economic strength hasn't begun to nose-dive at quite the rate Europe has managed, but we won't be far behind. Everything is interconnected.

It's the USA that stands to gain the most from protectionism, not Europe. Saying so is heresy to Chicago School economists, if you care to dignify those scholars with the word economist. (I prefer the term 'fantasist.') To the rest of the world's economists, open markets are best, but only when playing fields are equal. China protects itself vigorously and by diverse means from imports. So long as it does, the only rational response is tariffs and trade barriers.

No less than Europe, the US can't survive with only a service sector. We've got to ramp up our industrial output, and the only way to do that is to protect ourselves from products made by low-paid serfs with unsafe chemicals and no serious regard for environmental protections in a country whose markets we cannot seriously access.

Europe/the EU isn't one country but many. Northern European countries have lot to lose from protectionism since China is a big market.
The Southern countries on the other hand can't compete and won't be able to resuscitate their economies without either substantially cutting wages and benefits, leaving the Euro and pushing their currencies artificially low or protectionism.
No elected politician will want to cut wages and benefits. The Northern countries want to avoid the South leaving the Euro and, almost certainly, declare bankruptcy. Protectionism makes sense as a mechanism for redistributing European wealth while keeping the EU intact.
On the other hand the South might not be able to avoid bankruptcy in any case, so maybe we'll see NEU and SEU created.

The real fact remains that the Govt. of China is the biggest business house on the earth and a very ruthless one using all the tricks of the trade along with faster decision making geared to benefit the Chinese.

Chinese had long-back dumped the Communist ideals in the yellow sea. They are now ruled by a team of technocrats who, if needed can build a straight road or rail link from north to South, disregarding any social, environmental, local, religious, regional and political concerns and pressures.

Chinese always have a larger geo-political blue print to control the resources of the region by their increasing economic-military might.

Than there is so much still hidden, remains to be known about China for the world at large.

Mexico, the United States and the European Union have been among the most frequent complainants before the WTO over China's trade practices, according to the economy ministry. Including complaints about banned subsidies and restrictions it has placed on exports of some raw materials from the Asian country, as well as violations of intellectual-property and investment rights.According to Mexican authorities, imports from China in 2010 were valued at $45.6 billion, while exports to the Asian nation amounted to just $4.2 billion.

How USA balance, or at least drastically reduce, the trade deficit with China?

They be brave and puncture the myth that China's main manufacturing edge is solely its cheap labor.

The biggest source of China's manufacturing advantage is actually a complex array of unfair trade practices, all of which are illegal under free-trade rules.

The most potent of China's "weapons of job destruction" are an elaborate web of export subsidies; the blatant piracy of America's technologies and trade secrets; the counterfeiting of valuable brand names like Nike and Chevy; a cleverly manipulated and grossly undervalued currency; and the forced transfer of the technology of any American company wishing to operate on Chinese soil or sell into the Chinese market.

These unfair trade practices is expressly prohibited both by World Trade Organization rules

China talks angrily about unipolar world but at the same time is working over time to have a unipolar Asia under brutal Chinese military and economic might.

Chinese support rouge nations like Pakistan and North Korea for their ability to harm, intimidate and needle democracies and west endlessly.

USA worked over time after demise of Mao to facilitate Chinese integrations with the west and world economies through tools of capitalism and market.

Perhaps it was assumed that they will obey rules and play a fair game. Chinese copy and manufacture Indian hand loom, products in mechanized factories, leading to great problems.

Students of history are extremely rare nowadays. Sure, the strength of cash is what's going to drive Europe together, regardless of anything else will. Those wars were because of nationalism, the ability trips and egos from the ruling class, And cash. Now, Europeans have experienced two plus decades of getting open borders and sharing not just a currency, but some pot identity. Asking a sovereign nation to submit its plan for approval isn't practical yet, but requiring these phones suffer a strict audit before receiving assistance is virtually towards building muscle. I for just one hope and pray the Eu survives this crisis and stays together, but care much less whether Greece and also the lesser states remain in it. An ideal Eurozone will include the large Ten, everyone else will just drag them down.

The entire world must bring China under control if any country other than China is going to survive in the future.

China's unfair trade practices are a disgrace that must be brought under control by the rest of the world. It might take placing punitive custom duties on Chinese goods and placing strict quotas on Chinese goods to force the Chinese leaders to understand that if they want to be a world economic power then they must play by the rules.

The Chinese Government can talk to the end of time if talk allows them to continue their actions. It will take action against their goods, not talk, to convince them they must abide by the same rules as the rest of the leading nations of the world.

No one ever loses weight by talking about losing weight, they only lose weight when they start taking steps to lose that weight. The world will not convince China to be a good World Citizen by talking about it, the World Leaders must start taking action against China's exports to convince the Chinese leaders it is time for them to start behaving like responsible adultsramps.

European frontrunners thus observe China like a challenging challenge, not really a possible savior. Not just is actually China a less expensive marketplace, but it's additionally making up ground within technological overall performance, infrastructure, and also the efficiency of their work force. Given Europe's diminishing competitiveness, it will likely be greatly hard to increase industrial manufacturing -- a minimum of with out restoring with a type of protectionism.

Although many Americans and Europeans might have be hiding in a cave and completely blind to the current situation regarding China, I am most certainly not. This article is concrete proof that the Chinese are emerging as a world superpower, while the U.S. 's superpower status is steadily declining and European nations like the U.K. have already noticeably fallen from superpower status. The Chinese could very well have a dominant hold on the European market if the EU and others are not extremely careful, and don't check themselves into a < a href=http://drugrehabflorida.co/drug-rehab-florida-mitchell-b-recovery-story>drug rehab fl This article argues that the Chinese might not be interested, however i beg to differ. If they can scoop up huge car manufacturing companies at reasonable prices, why wouldn't they. The United States and Europe have allowed the Chinese far too much access into the global market, resulting in fewer jobs and China's continued development of armaments and military. Scary.