← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Walter Yannis
Thread ID: 18331 | Posts: 16 | Started: 2005-05-21
2005-05-21 17:40 | User Profile
[URL=http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050520/wl_asia_afp/uschinatradepolitics_050520010606&printer=1]Yahoo![/URL]
Washington's China policy a 'total failure' top US lawmaker Thu May 19, 9:06 PM ET
The leader of Democrats in the House of Representatives denounced US China policy as a "total failure," particularly with respect to the upward-spiraling US trade deficit.
"There has never been any good faith on the part of the Chinese to act in a way that is fair, that honors the opportunity that we give them to grow their economy by using our markets for that growth," said Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
"As a result, much sensitive technology, some of it related to weapons of mass destruction, was exported from China to unsafe countries."
Because of misguided US trade policy "the trade deficit has soared, and religious repression continues, and we are up the creek," she told reporters at a press conference.
"The China policy of the United States -- Democrats' and Republicans' alike -- has been a total failure," the Democratic leader said.
Pelosi said US officials missed a golden opportunity to wield influence on China in the area of human rights and trade a decade and a half ago, when the trade deficit was not as large.
"Going back 15 years when it was two to three billion dollars in a year, I thought it gave us tremendous leverage to stop the Chinese government's proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, to stop their unfair trade practices, and to stop their human rights violations," she said.
"Today the trade deficit with China is two to three billion a week -- not a year, a week," she said.
"Today they rule the roost. They have over 150 dollar billion trade deficit a year with us. ... If they decided, for a day or two, to think about whether they were going to purchase our bonds, we would have a problem in our economy," she said.
Pelosi had particular words of scorn for "all those geniuses who told us that if we just continue to engage in the same trade relationship with China that there would be freedom in China, and it would stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and they would stop engaging in unfair trade practices."
"The United States had much more leverage early on with the Chinese ... before we gave them Most Favored Nation status permanently with nothing on their side .... before we smoothed the way for them to go into the WTO.
"Our leverage is greatly diminished because of those decisions," Pelosi said, lamenting: "I don't know if you can turn back on it."
2005-05-21 18:08 | User Profile
Could be. Excessive holding of U.S. bonds by foreign governments and peoples always struck me as odd. What would happen if the U.S. defaulted en masse?
But it touches on the question: What does the rising China mean for the white world?
2005-05-21 18:19 | User Profile
Actually, "our" China policy has been a smashing sucess- for plutocratic elements.
2005-05-22 02:37 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Hugh Lincoln]But it touches on the question: What does the rising China mean for the white world?[/QUOTE] But there is no longer a white world!
2005-05-22 05:24 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Hugh Lincoln]Could be. Excessive holding of U.S. bonds by foreign governments and peoples always struck me as odd. What would happen if the U.S. defaulted en masse?
But it touches on the question: What does the rising China mean for the white world?[/QUOTE]
Steven Mosher (a Jew, but he seems to tell it like it is about China) wrote a good book called "Hegemon." According to Mosher, China historically just wants recognition of its preeminence. China wants kow tows and large cargo caravans of tribute.
They also territorially want to resurrect the Mongol empire, at least most of it, which would indclude Mongolia, Central Asia to the Caspian, Korea, and all of Siberia.
Get ready to kow tow to the Red Emperor.
The Freepers and the 'Rats have made it all but inevitable.
2005-05-22 12:57 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]Steven Mosher (a Jew, but he seems to tell it like it is about China) wrote a good book called "Hegemon." According to Mosher, China historically just wants recognition of its preeminence. China wants kow tows and large cargo caravans of tribute.
They also territorially want to resurrect the Mongol empire, at least most of it, which would indclude Mongolia, Central Asia to the Caspian, Korea, and all of Siberia.
Get ready to kow tow to the Red Emperor.
The Freepers and the 'Rats have made it all but inevitable.[/QUOTE] Jung Gwo (how it sounds in English) is what China names itself. The Middle Kingdom. Connotation: "the rest of the world revolves around us." Mao did us a favor by being a xenophobe, while our anti-Communist stance helped keep the Chinese economic juggernaut suppressed. We, and by that I mean the whole West, chose against economic warfare vis a vis the Asian hegemon (I will go get that book, sounds good) but deluded ourselves about the mythic "peace dividend." Greed shall be the downfall of capitalism, or at least, capitalism as we know it. Will freedom disappear with it?
After The Wall came down, no one wanted to believe we had another threat. Those of us who commented on it were accused of being paranoid, and of seeing enemies who were not there. "We can change them by making them rich." Really? If one understands Chinese culture even marginally, one sees through that immediately. If China were a Christian nation, OK, I might buy into that somewhat.
Current national power models define a nation's power calculus as: Economic, military, informational, diplomatic power.
Ike knew that America's strength was enabled by powerful economy, from that power comes the capacity for strength elsewhere. The Chinese know the same thing. Why have the "global free trade" crowd, who insist on returning to wage slavery, not been exposed as the frauds they are?
Thanks for the book recommendation. :smartass:
2005-05-22 15:43 | User Profile
20 May, 2005 Feeding the China Frenzy
Treasury Secretary John Snow intone some classic bureaucratic cant in saying Tuesday that the U.S. may someday charge China with unfair currency manipulation-but not just yet. The markets breathed a huge sigh of relief. A currency/trade war with China at least has been postponed.
But back to Mr. Snow's statement, which demonstrates how decisions of huge importance to the global economy are so often founded on ill-judged premises. Said the Treasury Secretary: "Addressing imbalances in the global economy is a soared responsibility among the major economic regions of the world." We're all for global cooperation if it means reinforcing good policies. But this Treasury effort amounts to an ultimatum that if China doesn't revalue it will soon be cited as a "currency manipulator."
This U.S. quarrel with China has far more to do with U.S. politics than with any objective or scientifically based assessment of "imbalances" in the global economy or some shared "responsibility" of major nations to correct them. It has a great deal to do with the yammering about China that's coming from Senate protectionists like Democrat Chuck Schumer and Republican Lindsey Graham. The Treasury exchange rate report the Secretary was introducing is a requirement of U.S. law, the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act ëf 1988, through which the U.S. Congress tasked Treasury with trying to decide what constitutes "fair" exchange rates.
Even if shifting exchange rates had a major bearing on terms of trade, a highly dubious proposition, there is no such thing as perfect "balance" in the global economy. If allowed to function freely, it is a dynamic system with constantly shifting patterns of trade and investment." Interference by political tinkerers always risks slowing it down and retarding its ability to produce new jobs and relieve global poverty.
As it happens, the dollar-yuan exchange rate has been an island of stability in this dynamic system, just as the euro serve that function for Europe. The yuan has been fixed at 8.28 to the dollar since 1995. This stability has given foreign investors the confidence to build factories in China, fueling its years of rapid growth. The U.S.-China relationship has contributed to global economic which reached nearly 5% last year- and has increased the possibility that China will evolve into a responsible democratic nation.
But the U.S. has been ragging China for a year now to "revalue" the yuan on the presumption that this would raise the price of Chinese imports to the U.S. and ââ¬Âcureââ¬Â the U.S. trade deficit with China. This is the triumph of politics over experience. Any reduction in the quantity of Chinese exports would be offset in part by their higher price. And while China's exports might fall, so would its imports as its economy slowed due to deflationary pressure caused by revaluation.
Stanford Economist Ron McKinnon recently reminded the world that this was precisely the experience of Japan as the yen was going to 80 to the dollar from 360 in the 25 years after 1971. "The ever-higher yen from 1971 to 1995 led to even bigger Japanese trade surpluses," Mr. McKinnon writes. Economists Steve Hanke and Michael Connolly have warned on this page that a revaluation or float of the yuan cooU do similar deflationary damage to China.
Rapid economic growth has created the superficial impression that China is some kind of "miracle" economy, much as Japan Inc. was similarly lauded in the 1980s. It is nothing of the sort. The stable connection to the dollar has brought in hundreds of billions in foreign investment, which has been put to good use by an Industrious Chinese population and the busi ness skills of the so-called overseas Chinese who have exploited this productivity.
But China still is a fragile economic and political system. The Chinese Communist Party has been unwilling, or unable, to reform the banking system because it is the party's means of bestowing favors and thereby retaining support. Banks ââ¬Åloanââ¬Â money without any expection of ever being repaid. Because the banking system is so weak, China is making only small progress in removing controls on the yuan by issuing bonds to Chinese banks. Until China frees up the capital account, it is in no position to float the yuan.
We have repeatedly urged China to move faster to eliminate the exchange controls on capital, and it will eventually have to do so in its own self interest if it is to safely deconstruct the house of cards it has been buildning.The U.S. Treasury no doubt understands this, but feels it needs to do something to fend off Congress and therefore it shouts about the value of the yuan.
After reading this I almost think that the editors of the Wall Street Journal have been smoking Chinese opium. They certainly don't live in the same solar system as I do. This is the plutocratic face of our Judeo-plutocracy for all to see.
There is no URL provided because I scanned this editorial.
2005-05-22 16:15 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Angeleyes]Thanks for the book recommendation. :smartass:[/QUOTE]
You're welcome.
Here's another FREEKING EXCELLENT book on the Chinese:
[URL=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0399140115/qid=1116778211/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-1502497-9611253?v=glance&s=books]The Lords of the Rim: The Invisible Empire of the Overseas Chinese[/URL] by Sterling Seagrave
We were discussing on another thread the influence the Overseas Chinese had on the Southeast Asian crisis of the post-war period (say, 1945-1975).
This book discusses the history of the OC, their deep connections to China proper, and their role in the Communist movements of Indonesia, Malaysia, Burma (and I'm probably forgetting one - the Philippines?).
Seagrave really lays it all out there. He goes on to condemn racism (after showing briliantly how race was the key factor in the whole mess), but he probably did that just to get published.
Very important book.
King Rama VI of Thailand in 1912 (?) called the OC the "Jews of the East."
2005-05-22 16:44 | User Profile
[QUOTE]As it happens, the dollar-yuan exchange rate has been an island of stability in this dynamic system, just as the euro serve that function for Europe. The yuan has been fixed at 8.28 to the dollar since 1995. This stability has given foreign investors the confidence to build factories in China, fueling its years of rapid growth. The U.S.-China relationship has contributed to global economic which reached nearly 5% last year- and has increased the possibility that China will evolve into a responsible democratic nation.[/QUOTE]
If you read the Mosher and Seagrave books mentioned above, you'll see that the essence of Chinese history is the absolute authority of the state over everything and everybody. These people were totalitarians 3,000 years ago. We simply have no analog for it. We're talking thousands of years of pure tyranny based on all-pervasive state terror. That's the way it's worked there from time immemorial.
We need to keep that uppermost in our mind. The author of this editorial is projecting his roundeye view of the world onto a very different civilizational critter.
One of the recurring themes that has repeated many, many times (almost like clockwork) over the past 3,000 years of so is this: the state gets hard up for money and starts losing legitmacy. The people are poor and hungry and oppressed. The Huns and Mongols and Manchus rape and pillage. The people get ticked off, and they have problems.
So, what the state does is it loosens its grip on trade and intellectual life. "Let a thousand flowers bloom" the Red Emporer Mao said in the late 1950s just to see who would speak out, then he had them sent to concentration camps circa 1960. It happened again in the 1980s under Deng Xiaoping - Democracy Wall and all that, only to be crushed under tank treads in Tienamen Square.
THIS IS NOTHING NEW. This has happened over and over and over again.
Same with trade. The state lets people breath, they start to make some money, the economy picks up, then the reimpose control, nationalize everything, and kill/exile the traders. Mao did this in the first half of the 1950s - he let the farmers work and form free enterprise cooperatives until about 1956, when he forced these newly prosperous peasants into state-owned collectives, and then forced them to turn over their grain to pay the Soviets for industrialization loans leaving nothing left for them to eat. THIRTY MILLION INNOCENT HUMAN BEINGS STARVED TO DEATH in what is the largest and most horrific famine in world history to date and the Chicoms - and indeed the rest of the world - barely blinked an eye.
But then again THIS IS NOTHING NEW. You see, the Overseas Chinese - and indeed the large Chinese populations in the south of the country - are the products of millenia of these boom-and-bust purges. The ancestors of southern Chinese were forced emigrants from the north around Beijing - refugees from many, many, many purges of the most prosperous farmers, craftsmen and traders from the North of centures and centuries. That's why the southern Chinese around Shangai and places like that are to this day much more business orientated than the North. The OC of Southeast Asia came from this stock. They were there centuries before the European imperialists arrived. They ran the place for over a thousand years. The humming ports of Hong Kong and Singapore (and Taiwan, Chiang's people were southerners mostly) symbolize their genius for business.
Now, on the background of all that, it's pretty bloody optimistic of this author to say that this latest round of economic boom will not be followed by a state clampdown and economic bust. What does he believe is so magic about the situation now that he's willing to bet American security on China "evolving?"
I mean to say, maybe he's right. I hope he's right. I hope for the sake of one quarter of humanity that he's right. I hope for the peace of the world that he's right.
But the point is that ALL HISTORICAL PRECEDENT INDICATES THAT HE'S WRONG and that whatever optimism we have must certainly be loaded down with a heavy burden of caution.
We're talking here about taking to economic (and by extension military) preeminence the FREEKING DUKE OF ZHAO (who was a real piece of work who live thousands of years ago and who made Joseph Stalin look like a piker).
We're talking about trusting the SAME PARTY that intentionally starved thirty million of their own people to death just so they could pay their state loans.
Somebody needs to slap this author upside the head and ask him if he's willing to bet the future of his own children on the Chinese taking on the worldview of your average Peorian.
But to ask the question is to answer it.
This whole thing is pollyannish nonsense being foisted upon us by corporate CEOs who really, really want cheap labor. And they're willing to sell their grandmothers for a 1% improvement in their quarterly reports.
But really all of this is clear. PJB railed about this, but the sheeple take no notice.
Democracy is a failure, because the people are ignorant, indifferent and corrupt.
The Red Hegemon may just be the one to teach us that lesson once and for all.
2005-05-22 16:55 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]These people were totalitarians 3,000 years ago. We simply have no analog for it. We're talking thousands of years of pure tyranny based on all-pervasive state terror. That's the way it's worked there from time immemorial. .[/QUOTE] Amen, deacon. :notworth:
As to the fundamental error of measuring a Chinaman's wheat by an American's bushel, Amen yet again.
Kypling had some line, an epitaph along the lines of:
"Here lies a fool who tried to hustle the East."
2005-05-22 17:08 | User Profile
One reason for Chinese being totalitarians could be their mentality of a cockroach running around wildly and not paying attention to anyone else (that's why they are bad drivers too: they just don't like to cooperate or pay attention to anyone). People like this just beg for someone with a big stick to make them pay attention and run in one direction.
[img]http://www.smailiki.nm.ru/nac/nac03.gif[/img]
2005-05-22 17:21 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Julian the Apostate]But there is no longer a white world![/QUOTE]
There will always be a White world on this planet.
Chinese successes are due more to the collaboration of "White" Plutocrats seeking cheap, police-state labor for the mass manufacture of White inventions than any innate genius of the Chinese themselves.
2005-05-22 17:22 | User Profile
I agree with the characterization of the Chinese as "Jews of the East". They do have good business sense, usually, but aren't good inventors or implementors. They also don't mind stealing, whether it's ideas or property. What puts them apart from the Jews, however, they aren't big on tikkun olam tactics of undermining their hosts. That's why China alone, without a symbiotic relationship with, say, whitey, is doomed to obscurity and poverty.
Whites are the only self-sufficient peoples able to build prosperous countries without relying on parasitizing of some host. That's what made white countries great, and that's also what contributes now to their downfall, especially in this age of globalization and specialization.
2005-05-22 18:21 | User Profile
Walter,
I'm delighted to see that editorial got the desired results- an excellent commentary by you.
There is so much wrong with this editorial one doesn't know where to begin. I can see in my mind the idiots on tv and the radio who get their talking points from the WSJ nodding their heads in sage agreement, not understanding a damn thing written here.
I read the editorial this way: "We have a lot of money tied up in China that they are not going to allow out of the country save in the form of exports. We allowed our greed for profits, O.P.I.C. and EXIM Bank hand outs to get the better of us so we dare not rock the boat. Leave things as they are for we will be long gone before the account comes due."
And that is just where they show a little consistancy. On the other hand, these idiots are the same ones who write about "standing up to China" over Taiwan and attempting to pressure them over Iran and the Sudan. They write of "the possibility that China will evolve into a responsible democratic nation." Following this line of thought why couldn't they have done the same thing with Iraq? I supposed it was due to the sanctions and Hussein had signed contracts with other countries and transnationals to allow investment. In short, they were mad about not being allowed to plunder the country for themselves.
The statement about the Euro doesn't even make sense. [QUOTE]As it happens, the dollar-yuan exchange rate has been an island of stability in this dynamic system, just as the euro serve that function for Europe. The yuan has been fixed at 8.28 to the dollar since 1995.[/QUOTE] The Euro has been gaining on the dollar since Bush's initial election. It hasn't been pegged to anything. The rest of the paragraph not shown here indicates to me that they are fearful about being nationalized even if the taxpayers wind up picking up the tab.
No, they are not just smoking opium. The editorial conference room must be littered with empty syringes, broken crack pipes and cast aside bongs. Only someone in an acute state of drug intoxication could pen such nonsense.
I hope one morning to get up a hear that "terrorists" have gone into the home of "adventures in capitalism" and thrown a satchel charge into a full conference room of these fools. they deserve the very worst.
2005-05-22 18:27 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius]Walter, I read the editorial this way: "We have a lot of money tied up in China that they are not going to allow out of the country save in the form of exports. We allowed our greed for profits, O.P.I.C. and EXIM Bank hand outs to get the better of us so we dare not rock the boat. Leave things as they are for we will be long gone before the account comes due."
The statement about the Euro doesn't even make sense.
The Euro has been gaining on the dollar since Bush's initial election. It hasn't been pegged to anything. The rest of the paragraph not shown here indicates to me that they are fearful about being nationalized even if the taxpayers wind up picking up the tab. [/QUOTE] 1. Your summary strikes in the bullseye, I think.
What impact would bearing the full cost of that have on the Euro? Would it have any? Answering a question like that probably begs considerable research.
2005-05-23 07:36 | User Profile
Sert, Walter & all the others who have posted,
An excellent thread with lots of intelligent information!
After the revolution, I want you folks running our nations foreign policy!
:thumbsup:
An interesting book that I read years ago: "Ways That Are Dark" By Ralph Townsend :[url]http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=430142778[/url]
If my memory serves, Mr Townsend was a diplomat in China in the 1930's.
Lots of insight into the riddle that is China.