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Anti-China Thread

Posted: September 30th, 2010, 10:54 am
by southpaw
New thread to post how bad the Chinese have bought off and manipulate our politicians and corporations.

Re: Anti-China Thread

Posted: September 30th, 2010, 10:56 am
by southpaw
The Message of Tokyo's Kowtow
by Patrick J. Buchanan

09/28/2010



Hubris will do it every time.

The Chinese have just made a serious strategic blunder.

They dropped the mask and showed their scowling face to Asia, exposing how the Middle Kingdom intends to deal with smaller powers, now that she is the largest military and economic force in Asia and second largest on earth.



A fortnight ago, a Chinese trawler rammed a Japanese patrol boat in the Senkaku Islands administered by Japan but also claimed by China. Tokyo released the ship and crew, but held the captain.

His immediate return was demanded by Beijing.

Japan refused. China instantly escalated the minor incident into a major confrontation, threatening a cut off of Japan's supply of "rare-earth" materials, essential to the production of missiles, batteries and computers.

Through predatory trading, China had killed its U.S. competitor in rare-earth materials, establishing almost a global monopoly.

The world depends on China.

Japan capitulated and released the captain.

Now Beijing has decided to rub Japan's nose in her humiliation by demanding a full apology and compensation.

Suddenly, the world sees, no longer as through a glass darkly, the China that has emerged from a quarter century of American indulgence, patronage and tutelage since Tiananmen Square.

The Chinese tiger is all grown up, and it's not cuddly anymore.

And with Beijing's threat to use its monopoly of rare-earth materials to bend nations to its will, how does the Milton Friedmanite free-trade ideology of the Republican Party, which fed Beijing $2 trillion in trade surpluses at America's expense over two decades, look now?

How do all those lockstep Republican votes for Most Favored Nation status for Beijing, ushering her into the World Trade Organization and looking the other way as China dumped into our markets, thieved our technology and carted off our factories look today?

The self-sufficient republic that could stand alone in the world is more dependent than Japan on China for rare-earth elements vital to our industries, for the necessities of our daily life, and for the loans to finance our massive trade and budget deficits.

How does the interdependence of nations in a global economy look now, compared to the independence American patriots from Alexander Hamilton to Calvin Coolidge guaranteed to us, that enabled us to win World War II in Europe and the Pacific in less than four years?

Yet China's bullying of Japan is beneficial, for it may wake us up to the world as it is, as it has been, and ever shall be.

Consider.

China now claims all the Paracel and Spratly islands in the South China Sea, though Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Brunei border that sea. To reinforce her claim, a Chinese fighter jet crashed a U.S EP-3 surveillance plane 80 miles off Hainan Island in 2001. Not until Secretary of State Colin Powell apologized twice did China agree to release the American crew.

China's claim to the Senkakus (the Diaoyu Islands to the Chinese) was emphasized last week. While these are largely volcanic rocks rather than habitable islands, ownership would give a nation a powerful claim to all the oil, gas and minerals in the East China Sea.

China has repeatedly warned the United States to keep its warships, especially carriers, out of the 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait. On the mainland opposite, Beijing has planted 1,000 missiles to convince Taipei of the futility and cost of declaring independence.

When the U.S. Navy launched exercises with South Korea after the sinking of South Korea's warship Cheonan by the North, China threatened the United States should it move the 97,000-ton carrier George Washington into the Yellow Sea between Korea and China. The carrier stayed out of the Yellow Sea and remained east of the Korean Peninsula.

In addition to her claims to sovereignty over all the seas off her southern and eastern coasts, China occupies a large tract of Indian land in the Aksai Chin area of India's northwest. Thousands of square miles were seized by Beijing in the 1962 war with New Delhi -- and annexed.

In 1969, China and the Soviet Union battled on the Amur and Ussuri rivers over lands Czar Alexander I seized at the end of that bloodiest war of the 19th century, the Chinese civil war known as the Taiping Rebellion. Leonid Brezhnev reportedly sounded out the Nixon White House on U.S. reaction to Soviet use of atomic weapons to effect the nuclear castration of Mao's China.

China's claims to her lost lands in Siberia and the Russian Far East have not been forgotten in Beijing, and remain on Chinese maps.

How should America respond?

As none of these territorial disputes involves our vital interests, we should stay out and let free Asia get a good close look at the new China. Then explore the depths of our own dependency on this bellicose Beijing and determine how to restore our economic independence.

Ending the trade deficit with China now becomes a matter of national security.


As ususal Pat is right on the money. But I'm sure some liberal looney will call him a racist or a Bush sycophant.

Re: Anti-China Thread

Posted: September 30th, 2010, 10:59 am
by southpaw
Also read this week that China is putting exorborant tariffs on US imports of chicken. Seems that China feels the US is dumping cheap chicken on Chinese markets and their chicken farmers can't compete. Well how about that!

Time for a trade war folks.

Re: Anti-China Thread

Posted: October 6th, 2010, 7:51 pm
by Manfred
Sounds like an awful lot of chicken sh## to me. Sorry, I couldn't help myself with that one! LOL

Re: Anti-China Thread

Posted: October 8th, 2010, 2:38 pm
by southpaw
touche...

Do you like the trade deficit with China? Support the so-called free trade agreements? Like all the good manufacturing jobs going to China and India and in return we get manufactured junk for the same price?

Re: Anti-China Thread

Posted: October 19th, 2010, 9:40 pm
by southpaw
China to Halt Some Exports to U.S.By KEITH BRADSHER
Published: October 19, 2010
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LinkedinDiggMixxMySpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalink. HONG KONG — China, which has been blocking shipments of crucial minerals to Japan for the last month, has now quietly halted shipments of those materials to the United States and Europe, three industry officials said on Tuesday.

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The Chinese action, involving rare earth minerals that are crucial to manufacturing many advanced products, seems certain to further intensify already rising trade and currency tensions with the West. Until recently, China typically sought quick and quiet accommodations on trade issues. But the interruption in rare earth supplies is the latest sign from Beijing that Chinese leaders are willing to use their growing economic muscle.

“The embargo is expanding” beyond Japan, said one of the three rare earth industry officials, all of whom insisted on anonymity for fear of business retaliation by Chinese authorities.

They said Chinese customs officials imposed the broader restrictions on Monday morning, hours after a top Chinese official summoned international news media Sunday night to denounce United States trade actions.

China mines 95 percent of the world’s rare earth elements, which have broad commercial and military applications, and are vital to the manufacture of products as diverse as cellphones, large wind turbines and guided missiles. Any curtailment of Chinese supplies of rare earths is likely to be greeted with alarm in Western capitals, particularly because Western companies are believed to keep much smaller stockpiles of rare earths than Japanese companies.

China experts said on Tuesday that Beijing’s assertive stance on rare earths might also signal the ascendance of economic nationalists, noting that the Central Committee of the Communist Party convened over the weekend.

Officials at the media relations office of China’s commerce ministry did not respond all day on Tuesday to e-mail or telephone calls seeking confirmation of the expanded embargo.

A few rare earth shipments to the West have been delayed by customs officials in recent weeks, said industry officials in China, Japan and the United States, but new restrictions on exports appear to have been imposed on Monday morning.

Industry executives said there had been no signal from Beijing of how long rare earth shipments intended for the West would be held by Chinese customs officials. Nor is it clear if occasional shipments are still being allowed out of the country, or if all shipments have now been suspended.

Word of the blocked shipments emerged from industry executives on Tuesday after an official China newspaper reported earlier in the day that Beijing planned next year to further reduce its annual export quota for rare earths.

The signals of a tougher Chinese trade stance come after American trade officials announced on Friday that they would investigate whether China was violating World Trade Organization rules by subsidizing its clean energy exports and limiting clean energy imports. The inquiry includes whether China’s steady reductions in rare earth export quotas since 2005, along with steep export taxes on rare earths, are illegal attempts to force multinational companies to produce more of their high-technology goods in China.

Despite a widely confirmed suspension of rare earth shipments from China to Japan, now nearly a month old, Beijing has continued to deny that any embargo exists.

Industry executives and analysts have interpreted that official denial as a way to wield an undeclared trade weapon without creating a policy trail that could make it easier for other countries to bring a case against China at the World Trade Organization.

So far, China seems to be taking a similar approach in expanding the embargo to the West.

Wang Baodong, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said on Tuesday that the Chinese government was putting new restrictions on the mining, processing and export of rare earths to protect the environment. But he said that China was not violating any W.T.O. rules in doing so and that it was not imposing an embargo or trying to use rare earths as a bargaining chip.

“With stricter export mechanism gradually in place, outbound shipments to other countries might understandably begin to feel the effect,” Mr. Wang said in an e-mail. “But I don’t see any link between China’s reasonable rare earth export control policy and the irrational U.S. decision of protectionist nature to investigate China’s clean energy industries.”

Nefeterius Akeli McPherson, a spokeswoman for the Office of the United States Trade Representative in Washington, said that American trade officials were looking into the matter, after a report of the Chinese customs restrictions was published on Tuesday afternoon on the Web site of The New York Times.

“We’ve seen the news report and are seeking more information in keeping with our recent announcement of an investigation into whether China’s actions and policies are consistent with W.T.O. rules.”

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