Well, I Guess We Knew There’d Be Demands…
From Helena Cobban (h/t MinnesotaChuck).
China’s President Hu Jintao has now explicitly linked his country’s readiness to show good cooperation in resolving the US financial crisis to the question of Taiwan.
Beijing’s official Xinhua news agency reported today that Hu and Pres. Bush conferred thusly about the crisis yesterday evening (Washington time):
Bush briefed Hu on the latest development of the U.S. financial market, saying his government was well aware of the scope of the problem, and had taken and would continue to take necessary measures to stabilize the domestic and world financial markets.
Hu [said he] hoped the measures would soon take effect and lead to a gradual recovery of the financial market, which he said not only serves the interests of the United States, but also those of China, and benefits the stability of the world financial market and the sound development of the world economy.
… He said China is ready to work with the U.S. side to intensify dialogue, exchanges and cooperation, and properly handle issues concerning mutual interests and of major concern, particularly the Taiwan question, in a bid to push forward the sustained and steady development of the Sino-U.S. constructive and cooperative ties.
How long do you think Hu has been waiting for the moment he had Bush by the balls?
When you come begging to your banker, you’ve got to expect him to issue demands, I guess.
Please digg this story – it’s important.
Marcy – we’ve all been mentioning for months about the amount of US debt that China holds…we just did not know what they thought was important enough to THEM to call in their markers for…NOW we know.
Oy, is that like…ummm…give us complete control of Taiwan and reneg on any commitments to protect Taiwan…Or we’ll call your loans???!!!
Usually when you come begging from your banker they say give me your business…or whatever I want.
I hope they ask Palin about this…now that she’s almost a foreign policy expert.
If it were not so sad to see, yet again, how ignorant these Republicans are with regard to international relations and high stakes poker, I would be laughing my ass off at these fools.
Take my word for it, BushCo is going to get called “All In” by everyone at the table.
If this works, imagine what the Saudi’s will ask us for???
Well Bush is already giving the nuclear reactor tech what else can we give them? I know that things can always get worse but even my tin foil hat imagination can’t think what could be worse:)
How about- this year ALL our children’s Christmas toys come from China, and instead of belly-aching about the toxicity and carcinogens, we all of us travel to the west coast, stand shoulder and shoulder, and when the sun sets, fire up a laser light show and sing the “Our Collective Thanks to Chairmen Mao For Providing Us The Enduring Bounty of His Prudent Guidance” song?
[Don’t knock it ’til you’ve heard it. My son recorded it on his cell phone and played it back for me. I needed a few playbacks to get a feel for it, but by that point its kind of catchy; I spent the next few days humming it around the office. I suspect it works better with larger choral numbers, starting at a thousand and up. A lot of Chinese are suckers for sentiment, so if we do go ahead with this, it could be 50 basis points or better. I’m quite serious – about the effect.]
“Bush balls” as I understand it, is a Nouveau Chinese menu item that accompanies an order of “Dim Son”.
LOL
The Chinese are saying this openly?
Forget Taiwan the Chinese want to spook the worlds stock markets. Bush hates being told what to do publicly I think Bush’s Mom told his wife as advice for her marriage to never criticize George publicly but in private.
I think the Chinese read “Bush on the Couch” and the Kitty Kelly bio.
They are stringing him along they want Bush to balk and retaliate they think they know how Bush will respond and they want it to happen.
Even rumors of a economic collapse will push gold higher China and India are two of the worlds biggest gold buyers I always hear about their gold buying when I read about what is going on in the gold markets.
Or is China up to something else?
China is just using whatever leverage they can get. They are not generally expansionist. They can’t survive without Americans buying their junk. It’s just a bunch of negotiating crappola.
You want Taiwan Mr. China? You’ve already accomplished most of it. Where would China be economically without Hong Kong. Get real.
China needs the West’s affluenza in order to survive.
They definitely don’t want war. They aren’t stupid.
Bush, however, well, that’s another story.
I agree but if China talks tough about Taiwan and Bush bites back that will spook markets. Spooked Markets turn to gold which China has been buying for years China will then be in a position to sell gold high and buy American companies cheap.
Don’t look at what is the obvious shot in pool the Chinese look to put in two or three balls in the hole with one shot. My Dad’s old company negotiated with them for months they wait until they get what they want. Making a quick deal is not their goal they want the best deal.
I’m sure they have read Sun Tzu.
“I’m sure they have read Sun Tzu”
They ARE
[gol-darned Monday night football fumble fingers]
They ARE Sun Tzu.
Great and we have fiddle while
Romethe financial markets burn Nero as our leader. Make yourself invulnerable and then await your enemies moment of weakness to paraphrase Sun Tze.Bush has created the necessary weakness.
There is of course a school of business thinking that at some point an enterprise gets so big it just cannot be allowed to fail. I suppose one can point to Enron, AIG and the Wall Street mercantile banking firms in refuting that theory as sound, but I’m not certain it’s been thoroughly tested at the scale of an entire empire…
well, other that is than the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the Mongol Empire, the Mayan Empire, the Aztec Empire, the Spanish Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire, and perhaps three or four dozen before the first we might not have a full enough picture of to arrive at a fair judgment on –
but none of them had blogging, right?
Sooner or later mankind will learn to be better and forgo growth when the growth causes us to get to big/rich/fat to be healthy. Or else we will die out.
Its our choice can we learn? Can we control our appetites without being told/forced to once we know that too much of a pleasure is a danger?
Okay, I blog in jest.
One of the downsides of large institutions is resistance to change. That resistance can also be a strength, in resilience.
And, supposedly at least, the power of America lies its capacity for change – this election cycle being a fairly minor, but stern, test of that advantage.
I recognize that is some inconsistency in the “reasoning” above, which I fully expect Senator McCain to seek to rationalize over the next few weeks.
But all things considered, should he “succeed”, he will have succeeded mainly in proving the converse.
Bush just lost the Chinese vote from Taiwan. They were as anti commie as the Cubans, one issue types on foreign policy.
US policy on Taiwan is a good one: resolution of the conflict by peaceful means. I don’t see that changing.
The meaning of all those late-night announcements last week becomes clear …
(Americans don’t do much business at 2am et —when it’s midafternoon in Beijing and Shanghai.)
What is the anti commie McCain campaign saying about this? We can divide the GOP on foreign policy and the financial bailout, Bush wants things that hurt the GOP trying to get reelected.
We need to get these stories out there.
As banker to the world’s former sole superpower, a former creditor nation with debt, infrastructure problems and political dysfunction the size of its defense budget, why would you ask only for one thing? Why not a proverbial laundry list, where the launderer has all the tickets.
American backing for Taiwan is a public, emotionally laden project of longstanding. There are many more lucrative issues, from currencies to trade, from civil rights (or their lack) to press coverage, to backing for Beijing’s global search for influence, trade, oil, investment projects. From parting ways with Japan, Korea, Russia and leaning toward Beijing to acquiescing in a non-regulatory regime that allows the free flow of safe or unsafe products from China into the US and the world, from opposition to electronic products content and recycling to opposition to standards and effective monitoring of the contents of baby and dog food.
Tying the hands of the US over Taiwan is the ante, not the pot. Beijing holds most of the cards as well as the IOU’s.
Please forgive in advance my crudity:
Shorter China to Junya: “No tickee, no washee.”
I agree. this doesn’t even appear to be a demand at all. Just leaving a little marker for the real negotiations. Truth is, this doesn’t mean much, kind of went without saying anyway when you get down to it. Was a nice little prick of Bush though.
I’m a little surprised that he hasn’t just given them Taiwan already. Bush rarely misses a chance to fuck over one of our “allies” for short-term political gain, and Taiwan doesn’t even have any white people.
Taiwan holds rather a few secrets, lots of cash, hordes of proprietary rights and data, and various military “objets” of considerable importance. Violence would upset the applecart, but not be forbidden. More lucrative and less dysfunctional would be a Borg-style reintegration of an errant province, like welcoming Texas or South Carolina back into the Union, but less improbable.
Depriving Taiwan of practical US assistance would go a considerable distance in achieving Beijing’s ends. But as with Cheney and McSame, abject submission merely elicits a desire for more, an extreme version of the classic Enron marketing mantra, “If the customer doesn’t scream, you haven’t pushed them far enough.” In the case of Cheney, substitute “prisoner”; in the case of China, substitute whatever they want.
Resistance to change? Nothing beats the neocons and their ReichWing profiteering. I’m sure they’ll find a way to make money advising the Taiwanese to put their money into American banks instead of trusting what will happen after the ROC’s reintegration into the Chinese homeland.
Excellent summary by Thomas Franks of his, The Wrecking Crew, over at Harpers.
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/08/0082132
he was probably in the helicopters in
Berkley when Reagan gassed everyone
I mean Abramoff of course
Via Scott Horton, 2nd Cir orders release of more detainee abuse pictures (from seven locations other than Abu Ghraib) that have been held up for years now.
http://harpers.org/subjects/NoComment
I’m gonna savor every bit of this karmic justice
Thanks ew.
digg
By the way, may I officially say that this weekend of football is dead to me. The Jets suck; randiego’s Frightning Bolts rule. Jeebus there is another
John ElwayPhil Rivers bomb. What a nightmare.Chargers win.
The offense looks good, even though Tomlinson is clearly hurt and probably shouldn’t be playing. The difference in quickness from when he and Darren Sproles were handling the ball was obvious.
The defense played better.
Still, we’re 1-2. I’m tired of watching a talented team dig themselves out of holes…
here’s a little O-T Trash talkin:
randiego ???
we thought you was dead
(wink)
How Bout Them Cowboys
an
BOOMER SOONERS
we now return you to your regularly scheduled topic …
EW please keep on this story because you know the MSM doesn’t follow up unless we keep making noise.
Paulson is REALLY chummy with China’s rulers. I have more research to do on Paulson’s background; will try for links later.
John Boyd, regarded by many both here and abroad as America’s greatest strategic thinker and in the same league as Sun Tzu and Clausiwitz, stated the purpose of a nation’s grand strategy as to enable it to shape and cope with the ever changing environment of which it is a part. By this definition the seven plus years of Bush-Cheney have capped off the unmitigated disaster that has been in the making since the far right first seized control of the levers of power in the Reagan administration. The evidence is all around us for anyone to see who looks with an open mind. The disdain with which officials as senior as Condi Rice are greeted in the capitols of the Middle East, the Hezbollah fiasco in Lebanon in 2006, Georgia in 2008, and now this.
earlofhuntingdon’s reference@29 to the Harper’s article on the wrecking crew gives an excellent description of the evolution of Reaaganism.
Franks was able to capture the almost viral,infectious origin of the college republicans that have evolved to what we have today.
great stuff!!
A great many winger blogs like to point to John Boyd’s teachings as holding some key to how McCain ought to attack Obama. Moreover, McCampaign Commander in Chief Schmidt considers himself a John Boyd accolyte and likes to point to things written by John Boyd to support some of the McCampaign’s games.
It’s might well come as a rude surprise to McCain in Friday’s opening debate, on foreign policy, to learn that Obama has read what he has referred to as “a little Boyd”, which I suspect means somewhere between extensively and exhaustively –
in contrast with McCain, who though known to have referred to Boyd in any number of contexts, some even appropriately, I very much doubt has read anywhere near as extensively, and of what he has read I would expect he has a critically diminished degree of understanding.
Due to Schmidt’s being a reflexive fan, it would not surprise me to hear him refer to Boyd at some point in the first debate, probably early on during the feeling out period before he gets too tired and annoyed. The appropriate response, according to another consumate strategist, a Muslim to boot, is a right hand lead [Kinshasa, Zaire, October 1974, Round 1]which tends to drive those subsumed in hubris to the sort of distraction a bull feels faced with a red cape. In the legal arena, the right lead typically takes the form of an innocent looking assertion of what “common sense dictates”, without citing the author or otherwise suggesting the real danger lurking in the response to the counter. Those subsumed in a solution of hubris and self-doubt tend to wade right in with the enthusiasm of the vain, leaving themselves open to the simplest of quick combinations, followed shortly by a graceless resignation[Lewistown, Maine, May 1965], although with less in the way of dispiriting consequences. I’m not sure which type McCain is, but he’s no Joe Frazier.
All of this leaves aside the question of whether John Boyd himself would consider his theories readily translatable for proper, effective use in a campaign to be elected POTUS – in response to which I vote:
No.
[I have no doubt Boyd would put that more effectively.]
Think of a Nation of Bush Debt Mules – tricked out with Exxon, Goldman-Sachs, and “People’s ROC” decals…
The Collective American Dream Wrought of Hard Work, Fairness and Honesty has become a Shitpile in the hands of an Un-Regulated, Lying, Cheating and Stealing Wall Street.
We’ve been bamboozled by Bush and the “Look, over there!” Republicans, and now We’re going to Pay by having our Assets parted-out to Creditors like Hu – he’s a part-owner of US, you know…
In any sense that Taiwan might be linked to US, that linkage may well be Hu’s to confiscate if We Can’t Pay.
America is punched-out and W-eak.
Maybe – if We’re ‘good’ – the Chinese will kick-in some chrome for our lunch pails?
Those Chinese taste really awful…so awful that every colonial power that tried to eat them up got awful indigestion. They just would not and will not learn to fully submit.
Chuck all the garbage fed you in our schools. Even our very best schools for our Very Best Families’ preppies.
Read, man!Get thee to a library and, for 1 month, read only 1st-person, historical accounts. Then,read Edgar Snow’s* 1st-person works; then add Joseph Needham’s fabulous, researched compilation of China’s contributions to civilization…gun powder and paper are dwarfed. Your understanding will bloom.
Then the laughter and sneering will not flow so easily.
*Ed Snow, a Missouri boy true to the “Show Me” state, enabled Nixon’s visit to China[1973?] by carrying the invitation from Chou En Li and Mao, his trusted friends from the 1930s onward. BTW, Ed was the only American at Stalingrad when Field Marshal vonPaulus was captured. Ed really got around.
More late-night Edgar Snow–he crossed enemy lines 1936 to meet Chou, both riding mules. Later abt 1937 spent weeks in Yenan cave HQ of Mao, taking down dictation as Mao gave his verbal autobio, then published the 1st account of Mao in the USA to rave reviews and sympathy with his campaign to free China from Chiang’s tyranny, starvation, disease and the murderous Japanese Imperial Armies. Any further tyranny was far more tolerable when that was accomplished…and it has been barely 50 years from Mao’s victory to their 1st, manned space circumnavigation.
ain’t this the part where we call the rest of the world
that’s gotta be a part of the plan at some point, right ???
Is this like in The Magnificent Seven when the character played by Richard Long is doing his dying swan thing and asks Chris, the guntotin’ guru played by Yul Brynner, to reveal to him that he’s not given his life for two meals of beans one fried the other re-fried, in fact the village has been hiding a fortune in finely-wrought Spanish silver left behind by the Conquistadores?
Sure freep; you had it right all along; that’s the plan.
Just not OUR plan.
Yep, it was always about the gold in them thar’ hills, a paean to 1950’s sensibilities, which precluded tough guys from admitting they wanted to do the right thing because it was the right thing. Fortunately, the film made fun of that reluctance, but then it was also western fantasy. But in the original Seven, it was Brad Dexter, not Richard Long.
Ah. Nuclear submarines. Yes, very effective. How many of your citizens do they feed?
Ah. Mr Bush. About that money you are borrowing from us to give to Isreal…
Perhaps it could be suggested to the Isreali’s to…
(Please fill in the blanks)
This image sums it up nicely.
If Japan stops believing in the U.S.’s nuclear guarantee, I guess their next step is to go nuclear.
Karl Rove is here today and in Calgary tomorrow. He is being hosted by the Fraser Institute — think AEI and then move several degrees to the right.
Maybe this is just wingnut welfare, but there is an election on here too.
Is it true that China owns us? United States of America….Made in China
Paulson the same person who sold 500 million dollars worth of Goldman Sachs stock before he took the Secretary of the Treasury job. No conflict of interest there.
After listening to Paulson last Friday and on the Sunday talk shows I felt as if the American Taxpers were watching the biggest U.S. Treasury Heist and Paulson was the inside hit man with a gun held to our Reps and the American taxpayers heads saying ”now or later”.
Yep. Glennzilla agrees, and skewers Village Idiot David Brooks:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/