Hu, Not Wen, Comes To Dinner

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Hu, Not Wen, Comes To Dinner

Chinese president Hu Jintao comes to the White House for a State Dinner.

If Obama and his administration believe this visit is all about "face" they are sadly mistaken.



As you can see from this video, China's issues are completely different from what the
US says are the issues. One problem the US has is trying to have "dialogue" with anothercountry by discussing onlt the US's concerns. China isn't buying that anymore. Here is the Q&A from the WSJ.....
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703551604576085514147521334.html

I wish to stress the following four points.

First, we should increase dialogue and contact and enhance strategic mutual trust.

Second, we should abandon the zero-sum Cold War mentality, view each other's development in an objective and sensible way, respect each other's choice of development path, and pursue common development through win-win cooperation.

Third, we should respect each other's sovereignty, territorial integrity and development interests and properly address each other's major concerns.

And fourth, we should make constant efforts to expand our converging interests so that China and the United States will be partners for cooperation in broader areas.
.....

The hidden part of an iceburg is the bigger part, that part being US Policy makers fear that any country whose economy begins to equal ours, could, in fact, develop a military equal to ours. The US actually has a secret policy addressing this idea in real terms.

No one should be surprised, then, to know the US has been encircling China for some time, now, as China's economy grows. Recently, we made a deal with Australia to station our Navy there as an "unofficial base" In addition, our buildup on our militarized Pacific islands is enough to worry any country, never mind the target of our paranoia, China.

Unfortunately, it seems that our propensity for spewing out "fishy" numbers, false data, misleading stats, etc, etc, etc, has come back to bite us. Or should I say, we have come to believe our own propaganda. Our "Hey, Mikey, lets blame China," strategy was fine as long as it was just domestic politics, but when Policy makers swallow this stuff whole, watch out.

You have all heard that the US blames China for it's huge trade deficite with the US.
THAT you understand, but have you actually looked at the numbers? Here is one example...

RE Trade imbalance, who would compare Pennsylvania's exports with the UK,
which is 5 times the size of Pennsylvania?

Well, that is just what the Government propagandists do when the report trade
deficits by country name, instead of size. Here is something you may enjoy...

Rank Trade Deficit by Country's Population

1. Ireland (5). . . . .- $4,585.41 per capita
2. Venezuela (7). . . - $645.27 per capita
3. Canada (6). . . . . - $589.02 per capita
4. Malaysia (10). . . - $456.63 per capita
5. Mexico (2). . . . . - $438.21 per capita
6. Japan (3). . . . . . - $351.76 per capita
7. Germany (4). . . .- $342.29 per capita
8. Italy (9). . . . . . . .- $234.93 per capita
9. China (1). . . . . . .- $169.22 per capita
10. Nigeria (8). . . . . - $97.94 per capita

(the numbers in the ( ) are the rank by country name without reguard to size.)

What the US military really fears is an economically sound China...

http://original.antiwar.com/john-v-walsh/2011/01/17/an-anti-interventionist-looks-at-china/
Let us consider U.S. military doctrine in the ways it might affect relations with China. U.S. doctrine is clear and unchanging from one administration to the next since the end of the
Cold War. No country is to be allowed to come close to the U.S. in military might.

The most explicit statement of this came in the Defense Planning Guide for 1994-1999, a secret document prepared in 1992 and leaked to the New York Times and Washington Post. “Our first objective,” the highly classified document stated, “is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union.”

From the outset Obama has left no doubt that the policy of permanent military superiority continues under him, proclaiming just after his election, on the occasion of appointing his “foreign policy team” of Clinton, Gates, and others that “we all share the belief we have to maintain the strongest military on the planet.”

Just last week Pentagon chief Robert Gates declared in a speech in Tokyo that the 47,000 troops in Japan were there to “keep China’s rising power in check” and so will remain for the indefinite future.

One must also conclude that the wars in Central Asia, the implantation of U.S. bases right on China’s back doorstep, and the courting of India over the past 10 years are also part of the “containment” policy, whatever other purposes those wars and bases may have. This dimension of the U.S. wars is rarely discussed in the mainstream or liberal press.

The implications of this doctrine are pernicious in the extreme.

First, the very threat encourages those who might want to be friends to arm themselves to preserve their independence and sovereignty.

Second, and much more important, military might grows out of economic power, as we have known at least since Thucydides. Thus the U.S. is declaring that China cannot have a total GDP that comes close to that of the U.S.

Let us consider the consequences of that. What would it mean for China if it achieved an aggregate GDP not larger that of the U.S. but simply the same size? Quite simply, since China has four or five times our population, it would mean that China would have a per capita GDP one fourth of ours – or about $10,000 a year. That means unending poverty for the Chinese people. Thus China is forced to choose between poverty or provoking the ire of the U.S.

Such is the iron logic of U.S. military policy.



And from a Chinese perspective we have
DOES CHINA’S RISE THREATEN
THE UNITED STATES?
Jinghao Zhou

http://www.asianperspective.org/articles/v32n3-g.pdf
In order for the Communist Party of China (CCP) to survive into the twenty-first century, it has realized that China must make peace with the international society and develop a harmonious society at home.

The Sixth Plenary Session of the Sixteenth Central Committee of the CPC passed the “Resolution of the CPC Central Committee on Major Issues Regarding the Building of a Harmonious Socialist Society” in October 2006, placing “building a harmonious society” atop its work agenda.

China has tried to make peace with neighboring countries and cooperate with
Western governments on a broad range of issues. Theoretically, the global village
is an international family. If every member of the family becomes strong, the
international family becomes stronger.

Every nation has its own national interests, so real conflicts between different nations are inevitable. Even now, there are intensive competitions among the democratic societies. Because China is a non-democratic country, China’s rise unavoidably causes other countries to worry.

Russia - China Oil Pipeline Opens

Happy New Year

The Russia - China Oil Pipeline opened...



This is a good example of how resolving border/territorial disputed peacefully leads to trade and increased prosperity for all sides. A win-win solution.



Here is an excellent review of what a border/territirial dispite comprises. But today, more than ever, trade, and the possibility of finding needed natural resources make the peaceful resolution of border disputes especially urgent.


We should ask ourselves, what is it that enables countries like China and Russia to resolve border disputes peacefully, while other countries cannot resolve border disputes, or actually go to war over disputed territory.