Enter the Dragon

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Bill Gertz has posted two stories in the Washington Times regarding China that are at once alarmist and frightening. Yesterday's story talks about how, "China is building its military forces faster than U.S. intelligence and military analysts expected, prompting fears that Beijing will attack Taiwan in the next two years, according to Pentagon officials." Well now at least I feel vindicated seeing as I said this months ago.

"China's military buildup includes an array of new high-technology weapons, such as warships, submarines, missiles and a maneuverable warhead designed to defeat U.S. missile defenses. Recent intelligence reports also show that China has stepped up military exercises involving amphibious assaults, viewed as another sign that it is preparing for an attack on Taiwan."

It isn't just the recent buildup of arms in China that has Pentagon officials worried. Much like the rhetoric coming out of our media punditocracy, when they look at China, they see Nazi Germany. "We may be seeing in China the first true fascist society on the model of Nazi Germany, where you have this incredible resource base in a commercial economy with strong nationalism, which the military was able to reach into and ramp up incredible production," a senior defense official said.

When the folks in Washington start with the Nazi comparisons, such as when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990 and comparisons were made between former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler, you know we're in for a terribly bumpy ride down the warpath.

The second article by Bill Gertz talks about China seeing the US as their main enemy. Now there's a shock...

"China's communist leaders view the United States as their main enemy and are working in Asia and around the world to undermine U.S. alliances, said a former Chinese diplomat."

See, and people wonder why I keep posting articles on who is forming alliances with whom.

Gertz is getting his information from Chen Yonglin, the former Chinese diplomat who recently defected to Australia. He is currently seeking asylum there, however that's a thorny. First off, his defection on the day of the 16th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre was a serious embarrassment to his former government. Second and probably more importantly, he won't receive asylum in Australia because Beijing is Australia's third largest trading partner with annual exchanges now worth $22.7 billion. Yonglin said he abandoned his consular post because he can no longer support China's repression of pro-democracy and religious groups.

"The United States is considered by the Chinese Communist Party as the largest enemy, the major strategic rival," Mr. Chen told The Washington Times in a telephone interview from Australia, where he is in hiding after breaking with Beijing in May.

"China has sought to influence Australia's government through high-level political visits and favorable trade and by offering contracts on energy-related products. The goal is to force Australia to become part of a China-dominated "grand neighboring region" in Asia and to "force a wedge between the U.S. and Australia," he added.

On China's military buildup, Mr. Chen said Beijing is following the strategy of former leader Deng Xiaoping, who urged China to "bide our time, build our capabilities" -- military as well as economic and political. "What that means is that when the day is mature, the Chinese government will strike back," he said.

"...Chinese society is getting more unstable," Chen said. "Once any serious civil disobedience occurs, the government may call for a war across the Taiwan Strait to gather [political] strength from people."

Whether Chen turns out to be another Ahmad Chalabi or someone that is spot on, on his analysis of the impending threat coming from Beijing remains to be seen. However, one cannot discount the reality that the Chinese are building up their military, they have threatened Taiwan and they are forming a bevy of strategic alliances.

Unlike the Islamic world, whom we can more or less bully at will, in China we have a different problem. According to the Treasury Department, major foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury securities total $1.38 trillion. Over the first seven months of 2003, Mainland China and Hong Kong have accumulated $177 billion of U.S. debt. Currently, China is the world's second-largest buyer, exceeded only by Japan. Furthermore, China's purchases of U.S. government securities rose 20% over the first half of this year and have exploded by more than 105% since the beginning of 2001.

This situation is dangerous because it is how the Bush Administration is in part funding the federal government, by selling our debt to the Chinese. This August, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that the federal government will accumulate a $401 billion deficit next year not including the additional $87 billion request for Iraq. (Read more)

That's not the only economic issue between Beijing and Washington. "The China National Offshore Oil Corporation, a company that is 70 percent owned by the Chinese government, is seeking to acquire control of Unocal, an energy company with global reach. In particular, Unocal has a history - oddly ignored in much reporting on the Chinese offer - of doing business with problematic regimes in difficult places, including the Burmese junta and the Taliban. One indication of Unocal's reach: Zalmay Khalilzad, who was U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan for 18 months and was just confirmed as ambassador to Iraq, was a Unocal consultant." (Read More)

In case anyone was wondering the US obviously opposes this deal. In Washington, a bi-partisan group of lawmakers has sent a letter to Treasury Secretary John Snow demanding that the Committee on Foreign Investments in the US (CFIUS), a powerful inter-agency panel, review the potential deal ‘immediately’. Some say the US is bent out shape over this because the US is finding it ever more difficult to compete with China over scoring various sources of cheap oil. Other's note that the real issue is that China outbid American competitor Chevron for the purchase of Unocal.

It should be noted that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was a director of Chevron for a decade before Bush's election. Chevron even named an oil tanker after her. If wars could be fought with merely symbols, we'd already be at war with China.

And what about Ms. Rice then? What is she going to do about this seeing as she's the Secretary of State and an expert on China? Well, if history ends up repeating itself as it did in 1996 when Rice was involved in the largest Chinese army penetration of the Clinton administration, she may end up doing more damage than good. If you've never heard this story or have only heard about the Clinton side to it, it's probably because to this day, Condoleezza Rice will not answer questions about her service at Stanford with Chinese Army spy Hua Di, which led to a secure fiber-optic communication system being exported directly to the Chinese army. (Read More)

The irony in all of this is that because this administration wanted a war in Iraq so badly, they may have hamstrung themselves against the real threat emerging in China. The truly sad part is that Rice told Bush in his first term that China was going to be a problem and that he'd better do something about it, soon. So now the war in Iraq has opened Pandora's box and skulking somewhere in the back is a Chinese dragon just waiting for the right time to strike. Meanwhile, we'll still be shooting at Saudi's, Yemeni's, Egyptians, Syrian's and other assorted terrorists in Iraq. Not to mention that little problem of Iranian mullah's and their quest for the atomic bomb still lurking about.

But more importantly than all that, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, is it real or is it all just media propaganda? I don't know about you but I'm :::::::yawn::::::: glued to my seat, never mind China.