Big News in China

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There are two stories of interest coming out of China this week, so far. The first one comes out of the New York Times and states that, “China's biggest state-owned oil company, the China National Petroleum Corporation, announced on Monday that it would pay $4.18 billion for a Canadian oil company with shares traded in New York and substantial reserves in Kazakhstan.

It is China's largest foreign acquisition yet, and more than twice what a Chinese computer company paid for I.B.M.'s personal computer business.

China National Petroleum outbid India's state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation in reaching a deal to acquire PetroKazakhstan, and it is not clear whether the Indian company will step up with a counterbid. Still, the process underlines the growing competition for oil resources by the world's two most populous countries, each of which is rapidly increasing oil imports.”

The other story, which has been percolating for a few days now concerns the first ever joint war games between Beijing and Moscow. This is from Chinadaily.com, “Their military drills, an exercise for the suppression of hypothetical ethnic conflict in an imaginary restive Central Asian country, signifies a new Russian-Chinese cooperation that could direct the shape of regional tension and disagreement in the future. The military drills mark a new friendly phase in a bilateral relationship that has often been characterized by open hostility.

The war games map out possible responses to an imaginary state engulfed in a wave of violence fuelled by ethnic and religious strife. Under great fanfare, they have repeated the urgency to ``fight against international terrorism, separatism and extremism’ in statements aimed at Taiwan and Chechnya.”

Normally I’d be bemoaning all of this and calling for our government to be vigilant against a clearly growing threat in the world. Not today my friends, not today. If this administration has taught me anything it’s that left to our devices we cannot be trusted to do the right things in the world for the right reasons. Like in most cases, we’re at our best when we’re threatened with our entire world collapsing around us.

If competition is what drives the marketplace then said marketplace is very soon going to go into overdrive. Let's face facts here, China is a megalith that isn't going anywhere and can only get bigger. Some analysts have it that China's economy will eventually out produce more than the US'. That'd be some feat wouldn’t it?

There are those in Washington who clearly see the role of the US as an entity that gently (or rather harshly) pushes and prods the world in a direction that maximizes its own benefits. In the past, it was the USSR that stood in our way but their only real threat was MADD (mutually assured destruction) by virtue of an ICBM launched at New York. The Soviets were never an economic threat nor would they ever be.

This War on Terror has really been an opportunity to take advantage of the "Unipolar Moment" and as I've stated in this space many, many times, that moment has come and gone. China is the new USSR without the economic basket case issue. Right now the only two ways China can be knocked down a peg is if either they can't contain its HIV/AIDS issue or there's open rebellion against the totalitarian government. The world won't let the former happen and the Chinese government has plenty of tanks to stop the latter from happening.

So we're right back where we were in the 50's. The Chinese are standing on the other side of the table and they have big tickets to the right dance. Simply put, they've got the manpower and they've got the skyrocketing economy to challenge the US. Provided they don't do something phenomenally stupid and try exterminating a particular race of people (Hitler I'm looking in your direction) they will only get stronger as will their challenge to the US.

Oddly enough, I’m in favor of China challenging the US and providing the stiff economic and diplomatic competition we’ve been sorely lacking. Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t want them to invade Taiwan nor do I want them seriously threatening the US with ICBM’s, however, threat of becoming the engine that drives the world economy is a laudable endeavor. It should (but if this administration is true to form it won’t) push the US to make the right kind of changes so that its not knocked out of its place as the current engine that drives the world economy.

The US also needs “an enemy” to stop it from doing precisely what the “neo-cons” have been alleging is good policy for some time now. Without a counter-balance to stop the US from going overboard (like some say it is in the Mid-East right now). If you look at how we’ve dealt with Iraq/Iran versus how we’ve handled North Korea, the difference is fairly apparent. In the former case there’s been no major backer to seriously stand in the way of the Washington carrying out all kinds of agendas written by wonks whom owe allegiance to Israel, the oil companies or a little bit of both and then some. France and the EU have tried to be the counter-weight to the US but it’s a miserable diplomatic and economic failure. That place is just waiting for the Islamofascists and angry Africans to set the entire continent on fire. The answer here is clearly China. Only in China can there be “an enemy” worthy of saving the US from itself.

Let me reiterate that I’m all in favor of Beijing throwing its weight behind global policy issues such as the de-nuclearization of North Korea so long as that’s as far as it goes. A while back there was scuttlebutt about the Chinese building up its armed forces for a clash with the US because of the clout it was building in the world. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not wishing for a war with the Chinese nor am I rooting against my own country. What I want is a counter-weight, not a new master.