Sinomania!

According to a world-wide public opinion poll published by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, most people in the world are not bothered by the rise of China. The results of the poll reveal some interesting bed-fellows. For example, the biggest positive response to China comes from Latin Americans -- majorities in Mexico, Peru, and Argentina all viewed China positively. As did Iranians and Israelis and most people in Thailand. The most negative responses were in United States and its satellites the Philippines and South Korea and among the French. Anti-China feelings in the United States are a legacy of the barrage of anti-China propaganda fed to Americans for generations by Henry Luce and his media empire and far-right anti-China groups and media outlets that continue to warp Americans minds about China.

Most intriguing, the majority of the people polled around the world were equally distrustful of the USA and China.

Labels: china, opinion, public, usa, war

So says a headline release from the Scripps Howard News Service sans the question mark. The spin (why haven't we seen this headline on Drudge yet?) is a ridiculous misreport of the latest report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) that watches arms expenditures around the world.

According to the report the USA remains by far the world's biggest war machine with well over half a trillion dollars in annual arms spending. China is actually listed at number four after the UK and France. According to the report the top five military-industrial complexes and their 2006 revenues were: the USA $529 billion (46% of the entire world's weapons spending); the UK $59 billion; France $53 billion; China $50 billion (not even 10% of USA spending); and Japan $44 billion.

The Scripps Howard piece uses the purchasing-power-parity (PPP) equivalent figure for China at $188 billion. But that is specious unless the news services also explains that measured by PPP China is the second largest economy in the world just behind the USA.

If we're going to parse the data, a more revealing measure, provided in the SIPRI report but completely unreported, is military spending on a per capita basis. The USA spends $1,756 for each of its (legal) citizens versus only $37 spent per person by China on its "war" machine.

Labels: arms, china, defense, industrial, military, spending, u.s., war

It strikes me as particularly hollow that Speaker Nancy Pelosi used her pulpit as head of America's House of Representatives to breathe life into the propaganda that what happened in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, was a massacre of "pro-democracy" demonstrators and students and - more ridiculous - ominously threatening that maybe China won't get to host the Summer Olympics next year (as though the Olympics were the USA's to give or take away). Why hollow? Because I doubt that Pelosi will issue any statement on July 28 on the anniversary of the suppression of the Bonus Army that occured right outside the halls of Congress when US Army troops killed and wounded American protestors with guns and tanks. But that was back in 1932.

More ridiculous still is that Pelosi still thinks the USA has any moral ground to claim whatsoever in the wake of the Iraq occupation and our conduct at the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons. As for the Olympics Madame Speaker, the games are awarded to a CITY not a nation and the voting, in which the USA fully participated, is conducted by the International Olympic Committee and is not controlled by the USA and it is not in your power to declare whether or not the Chinese get to host the Olympics.

The second Strategic Economic Dialogue is underway today and tomorrow at the Mellon Auditorium in the main Commerce Department building in Washington, DC. Under its stately dome and corinthian columns, the Bush Cabinet (with a few stand-ins such as John Negroponte) and 17 Chinese ministers will attempt to hash out the big issue of the day, the USA’s mammoth trade deficit with China.

Dr. Henry Kissinger started things off with a musing on the historic implications of USA-China cooperation. He demonstrated this point (and revealed his intellectual irrelevance) by bringing up the discredited “Bismark/Wilhelmine Germany” argument that “when a nation grew with the speed, determination and scale of China it would evoke almost inevitable competition and even conflict between itself and the traditional countries.”

So far, the talks can be broken down as follows: Wu Yi says “Win-Win!” but Paulson says “When-When?”

Vice Premier Wu rightly pointed out that the trade gap with China could disappear by allowing high-tech exports. Of course that’s not possible when the USA views China through Kissinger’s 1914-era eyeglasses. Meanwhile Paulson has nothing to offer other than his impatience at Chinese progress.

All the while, the largest delegation since Deng Xiaoping’s famous American tour in 1978 is watching over a invading horde of Chinese businessman inking $20 billion in deals that will no doubt led to more imports and friction.

If nothing concrete emerges from this summit, the battle lines will be drawn between a sheepishly pro-China Executive branch versus an anti-China (Paulson’s own words) Congress. The result will be anti-trade legislation before the end of this year and a full-blown China bashing and China-baiting all 2008 as Presidential candidates on both sides vie to heap blame for all America’s problems not on Washington (where it belongs) but on Beijing.