Tag: Sino-fascism

Thuggish Is As Thuggish Does

Did you think that Beijing would be selective in its rare earth trade embargo, wielding its market position against Japan (alone, among all the countries of the world) as a weapon of last-resort?

Think again:

American trade officials announced last Friday that they would investigate whether China was violating international trade rules by subsidizing its clean energy industries. The inquiry includes whether China’s steady reductions in rare earth export quotas since 2005, along with steep export taxes on rare earths, are illegal efforts to force multinational companies to produce more of their high-technology goods in China.

[…]

Hours later, according to industry officials, Chinese customs officials began singling out and delaying rare earth shipments to the West. [emphasis added]

Earlier this year, Taiwan's Chinese Nationalist Party signed a free trade agreement with China, all the while insisting that the Benevolent Butchers of Beijing would never abuse their economic power over Taiwan.

That proposition of theirs appears more divorced from reality with each passing day.

UPDATE (Oct 20/2010):  Daniel Drezner on China's rare earth embargo against the West —

"[This is] going to encourage some obvious policy responses by the rest of the world. Non-Chinese production of rare earths will explode over the next five years as countries throw subsidy after subsidy at spurring production. Given China's behavior, not even the most ardent free-market advocate will be in a position to argue otherwise." [emphasis added]

 

Nobel Peace Prize Predictions

Damn.  Remind me never to play a game of Machiavelli with Michael Turton!

All kidding aside, Occam's Razor suggests to me that China was sincere in its brutish objections to Liu Xiaobo's nomination and win.  Thuggish is as thuggish does.

But I'll go further out on a limb and predict that within the next 3 or 5 years Liu will have company, when another Chinese dissident will be awarded the prize.  And my reason for believing that is that the Chinese Communist Party REALLY hacked off the Nobel Committee.  So much so, that the committee broke with precedent and leaked the name of the winner to the media a few days before the official announcement.  (Hard to imagine a bigger F U being issued to the Butchers of Beijing.)

Remember how the Nobel committee spent the last 6 or 7 years repudiating George W. Bush?  It was almost a steady stream – Mohammed ElBaradei…Al Gore…Barack Obama.  (If I'm not mistaken, there were also a couple anti-American authors for the Literature Prize tossed in just for good measure.)

Message received.  Loud and clear.

But one thing cannot be denied:  in response to these rebukes, the American government did most assuredly NOT threaten the government of Norway, nor the livelihood of its people.  Great powers get criticized, and they learn to live with it.  Goes with the territory.

In contrast, the Communist government of China gave the Nobel committee only two alternatives:  humiliating surrender, or honorable defiance.*  One or two more Liu Xiaobo's this decade will drive home to the Chinese what stuff Norwegians are made of.

* During a conversation with some Taiwanese youths a few years back, one of them announced in all seriousness to me that "Face didn't matter to Westerners." 

(No offence was intended by them.  I think the subject came up when I remarked that I wouldn't feel any loss of face if I offered a last-minute dinner party invitation to a coworker, and they declined due to prior commitments.)

It's a view charming in its naivety when held by the young — but foolish to the extreme if it's held by the Chinese leadership.

UPDATE:  An Indian reporter blogs on the Chinese media black-out.

UPDATE #2:  Liu's not hard-line enough, protest some exiled Chinese dissidents.  Sad.

 

Chinese Communist Party Releases Final Japanese Hostage

Beijing graciously releases Japanese chemical munitions removal specialist from captivity.

Advice to the Japanese government:  When you're in a hole, stop digging.  The CCP has demonstrated its eagerness to take hostages, so stop providing them with the hostages it so desperately craves.

They want 65 year-old chemical shells removed from their soil?  Let 'em clean 'em up themselves. 

No need for them to be on the Japanese dole, now that they're a big, rich, powerful country.

Beijing Relaxes “The Chinese Charm Offensive” Against Japan

Resumes rare earth shipments to Japanese high-tech industries.  (The four Japanese hostages it took earlier have still not been released, however.)

On a somewhat-related topic, there's one irony I've been meaning to mention regarding Taiwan's involvement in the Senkaku affair.  Taiwan's Chinese Nationalist Party will enthusiastically spend tens of thousands of dollars to defend the "right" of a Taiwanese citizen to hoist the R.O.C. flag on Japanese soil. 

Yet that same party is willing to spend MILLIONS to prevent Taiwanese citizens from hoisting that very same flag on their OWN SOIL (at least when Chinese Communist Party apparachiks come-a-callin').

Curious, is it not?

Give ‘Em An Inch And They Won’t Just Take An Isle

They'll take the whole archipelago.  Chinese ultranationalists at Taiwan's China Post salivate not just over the Senkaku Islands, but over ALL the islands in Japan's Okinawa Prefecture.

The Senkakus?  Merely an appetizer.

UPDATE:  In claiming the Senkaku Islands for "China", the China Post of Taiwan refers to a Japanese map from 1783 (on which the islands are given the same color as China).

Hayashi Shihei, Japan's first cartographer, positioned the Senkakus as belonging to China in the eighteenth century.

This all leads to a place where the Chinese ultranationalists of the Post most certainly did intend to go.  Because interestingly enough, that very same map represents Taiwan with an entirely different color from China.  (China & the Senkaku Islands are colored pinkish-red on the map, while Taiwan is colored yellow.)

Ergo, if you believe the Japanese map is irrefutable proof of China's ownership over the Senkakus, then you must also hold it to be irrefutable proof that Taiwan is an country independent of China.

Q.E.D.

1783 map from Japan shows Taiwan is independent from China

(Hat tip to Ampontan, who was the first to make this observation)

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The Chinese Charm Offensive

Beijing's bellicosity wins friends and allies – for America.  Danke schoen, Kaiser Hu Jintao.

Incidentally — and I speak only hypothetically — if China is justified in waging economic war against Japan over the Senkaku Islands, wouldn't America be justified in waging economic war against China for its currency manipulation?  Robert J. Samuelson at the Washington Post seems to think so.

[Let's be clear though on this last point:  As an economic subsidiary of Communist China, Taiwan would suffer terribly from a Sino-American trade war.]

 

When It Absolutely, Positively, DOESN’T Have To Be There…

Google went Galt in China earlier this year, and perhaps it's high time that Japan followed its example.  Because both the Daily Yomiuri and Asahi Shimbun are reporting that Beijing is erecting politically-motivated customs trade barriers to cripple Japanese industry.  From the Daily Yomiuri:

Shanghai customs authorities informed major Japanese transport firms last Tuesday of a decision to immediately boost the ratio of imports and exports subject to sample inspections at the city's customs house from the previous 30 percent to 100 percent.

Shanghai's quarantine authorities have also raised the ratio of quarantine inspections of commodities from the previous 10 percent to 50 percent, they said.

Because of the subsequent delay in the clearance and quarantine procedures, many air cargoes bound for Japan, including electronics parts, remain in Shanghai, according to the sources.

Similar measures have been taken at many other customs houses, including those in Fujian, Guandong and Liaoning Provinces…

Meanwhile, Communist China is denying that it had ANYTHING to do with the decision of Chinese rare earth exporters to cease shipments of their products to Japan.  Just as they denyed that the equipment they moved into the East China Sea had ANYTHING to do with oceanic gas field drilling.

[Surprise, surprise – the latest word is that the water near the Chinese offshore facility is dirty and turbid.  Which is just the sort of thing that one expects when AN UNDERWATER DRILL BIT MEETS SOLID ROCK.]