Be Prepared To Learn Chinese

[vector7]

China's role on world stage is no cause for alarm, says Barack Obama

Tania Branigan

• The Observer,
• Sunday 15 November 2009
• Article history

Barack Obama introduced himself as America's "first Pacific president" as he launched his four-nation tour of the region, vowing to deepen ties with Asia and arguing that China's rise should be welcomed rather than feared.

Kicking off his visit in Tokyo, he also sought to thaw the chill in relations with his hosts, America's closest allies in the region. The new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, has vowed to make Japan less dependent on the US, but the two men agreed to put off the issue of resolving the future of US forces in Japan.

However, police in China are reported to have detained dozens of dissidents in a crackdown ahead of Obama's arrival there today. Human rights campaigners said that at least 30 activists who were expected to apply for the right to hold protests directed at the Chinese government during the US president's visit were arrested.

Reformers worry that Obama will play down China's poor human rights record in order to maintain good relations on issues such as the economy. "We get the impression Obama doesn't want to talk about human rights on this trip, but it is precisely because of his visit here that these people are being rounded up and detained right now," Ai Weiwei, a Beijing-based artist and social commentator, told the Financial Times.

Speaking yesterday during the first stop on his nine-day Asian tour, Obama told an audience of 1,500 in the Japanese capital: "I want every American to know that we have a stake in the future of this region, because what happens here has a direct effect on our lives at home."

American officials have portrayed the trip as an opportunity to develop relationships and make progress on non-proliferation, climate change and the economy, and are playing down expectations of any agreements.

As in his previous foreign affairs speeches, Obama emphasised his personal ties in the region – referring to his birth in Hawaii, time in Indonesia and boyhood travels in Asia – and the administration's break with unilateralism.

"We welcome China's efforts to play a greater role on the world stage – a role in which their growing economy is joined by growing responsibility," he said. "Power does not need to be a zero-sum game and nations need not fear the success of another."

He held out a hand to North Korea again, calling for it to denuclearise; and to Burma, if it undertakes democratic reform and frees political prisoners, including opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Burma's prime minister will be present at the president's meeting with Association of South-east Asian Nations (Asean) leaders in Singapore.

Obama also announced that the US will sign up to a trans-Pacific free trade agreement. That may help to deflect accusations of protectionism, which are likely to be aired throughout his tour. He stressed the need for "balanced" growth and said Asian countries should not be dependent on exports to the US.

The economic crisis has underlined the interdependence of "Chimerica" in particular and the trade imbalance that has left China with vast US dollar holdings. Washington wants the Chinese currency, the yuan, to appreciate further; Beijing will repeat its concerns that US debt could endanger its dollar holdings.

But Obama's Chinese visit is about more than money. The world's two largest carbon emitters are meeting just weeks away from the Copenhagen climate-change conference.

China's influence on North Korea and Iran are central to Obama's non-proliferation agenda. Its handling of Afghanistan and Pakistan will also be high up in discussions.

Obama's China policy is essentially his predecessor's; the relationship is increasingly amicable. But some fear attempts to broaden it could mean less meaningful engagement.

"Bush's approach was: you are rising in the international system and need to take on more responsibility," said Victor Cha, director of Asian affairs in the National Security Council under George Bush and now at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. "Obama is heaping on all these very, very high expectations – on issues like climate change and currency – and I think they are expectations that China cannot possibly meet."

China sees itself as a vulnerable developing country as well as a rising power. And shared anxieties – such as those over proliferation – do not equal identical interests. "China's own interests in those hot spots [North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan] make it deeply conflicted about playing a larger role on the world stage," said Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt of the International Crisis Group. "While the United States frames China in terms of its growing responsibilities as a major power, China continues to think primarily in terms of its own interests."

To some observers, the administration is also too keen to please Beijing, wasting leverage rather than smoothing the path to greater gains.

Obama's decision not to meet the Dalai Lama last month – aides say he will do so in future – "doesn't send a signal that the US wants to work with China; it sends a signal they have basically got us," said Cha.

[vector7]

November 15, 2009
China’s Role as Lender Alters Obama’s Visit
By HELENE COOPER, MICHAEL WINES and DAVID E. SANGER

When President Obama visits China for the first time on Sunday, he will, in many ways, be assuming the role of profligate spender coming to pay his respects to his banker.

That stark fact — China is the largest foreign lender to the United States — has changed the core of the relationship between the United States and the only country with a reasonable chance of challenging its status as the world’s sole superpower.

The result: unlike his immediate predecessors, who publicly pushed and prodded China to follow the Western model and become more open politically and economically, Mr. Obama will be spending less time exhorting Beijing and more time reassuring it.

In a July meeting, Chinese officials asked their American counterparts detailed questions about the health care legislation making its way through Congress. The president’s budget director, Peter R. Orszag, answered most of their questions. But the Chinese were not particularly interested in the public option or universal care for all Americans.

“They wanted to know, in painstaking detail, how the health care plan would affect the deficit,” one participant in the conversation recalled. Chinese officials expect that they will help finance whatever Congress and the White House settle on, mostly through buying Treasury debt, and like any banker, they wanted evidence that the United States had a plan to pay them back.

It is a long way from the days when President George W. Bush hectored China about currency manipulation, or when President Bill Clinton exhorted the Chinese to improve human rights.

Mr. Obama has struck a mollifying note with China. He pointedly singled out the emerging dynamic at play between the United States and China during a wide-ranging speech in Tokyo on Saturday that was meant to outline a new American relationship with Asia.

“The United States does not seek to contain China,” Mr. Obama said. “On the contrary, the rise of a strong, prosperous China can be a source of strength for the community of nations.”

He alluded to human rights but did not get specific. “We will not agree on every issue,” he said, “and the United States will never waver in speaking up for the fundamental values that we hold dear — and that includes respect for the religion and cultures of all people.”

White House officials have been working for months to make sure that Mr. Obama’s three-day visit to Shanghai and Beijing conveys a conciliatory image. For instance, in June, the White House told the Dalai Lama that while Mr. Obama would meet him at some point, he would not do so in October, when the Tibetan spiritual leader visited Washington, because it was too close to Mr. Obama’s visit to China.

Greeting the Dalai Lama, whom China condemns as a separatist, weeks before Mr. Obama’s first presidential trip to the country could alienate Beijing, administration officials said. Every president since George H. W. Bush in 1991 has met the Dalai Lama when he visited Washington, usually in private encounters at the White House, although in 2007 George W. Bush became the first president to welcome him publicly, bestowing the Congressional Gold Medal on him at the Capitol. Mr. Obama met the Dalai Lama as a senator.

Similarly, while he was campaigning for the presidency, Mr. Obama several times accused China of manipulating its currency, an allegation that the current Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, repeated during his confirmation hearings. But in April, the Treasury Department retreated from that criticism, issuing a report that said China was not manipulating its currency to increase its exports.

While American officials said privately that they remained frustrated that China’s currency policies lowered the cost of Chinese goods and made American products more expensive in foreign markets, they said that they were relieved that China was fighting the global recession with an enormous fiscal stimulus program to spur domestic growth, and added that now was not the time to antagonize Beijing.

China is not viewed as a trouble spot for the United States. But this administration, like its predecessor, has had difficulty grappling with a rising power that seems eager to avoid direct clashes with the United States but affects its interests in many areas, including currency policy, nuclear proliferation, climate change and military spending.

In that regard, two members of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy team said that the United States’ interactions with the Chinese had been far too narrow in past years, focusing on counterterrorism and North Korea. Too little was done, they said, to address China’s energy and environmental policies, or its expansion of influence in Southeast Asia, South Asia and Africa, where China has invested heavily and used billions of dollars in aid to advance its political influence.

One hint of the Obama administration’s new approach came in a speech this fall by James B. Steinberg, the deputy secretary of state, who has deep roots in China policy. He argued that China needed to adopt a policy of “strategic reassurance” to the rest of the world, a phrase that appeared intended to be the successor to the framework of the Bush era, when China was urged to embrace a role as a “responsible stakeholder.”

“Strategic reassurance rests on a core, if tacit, bargain,” Mr. Steinberg said. “Just as we and our allies must make clear that we are prepared to welcome China’s ‘arrival,’ ” he argued, the Chinese “must reassure the rest of the world that its development and growing global role will not come at the expense of security and well-being of others.”

The Chinese reaction has been mixed, at best. The official China Daily newspaper ran a column just before Mr. Obama’s arrival suggesting that the United States needed to provide some assurance of its own — to “respect China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” code words for entirely backing away from the issues of how China deals with Taiwan and Tibet.

In the United States, the phrase “strategic reassurance” has been attacked by conservative commentators, who argue that any reassurance that the United States provides to China would be an acknowledgment of a decline in American power.

In an op-ed article in The Washington Post, the analysts Robert Kagan and Dan Blumenthal argued that the policy had echoes of Europe “ceding the Western Hemisphere to American hegemony” a century ago. “Lingering behind this concept is an assumption of America’s inevitable decline,” they wrote. White House officials shot back, insisting that it is China that needs to do the reassurance, not the United States.

In China, Mr. Obama will meet with local political leaders and will host an American-style town hall meeting with students in Shanghai. He will then spend two days in Beijing meeting with President Hu Jintao.

It seems unlikely that Mr. Obama will get the same celebrity-type reception in Beijing that he received in Cairo, Ghana, Paris and London. China seems mostly immune to the Obama fever that swept other parts of the world, and the Chinese are growing more confident that their country has the wherewithal to compete with the United States on the world stage, analysts say.

“Obama is still a positive guy, and all over the world most people think he’s more energetic, more sincere, than Bush, more a reformist,” said Shi Yinhong, a professor and an expert on United States-China relations at People’s University in Beijing. “But in China, Obama’s popularity is less than in Europe, than Japan or Southeast Asia.” In China, he said, “there is no worship of Obama.”

For instance, during the Bush and Clinton years, China might release a few political dissidents on the eve of a visit by the president as a good-will gesture. This time, American officials say, they do not expect any similar gestures, although they say that Mr. Obama will raise human rights issues privately with Mr. Hu.

“This time China will agree to have a human rights dialogue with the U.S. on some cases,” Mr. Shi said, but “the arguments have changed compared to the past. Now we say, ‘We are a different country, we have our own system, our own culture.’ ”

Helene Cooper reported from Singapore, Michael Wines from Beijing, and David E. Sanger from Washington.

[vector7]

From The Times
November 16, 2009
President Obama will urge China to join US in ‘world leadership’
Giles Whittell in Washington

* 1 Comment

Recommend? (5)

Air Force One touched down in Shanghai in driving rain last night, carrying a President who in three days hopes to convince China that the relationship between the world’s two largest economies can be a joint project in global leadership, not a zero-sum contest for power.

He will have his work cut out: for the first time in the history of his office, thwarted on multiple fronts at home and abroad, Barack Obama will be negotiating with the Chinese from a position of perceived weakness.

By the standards of his frenzied presidency, Mr Obama’s schedule in China will be almost relaxed. With a state banquet, two summits and two sightseeing breaks, it will inevitably recall Richard Nixon’s epoch-making visit of 1972.

It will also acknowledge the central importance of China to the US economy and Mr Obama’s world view, even as he juggles with immense and pressing foreign policy challenges from Afghanistan to Israel and Iran to North Korea.

Related Links

* The Global Resent Button

* Obama still searching for foreign success

* Beijing gets the jitters as Obama flies in

In Shanghai today and Beijing tomorrow, the President will speak softly about human rights and currency manipulation, but optimistically about trade, technology transfer and mutual dependence. He will seek to persuade Hu Jintao, his Chinese counterpart, that only a rebalancing of the Chinese economy in favour of domestic consumption can sustain global growth and save Asia from a “drift from crisis to crisis”. In the process, he must try to make the case to an increasingly sceptical domestic audience that he is right to spend nine days in Asia while US troops continue to wait for a new strategy on Afghanistan.

Yesterday Hillary Clinton, travelling with Mr Obama as his Secretary of State, interrupted her Asian itinerary to give two network TV interviews focused almost exclusively on the apparent crisis in White House thinking on Afghanistan, an impasse laid bare with the leak last week of two cables from the US Ambassador in Kabul urging the President not to send any reinforcements to prop up the regime of President Karzai in its current state.

After a promise from Mr Obama to troops in Alaska that “we’ll give you the strategy and clear mission you deserve”, Mrs Clinton insisted that the strategy would be about US security, not nation-building, and that continued US aid to Kabul would depend on certifiable progress against corruption. The time was past, she said, when the US would “talk about how we were going to help the Afghans build a modern democracy and build a more functioning state and do all these wonderful things”.

Mrs Clinton’s words were clearly intended to recall President Bush’s so-called freedom agenda. Yet critics of this Administration’s foreign policy believe its habit of reaching back to the Bush era to justify policy is wearing thin. “Barack Obama is in danger of giving deliberation a bad name,” Doyle McManus wrote yesterday in the usually supportive Los Angeles Times. “In George Bush, we had a President who shot first and asked questions later. In Barack Obama, we have a President who asks the right questions but hesitates to pull the trigger.”

Mr Obama’s grand Asian tour will at least remind such voices that US foreign policy cannot be held hostage by one inherited conflict. The US may have been born on its eastern seaboard, he told an approving Japanese audience on Friday, “but for generations we also have been a nation of the Pacific. Asia and the United States are not separated by this great ocean; we are bound by it”.

He promised that “the United States does not seek to contain China”, and offered North Korea “a different future” based on trade, investment, tourism and, crucially, de-nuclearisation. On North Korea, as on Iran and the Israel-Palestinian peace process, Mr Obama stands accused of offering more than he can deliver.

His overtures to Tehran have been met with tactical manoeuvring over proposals for a uranium export deal and were rebuffed yesterday by the speaker of the Iranian parliament.

The flying White House prompts re-evaluations of US foreign policy wherever it goes. The single most striking headline to emerge four days into the longest tour of this presidency is negative, though not surprising: leaders at the Asian-Pacific summit in Singapore abandoned the goal of a binding global carbon emissions treaty next month in Copenhagen. Yet on several issues, most of them involving Russia, Mr Obama has made concrete progress.

In China, Russia and across the globe, Mr Obama has pressed the “reset button”. Flattering Russia and the scrapping of a missile defence shield in Eastern Europe appears to be paying off in the diplomatic race to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. It is not too soon for critics to assail Mr Obama for the mixed results so far. Nor, the Administration insists, is it too late to confound them.

By avoiding confrontation over currency or human rights, he could extract significant concessions from Beijing on climate change, and still meet the Dalai Lama on his return to Washington. By sending a televised New Year’s greeting to the Iranian people, he may have emboldened the protesters who took to Tehran’s streets after this year’s presidential elections, ultimately weakening the Ahmadinejad regime.

By inviting Pyongyang into global nuclear non-proliferation agreements rather than branding it one end of an axis of evil, he may yet prepare the ground for progress in the six-party talks on North Korea. This much is clear: the status quo was not working.

[vector7]

Obama in China and Twilight for America

By Daniel Greenfield
Monday, November 16, 2009

The first year of Obama has seen America retreating on all fronts. The country that once pressed back the Russian bear, has instead pulled up the missile shield and sent the signal to Moscow that the former Soviet Republicans can no longer count on US aid to insure their independence. On China, Obama has switched to a policy of “Strategic Reassurance”, which is a fancy way of retreating and saying “Nice Doggie”, without actually even bothering to hunt for the stick.

Not only has Obama become the first President not to meet with the Dalai Lama, but what “Strategic Reassurance” really does is hang out Taiwan and Japan on the line, assuring China that America will not interfere with its expanding sphere of political and military dominance.

Robert Kagan and Dan Blumenthal, two prominent foreign policy analysts, described the policy as follows.

“‘Strategic reassurance’ seems to chart a different course. Senior officials liken the policy to the British accommodation of a rising United States at the end of the 19th century, which entailed ceding the Western Hemisphere to American hegemony. Lingering behind this concept is an assumption of America’s inevitable decline.”

That assumption is of course the engine behind the White House’s policymaking that consists of selling out allies to enemies in the hopes of stability. This was the sum total of British foreign policy before and after WW2, a policy that gave us an Arab Socialist Middle East, a Southeast Asia in turmoil and Africa under the boots of murderous dictators. And Obama is now working to replicate that same policy on a far larger scale.

Obama’s international tour of bowing only highlights his weakness. His global popularity is as shallow as that of any celebrity, and only serves to signal America’s weakness. Each of Obama’s fumbling speeches has failed to achieve any tangible result except to express America’s helplessness and willingness to concede on every front. Buzzwords like “New Relationship”, “Multilateralism” and “Strategic Reassurance” are the ways in which Obama and his foreign policy minions phrase their “New Incompetence”.

America which once served as a global shield, is being transformed into a paper tiger. And the result is emboldening both old enemies, such as Russia and China, as well as smaller but more aggressive genocidal regimes, such as North Korea and Iran, who have begun pushing a new wave of confrontations with American allies.

Obama has sold out every American ally to every American enemy, from Latin America to Eastern Europe to Asia to the Middle East. The message repeated over and over again is that not only can America no longer help free nations, but that the people in power in D.C. will actively sell out free nations to tyrannies in the name of multilateralism, and to buy ourselves some time before the implosion comes.

The New York Times article on Obama’s visit to China describes his visit as, “assuming the role of profligate spender coming to pay his respects to his banker” and sketched an image of American domestic policy having to gain approval from China.

In a July meeting, Chinese officials asked their American counterparts detailed questions about the health care legislation making its way through Congress. The president’s budget director, Peter R. Orszag, answered most of their questions. But the Chinese were not particularly interested in the public option or universal care for all Americans.

“They wanted to know, in painstaking detail, how the health care plan would affect the deficit,” one participant in the conversation recalled. Chinese officials expect that they will help finance whatever Congress and the White House settle on, mostly through buying Treasury debt, and like any banker, they wanted evidence that the United States had a plan to pay them back.

It is a long way from the days when President George W. Bush hectored China about currency manipulation, or when President Bill Clinton exhorted the Chinese to improve human rights.

Obama’s socialist spending spree does not simply come at the expense of America freedoms, it explicitly puts China in charge of American policy.

The price for universal health care will not simply be paid by Americans, it will be paid for by American allies in Asia.

Furthermore as the United States continues to borrow from China in order to fund Obama’s deficit spending, much of the interest paid back will in turn go to fund China’s military machine.

Unfortunately, that is not the reality in Asia. Contrary to optimistic predictions just a decade ago, China is behaving exactly as one would expect a great power to behave. As it has grown richer, China has used its wealth to build a stronger and more capable military. As its military power has grown, so have its ambitions…

Yet the new head of the U.S. Pacific Command, Adm. Robert Willard, noted last month that “in the past decade or so, China has exceeded most of our intelligence estimates of their military capability. . . . They’ve grown at an unprecedented rate.” Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently warned that China’s military modernization program could undermine U.S. military power in the Pacific.

Which means that the next naval war in the Pacific will see the US Navy coping with a Chinese Navy paid for by US tax dollars used to pay off Obama’s debts and made of US scrap metal resold to China.
North Korea has become emboldened enough to stage raids on South Korean waters

Meanwhile North Korea has become emboldened enough to stage raids on South Korean waters. Kim Jong Il’s new confidence in the inability of the US to do anything about his depredations is obvious enough, and comes right down to Obama. Iran in turn is doing the same thing, feeding a civil war in Yemen that has now dragged in Saudi Arabia, while openly taunting Obama about its nuclear arsenal.

As Obama cuts back on defense spending, while going deeper into debt to pay off his Wall Street and Union backers, America begins to increasingly look like a failed state. And while China is happy enough to lend us every dollar we ask for, that is only because it brings America one step closer to becoming a Sharecropper Society.

We took the first steps toward the Sharecropper Society by exporting the means of production abroad, particularly to China. Shortly afterward Chinese companies began selling cheaper versions of our own products back to us, turning those same US companies into their distributors.

Now China has begun buying American brand names such as Hummer, thereby cutting US companies entirely out of the loop. Very soon about the only thing that China will need from the US is ad agencies and superstores like Wal-Mart to shove the cheap Chinese junk down America’s throat.

Americans will essentially become Chinese serfs

Americans will no longer be working for themselves. Instead Americans incomes will go to buy Chinese products and pay taxes, which will in turn go to China. As American corporations are taken over by China, Americans will essentially become Chinese serfs. The process is well underway and Obama’s deficit spending is bringing it closer every day.

China has already won its economic war with America. Every product made in China, every Wal-Mart and every number in the trade deficit is a PRC flag planted on American soil. Now China is pursuing a quiet political war with America, and putting us in their debt amounts to a boot planted on Uncle Sam’s grizzled neck.

Obama’s policy of “strategic reassurance,” amounts to an admission that the US can no longer stand in China’s way globally. Which is perfectly timed for China’s growing expansion as it completes its ethnic cleansing of Tibet, expands its slave labor empire across Africa, and uses “Soft Power” to spread its propaganda globally through its state owned media. Taiwan’s day is coming, and for all of Japan’s fussing about nuclear arms, it is now in an invisible arms race with North Korea. And the only way out is through China.

America let this happen, and while Obama is the worst incarnation of this policy, his treason is only the latest link in the grand chain of bad policy that helped turn China from a backward starving Communist dictatorship into a world power. Meanwhile on the Russian front, Obama has retreated from even the relatively weak stand that the Bush Administration took over Georgia. “Strategic Reassurance” toward Russia means exactly what it does toward China, selling out to Putin all of the former Republics whose freedom we prided ourselves on. The only difference is that instead of cheap products and our national debt, Russia’s leverage on us comes in the form of energy.

If Russia can help drive its Iranian ally to lead a Shiite revolution in the Middle East, and its Latin American allies to lead a Marxist revolution right below us, it will have a lock on much of the world’s oil, and in turn enjoy a great deal of leverage over North America and Europe. Which will help force us to recognize its territorial claims to the former Warsaw Pact states of the USSR that Russian nationalists are aching to reclaim.

With a Shiite Middle East, a Chinese Asia, a Marxist Latin America and a Russian Europe—America in twilight will once again stand alone.

[vector7]

US Wants China to Buy into Its Small Banks

Tuesday, 17 Nov 2009 | 4:56 AM ET

By: Reuters

Chinese and U.S. regulators are negotiating a pact aimed at encouraging Chinese financial institutions to buy into small and medium-sized banks in the United States, bankers briefed on the plan said on Tuesday.

Chinese bankers have complained that it's been difficult for them to set up branches or invest in banks in the world's leading economy, due partly to U.S. regulators' tough supervision and strict approval process for financial deals.

But the global financial landscape has been revamped by the credit crisis, and cash-rich Chinese banks are now bigger players on the world scene and are scouting around for investment targets.

To illustrate the global shake-down, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China is now the world's biggest bank by market value, while Citigroup [C 4.30 0.06 (+1.42%)], once the world's No.1 bank, is worth the same as a second-tier commercial bank in China.

Two senior Chinese bankers said they had been invited this year by U.S. officials, investment bankers and financial advisers to look at several potential investments in U.S. banks, mostly in financial trouble.

"The trend is already there," said one Chinese banker.

"Now they're going to make this into an agreement to show there's a change in official attitude towards Chinese investments in the U.S. banking system," said the banker, who declined to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the matter.

CNBC.com

A Sino-U.S. Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to encourage Chinese banks to invest in U.S. lenders is in the making, and China's banking regulator has sought feedback from big domestic banks, bankers told Reuters.

Over 100 U.S. banks have already been seized by regulators in the financial crisis, and more bank failures could come as the Obama administration also needs more capital to take over troubled lenders.

No Hurry to Buy?

The MOU would be part of a new strategic framework that ranges from climate change to international cooperation, Hong Kong's South China Morning Post reported on Tuesday.

The hope is to announce a deal during U.S. President Barack Obama's current visit to China, the newspaper said, citing unnamed mainland bankers briefed on the matter.

In October 2007, Minsheng Banking Corp, China's seventh-largest by assets, agreed to buy 9.9 percent of San Francisco-based UCBH Holdings [UCBH 0.091 -0.749 (-89.17%) ] for more than $200 million in the first investment by a mainland Chinese bank in a U.S. bank.

But Minsheng has seen huge paper losses on its investment in UCBH, whose business focuses on mortgages for many Chinese Americans on the U.S. West Coast, as UCBH shares sank in the financial crisis.

Other Chinese banks such as ICBC and Merchants Bank have also shown an interest in expanding in the United States, but their approach may be different.

"I feel lots of uncertainties still exist in the U.S. financial market and we want to keep a distance from these toxic assets at this moment," said Ma Weihua, CEO of Merchants Bank, China's sixth-largest lender by assets.

"Our attitude towards U.S. financial assets is very conservative right now," Ma told Reuters by telephone.

Merchants Bank opened its first U.S. branch in New York about a year ago, and Ma said the branch would hire more local staff to expand its business there.

[vector7]

Hu meets with Obama, makes 5 proposals for Sino-U.S. relations via people.com.cn

21:46, November 17, 2009



Chinese President Hu Jintao made five proposals on promoting Sino-U.S. relations and tackling delicate issues of common concern while meeting with visiting U.S. President Barack Obama in Beijing Tuesday.

Obama, who is in Beijing for a four-day state visit to China, agreed with Hu on the proposals, reiterating that the United States does not seek to contain China’s rise and that he welcomes China as a “strong, prosperous and successful member of the community of nations.”

FURTHER STRATEGIC MUTUAL TRUST

Hu called on the two countries to continue to increase strategic mutual trust with prerequisite of respect for each other’s core interests and major concerns.

He hailed Obama’s statement that the United States sticks to the one-China policy and hoped that the United States would “properly handle” the Taiwan issue and forbid “Tibet independence” and “East Turkistan” forces from using U.S. territory to cover their anti-China separatist activities.

In Hu’s words, China and the United States should not be opponents, but partners that trust each other and cooperate sincerely.

“The development of China is an opportunity for all nations, including the United States,” Hu said. “It is not a challenge, let alone a threat.”

MAINTAIN EXCHANGES AT ALL LEVELS

Hu said China and the United States should maintain different levels of communication and consultation on major issues in a timely manner through different channels, including exchange of visits, talks and meetings on multilateral occasions.

The two countries should further substantiate the results of the first round of Sino-U.S. Strategic Economic Dialogue and start soon to prepare for the second round of talks in Beijing next summer, Hu said, calling the dialogue an important platform to enhance exchanges and cooperation between the two countries.

STEP UP MACRO CONTROL

It is “necessary” for China and the United States to step up cooperation on coordinating macro economic and financial policies, pushing forward reforms in the international financial system and improving global economic governance structure, Hu said.

He also raised the issue of trade frictions, voicing hope that the United States would loosen restrictions on its export of hi-tech products to China as soon as possible, while recognizing China’s market economy status and facilitating expansion of trade and investment cooperation.

“Under the current circumstances,” Hu said, “the two countries should more resolutely oppose and resist trade protectionism in any form.”

ADVANCE EXCHANGES, COOPERATION IN VARIOUS AREAS

The other areas proposed by Hu for further cooperation between China and the United States include infrastructure, climate change and clean energy, and exchange of students.

He said China is willing to work with the United States on space exploration and construction of high-speed railways.

The two sides should take the launch of the joint clean energy research center as a turning point and deepen cooperation on energy saving, emissions reduction, renewable energy and treatment of environmental pollution, Hu said.

China is also willing to increase counter-terrorism cooperation with the United States on a basis of mutual benefit and hold dialogues with the United States on issues of human rights and religions based on the principle of equality, mutual respect and non-interference with each other’s internal affairs, said Hu.

WORK TOGETHER TO MEET GLOBAL, REGIONAL CHALLENGES

Hu proposed that the two countries should continue to work together on global and regional hot issues in light of the benefit gained in recent years by cooperating on climate change, nuclear non-proliferation, crackdown on transnational crimes, disaster relief and prevention and treatment of contagious diseases.

Source: Xinhua

[vector7]

U.S. tourism meccas covet Chinese market

Nov. 30, 2009
By HERBERT A. SAMPLE

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS HONOLULU -- Hawaii, California and Las Vegas are among American tourist destinations vying fiercely for a vast and largely untapped new market segment.

Yes, to be a Chinese tourist these days is to be a widely-sought traveler.

Hawaii has beaches and its famed "aloha spirit" as its siren call. Las Vegas offers gambling and its entertainment-oriented attractions. San Francisco can boast high-end shopping and the Golden Gate Bridge.

Beset by one of the worst recessions in decades, the U.S. destinations are spending significant sums on marketing campaigns in China's most populous regions and are urging U.S. Embassy officials and Chinese airlines to ease the logistical burdens of flying to the United States.

The payoff could be substantial, particularly in Hawaii, the closest U.S. destination to China but which is, at least for now, harder for the Chinese to reach by air.

"It could be huge" for Hawaii, said Ted Sturdivant, who has long published a Hawaii travel guide for Chinese, Japanese and other foreign tourists.

Attracting more Chinese tourists "will bring back a lot of jobs" to Hawaii, Gov. Linda Lingle said recently, after returning from a tourism and economic mission to China.

About a half-million Chinese traveled to all U.S. destinations last year, and that number is expected to grow by double digits in each of the next four years mainly because of China's growing economy and new wealth, according to the U.S. Travel Association. Tourism officials note that the Chinese middle and upper classes each rivals the size of the entire U.S. population, so luring just a fraction would produce huge numbers.

"Everybody looks at China and sees a country with 1.3 billion people and a growing economy, and they say, 'Oh my God, it's the greatest travel market that ever was,'" said Frank Haas, an instructor at the School of Travel Industry Management at the University of Hawaii.

Hawaii's tourism market has generally been propped up by two regions: the U.S. West Coast and Japan. Both market segments declined this year, as did the number of Chinese visitors -- this despite a late 2007 agreement that China and the United States signed lifting some travel barriers.

To lure the Chinese, the Hawaii Tourism Authority has budgeted a total of nearly $2.7 million this fiscal year for marketing there and in Korea, said David Uchiyama, HTA's vice president of marketing. That includes $447,000 to participate in the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai, which begins in May.

But for the Chinese traveler, preparations for a trip to the United States can still be a hassle. Only the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and four consulates located mostly on China's eastern coast handle visa applications, which require an in-person interview. However, traveling in groups, which tourism experts say Chinese prefer, can ease those impediments.

Then there is getting to the United States. There are nonstop flights from Beijing and other Chinese cities to popular U.S. destinations, but Hawaii is not among them. Traveling to Hawaii usually means a stop at busy Narita Airport outside Tokyo.

That could change next year if China-based Hainan Airlines follows through with plans to begin flying to Honolulu from Beijing nonstop. Even so, Hainan at first will fly only once a week to Hawaii. In comparison, Japan has about a dozen daily flights to the islands.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority also is eying Hainan, said John Bischoff, a vice president with the organization. The authority may be interested in a deal in which Hainan passengers stop in Hawaii on their way to Las Vegas or during their return to China, he said.

The Chinese tend to travel to the United States for multiple weeks, so it's to the advantage of U.S. tourism officials to cooperate on tour packages and travel agent training, Bischoff said.

Chinese travelers are not frugal, spending more than counterparts from any other country: about $7,200 per person per trip, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.

California drew 237,000 Chinese visitors last year. State and local tourism officials are meeting counterparts in China and offering new travel packages that brand the Golden State as a "dream destination."

Las Vegas' marketing efforts focus less on gaming, since the Chinese can easily travel to Macau for that, Bischoff said. Instead, Las Vegas highlights entertainment and sightseeing attractions, including the Grand Canyon Skywalk 122 miles away, which was built by a Chinese American businessman.

"Estimates are," Bischoff added, "that the Chinese tourist market is one of our brightest increasing sources of tourists."

Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

[vector7]

US may block China mine investment near Navy site

U.S. mining company Firstgold still hopes to complete a partnership deal with a Chinese mining company, the company's chief executive said.

Saturday, 19 December 2009 12:27



U.S. mining company Firstgold still hopes to complete a partnership deal with a Chinese mining company despite U.S. national security concerns that could cause President Barack Obama to block it, the company's chief executive said on Friday.

Firstgold has been told by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, a panel headed by the Treasury Department, that it would recommend Obama reject the plan for China's Northwest Nonferrous International Investment Co to buy 51 percent of the company.

CFIUS said the $26.5 million deal to develop the Relief Canyon mine, near Lovelock, Nevada, raised national security concerns due to its proximity to the Fallon Naval Air Station and other military installations, Lynch said.

The Navy uses Fallon, which is over 50 miles (80 km) from the Relief Canyon mine, for tactical aviation training.

If Obama rejects the deal, it would be only the second time a U.S. president has intervened to block an investment on national security grounds, a trade attorney said.

For China, however, it would form part of a growing roster of overseas resources deals that have been blocked following foreign government intervention, in what the Chinese see as a trend of protectionism in Western nations.

"Firstgold's perspective is to not withdraw (its request for U.S. government approval of the transaction) and it's not out of any disrespect," company chief Terry Lynch said.

"We just don't think the right decision has been made. ... To see this as a national security risk, you really have to give your head a shake."

"It's comical. ... If the Chinese want to buy a house in Lovelock, Nevada, nothing's going to stop them. There's no CFIUS review on that," Lynch said, adding there were no plans for the Chinese to replace the U.S. workforce.

CFIUS "definitely would like us to withdraw the petition" and spare Obama the decision, but there is no incentive for Firstgold to do that, Lynch said.

It is possible Northwest could decide by Monday to back out of the deal, but Lynch said he did not know what it would do.

Once Obama gets the CFIUS recommendation, he has 15 days to announce his decision.

"Big deal"

Usually, companies decide themselves to abandon a project if they cannot reach an agreement with CFIUS on how to mitigate national security concerns.

"What's extraordinary here is that these companies might actually force the president himself to do it," said Timothy Keeler, a former U.S. trade official now at Mayer Brown LLP.

"It very well could be the right decision. But nestled in the broader context of U.S.-China relations right now, it's a big deal," Keeler added.

A spokesman at Beijing's embassy in Washington said China believed Chinese companies should be able to invest abroad based on market principles and international rules.

"China has been very open for foreign enterprises to invest in the country, and we hope that other countries will take the same attitude toward Chinese enterprises' investment activities," embassy spokesman Wang Baodang said.

A U.S. Treasury Department spokeswoman said she could not by law comment on specific CFIUS cases.

"CFIUS' statutory obligation is to protect national security, while maintaining an open investment environment, a responsibility that we take very seriously," U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin said in a statement given to The New York Times.

Australia's Defense Department objected this year to a joint venture between China's Wuhan Iron and Steel and Western Plains Resources near the Woomera missile testing site. An investment by Chinese state trading firm Minmetals inOz Minerals was only cleared after a mine near Woomera was stripped out.

A senior executive at Northwest's parent firm said the Chinese side had only just found out about the military base, which had not come up during initial discussions.

"A developed country should have clear laws, for instance, what kind of perimeter around military installations is allowed," said the executive.

[vector7]

It Can’t Happen Here? Oh Yes, It Can…

By John Galt

December 30, 2009

December 29, 2009 9:41 AM

NY investment firm gaga for green acres

Optima Fund Management aims to profit from the rise in commodities prices with its intention of purchasing 10,000 acres of agricultural land in Arizona and California.

Now read that headline from the December 29th edition of Crain’s NY Business and think for a minute. Then get excited.

Why get excited? The introduction of hedge funds into the agriculture arene within the United States domestic market is a very dangerous break from the past. Instead of the proverbial “Family Farm” model performing its historic function of growing crops, going to market and repeating the cycle, now hedge funds will have the ability to determine what is grown and which markets those products are sold to. Thus if a corn farmer in Kentucky agrees to sell his land to XYZ Hedge Fund, then they determine that soybeans will be the most profitable path and those crops are to be sold on the Chinese or Indian markets, that’s no longer product available for domestic consumption. In the end we could have to bid an even higher price due to our deteriorating dollar against foreign competition to insure a steady supply of food, thus losing our advantages of historically cheap domestic agricultural supply. It also introduces the risk of land mismanagement although the returns should be sufficient if the funds follow the advice of the farmer/sharecropper occupying the land.

If you extend this out, it is not a big deal; or is it? China and India already have private corporations engaged in leasing farms throughout Asia to grow and export food to their domestic markets. It is perfectly logical for them to do the same within the United States as a follow up to their other international ventures. The problem people will have is that as domestic price pressures intensify in 2010 and beyond, especially for necessities like food, then the specter or protectionism will rear its ugly head and that will be the final nail in our economic coffin. This is not a warning that bad things could happen from this, but in my opinion when non-farming interests begin to view the American farmer, especially non-corporatized entities, as profit centers the long term future for the independent American family farm looks bleaker by the minute.

[vector7]

Be Prepared To Learn Chinese?

Nah...don't sweat it.

They have translators, move over Tokyo Rose...make room for Beijing Betty!!!

Listen to the attached audio file.

China leases radio station for broadcasts...in AMERICA

[vector7]

China's lobbying efforts yield new influence, openness on Capitol Hill

By John Pomfret
Saturday, January 9, 2010; A01

Ten years ago, U.S. lawmakers publicly accused the China Ocean Shipping Co. of being a front for espionage and blocked plans to expand its Long Beach, Calif., port terminal over fears that Chinese spies would use it to snoop on the United States.

By last year, Congress was seeing the state-owned Chinese behemoth in a far kinder light. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) authored a resolution applauding the company for employing thousands of Americans and helping keep the waters of Alaska clean. Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-Mass.) hailed the firm on the House floor, calling its chief executive "a people's ambassador" to the United States after it rescued Boston's port -- and thousands of jobs -- when a European shipping line moved out.

The congressional about-face illustrates a dramatic increase in China's influence on Capitol Hill, where for years its lobbying muscle never matched its ballooning importance in world affairs. Members of Congress, lobbyists and other observers said China's new prominence is largely the result of Beijing's increasingly sophisticated efforts to influence events at the center of U.S. power -- and a growing realization among U.S. lawmakers that China has become a critical economic player across America.

Although many Americans still view China with deep suspicion because of its communist system and human rights record, the results of Beijing's image-and-influence campaign are clear. Members of Congress "are starting to understand that the Chinese are not communist but that the Chinese are Chinese," said Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.). China is Oregon's biggest export market after Canada.

"China is an overarching backdrop to almost everything that I am involved with," said the seven-term congressman, adding that on matters as diverse as the U.S. economy, climate change and energy policy, "China is something that no one can ignore."

For years, as China steadily rose to global economic and political heights, it all but ignored the U.S. Congress, with outreach to American lawmakers left to friends in the business community. But now China has launched a multimillion-dollar lobbying effort so effective that it is challenging the heralded efforts of nemesis Taiwan.

A decade ago, U.S. politicians of all stripes routinely subjected China to attacks. Now acts of benevolence are more likely -- such as a resolution commemorating the 2,560th birthday of Chinese philosopher Confucius, which the House overwhelmingly approved in October.

"There was originally this kind of anti-communist view of China," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who in 1979 became the first U.S. mayor to visit China when she ran San Francisco. "That's changing. . . . China is a socialist country but one that is increasingly becoming capitalistic."

The new openness toward China is often subtle and not shared by all. But an undeniable evolution is taking place, congressional staffers and analysts said, as members of Congress, many with increasing numbers of large and small businesses in their districts that depend on trade with China, are now far more likely to kill or water down measures opposed by Beijing.

While China maintains a huge trade surplus with the United States, U.S. exports to China have surged in recent years. In 2008, according to the U.S.-China Business Council, exports to China grew in 85 percent of congressional districts. China is now the third-biggest market for U.S. goods, after Canada and Mexico.

"People in Congress are not stupid," said Minxin Pei, a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College. "A few years ago, China-bashing was costless. Now they will get phone calls from worried CEOs. China is creating jobs in their congressional districts."

Zhou Wenzhong, China's avuncular ambassador, has visited about 100 senators and representatives in their districts during his four-year-old tenure in Washington. But he said it wasn't simply lobbying and shoe-leather efforts that have helped China's image in Congress.
"It's because of our common interests that more and more members have seen the importance of this relationship," he said. "I think their understanding of China is much deeper."

An evolving outreach
Until the late 1990s, the Chinese Embassy employed only one diplomat focused on congressional affairs. It was a dead-end job for functionaries who rarely left the embassy, then located in a dour former hotel on Connecticut Avenue.

China counted on U.S. business groups, such as the American Chamber of Commerce, to lobby on its behalf. But with China's accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001, those U.S. groups became reluctant to work on behalf of an increasingly potent competitor.

That spurred China to up its game on Capitol Hill, as did other events.
In the mid-1990s, Taiwan's success in lobbying for a visa for then-President Lee Teng-hui to attend a reunion at Cornell University and give a speech infuriated China and helped precipitate a crisis in the Taiwan Strait.

Then, in 2005, the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp. tried to buy the U.S. oil conglomerate Unocal but ran into a lobbying operation backed by the American giant Chevron, which had the competing bid. The Chinese spent $4 million on lobbying. But it lost to Chevron as Congress passed a resolution opposing the Chinese-led takeover on security grounds.

Last year, China opened a $200 million citadel of an embassy overlooking Van Ness Street -- showcasing its rising fortunes and its focus on Washington. There, the beefed-up congressional affairs office now numbers at least 10 diplomats, most of whom have studied in U.S. universities, speak perfect English and are familiar with American ways.

"The Chinese have for years been wielding a lot of influence," said Rep. J. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), who heads the Congressional China Caucus, which has taken a tough line on Beijing. "They've liked to do it under the radar. But as there's been more light shed on it, they've had to change their ways."

China's handling of troublesome U.S. politicians has evolved, too. When Sens. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) proposed legislation in 2005 that would slap a 27.5 percent tariff on Chinese goods unless China revalued its currency, Beijing took a new tack. Instead of denouncing the pair on the front page of the People's Daily, as it might have in the past, the Foreign Ministry in Beijing welcomed them on a visit to China. At the end of his trip, Schumer told reporters that he was no longer sure he would push for a vote on the bill and that he was "more optimistic that this can be worked out than we were in the past."

From 2005 to 2009, China for the first time hosted more U.S. politicians and congressional staff members than Taiwan, according to LegiStorm.com, a congressional watchdog. China has also tripled the amount it spends on lobbying firms, including such powerhouses as Patton Boggs and Hogan & Hartson, since 2006 -- although it continues to be outspent by Taiwan.

Feinstein said the views of her colleagues have become more sophisticated with time. They know that China holds a massive amount of U.S. debt and that it imports a lot of goods -- $11 billion worth from her state alone last year. "I have never seen a country change as fast in 30 years as China has done," she said.

Neutralizing Taiwan
Washington used to be home to two types of "China people," known to insiders as the Red team, which supported China, and the Blue team, which backed Taiwan. These days China's rising influence has succeeded in bolstering the Reds.

In 1991, Rep. Nancy Pelosi traveled to China and unfurled a banner on Tiananmen Square in remembrance of those who died during the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators. Last year, as speaker of the House, Pelosi returned to China, and although she continued to raise human rights issues, she focused far more on climate change and, as a congressional staffer said, "minded her P's and Q's."

Some legislators who used to be considered firmly in Taiwan's camp now lean toward China.

Del. Eni F.H. Faleomavaega, a nonvoting, 11-term member from American Samoa, is the influential chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific and the Global Environment and for years was considered a solid backer of Taiwan. But over the past year, the Democrat has watered down or killed pro-Taiwan legislation and resolutions.

Faleomavaega partly credited China's improved lobbying for the shift. "Our friendliest allies -- Germany, Great Britain, France and Japan -- know how to work the system," he said. "China is just trying to catch up."

China's strongest backers in Congress are also becoming more vocal, especially the 60-member U.S.-China Working Group, led by Reps. Rick Larsen (D-Wa.) and Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.), who represent districts that do considerable trade with China.

"We bought China when it was low," Larsen quipped. "There was nowhere for it to go but up."

Staff writer Steven Mufson contributed to this report.

[vector7]

[Ryan Ruck]

Interesting how those new Red Dawn spy shots have been noticed in China. I wonder what the opinion of the movie is over there?

[vector7]

Nothing the PLA haven't considered already.

Oh and while we are on the subject of Red Dawn II.

(Director) Dan Bradley, in case you aren't aware this isn't 1984, Russia is a close ally of China.



You need to come up with some more realistic allies or talk to some experts in this field (JR Nyquist).

The current Leftist path we are headed down makes this scenario nearly unrecoverable and down right scary!

Too bad the Liberal Socialist in power have embraced every leftist dictator and flirt regularly with radical Islamic regimes while turning their backs on our previous allies in Europe and Middle East (Israel). To show good faith they are dismantling and lowering our defenses in every aspect thinking the AXIS respect weakness.

Slowly Japan is drifting toward China as we grow economic and militarily weaker, gradually withdrawing support in the region.

If Red Dawn happens in the near future it will be followed by an ugly and humiliating AXIS OCCUPATION!!!

[vector7]

With 1-child policy, China 'missing' girls causes a shortage of 50 million men without a woman

Cheryl Wetzstein

When Chinese officials created the country's one-child-per-couple policy in 1978, they intended to contain the country's burgeoning population for the sake of economic growth, national security and environmental preservation.

But Chinese boys now outnumber Chinese girls by the millions, and the impact of the lopsided sex imbalance is starting to spill beyond China's borders.

This phenomenon of "missing girls" has turned China into "a giant magnet" for human traffickers, who lure or kidnap women and sell them — even multiple times — into forced marriages or the commercial sex trade, says Ambassador Mark Lagon, who oversaw human rights issues at the State Department during the administration of President George W. Bush.

"The impact is obvious. It's creating a 'Wild West' sex industry in China," Mr. Lagon said.

In China, "an entire nation of women" is missing because they were aborted before they were born, said Reggie Littlejohn, founder of Women's Rights Without Frontiers, a nonprofit anti-sex slavery group. "This is gendercide."

To grasp the magnitude of the human-trafficking problem in China, it's important to have a reliable tally of the "missing girls."

Recently, the government-backed Chinese Academy of Social Services (CASS) predicted that 24 million Chinese men might not be able to find brides in 2020. However, previous estimates put that number in the 30 million to 50 million range.

In fact, a 2009 study in the BMJ (formerly known as the British Medical Journal) said that in 2005, there were 32 million extra Chinese men under the age of 20 — and that 1.1 million extra males were born in just that year.

"Sex-selective abortion accounts for almost all the excess males," said study authors Wei Xing Zhu, Li Lu and Therese Hesketh, who urged China to enforce its laws forbidding abortions based on gender.
Chinese officials plan to enforce those laws, as well as try to change Chinese "son-preferential ideologies," said a 2007 report from a Chinese academic institute. A "Care for Girls" campaign is already under way in Chinese districts that have especially large imbalances in their sex ratios, Shuzhuo Li, director of the Institute for Population and Development Studies at Xi'an Jiaotong University in China, wrote in that report.

But changing the deeply rooted "son-preference ideologies" will be very difficult.

Chinese parents believe they must have a son to carry their family name, inherit family properties, support them in their old age and host their funeral ceremonies. Tradition says children belong to their father's lineages, and daughters become part of their husband's families.
Because of these ancient beliefs, China's one-child policy forces couples to choose between "their future retirement and the lives of their daughters," said Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, a nonprofit pro-life group who has been tracking the one-child policy since the late 1980s.

Chinese officials repeatedly reaffirm the one-child policy, but also appear to be tinkering with it.

For instance, last summer, faced with a stunningly anemic 0.88 children per woman birthrate in Shanghai, officials announced that certain couples could have a second child.

But this week, the Beijing News had to back off a similar story for Beijing's couples. The paper had reported that an official with the Beijing family- planning commission said the panel was considering allowing couples to apply for a second birth permit even if only one spouse was an "only" child. Currently, both spouses must be "only" children to get a second permit.

The Beijing News report was swiftly retracted via Xinhua News Agency, a government news agency, which noted that the "journalist who wrote the original false report had already apologized" to the official. A second, unnamed Beijing family-planning official reminded Xinhua that birth-planning is "a fundamental policy" and "requires stability and continuity" to succeed.

Meanwhile, multiple alarm bells are going off about China's demographics.

The massive population is "graying," which means there will be many elderly people with far fewer workers and family members to support them.

There is also the specter of millions of young, unmarried, restless and unfettered Chinese men and how that might explode into civil unrest.

But the most immediate and horrifying consequence of China's "missing girls" is that it is fueling a growing trade in human beings, especially girls and women, say those who are fighting it.
The State Department's 2009 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report downgraded China to its Tier 2 "watch list," because it is a "source, transit, and destination country for men, women and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation."
While women from many countries are being captured or trafficked into China, North Korean women are especially vulnerable. Neither China nor North Korea "seems to want to protect that population,"

Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, director of the State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, said in June when the TIP report was released.

"China's approach to human trafficking is strictly an iron-fist, law-and-order approach," said Mr. Lagon, who is now the executive director and chief executive of the Polaris Project, a nonprofit organization that fights international sex slavery.

If North Korean women protest or try to flee their forced marriages or prostitution houses, they can be "repatriated" to North Korea, said Mr. Lagon. Upon their return, they are treated like criminals and are likely to be beaten, imprisoned or killed, he said.
Laura Lederer, a former State Department official who now is part of Global Centurion, a nonprofit group fighting sex slavery, said that the sex imbalance in China is leading to a "new tsunami of demand."

"We need to be working on this on the front end," she said, calling for high-level enforcement in anti-trafficking laws.

As for the trafficking victims, Mr. Lagon urged Americans who suspect illegal activities to call the National Human Trafficking Resource Center hot line, which is operated by the Polaris Project.

Sex trafficking is a heinous human rights violation, and people may instinctively want to turn away from the issue, he said. But "it's inspiring" to see how people can escape and survive even the worst situations. "It doesn't have to be a dark subject if you are exposed to those who are fighting for dignity," he said.

[vector7]

Mainland China pours wealth into B.C. housing

Steve Ladurantaye in Toronto and Kerry Gold in Vancouver From Friday's Globe and Mail Published on Thursday, Jun. 10, 2010 10:23PM EDT Last updated on Friday, Jun. 11, 2010 10:34AM EDT



As Vancouver’s once hot real estate market hits the skids, a rush of buyers from China may help the city sidestep a sharp correction in prices.

Foreign money is flooding into China as the economic recovery spurs demand for its manufactured products.

Exports increased almost 50 per cent year-over-year in May, helping ease worries about a slowdown in the world’s workshop.

China’s citizens have been told not to spend their rapidly increasing savings in the national real estate market to prevent speculators from skewing values, but those who can get their money out of the country are finding a haven on Canada’s West Coast.

“The government's efforts to cool the property market here in China have really thrown the market into confusion,” said Patrick Chovanec, a business professor at Beijing's Tsinghua University.

“People have started buying gold, and it could be that some of the more mobile class of people are looking abroad for real estate buys.”

And it’s not two-bedroom bungalows that are being snapped up – it’s high-end luxury properties that are out of the reach of many Vancouverites.

Even as the broader market softens, luxury sales are on track for a record year.

“Out of the nearly $200-million [worth of real estate] we’ve sold so far this year, I’d say 50 per cent was sold to Mainland Chinese,” said George Wong of Magnum Projects. “There’s a growing middle class and a growing wealthy class. And they have become the fuel to our real estate.”

Mr. Wong travels to cities such as Beijing and Shanghai to showcase West Coast properties, and his trips have led to sales.

He said Chinese buyers account for about half of the units bought at a downtown condo development called Harbour Green, where the average unit costs $5.5-million.

“That’s the most luxurious and exclusive condo in Canada,” he said.

While Vancouver’s real estate market rebounded sharply from recessionary lows and helped lead the country’s economic recovery, sales fell 10 per cent last month compared to April. After a year and a half of double-digit growth, monthly sales are suddenly 27 per cent lower than they were at the market’s pre-recession peak in 2007.

But even as new listings flood the market – 7,000 in May alone – the average sale price decreased a scant 0.4 per cent to $590,662.

Those closest to the market attribute the stability to Chinese buyers looking to relocate or for a residence while doing business.

“There are over 3,000 Chinese families who migrate to Canada under the business category every year,” said Vincent Chen of Visas Consulting Group, who helps families move to Canada from his office in Shanghai.

“At least 60 per cent of these families choose Vancouver to settle down – and a major part of them will buy property there, sooner or later.”

In a survey released earlier this year, ReMax said foreign buyers were buying luxury properties across the country. Many intend to immigrate, the report said, but others seek affordable investments.

While Canada's rapid housing recovery – a 5.2 per cent year-over-year gain in 2009 – stoked fears of a bubble, other markets have been even hotter. Over the same period, prices in Hong Kong gained 27.6 per cent while those in China gained 25.1 per cent.

Brokerages are hiring translators and tailoring their websites for overseas clients.

Century 21 launched a Chinese version of its Canadian website earlier this year. At Realtor.ca, the public face of the Canadian Real Estate Association’s Multiple Listing Service, site visits from China come third after the United States.

Celia Liang came to Canada a decade ago to open a restaurant in Golden, B.C. She is now in Kelowna working as a translator for a local agent.

“My experience has been, in the last two years, I am seeing more Chinese come,” Ms. Liang said. “These aren’t Canadian Chinese. They are from China.”

Ms. Liang said Chinese buyers are here to settle down, raise families, and get away from the congestion and overcrowding of many Chinese cities.

“The thing that will make people buy property is they have to want to move to Canada – that is the thing, for them to want to invest in another country and not their own,” she said. “They buy property here not for investment, but because they are willing to move here.”

Celia Lang stands in the doorway of her Kelowna, B.C. home on Wednesday June 9, 2010. A local real estate agent uses Celia Lang as a translator with possible Chinese real estate investors.

Jeff Bassett for the Globe and Mail

[vector7]

Face of the Nation Changing | United States Ownership



National (Aug 23) – The National Association of Realtors (NAR) has documented what some might consider an alarming trend.

The NAR Profile of International Home Buying Activity for 2010 indicates that foreign investors are swooping in and making a real property killing in the United States. Foreclosures and short sales continue to climb with a huge shadow inventory of lender-owned homes yet to hit the market.

Hong Kong, China, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and 48 other countries know a deal when they see it and buyers are purchasing real estate across the country.

Canadian buyers, at 23 percent, are the most prolific. Mexico investors have taken up 10 percent of the market. UK buyers, while slowing slightly since 2009, account for 10.5 percent of real property purchases.

Eight percent of China and Hong Kong buyers see the U.S. as a bargain.

Foreign ownership spans the United States, with a majority of investments made relative to where the investor or investors live. The Asian market tends to lean more toward purchasing real property on the West Coast, as do buyers from Mexico.

How foreign ownership is perceived depends on how one views the United States as a whole. While overseas buy-ups of real estate in America may stimulate the market somewhat, the question remains why isn’t the United States doing more to ensure Americans keep their homes?

The Making Homes Affordable program is slowing down. With more than 2.3 million homes taken over by lenders since the beginning of the recession in December 2007, the government program designed to keep people in their homes at affordable monthly payments suffers complications. More and more homeowners are dropping out of the program primarily due to lenders stonewalling the process.

The outcome, as people are forced from their homes, means depressed values that are crippling the overall housing industry. Construction, once a mainstay industry in the United States, has taken one of the hardest blows.

Now, with the assistance of lenders unwilling to help Americans keep their homes, but more than happy to find foreign buyers, it is anyone’s guess as to whether or not the United States of America will find itself with a name change in the not-so-near future.

By: T. Cahill

[vector7]

US Is 'Practically Owned' by China: Analyst


Published: Monday, 27 Sep 2010 | 6:08 AM ET

By: Antonia Oprita

The US supremacy as the top world economy will end sooner than many people believe, so gold is a better investment than the dollar despite it hitting a new record, Tom Winnifrith, CEO at financial services firm Rivington Street Holdings, told CNBC.com Monday.

Gold [XAU=X 1309.0 1.60 (+0.12%) ] hit a new record high Monday and silver [XAG=X 21.89 0.20 (+0.92%) ] rose to another 30-year peak as investors were worried about the dollar weakening further after the Federal Reserve hinted at more quantitative easing last week.

The US trade deficit and debt continue to grow and the authorities are reluctant to address the problem, preferring to print money, Winnifrith said.
"America is practically owned by China," he said.

He reminded of the fact that in 1900, sterling was the world's reserve currency but by 1948, that was no longer the case as the British Empire collapsed.

"America is doing what Britain did," Winnifrith said. "America spends much more than it can afford and it's not addressing the issue."

In 1832, China and India were the world's two largest economies and by 2032, they will regain that status, he predicted.

"The 200 years when Britain and the US were the top two economies were an aberration and that will change," Winnifrith said.

"The decline of empires has happened much faster than folks think. I believe that gold will be a far better bet in 20 years than the dollar," he added.

[samizdat]

This begs a question? Gold and silver are "pegged" to the dollar. When the dollar evaporates, resurrects collapses or whatever- to what unit of exchange will gold and silver be pegged? Duh?

[Ryan Ruck]

Uh oh, might want to try that again...