Posted on 03/08/2018 12:53:05 AM PST by cba123
Top Navy and Marine Corps officials on Wednesday expressed concern over China’s expanding global reach and said the superpower was rapidly buying up foreign land to “win without fighting.”
“When it comes to China, the bottom line there is the checkbook,” Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer told lawmakers during a House Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing.
“Not only in the dollars and cents that they are writing to support their military expansion and their technological work, but what they’re doing around the globe ... weaponizing capital.”
(please see link for full article)
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
This has been going on for a generation and a half, people.
Just now, people are (starting) to actually buy a clue?
So, are the Navy and Marine Corps now idiots as well or was Pat right?
Inquiring minds want to know and if the people now recognizing this fact had an ounce of honor in them there would be a long line of people waiting their turn to apologize to Pat.
Marine and Navy people, like other career military personnel, have one thing in common - they think money grows on trees. In reality, it doesn’t, and the Chinese influence-buying spree is making serious dents in its finances. Venezuela alone owes China $60b - the vast majority of which principal the Chinese are unlikely to ever see again.
https://www.ft.com/content/f51c4880-cddc-11e7-b781-794ce08b24dc
The FT article talks about the Chinese seeking access to Venezuela’s oil by lending it $60b. That’s frankly an asinine assertion. Does Germany lend huge sums of money to kleptocracies so it can buy oil? We, the US of A, import a net 8m barrels a day (we export light sweet crude while importing heavy sour crude) because the 10m barrels we produce doesn’t cover the 18m barrels we use daily. Just how much have we lent anyone to be able to buy oil from them?
Bottom line is that the Chinese are just throwing their money away. They don’t have enough of a navy to use gunboat diplomacy to enforce their claims as creditors - at least not with Uncle Sam on the beat. And if they were so inclined, the fact is that territorial expansion doesn’t require you to lend money to the countries you intend to invade. In fact, it is preferable that you use that money to develop and mass-produce improved weaponry so as to make your military operations far less troublesome.
As a non-Chinese amateur China watcher, I don’t have access to Chinese language sources (and am unwilling to spend significant amounts of time using Google translate). But this website has some numbers on the cost of a Chinese carrier battle group.
http://www.chinaisgood.com/wn/76/mhgndee.html
The number estimated is about $12b per carrier battle group. So the $60b they lent to Venezuela would buy them 5 carrier battle groups. Isn’t that a better investment than a debt they’ll never be able to collect on?
Just how much money did Japan and Germany lend to the territories they eventually invaded, prior to WWII? The logical thing to do is the reverse - borrow money from your prey and then extinguish that debt by invading them. That’s what Saddam did to Kuwait. Kuwait lent Saddam money to help Iraq ward off Iran. Saddam decided to help himself to a debt holiday by invading Kuwait. It would have worked, too, if Uncle Sam hadn’t jumped in.
No one who has read his books could seriously believe that. He and Ross Perot being framed as know-nothings was an excellent indicator that the powers that be were selling out the US for their personal gain and their agenda.
China is buying up a lot of global real estate. They're doing it with OUR trade deficit. And over 100 DC Republican swampthings signed a letter opposing tariffs! On the left, the agenda of the Dems will turn us into a freedomless, nationless global nightmare. I wonder how many years are left for any remnants of civilization as we know it.
Their African experience will sour their taste for this.
Pat was right about many things. Currently he is however living in the past. On Hannity recently he was harping on the importance of getting the newspapers to write the correct news stories. He seemed to be oblivious to the fact that A) the news media is strictly the propaganda arm of the far left (with few exceptions). And B) he didn’t seem to understand that print media is dead.
Creeping senility eventually gets us all. He was still sharp on some things but oblivious to others.
There is no serious difference between Venezuela and American’s on welfare in their opinion on the origin of money.
The perfumed princes are just trying to increase their budgets.
simple washington bureaucrat BS
No there is more happening here, than just Washington bureaucrat BS.
China is outmaneuvering us.
Bigtime.
how could China possibly be ‘outmanuvering’ us with a military budget a tiny fraction of ours.
Either you are suggesting that;
1) Our military budget is a cesspool of waste, mismanagement, and fraud
and/or
2) Our military leadership is grossly incompetant
in either case it appears the solution would be a wholesale purge of the Officer Corps and a slashing of the military budget until points 1&2 are no longer operative
China’s military really isn’t that much smaller than ours is, if you consider the entire COUNTRY is all the government.
I think you are overly focused on some matters about the US military. I do not know what, or why, and I don’t really know enough about our military to speak intelligently on the matter.
Maybe the things you say are true. Maybe they are not as big as you say. All I am saying is China is a serious threat.
I am very glad we finally have a President who seems to get that.
Regards.
“ll I am saying is China is a serious threat.”
to what ?
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