H-W runs the balboa and cristobal ports .
Posted on 09/26/2005 7:39:51 AM PDT by XR7
H-W runs the balboa and cristobal ports .
CNN: U.S. critics warn of Chinese influence
U.S. military planners long considered the canal a strategic point. That has fueled last-ditch opposition to the handover among American conservatives, who never liked the idea in the first place. Now, some of them are warning that the waterway will fall under communist Chinese control after U.S. involvement ends.
Critics like Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-California, say china's Hutchison Whampoa's port concession at both ends of the channel means China can gain control over the canal.
"If we do nothing, Mr. Chairman, within a decade, the communist Chinese regime ... will dominate the tiny country of Panama, and will control the Panama Canal," Rohrabacher said. "We cannot afford that to happen. This is not in the interest of the United States, and it would be a severe compromise of our national security."
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Carter Library:
Another of President Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy accomplishments was his normalizing relations with the People’s Republic of China.
Over the winter of 1977-1978 Carter cultivated relations with Chinese officials in Washington, and solicited an official invitation to visit China himself. However the president pulled back after his advisor Mondale stated that it was too much to ask the senate to handle the Panama Canal treaties and any new agreements with China at the same time. President Carter was thus told not to be explicit about normalization, and that his visit to China was inconclusive.
( dont' be explicit? - That meas LIE! in lawyerese )
yeah the H-W deal for balboa and cristobal ports is the source of the entire 'chinese control the canal' thing. For people who have no idea what or where the ports are or how they are located relative to the canal, etc., it can certainly be used to cause alarmist rhetoric.
You don't see any of the american FR members (including myself) who live in panama buying into it. That alone should imply a lot.
The chinese are not to be trusted - when your entire civilization is seen on an endless cycle, nothing is rushed. It is nothing for the Chinese to wait 20 - 50 - even a 100 years for a goal to be obtained. The object is the goal. Westerners have no concept of patience of this degree.
The Chinese have their facilities at each end of the panama canal and even in California very near our U.S.Navy nuclear weapons facilities. It really would take nothing for them to shut down the canal (blackmail works just as well) and having your own personal port of entry where American Authorities cannot access as the one in California .... Hell of a lauch point.
There is no such thing in communist china as a 'private' civilian company - they are all owned and controlled solely by the communist party hierarchy.
Or the "People's" Liberation Army.
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