Hagel warns China?
“If you don’t stop being mean, the USA will stop buying your worthless plastic baubles and bangles.”
“Ah so...and we will dump US dollars. Your turn, sir.”
Hagel warns China?
We will check your bathrooms for Graffiti !!!
They would take a bath as the purchasing power of those dollars falls.
The real issue is, With what is Hagel warning the Chinese? Naval forces that undermanned, ill maintained and ill trained?
Another of Obama's "red lines" will simply cause China to become even more aggressive. He should shut up and request an additional $50 billion for the US Navy, which would say far more.
Ah so
A minor point, but "Ah so [desu ka]" is Japanese, so a Chinese would take umbrage at its use in a Chinese phrase. I think, though I'm not an expert, that a Mandarin Chinese would say 哦，我明白了 (O, wo ming bai le), before dumping our dollars.
The problem is simple, but the solution probably doesn't exist. The problem is that we want to be everyone's friend in Asia, but everyone in Asia doesn't want to be everyone else's friend. We want to be the friends of the Japanese, and the Koreans, and the Chinese, and the Taiwanese, and the Vietnamese, and the Malaysians, and the Singaporeans, and the Indonesians, and the Filipinos, but the Japanese and the Koreans have been at it off and on since the 300s, and the Japanese and the Chinese since at least the 1200s, and the Chinese and the Vietnamese at least that long, and the rest of Asia looks down on the Filipinos, and the Muslims in Malaysia and Indonesia and the Philippines want to "convert" the rest of Asia into a Pacific version of North and West Africa...
...and we just want to be everyone's friend. Can't happen. Whatever sides we choose, the other sides will get angry at us, and if we try to remain neutral, then every side will get angry at us. And as for trade, the Asians are where the Europeans were 200 years ago: trade, for them, is a form of hegemonic projection--they don't trade in order to create mutual benefit, they trade in order to establish economic domination. It doesn't always work out in their favor--Japan overextended itself economically in the 1980s and are still paying the price, and China is overextending itself in this decade and will likely pay a similar price--but you have to know your adversary in order to avoid being overcome by your adversary, something a Chinese thinker taught us a few thousand years ago.
When somone owes you a little money, you are in control.
When someone owes you a lot of money, they are in control.