Thanks for posting this. It’s well written.
But how did we get here? ... The full answers are well beyond the scope of this article, but the short version is this: greed and a lack of strategic thinking.
The free-trade lobby will tell us that opening China up to free trade will bring about the desired political reforms and lead to a ‘partnership’. The problem with this argument is that it has been made for the last 25 years and relations have not improved, rather, they have deteriorated. But the siren song of the Chinese ‘comfort women’ is too much for big business to resist. “Come, build your new plant in China. We have cheap labor and negligible regulations…Oh, and by the way, we will be co-owners with you and you will need to share your manufacturing secrets…but hey, you will still make more money.”
Scanning the political horizon for 2008, there is only one man standing that vows to put an end to this entire charade, Duncan Hunter. Duncan Hunter is, and has been, a Dragon Hunter.
Hey, Kevmo. Hate to be a doomsayer, but I’ve been concerned over the possibility of China cashing in her US treasury bonds for years, and wouldn’t be surprised if she eventually nationalizes those greedy ‘multi-national’ corporations she seductively courted not so long ago.
Incidentally, see my post #33.