Latin America wary of China expansion

Cuiaba, Brazil — In the spacious, sunlit office of Gov. Blairo Borges Maggi, festooned with portraits of him in military uniform and in mufti, the governor unabashedly criticized China before a roomful of foreign reporters.

Maggi, 49, is the powerful, no-nonsense administrator of Mato Grosso state, Brazil's breadbasket. His family owns 350,000 acres of soybeans. Nobody grows more animal feed than "the Soybean King." Few countries buy more Brazilian soybeans than China.

So it was odd one recent morning when the brash and cocksure Maggi trashed China — Mato Grosso's and Maggi's meal ticket.

"China doesn't care about the United States, Brazil or anyone else," he said, backed by 10 aides. "If you ask me if I trust them in a long-term relationship I say 'No.' "

China's voracious global expansion now registers on the American consciousness. Beijing's announcement last month that a state-run corporation wanted to buy U.S. oil giant Unocal sounded alarms well beyond Washington. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a congressionally mandated watchdog, holds hearings Thursday and Friday on Capitol Hill to review the impact of China's global advance.

It certainly will.

Ratify the agreement***Lowering barriers will help economies of Caribbean, Alabama

As the U.S. House approaches a cliffhanger vote on a free-trade agreement with six Central American and Caribbean countries, lawmakers should seize the opportunities that will flow to U.S. workers, especially those in the technology and telecommunications industries.

The pact, known as "CAFTA-DR," would lower barriers to trade and investment among the United States and Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Honduras. These nations represent the second-largest export market in Latin America with $32 billion in two-way trade supporting about 200,000 U.S. jobs. (Mexico is first.) ........***

Say 'no' to CAFTA***The proposed trade pact is fatally flawed in its present form A current radio commercial urges Alabamians to oppose CAFTA "because CAFTA rhymes with NAFTA" and references the opposition to NAFTA of H. Ross Perot, the erstwhile presidential candidate who once claimed President George H.W. Bush was plotting to disrupt Perot's daughter's wedding. ....***

Derbyshire: SORRY STATE (Communist, Nationalist, and Dangerous) ***.......Chinese nationalism was not born in 1989, of course. One of Deng Xiaoping's first initiatives, after consolidating his power at the Twelfth Party Congress of 1982, was to launch a movement entitled "Five Emphases, Four Beautifications, Three Love." The "Three Loves" were for the country, the party and socialism, in that order. Mao's revolution was, in fact, as much nationalist as communist. This was one reason Stalin-who was quite a learned man in the narrow sphere of Marxist-Leninist theory-looked down on Mao. Orthodox communist dogma was internationalist, and foresaw a worldwide socialist utopia in which national boundaries would be obsolete. Once they saw the advantages of socialism, people everywhere would clamor to join that commonwealth. Until then, national boundaries should, in theory, be respected. The Constitution of the USSR guaranteed the right of secession to every Union republic. This right existed only on paper while the dictatorship lasted, but when Soviet power collapsed, all the republics chose to exercise the right of secession, and they are now independent.

Mao's China was never like that. The non-Chinese nationalities tapped in the People's Republic have their won "autonomous regions," but the "autonomy" is perfectly fictitious, and they have no right to secede under China's Constitution. To the contrary, Article 4 prohibits acts that "instigate the secession" of any minority, and there is perhaps no article more ruthlessly enforced. "Splittism" (fenlie zhuyi) is one of the most serious thought-crimes in the People's Republic, and the accusation that the West seeks to break up China is a staple of the xenophobic polemics now widely published and read in China, with the obvious indulgence of the government. All of China-62 degrees of longitude-is on Beijing time, to the great inconvenience of the western territories. Notwithstanding much mendacious window-dressing about "preserving minority cultures," China's actual policy towards her subject peoples is one of determined Sinification. Every Mongolian, every Tibetan, every Uighur knows that to enjoy anything better than a subsistence living, he must speak, dress, eat, and think Chinese.

"Nationalism" does not really capture the whole of the phenomenon under consideration here. There is a large component of racial pride. I used to belong to a scholarly e-mail group for Chinese scientists and researchers in the U.S. When I ventured some mild remarks about the status of Tibet and Turkestan, I was met with a volley of frankly racial abuse. One respondent addressed me as "England big nose," and another offered sarcastically to kiss my "hairy hand." These are not illiterate rednecks, mind you, but the cream of Chinese intelligentsia, bearers of advanced degrees from prestigious universities. Another staple of the xenophobic literature now popular in China is the claim that U.S. scientists are working on racially selective biological weapons; and the very respectable British Sinologist Jasper Becker, in his 2000 book The Chinese, claims that the government sponsors research to prove that the Chinese belong to a separate species. One wonders what direction China's own biological-weapons research is taking. .............***

***Americans are focused on our relations with China, many fearfully so. Will we able to compete as China continues taking manufacturing jobs from a free-market America?

A recent Senate Finance Committee hearing was held on this subject. The main witness, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, opposed tariffs on Chinese goods, but said little else of substance -- except for one telling comment.

In the long run, he accurately pointed out, our economic strength in the world market eventually rests mainly on one factor -- brainpower, measured by the quality of our education system. In that race, he emphasized, we are failing badly.

Why is it, Mr. Greenspan asked, that our fourth-grade students are superior in international competition, while our eighth-grade students have proven inferior? Also, why are 12th graders hopeless in the key disciplines of math and science? In the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, our high schoolers scored 19th out of 21 countries, beating out only Cyprus and South Africa. They scored 20 percent lower than the Netherlands, a nation that lives on its brainpower -- as America might one day have to do.

Asked why our students become more ignorant the longer they stay in our public schools, Mr. Greenspan's response was typical of America's uninformed leaders: "I have no idea."

But for those of us who have studied public education, the answer is clear: Our educators, from teachers through superintendents of schools, are academically and intellectually so inferior that the fourth grade is apparently the outer limit of their teaching abilities. They are so poorly selected, poorly trained and lacking in general intelligence, that failure by our middle- and high-school students is foreordained. ...........***

http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20050716-105811-9987r.htm

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