Posted on 02/26/2007 12:17:57 PM PST by khnyny
I read the article.
Yes, they will buy up a bunch of companies, and putatively be owners of those companies.
Americans can nevertheless prevent the Chinese from being our masters, in such a circumstance, through a nasty and little-known-tactic called "Changing the rules of the game". See, RIGHT NOW, to "own" a company means that you get to take all the decisions, and nobody gets to watch you do it. But if you start having a foreign adversary really aggressively get in your face, to "own" a company could easily become what it has become in many countries in Europe, (I'm thinking about France) where there is a "Golden Share" in privatized companies, one measly little share which the government owns...which share, by the way, has full rights of inspection of the books, gets to put a member on the board and the audit committee and see all the books, and gets a veto on everything the other 99 million shareholders do.
Now, to be sure, the Golden Share's prerogatives are not used lightly, and business is left alone, largely, but whenever anything of strategic importance comes up, the French government uses its ownership of that one share and dictates the answer to the company, under penalty of law. The government does this discreetly and not very often, or else the value of shares on the CAC 40 would be low. Actually, those values are very, very high, so this sort of "Golden Share" works rather well at protecting national strategic interests.
Sure, it's not "cricket". It means that the Chinese come in as a buyer, like everybody else, and once they're deeply in and OWN the companies, suddenly we change the laws and the rules so that they do not have the same authority as owners of the company that an owner had before. Oh well. That's why states are more powerful than companies, because states make laws, and laws determine what ownership MEANS.
China is a Communist country. It's a trade rival. It may be an enemy someday. Just because we have always had a certain concept of what "ownership" means doesn't mean, when it's our sovereignty at stake, that we cannot, just like that, steal all the companies and property that the Chinese rightfully and legally buy in this company, just like we rounded up the Japanese and took THEIR property, or made treaties with the Indians and took their property as soon as they were disarmed and the ink was dry.
It's not "cricket", but so what?
If the Chinese play nice, then we play nice. If the Chinese don't play nice, let them spend two trillion dollars buying up all of the shares of all of the American companies. Then change the laws to watch what they do, and if they try to use that ownership to start running the United States, use the power of law to take their companies away from them (without repaying the money). It's called "nationalization". China did it. Britain did it. France did it. All countries have done it. The US EFFECTIVELY did it during World War II with manufacturing firms (though leaving the ownership in place).
Let the Chinese invest. Use the laws to diminsh the power that ownership currently gives in American society. They can make money here (which we print), but they cannot buy influence here. If they try, take their company away from them, steal it by law. They will scream, mewl and puke, and lose. Because we're here and they're not.
Surely you don't believe that we're going to let a little bauble like "historical concepts of property rights" allow foreigners to rule us by simply buying us out? We will legally steal back our sovereignty if that's what we have to do. National sovereignty trumps property rights.
And you were dead right.
I screamed it from the rooftops starting the moment I got home from Ground Zero and showered off the white dust and threw out the suit I was wearing that day.
We had to declare war.
It was so damned obvious.
But we didn't.
And that is the fault of the Bush Administration.
Good points. Isn't this what Duncan Hunter has been saying? He's the only candidate that has the ba!!$ to come out and warn us about China's plan.
Gives you something to think about it
Which is why I support Duncan Hunter, among other things.
f China really did dump a trillion in bonds on the market, for pennies on the dollar, the US could inflate the currency and BUY THE BONDS BACK for pennies on the dollar, wiping out a trillion dollars in US national debt in the twinkling of an eye.
.... I think you need to think this one through just a bit ....
Great idea.
Too bad that it will NEVER happen.
Our leaders are corrupt.
Our captains of industry are also unsound and treasonous.
We no longer have the moral or spiritual ability to do what is right and to protect our nation and Constitution.
China has already bought up tooling from auctions and closed plants. It's gone.
In the movie The Band of Brothers, one of the G.I.'s yells at the hordes of defeated Nazi's marching into captivity "What were you thinking! Say hello to Ford and General Motors! You are using horses!".
Ford and GM will soon be unable to make a tank or a half track or a jeep.
Soon we will have to reconstitute our industrial base. And when that happens our next generation of leaders will surrender.
It will be easier and simpler.
President B. Hussein Obama will not be able to do anything except announce the end of the American experiment.
Duncan Hunter would make an excellent President.
But he will never be nominated.
Our people will demand more "bread and circuses".
President Obama is going to be the instrument of God's judgment on America.
Well, if that's the case, look at the bright side of Chinese domination: Chinese women.
You will find some highly capable people in the civil service. Some of the very best. Not all, of course, some are only slightly above average. The most highly capable people in the civil service operate on a level the political analysts and barbershop politicians have no idea exists.
"Right Johnny, the heroin junkie is the powerful one?"
The heroin junkie in this case is easily described as China, which is addicted to U.S. markets, U.S. dollars. The deficit with the U.S. accounts -- just the deficit -- for the equivalent of China's annual GDP growth. China must, absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, have U.S money. The reverse is _not_ true of the U.S. If China stopped buying U.S. debt, the U.S. would have to pay more to borrow and/or stop borrowing as much. The U.S. would face a recession, which it would come out of in a comparatively short amount of time, though it could be a sharp one. The ramifications for China, on the other hand, would be long-term and absolutely massive.
There is absolutely no question about who is at the relative mercy of who in this equation, and the fact that people are told the exact _opposite_ and told so _constantly_ is a testament to the ignorance-peddling nature of the media, not just in the U.S. but around the globe.
"America is so broke that it must beg for another monetary fix from anyone and everyone"
No.
"Some of us are either over educated or not very intelligent to buy this scam."
I have a graduate degree in economics. What's your background?
"We must start with the acknowledgement, at least, that we are unprepared to understand Chinese thinking," Mr. Pillsbury says.
And he's absolutely correct. However, what he's saying, and acknowledging that China is a serious threat, is light years away from the sort of threat people like some here are portraying. It's silly to set up scarecrows. Deal with reality.
China is dangerous. i do not see how true conservatives can deal with china. china is communist thats not a Republican value. china forces abortions, hardly part of the GOP platform, china has socilized health care (RINO's love that)
we should be doing everything to keep china down. as we build up china with our technology, we are creating a communist monster that is anti everything the GOP stands for.
not only that, chinas leaders are cruel, inhumman power hungery fanatics (you got to be fanatical if you kill off 30 million of your own) they are building a big military to threaten us. They have been the ones supporting kim chi bad hair doo (N. korean leader) allowing him to make nukes, and launch rockets. if there was no china, there would be only one korea, and it would be free.
china is costing the tax payer of the USA billions to keep up with there military expansion,a nd deal with problems like N. korea. Recall china fought us in the korean war, and no peace treaty was ever made, so technically I guess we are still at war with n. korea AND china
Opening up china was Nixon's big mistake. never, ever, ever trust a communist china is communist, and we should shun them, and prepare to fight them. worse than Nixon's mistake was clintons sell out of our technology.
the technology has given us an edge in military, and economics, and now we have given it way to a nation that would otherwise never be able to reeach that level of technology because it brutal communistic government
China is possibly still under central control to a degree. While we like to say Red China and ChiCom, such appellations are not particularly useful nor correct. We will probably find, if we actually look at China in its historical context that the Mandarin system is still very strong and the values are Confucian.
BTTT
Trade with China has not hurt the US economy at all (look around you and all the massive construction that is still taking place across America). Here in the Seattle area, construction cranes dot the skyline.
What trade does do (and the debt the US has with China), it allows China access to technology. An intangible that does not take anything away from the US. And it is the acquired technology (whether in science, manufacturing or financial), that will help alleviate global proverty (including poverty in China).
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