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http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1890507/posts?page=61#61

Excerpt:

Duncan Hunter: You know this last report on China actually received lots of criticism from the State Department because it was very candid about assessing this enormous growing military strength of China. The assessment of the Pentagon was they are doing so much more then they have to do for self defense. They are building an offensive capability. When they shot that satellite out of space on January 11th, because America’s military eyes are largely in space, that really hurdled a new era of military competition between the U.S. and China in space. Like it or not, if you have to rely on satellites for movement of special forces or army brigades or marine corps divisions, you have to rely on satellites for that, and your satellites are in danger, you are in trouble. So we have our eyes, our military eyes [on China]. Plus a lot of our economic capabilities are reflected through our space apparatus. You have to protect that. We are going to have to spend a lot of money now and take a lot of effort to neutralize what is an aggressive Chinese policy in regard to space.

Hugh Hewitt: Let’s talk about the media and China. I asked you about this on the radio yesterday, how many questions have you had about China in the course of the Campaign. You have been on the trail for how long?

Duncan Hunter: We have had 4 congressional debates now and we have been out campaigning hard this entire year. We had one great question, I think it came from either Brit Hume or one of his team, during the Fox debate in the South Carolina, last question of the debate to me on China. I was able to give, you only have one minute answer, I try to be a master on the compact answers, I laid out that we have this cheating on trade which is stacking up billions to China and they are using this money to arm. This presents a long term challenge to the United States. Maybe not a direct threat; but a military threat is comprised of two things, capability and intent. They certainly are building a capability to cause us a lot of harm. And the intent of China is always difficult to understand.

Those tough old communists that ran the Poly Bureau are still running things. We see these generals make wild statements like, “We hope you value L.A. more than you do Taiwan”. That is a thinly veiled threat to nuke L.A. Then there will be a flurry of newspaper statements by people saying well, ‘general so and so didn’t mean it’. Well I hope general so and so is pretty far away from that nuclear trigger. Because that is a wild statement. You see those wild statements that came out of Yunnan Island where the American plane was shot down or was forced down, and the wild statements that came out of there diplomacy core after that were tempered by their trade people. But it shows us there is a element of leadership that is embedded in the Chinese hierarchy that is very aggressive, very anti American and very war like. It is difficult to know which element of the Chinese leadership is going to dominate the government in 5 years.

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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1882543/posts
Dragon Hunter

Excerpt:

The investor class is also worried. As our political leaders gingerly attempt to address China’s currency devaluation and trade surplus with our country, powerful communist apparatchiks (yes, I know –it’s a Russian term) are hinting at a US treasury bill dump, a dump that could have severe financial consequences. China has pegged the value of the yuan to the dollar. Instead of floating in a natural balance against the dollar like other major currencies, this peg allows the Chinese imports to our shores to maintain their relative ‘cheapness’, not only here, but on the world market. It is China’s stated goal to leapfrog the US as the #1 economic powerhouse in the world, and undercutting US manufacturing is a very comfortable part of that plan. It has given them a staggering $233 billion trade surplus with the USA in 2006, a total that will easily be surpassed in 2007. But more likely than not, US negotiators will be reigned in and the status quo will continue, for now.

But how did we get here? Why have politicians and business leaders in the US allowed us to arrive at a place where a communist enemy holds such leverage over our economy? A place where a few words uttered by a ‘respected’ Chinese academic can rattle our markets? A place where we have allowed substandard food and materials onto our shores for years? And for that matter, a place where we pretend there is really only one China – Taiwan being a renegade province and such? 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.”

Unfortunately, President Bush has his hands full in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is hesitant to tackle the problem. His legacy is tied to success in the muslim world now and a financial showdown with China is not in the making. The majority democrat party is certainly yapping about China (dead pets, you know), but their leading candidate was bought and paid for with communist dollars.

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.

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