[bert]

With regard to the port situation, containers arrive from all over the world. I fear containers from places with a lower profile than China. We are in a war on terrorism and the bad guys could load up a container in Maylasia or Sri Lanka.

You are correct...Ports and containers are a serious weak point.

I have contact with Americans who regularly visit China as they do their jobs. They are working in factories there that are Chineese, but are also American. They do not express the fears you do. To the contrary, there is a feeling that positive change is underway.

This change may not be entirely to our benefit, but that is the nature of history. We must manage the change as best we can. We ignore the forces of history at our peril.

[bonesmccoy]

Bert,

While I agree that "change" is occuring in Eastern Chinese provinces and that western corporations are partnering with chinese power brokers. These Chinese power brokers are almost uniformly tied to either the Chinese or Taiwanese aristocracy/bureaucracy.

In fact, the split in the Chinese/Taiwanese financial interests were being effectively played off to divide the economic threat against US firms.

However, in the last 10 years (coincidental to the reign of Bubba Bill Clinton), the split between China and Taiwan economically seems to have been bridged through various international corporations doing business with Singapore, Hong Kong, S. Korea, and Japan.

US firms probably also played a role in "opening" PRC ports to US goods.

Unfortunately, the state dept. analysis on PRC threats seems weak. No doubt, my analysis is weaker, but at least I have ground level experience dealing with people from Chinese corporations who usurped massive amounts of building capacity in this area.

It is not to the benefit of the local economics of California cities when a Chinese Communist investor seizes major business assets in a small town and then drives down the cost of lease space.

Essentially, the shelter for the Yuan that is US real estate was used to accomplish two goals:
1. Shelter funds from devaluation of the Yuan and currency devaluation in China.
2. Push down the US economy by forcing down real estate prices (writing off the lease losses permits the US branch of Chinese firms to artificially decrease real estate costs in particular towns).

The end result is that your open access policy to China (without the appearance of further scrutiny) degrades US real estate assets and alters US manufacturing profitability.

This, in my opinion, is a form of economic attack.

The Chinese Communist sympathizers are fostering this economic attack on the base of the US economy.

It is high time that we prioritized US interests ahead of China's.