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My mistake- got the "trillions" number from another errant FReeper and just passed it along. He "corrected" the billions number I had originally quoted.

The Chinese are accumulating lots of cash and printing lots of money right now- why has our treasury secretary warned them on this?

As far as the canal is concerned, it seems strange to me that they would seek out this management contract if there were not a strategic benefit to them. It certainly places them in a position to choke off that vital channel for a significant period of time.

Bottomline- If they could trade a temporary downturn in their economy to control Taiwan and it's massive cash producing engine, they would. Don't think they're not running the numbers.

Yep. that would do it.

The Chinese and Taiwan ship outrageous amounts of containers through the Canal. Taking down the Canal involves quite a bit of effort. Also, the cash generating machine of Taiwan would be severely damaged so China would still have cash flow problems.

China manages the ports as I gather it. I have a friend here who worked at the Canal for 25 years through the turnover. Still knows quite a few Panamanians who work there.

I asked him about this very point (the Chinese) and he just chuckled a little bit. "Not a problem" says he and he'd know. Any sign of trouble and you'll find American Special Ops guys popping up all over the place and CENTCOM in high gear :-) This place is really amazing for all the defensive stuff they have in place. All the hills around the Canal are hollow. I'd place good money that we didn't tell the Panamanians about all the goodies stashed away or at least, there is some sort of agreement between the big boys about keeping that type of thing very quiet. (No personal knowledge here. Just an educated guess). Perhaps we are not as dumb as we appeared to be?

The government here wants to build a third set of locks for larger ships. Can you imagine the uproar if we had to foot the bill? Heh, heh. Maybe, just maybe, giving the Canal back to Panama wasn't such a bad idea?

Thanks for the link to the longer thread you sent. I have not gone through the whole thing yet.

However, regarding China taking on Taiwan -- I would be very interested to know if China is making any troop transport ships and ships to land armored brigades. That's what has been stopping them from being a serious threat in the conventional sense.

Logistics is the key and unless they have seriously upgraded their equipment on that front, they have a big problem. Taiwan is no slouch in the military game either. They have an advantage of being an island that would need invading from the sea. The air would be quite tough for them to pull off in any great numbers.

Granted there are ways for them to create havoc with soldiers coming in as civilians, etc. but you still need a lot of your own equipment to make it stick.

The above logistics angle was pointed out by no less than Tom Clancy probably 10 years ago.

Note: I'll stick with Rummy's assessment that China is an increasing threat and follow his lead.