Of course. If you know the enemy can kick your ass and know you are a 90 pound weakling, there won't be a hundred battles to fear. 
Posted on 08/19/2005 8:45:43 AM PDT by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
Virginia Republican Rep. Frank Wolf sent a strongly worded letter to Akin Gump Strauss Hauer and Feld, questioning the firm "being on the payroll of the Chinese government" and lobbying on behalf of state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) in its bid to take over Unocal corporation. Though Unocal's directors accepted Chevron's rival bid, CNOOC is reportedly looking to acquire other American oil companies. Thus, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer and Feld, reportedly the third largest lobbying firm in Washington, may still be on Beijing's "pay to play" roster. Chinese interests can certainly afford to hire the best, as their trade surplus with the United States continues to expand subatantially.
Wolf, who chairs the powerful Science-State-Justice-Commerce Appropriations subcommittee, cited a Pentagon report warning that China's need for oil, gas and other energy resources "appears to be driving the country toward becoming an expansionist power." Wolf asked in his letter, "Is there no bright line to separate who the lobbyists in Washington will or will not represent?" Beijing thinks it knows the answer, and its not the one Wolf wants to hear.
The public should be shocked at the work done in Washington by American firms on behalf of overseas interests trying to influence U.S. policy. James Sasser, ambassador to Beijing during the Clinton administration, once said, "The Chinese really don't do any lobbying. The heavy lifting is done by the American business community." The rules of the game may be changing.
In the July 23 National Journal, Bara Vaida reports that Beijing is now hiring a number of "politically connected lobbying and public relations firms to help press its message." On the list: Hogan & Hastson, BKSH & Associates, Brunswick Group, McDermott Will & Emery and Public Strategies. Vaida notes that the vice chairman of Public Strategies is Mark McKinnon, who was the chief media strategist for both of President George W. Bush's presidential campaigns.
Still, Beijing's most effective support comes from its business partners. An example appeared the day after Wolf sent his letter. The House considered H.R. 3100, the East Asia Security Act, offered by International Relations Committee chairman Rep. Henry Hyde to levy sanctions against European companies that sell arms to China. The bill won a majority, 215-203, but as the Associated Press reported, "Earlier during the roll call, more than 330 members had registered yes votes, but several lawmakers said people started changing votes after learning of opposition from the business community." This lobbying effort was enough to delay passage of Hyde's measure because the bill was being considered under suspension of the rules and required a two-thirds margin to pass. Among those groups lobbying against Hyde was the Electronic Industries Association, whose members are heavily engaged in China. Its president, former Democratic Congressman David McCurdy, called the bill "reactionary"and argued "we should nurture better ties with China."
Hyde later offered his legislation as an amendment to the Foreign Relations Authorization Act (H.R. 2601), where it was adopted by a voice vote. But it must still survive the conference committee process with the Senate, where business lobbyists are even stronger when it comes to blocking sanctions that interfere with trade for geopolitical reasons.
This is not the first time in history that bankers and business interests have become enthralled with a regime whose ambitions pose a threat to their own country. In the third volume of his history of the financial City of London, David Kynaston's details the optimistic views that bankers and the business press held towards Europe's rising fascist rulers during the interwar period. When Hitler marched into the Rhineland in 1936, the Financial Times declared his action "may well emerge in the end a clearer prospect of European peace than has existed for a generation past." When the League of Nations failed to act against Mussolini's aggression with sanctions "and accompanying notions of collective security had lost almost all credibility– few in the City lamented the fact," noted Kynaston.
After the Munich crisis the Financial Times praised Chamberlain's "efforts to preserve the peace as having assumed heroic proportions." And Sir Montagu Norman, Governor of the Bank of England mentioned "the helpful attitude of your Fuhrer" in a letter to Hjalmar Schacht, President of the Reichsbank. Bankers were even known to lecture newspaper owners against running columnists hostile to the policy of appeasement.
David Wells, a senior correspondent for The Financial Times, has continued his paper's tradition by defending American bankers (led by Goldman Sachs) who see China as a client rather than a geopolitical rival. In like form, a Wall Street Journal editorial on Beijing's new exchange rate policy praised the undervaluation of the yuan because it "gave foreign investors the confidence to build factories in China fueling the country's export-led boom." That this strategy has been devastating to many U.S.-based companies matters not at all to the WSJ.
In an earlier editorial supporting CNOOC, the WSJ used the tired line that "free trade also helps build a Chinese middle class that will eventually demand more political freedom." Winston Churchill knew this was a false hope when he faced a middle-class, capitalist Germany under Hitler's control. He warned of Germany's growing economic capabilities "with her factories equipped to the very latest point of science by British and American money."
There is a split today within the Republican Party between the national security wing and the business wing. It is similar to the split in the Conservative Party between Churchill and Neville Chamberlain in the 1930s. Chamberlain was, in the words of historian Kenneth W. Thompson "the archetype of bourgeois conservatism...[which] is derived from a decaying liberalism under whose colors the businessman in the nineteenth century achieved his now precarious eminence." In contrast, Churchill was a classical conservative, heir to a long aristocratic tradition that was used to dealing with unending rivalry among nations and empires. Thompson's conclusion, in his study Winston Churchill's World View, is that this "Tory tradition... having suffered less disillusionment and dismay over the abrupt and violent reappearance of barbarism and violence, was better able to meet the threat by organizing resources of power against predatory foes."
Beijing's leaders focus on who is in charge. They may have abandoned communism, but not Marxist political analysis. The U.S.-style state "is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists," according to Friedrich Engels. Combine that with Karl Marx's observation that "big industry created a class...with which nationality is already dead" and Beijing believes it knows how to control America by manipulating a detached, self-absorbed elite. Thus when Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visited the U.S. in 2003, he went to the New York Stock Exchange, the American Bankers Association, and the Chamber of Commerce before he went to the White House. Marxist theory has told them where the real power resides in America, and it has nothing to do with democracy.
Will U.S. policy be determined on the grounds of national interests or by special interests with foreign leanings? Are the Marxists right about the nature of American politics, that money rules and nothing else matters? Congress and the White House need to make clear who they truly represent.
"Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains."
--Thomas Jefferson to Horatio G. Spafford, 1814. ME 14:119
Related threads:
China: Why Won't the GOP Defend U.S. National Security?
The Bush Administration Wants a Strong China???
And finally, to save everybody the time and trouble of looking it up:
"deracinated" = "plucked up by the roots" or "uprooted"
ping
There are some free trade absolutists here on FR that would fit that profile.
Why does the word "whore" come to mind?
Perhaps you're making an association with the corrupt, incumbant Republicrats.
It seems that they're the only ones who are never deracinated.
ping
;^)
Calling these people whores is and insult! To sex workers everywhere.
Duh! And it will continue to happen. Wall Street played a huge part in Nazi Germany's rise to power. Can you say... "Council On Foreign Relations?" Same old crap. But nobody seems to care or believe it. Tin Foil Hats Kind Of Itch Any Way... :-)
Or maybe Chicoms are better Marxists that Soviets ever were? See my tagline.
In the interest of fairness I will represent the globalist ideologues who call themselves conservatives. "Nothing but racist, protectionist, isolationist, anti-semetic, homophobic, mysogynist reactionary drivel, and that is all I have to say about this article.
"The Chinese really don't do any lobbying. The heavy lifting is done by the American business community."
The American business community is becoming more of a fifth column than the silly left-wing activists.
Ya figure it's a lot of Freepers or just a few that are extremely loud???
Combine that with Karl Marx's observation that "big industry created a class...with which nationality is already dead" and Beijing believes it knows how to control America by manipulating a detached, self-absorbed elite.
Speaks for itself...
If you disagree with free tradin' away technology, wealth, and jobs you are called a "protectionist." It's wrong to want to protect the USA?
Deracinated U.S. businesses? Why "free traders" say that those are jobs that Americans should not do, lowly factory jobs. No one aspires to a life of a factory worker, they rationalize. Icky.
We have met the enemy ... and they are hiding behind the skirts of corporate/government bureaurcracy and online anonymous handles.
Of course. If you know the enemy can kick your ass and know you are a 90 pound weakling, there won't be a hundred battles to fear.
Thus we may know that there are five essentials for victory:
(1) He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.
(2) He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces.
(3) He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks.
(4) He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared.
(5) He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign.
Hence the saying:
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
bump, good read.
As has been said in the past, the communists will sell us the rope to hang ourselves --- after all, nearly everything is made in Commie China anymore, anyway!!!!
Time to shut them down before it is too late; however, it won't be done by any of the current business executives or many of our current politicians!!!
Yes, they are better Marxists. The only Soviet who was their equal was Lenin. But none that came after him had the correct elements of strategy. Deng Xiao Ping was a hard core Communist. And so is Hu Jintao.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.