Pissing off China
Posted by unbrand on 16 March 2005 | 0 Comments
I saw two items today relating to how the United States is dealing with China and China’s plans to “take back” Taiwan. One of the sources, The Truth Seeker seems to have a lot of articles that you won’t see on mainstream news, at least in the U.S. They have an unnamed contributor for their “Voice of the White House” archive who is supposedly around the White House Press Corps, or a part of it perhaps. I would normally think that an anonymous poster to a website like this is unlikely to be truthful, but there have been enough instances in the past where he or she has written something that turned out to be true. At any rate, the article mentions that President Bush has been warned:
“He was told, again, not asked, that if he did not make a public statement to the effect that the United States believed that the problems between the two entities could be solved between them and wished to remain strictly neutral, they would retaliate against the US. In other worse, if Beijing decided to invade Taiwan, which they are now seriously planning, Bush would have to butt out and stay out. Their threat? Clever. If he keeps up his current nose-thumbing at Beijing, they will repeg their currency and dump all of their US treasury holdings on the market and never again buy any US paper.”
The other other item is from The Independent and talks about the official story of the U.S. position:
“The worry in Washington is that Taiwan will retaliate, perhaps by edging closer to formalising a de facto independence that already includes separate elections, its own constitution and diplomatic relations with some countries. This in turn could be the trigger for a Chinese military move, leading to a showdown between the US and Beijing.”
So we have the official story and the unofficial story, each of which is fucked, but for different reasons. Officially, the U.S. doesn’t want a country to be free and independent and have a constitution, because, you know, the U.S. didn’t force it on them and there might actually be consequences of such freedom, so it can’t be worthwhile. Secondly, if the threat from China is real, and if they do dump their treasury holdings, that will send a clear signal of PANIC! to the rest of the world who owns so much of the U.S. All those other countries dumping their dollars, and guess what? Nail in the coffin for the U.S. dollar.
If China does have serious plans to take Taiwan back, then what would the U.S. do? On one hand, the U.S. would want to defend her interests there, but China is no Afghanistan. Or Iraq. On the other hand, if the U.S. capitulates then Wall Street would see a Chinese takeover of Taiwan as a Very Bad Thing and send stocks tumbling of companies who have interests in Taiwan.
Good job, George. You’re now seeing the fruits of your arrogant labor.