You knew--or should have known--that being deeply in debt to China would eventually have consequences. Not just the increased speed of movement toward a different world reserve currency than the dollar, or refusal to tolerate criticism of its human rights record, or its open analysis of Alan Greenspan's mistakes in managing the American economy.... Nope. Now Bejing is sending a clear message to President Obama regarding what it sees as the appropriate US foreign policy with respect to Afghanistan. Originally published in China Daily, this piece by Lin Qinggong is pretty clearly speaking for the old men in Bejing: The United States should first put an end to the war. The anti-terror war, which the former US administration of George W Bush launched in 2001, has turned out to be the source of ceaseless turbulence and violence in the past years. To promote much-needed reconciliation among the parties concerned, the US should end its military action. The war has neither brought the Is...

... in a post, by the way, that has nothing in particular to do with either Presidents Bush or Obama. Step One: Borrow so much money from the Chinese that you are no longer allowed to criticize them, but they are empowered to critique your performance, hint that they can crash the dollar any time they so desire, and threaten to displace the dollar as the world's reserve currency.... Step Two: Swap out your dependence on Saudi oil with a dependence on petrochemical exports from greasy Vlad Putin's Russia : Russia has taken center stage in oil exports. For the first time Russia has topped Saudi Arabia in oil exports. Russia exported about 7.4 million barrels per day in the first quarter compared with Saudi Arabia's 7 million barrels per day. Russian supplies of energy to the US jumped 33% in the past six months compared with a drop of 29% for Saudi Arabia in the same period. Short-term some folks see this as good news, because Russia currently needs petrodollars badly enoug...

You know you have hit the skids as a capitalist country when the Chinese are critiquing your central government policies like a robber baron watching a drunk spend his salary on Friday night: Mr Cheng said the Fed's loose monetary policy was stoking an unstable asset boom in China. "If we raise interest rates, we will be flooded with hot money. We have to wait for them. If they raise, we raise. "Credit in China is too loose. We have a bubble in the housing market and in stocks so we have to be very careful, because this could fall down." Mr Cheng said China had learned from the West that it is a mistake for central banks to target retail price inflation and take their eye off assets. "This is where Greenspan went wrong from 2000 to 2004," he said. "He thought everything was alright because inflation was low, but assets absorbed the liquidity." And, by gosh, the Chinese actually start to sound like ... Ron Paul(?): Cheng Siwei, former vice-chairma...

Eighteen months ago a commenter criticized me for posting about China's practice of harvesting organs from prisoners--primarily death row inmates and some political prisoners like Falun Gong. Eventually, even in a repressive, authoritarian country [which our government no longer criticizes because it's not nice to say bad things about your largest creditor], the truth comes out [ BBC ]: China is trying to move away from the use of executed prisoners as the major source of organs for transplants. According to the China Daily newspaper, executed prisoners currently provide two-thirds of all transplant organs . Ouch. That's going to leave a mark.

... and tell China what to do with its pending new orders for castrated PCs. From WSJ : BEIJING -- China plans to require that all personal computers sold in the country as of July 1 be shipped with software that blocks access to certain Web sites, a move that could give government censors unprecedented control over how Chinese users access the Internet. The government, which has told global PC makers of the requirement but has yet to announce it to the public, says the effort is aimed at protecting young people from "harmful" content. The primary target is pornography, says the main developer of the software, a company that has ties to China's security ministry and military. So here's the question: will the Federal government and/or American businesses decide to go right ahead and take the profits available from censorship or not? As a libertarian, I know it's their free choice, and I expect the argument that somebody in France or Germany or Korea will sell neut...

... even when it used to be one of your favorite mantras. From WaPo : BEIJING, May 24 -- For the second time this year, a top U.S. official visiting China has declined in advance to publicly discuss Beijing's human rights record, a shift in practice that comes almost exactly two decades after the Tiananmen Square massacre. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who collided with Chinese authorities in 1991 when she unfurled a banner memorializing those who died in the square, arrived here Sunday saying only that she planned to discuss climate change with Chinese officials. At a briefing in Washington before leaving for her week-long trip, Pelosi declined to say whether she planned to discuss human rights with her hosts. Instead, she said only that she would focus on securing support for a global pact on reducing carbon emissions, in advance of a major international gathering on climate change scheduled for December in Copenhagen. "We have to . . . learn from each other as we go forward. ...

First: Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann is, umm, well-qualified to be a guest on the Glenn Beck Show. And the sort of twisted attention she's given to the question of creating an international reserve currency based on Special Drawing Rights at the International Monetary Fund is ... special. Michelle sees this as the end of national currencies: BACHMANN: What that means is all of the countries in the world would have a single currency. We would give up the dollar as our currency and we would just go with a One World currency. … If we give up the dollar as our standard, and co-mingle the value of the dollar with the value of coinage in Zimbabwe, that dilutes our money supply. We lose control over our economy. And economic liberty is inextricably entwined with political liberty. Once you lose your economic freedom, you lose your political freedom. And then we are no more, as an exceptional nation, as we always have been. So this is imperative. Of course, this misrepresentation of an...

General Petraeus reports Pakistan as being on the verge of collapse : Less than a week ago, the Obama Administration unveiled a “new, comprehensive strategy” for Afghanistan and Pakistan, which included massive increases in spending as well as adding yet more troops to the ongoing surge in Afghanistan. Now, days later, top defense officials have informed Congress that the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan is growing worse by the day , and that the brand new strategy is no longer enough. SOCOM head Admiral Eric Olson described the situation as “increasingly dire.” At the same time, foreign military figures in Afghanistan have said they expect the surge to be a “game changer” and to cause a significant spike in militant attacks in that nation. Beyond that, while acknowledging that Pakistan had “betrayed America’s trust in the past,” General David Petraeus warned that Pakistan’s militants “could literally take down their state” if the US didn’t intervene. Undersecretary of Defense Mi...

From Al Jazeera : The head of the Chinese central bank has called for a new global currency controlled by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), saying such a move would give governments particularly in the developing world the ability to manage their economies more efficiently. In an online essay Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People's Bank of China, said the global financial crisis had exposed the danger of relying on one nation's currency for international payments. The essay, released on the bank's website late on Monday, did not mention the US dollar by name, but the vast majority of international finance is carried out in dollars. The comments come ahead of a major meeting of leaders from the Group of 20 major economies in London which will focus on measures to alleviate the global economic crisis. During the meeting, beginning on April 2, China is expected to call for developing economies to have a bigger say in global finance and step up pressure for changes to a s...

When your biggest creditor demands assurance that you will meet your obligations, what do you do? You tell them what they want to hear, of course: The White House has reassured China that its $2 trillion stockpile of US investments are safe, despite the global economic crisis. Robert Gibbs, a spokesman for Barack Obama, the US president, said on Friday: "There's no safer investment in the world than in the United States." Gibbs was responding to comments by Wen Jiabao, China's prime minister, who voiced concern over the outlook of US government bonds, calling on Washington to ease worries about US assets. Speaking at his annual news conference on Friday, Wen expressed concern that massive US deficit spending and near-zero interest rates could erode the value of China's bond holdings. China is the biggest holder of US government debt and has invested an estimated 70 per cent of its $2 trillion stockpile of foreign exchange reserves, the world's largest, in dol...

From Yahoo : BEIJING (Reuters) – A top Chinese official warned on Friday that the central government in Beijing must approve the Dalai Lama's reincarnation , and would not recognise any candidate that it had not endorsed, the official Xinhua agency said. You can't make this stuff up.

... or at least that's the conclusion you might draw after this warning from the wizened old men in Bejing has received international coverage without a single statement in response from our State Department : BEIJING, March 7 (Reuters) - China's foreign minister, speaking ahead of two sensitive anniversaries next week, warned other countries on Saturday not to let the Dalai Lama use their territory to try to sever Tibet from Chinese control. Beijing abruptly cancelled a China-EU summit last year, angry over French President Nicolas Sarkozy's meeting with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader whom Beijing condemns as a separatist. The Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in March 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule, says he only wants greater autonomy for the remote region in China's far west rather than outright independence. "In developing relations with China, other countries should not allow the Dalai Lama to visit their countries and should not allow their ...

Now we would apparently like to run our logistics for the Afghan war through ... China : NATO may ask China to provide support for the war effort in Afghanistan, including possibly opening a supply link for alliance forces, a senior U.S. official said Monday. The subject is still under consideration and no decision has been reached on whether to approach Beijing, the official said on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the issue. He spoke ahead of a meeting of NATO foreign ministers on Thursday in Brussels, which will include Hillary Rodham Clinton in her first European trip as U.S. secretary of state. One way Beijing could help would be to open an alternate logistics route through western China into Afghanistan, the U.S. official said in Brussels. China shares a 76-kilometer- (50-mile)-long border with Afghanistan in the Wakhan Corridor, a thin sparsely populated strip of Afghan territory separating Pakistan and Tajikistan. The 2,000-year-old-caravan route — once used by M...

... is a good indication of the subtle change in Sino-American relations that is resulting from our increasing indebtedness. Listen : China and the U.S. resumed military-to-military consultations Friday after a five-month suspension over American arms sales to Taiwan, but a top Chinese officer warned the exchanges remain in a "difficult period." China froze military exchanges in October to register its anger over a $6.5 billion U.S. arms sale to Taiwan that included advanced weaponry such as Patriot missiles and Apache attack helicopters. China, which claims self-ruled Taiwan is part of its territory, complained that the sale interfered with its internal affairs. Contacts resumed with talks led by David Sedney, a U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense, and Maj. Gen. Qian Lihua, the Chinese Defense Ministry's head of foreign affairs. Qian was quoted by the official Xinhua News Agency as saying that contacts would remain tenuous unless the U.S. removes remaining obstacl...

Human rights groups couldn't wait to give the new Secretary of State a boatload of criticism over her down-playing of human-rights issues with China: WaPo : BEIJING, Feb. 20 -- Human rights violations by China cannot block the possibility of significant cooperation between Washington and Beijing on the global economic crisis, climate change and security threats such as North Korea's nuclear program, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday. "We pretty much know what they are going to say" on human rights issues such as greater freedoms for Tibet, Clinton told reporters traveling with her on a tour of Asia. "We have to continue to press them. But our pressing on those issues can't interfere" with dialogue on other crucial topics. Clinton's remarks elicited sharp condemnation from Amnesty International, which has urged her to move human rights near the top of the U.S.-China agenda. The organization accused Clinton of saying "that huma...

... because Iran has used what is essentially 50-year-old technology to plop a small satellite into space? Now the former head of the Israeli Space Agency (who knew they had one?) opines that this means Iran now has the ballistic missile capability to hit western Europe: Iran's launch of a satellite on Tuesday demonstrates a new and advanced capability that allows Teheran to fire ballistic missiles carrying nuclear warheads all the way to Western Europe, said Maj.-Gen. (res.) Isaac Ben-Israel, the former head of the Israel Space Agency. "You need specific and added energy when firing a satellite that weighs between 30 and 50 kilograms into space," Ben-Israel, who is also a Kadima MK, told The Jerusalem Post. "If they succeeded, then the equivalent within the atmosphere is firing a ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead that weighs one ton all the way to Western Europe." This is a pretty interesting assertion, given that China required significant external tec...

.... increasingly credible reports of China employing torture in Tibet. From Reuters (through AWC ): BEIJING, Dec 10 (Reuters) - The use of torture in the restless Chinese region of Tibet is widespread and routine and officials regularly ignore legal safeguards supposed to be in place to prevent it, a new report said on Wednesday. Even when detainees are released, they may die of their injuries, be scarred for life mentally or physically and not be able to afford medical treatment or be denied it completely, the Free Tibet group said. "Despite claims by the Chinese government that there are 'extremely few cases of torture', the evidence tells a different story," Free Tibet director Stephanie Brigden said. "There is no doubt that the Chinese government is permitting the use of torture as a weapon to suppress the Tibetan people."... Free Tibet said it had profiled numerous cases of torture carried out against people detained following the demonstrations, which...

While the original source is perhaps circumspect, a report from our friends Down Under at Thoughts on Freedom suggests that: China may be contemplating bailing out the entire nation of North Korea rather than facing the massive, suicidal migration of lots of people rendered short through generations of malnutrition. The good news, I guess, is that there may be a job in the offing for Henry Paulson in Bejing after January 25.

Or should we just sit back and watch as China feeds its authoritarian, human-rights-abusing, environmentally disastrous government a big helping of light Iraqi crude? See, as a Libertarian I applaud the right of the Iraqi government to do what the hell it wants to do with the oil that is a sovereign Iraq's property. But as a good American imperialist (in the manner of GHW Bush, Bill Clinton, Dubya, John McCain, and even Barack), damn it, I expect that when my government literally sends in the Marines, Will Rogers-style , that we get to keep the goddamn oil we rightfully stole.

This from Fausta's Blog : Brazilian state oil company Petrobras is studying a block in deep Cuban waters for possible exploration as part of broader cooperation with the Caribbean island, a top advisor to the company said on Friday. "We are planning to cooperate not only in exploration and production, but lubricants, refining and training," Andre Ghirardi told Reuters in Havana at a one-day meeting of Brazilian and Cuban businessmen.... The US Geological Survey estimated the North Cuba basin could contain 4.6 billion barrels of oil, with a high-end potential of 9.3 billion barrels, and close to 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. China and Venezuela have already initiated the first stages of drilling in the North Cuba basin. Facts about foreign drilling immediately off our shores: 1) We have no control over the environmental impact of these operations as they take place in international waters. 2) All three nations pursue oil with State-owned companies, which generally ...