DUFF & NONSENSE!

Chop Suey 'n' grits - too, too delicious!

So 'Comrade' Xi Jinping meets 'Brother' Obama, an example, perhaps, of the inscrutable facing the screwable!  What, I sometimes wonder, have we done, both 'over here' and 'over there', to deserve the third-raters who run our nations.  Well, I suppose the cruel answer is that we voted for them!  Anyway, it would have been amusing to watch Obama stumble over his falling trousers as he departed the meeting and realised that somehow Xi had removed his braces without him feeling a thing!  And as for Secretary of State John Kerry, he probably forgot to put his trousers on in the first place!

Today, of course, we can all enjoy the sweet 'n' sour sauce provided by the American traitor, Edward Snowdon, who has blown open the activities of the National Security Agency in their deep-sea, wide-net fishing activities as they trawled the internet.  He, apparently, has sought political asylum in Hong Kong but not being a very intelligent Intelligence man he failed to realise that a year before us Brits vacated the place we signed a mutual extradition treaty with the USA.  Now the Chinese government (Sole Prop: Li Jinping) must decide whether to stand by it or deny it despite having just departed from dear President Obama promising to look hard, I tell you, velly, velly hard, at alleged communication hacking by Chinese, er, 'entrepreneurs'!

It's no wonder you sometimes have to wait when you rush to this distinguished blog every morning because there are so many security agencies checking me over that a queue has formed!  (Waddya mean, you never have any trouble?  Don't tell me they don't bother with D&N!)

 

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The Sunday Rumble: 9.6.13

If you have nails, prepare to bite them now:  For the last two days the new Chinese president has been in talks with Obama who has been supported in these subtle and delicate negotiations by, er, John Kerry ... yeeeees, quite!  One would like to think ... hope? ... that behind the scenes there is a top level of serious, intelligent and strategically-minded thinkers in the State Department to guide these two dummies men as they lay the groundworks for a new Sino-American 'arrangement' in the Pacific.  Well, a man may hope, may he not?  Mind you, and to be fair, I also hope that Xi Jingping has the political muscle and guile to keep his bellicose military under control.

 

What's the French for 'dropping a bollock?  Well, we have the Duke of Edinburgh to keep us endlessly amused by his ability to drop bollocks but now the French have President Hollande to do it for them.  On a state visit to Japan he expressed his condolences to the people of China - eh? what? waddesay? - for the deaths of ten Japanese citizens in a recent terrorist attack in Algeria.  'Eh bien, zey all look zee same, do zey not?'  The Japanese, I'm glad to say, remained, er, inscrutable!  And I have just remembered the French expression - un faux pas.  In Japanese it's called a - 失言.  See, you never stop learning on this blog!

 

How dare they!  This, from an article at The American Spectator:

The strange irony here is that critics initially regarded pulp fiction as gauche
pseudo-literature read by friendless kids, blue-collar rubes, and chronic
masturbators.

Well, I don't know which category I fit into but as a devoted, not to say, voracious, reader of pulp fiction I think it says all that needs to be said - about critics!  The article, by Daniel J. Flynn, reports on a recent effort to list the greatest writing in TV drama series.  The Wire only came 9th - morons!

 

Further rumbles as the day progresses . . .

Oooops, sorry, ran out of time!

 

 

 

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Your probs, George, are nothing compared to Mr. Xi Jinping's

It's not my job to offer aid and comfort to Mr. Osborne but it would very uncharitable not to offer the Chancellor a small crumb of comfort.  He thinks he is facing insurmountable problems - of course, he doesn't say that out loud but he knows it and so do we - so he should relax for five minutes and read Ambrose E-P in today's Telegraph.  The Chinese government is up to its armpits in chop-suey, at least, it looks like chop-suey but smells a lot worse!  Basically, the government is divided between the reformers and the statists.  The reformers have known for some time that the first phase of China's development from a quasi-Soviet state to Sate-controlled capitalism has passed and now the country must remove the grip of the State and open it up to full-blooded capitalism.  Unfortunately, as I have reported here before, the State-owned banks who financed the first phase far above and beyond what was required are now in deep trouble and any reform will shake them to their foundations.  Another difficulty is the overwhelming predominance of State Owned Enterprises (SOEs).  They and the banks have been in bed together for too long and their overweening strength has stifled free enterprise.  However, the intertwining power of the cronies and the bankers whose financial influence extends deep into the government will make it incredibly hard for the reformers to make any headway.  An interesting article in Caixin Online compares the China of today with the Britain of 1979 that Mrs. Thatcher had to sort out:

In Britain in the late 1970s, the government controlled most of the key
industries, and the Chinese government today controls PetroChina, China Mobile,
Air China and BaoSteel, in addition to all the financial giants such, as
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. The 10 largest companies by market
capitalization in China are all state-owned and account for the majority of the
total earnings on the stock market last year. Earnings by private companies
remain insignificant after 30 years of privatization. In developed markets,
state-owned firms generally account for a negligible portion of the overall
economy.

The international market analysts have seen the problems approaching for a considerable time and their warnings are there to be seen and read by everyone - except those determined not to look!  Here is Ambrose E-P again:

HSBC's gauge of Chinese services fell three points to 51.1 in April, the lowest
in almost two years.

The broader composite index also dropped sharply to a six-month low of 51.1
and is now barely above the contraction line, with new orders trailing badly.
The economy grew 7.7pc in the first quarter, slower than expected.

The Shanghai index of stocks rolled over in early March and has given up the
half the gains since the rally started late last year. It has dropped almost
60pc since its peak in 2008 and is now trading at levels comparable to 2003.

China's downturn is rippling through commodity markets, led by a major
sell-off of base metals this year. Credit Suisse said the short-covering rally
over the last few days is likely to prove a "dead cat bounce" as China's
structural slow-down and a weakening global economy overwhelm all else. It
expects copper to "bite the dust", falling to 2009 levels near $6,000 a tonne.

An opinion piece in Caixin Online re-iterates the warnings as expressed by what it calls "the China bears":

The China bears based their analysis on this: China's economy is slowing, and
the massive debts of local governments could well become a burden on the
national balance sheet, impeding the economy's balanced and stable growth. They see risks to the financial system.

None of this is to suggest that China's problems are insoluble, after all, 'that woman' taught us that nothing is impossible if you have the will - and the luck! Even so, the tensions between the reformers and the statists will be intense and dangerous.  I have remarked before on my belief that China has inherent centrifugal forces at work and the chances of them overcoming central power is always a possibility.

There, feeling better now, are you, George?  I hope not because you need to sort out our untenable borrowing requirements amongst several dozen other major problems!

 

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Why can't those damned tectonic plates stand still?

So, only 7.7% growth in China and the markets come over all faint.  Our two posh boys would give their right arms - well, Dave would give Georgie's and Georgie would give Dave's, they're politicians after all - for a growth rate half that size, in fact, a quarter would have them 'high fiving' - er, presumably with their left hands!  I realise I am repeating myself but the new Chinese government has an enormously tricky route to steer as it attempts to rebalance their economy without hurting their people who are notoriously fractious, especially so in this age of instant communications.  The Chinese population no longer has hopes - today it has expectations! 

At last the price of oil is beginning to reflect reality.  It is one of those commodities perpetually warped by some seriously big market manipulators who, amongst other things, will keep giant tankers on the high seas for as long as it takes for the price to be right, that's 'right' from their point of view, of course.  However, there is one irreducible factor which cannot be ignored and that is oil and gas fracking.  As I mentioned a few days ago, America is already out-producing Saudi Arabia and their requirement for imported oil is dropping rapidly.  If Chinese growth is easing off, too, that is going to leave the middle east oil producers sitting on oil no-one wants.  Hitherto they have kept their populations happy with handouts from oil revenues but if that is curtailed sundry kings and princes could find themselves as popular as a pork sausage in a mosque!

As for 'this septic Isle', I still fail to see any signs of real austerity.  There may not be the runaway growth of yesteryear but we all know where that led so it's not much of a loss.  However, the big millstone hanging round the neck of this government is their own internal energy policy.  Perhaps the only good thing to arise from the 'global freezing' we have just endured is that voters all over the land will be staggereed at the size of their heating bills.  Their anger might just be enough to strengthen the hands of the few realists in the government to dump all the ridiculous carbon measures and windmills into the North Sea and get on with fracking and building nuclear power stations.

 

Please, Mummy, can I be cruel to Lefties?

Well, no, of course one shouldn't be cruel to anyone, even deluded old Lefties slowly creeping towards death and disillusion.  But then again, one thinks of the horrors they would have inflicted on us if they had enjoyed half a chance and the urge to hurl stones becomes irresistible.  The death of 'that woman', of course, reminds us how close they came to doing just that back in the '70s when it was increasingly clear that the burden of state-social-democracy piled on our national shoulders by Clem Attlee and added to by every government, red or blue, since, simply wasn't working.  The choice was clear, either more socialism and never mind too much about the democracy, or, a return of sorts to the liberal free-market democracy of the 19th century.  Fortunately, just in the nick of time (why is Britain so damned lucky in times of crisis?) the right person came along and, in effect, made up our minds for us.

I am provoked to these thoughts by two posts at Dave Ostler's place.  The first, posted immediately on news of the death of 'that woman', was an open thread and is barely worth trudging through given that it is mostly a mixture of mindless drivel and bile.  The second, authored by Dave Osler himself, came a little later yesterday as Mr. Osler composed his thoughts.  Alas, it was surprisingly thin stuff given the target and from a usually thoughtful man. He likened her to La Pasionaria, a particularly stupid Spanish woman who, in the style of so many '30s communists never looked further than the end of her nose and thus trod through the blood without noticing, and that struck me as a rather thin and glib comparison.  He trotted out (no pun intended!) some particularly trite remarks from that despicable and dimwitted, little shit, Karl Marx, which did not bear more than two seconds consideration before they evaporated - much as Marxism has.

Dave Osler is, I would judge, a man with whom I would enjoy a few beers - although the reverse may not be the case!  He does, in the usual Marxist sense, 'analyse' matters but in writing an epitaph to 'that woman' he seems not just bereft of words but of thoughts also.  In this, he stands as an icon for the Left who to this day remain "bewitched, bothered and bewildered" by the her victories in this country and the outstanding victory of her philosophy worldwide - is it too much of a stretch to propose that perhaps the market reformers in China were encouraged by her?  Anyway, today the Left is best illustrated by that scene in the film of 'Les Mis' when the childish revolutionaries were blasted off their pathetic barricade by a couple of volleys from the artillery.  All that remains today are the comic antics of the Socialist Workers Party, or whatever they call themselves in their current form - like bacteria they keep splitting and evolving into new forms each more useless than the first.  

So, to return to my question, should we be cruel to the Lefties?  Well, it's a 'no brainer', isn't it? - pass me a few stones!

 

The Sunday Rumble: 7.4.13

Gloomy 'Yerdy-Burdle-Durdles':  I watched the first episode of the Swedish police story on BBC4 last night and went to bed even more depressed than usual.  What is it, or, why is it, I wondered, that these Scandinavian 'Yerdy-Burdle-Durdles' always look so depressed and miserable?  I mean, the story line was all about shooting high finance  crooks so you would think there could be a touch of humour to be derived from it, but no, all the detectives in this special investigation squad continued to look as though someone had nicked the best bits from their smörgåsbord!  Actually, I think I may have the answer to this Scandinavian mystery.  Last week even I, your favourite 'Sunny Jim', began to feel distinctly gloomy and it was some time before I realised that it was probably this bloody-bloody arctic weather we have suffered not for days, not for weeks but for months!  I am fed up with having to take about ten minutes to get dressed like an eskimo just to trudge through an icy wind to buy a paper.  Of course, the estimated size of my forthcoming heating bill might have added to my misery.  Oh, and the Scandi thriller failed to thrill.  I'll give it one more chance next Saturday but if it doesn't cheer up then it's adjö!

 

Nippon No 1 . . . but No 1 what, exactly?  Alas, dear reader, with the sort of efficiency which you have grown to expect from D&N I have mis-filed a report I saw during the week that provided a strategic over-view of the Pacific region.  Recently I have become somewhat over-fixated on China and that has led me to ignore Japan.  Big mistake because 'the times they are a-changin'' in Tokyo.  A new government has introduced money printing as an economic tool which has led, naturally, to a devaluation of the Japanese yen which indicates a belligerent attitude towards what is beginning to look like a world-wide currency war.  According to (my memory of!) this report there are also signs of an increase in Japanese military belligerency which is unremarkable given China's swaggering posture in regards to the South China Sea and the lunatic antics of 'Fat Boy' Kim in North Korea.  Apparently many small nations on the Pacific rim actually want Japan to give up its non-aggression policy which has been in place since the end of WWII because they are looking for a counter-weight to Chinese hegemony.  Watch this space  . . .

 

Sir Edward Elgar . . . 'pompous and circumstantial' Edwardian toff and musician?

 

 Nah!  A deeply ambivalent man with a host of insecurities which, naturally, surfaced during his life and in his music which you may, just, detect if you listen to it carefully enough.  Unfortunately, to fully detect the contradictions and the struggles within the man you need to be able to understand the language - music!  I have mentioned before my deep regret at not having learned the two most important languages after English - music and mathematics! This personal deficiency of mine was embarrassingly emphasised by an excellent programme on BBC4 last week investigating Elgar's life in which various emminent musicians were filmed listening to his musical 'language' and obviously hearing things I could not detect.  However, as a Catholic son of lower-middle-class parents born at the heights of the British Empire and in a society in which class was everything he had much to struggle with.  In addition, he was a vain man - see the myriad of carefully composed photographs - and an intensely romantic one as well.  Oddly, although his 'pomp and circumstance' music is taken as a musical portrait of the Victorian Empire and all it stood for there is throughout a vein of deep melancholy.  A man worth studying but, dammit, I wish I could speak the lingo!

 

The lights are going out all over  . . .  er, my house, actually!  And if I find the man responsible for fiitting all those smart, trendy lights that fit flush to the ceilings and which contain titchy little bulbs with two tiny metal prongs which have to be slotted into two equally minute channels which you cannot see, I will personally stick his fingers in a mincing-machine!  In order to get at the dead bulb it is necessary to first remove the chromium 'thingie' which holds the fitting flush to the ceiling.  In removing it, of course, you bring down half the ceiling - well, I do at any rate.  Removing the old and inserting the new-fangled micro-bulbs is a test of intense concentration which must be sustained whilst standing on a wobbly step-ladder as the blood slowly but implacably falls down your arms leaving your hands and fingers looking like they will a day after you are dead!  I am trying to convince the 'Memsahib' of the advantages of torches but so far . . . well, you can imagine!

 

I can't bring myself to write it:  A few days ago I started to write a post entitled "I'm beginning to give up on America".  I couldn't finish it, indeed, I had difficulty knowing where to start.  And that was quite apart from the genuine pain and anguish in even attempting to marshall my thoughts.  I simply cannot envisage a world in which the USA, with all its vices and virtues, was not around as final arbiter.  I suppose British Edwardians living in the '20s and '30s felt much the same as they sensed the rapidly approaching demise of the Empire.  I will not live long enough to see the full effects of the decline and fall of America - thank God.  However, I will try and grapple with the subject later in a proper post.

 

Mark Steyn hones in like a guided missile:  Happily, for you, I cannot improve on Mark Steyn's laser-guided wit which is impeccable even if the target was as soft and large as Maureen Dowd:

He who controls the language shapes the debate: In the same week the Associated Press announced that it would no longer describe illegal immigrants as “illegal immigrants,” the star columnist of the New York Times fretted that the Supreme Court seemed to have misplaced the style book on another fashionable minority. “I am worried,” wrote Maureen Dowd, “about how the justices can properly debate same-sex marriage when some don’t even seem to realize that most Americans use the word ‘gay’ now instead of ‘homosexual.’” She quoted her friend Max Mutchnick, creator of Will & Grace:

“Scalia uses the word ‘homosexual’ the way George Wallace used the word ‘Negro.’ There’s a tone to it. It’s humiliating and hurtful. I don’t think I’m being overly sensitive, merely vigilant.”

For younger readers, George Wallace was a powerful segregationist Democrat. Whoa, don’t be overly sensitive. There’s no “tone” to my use of the word “Democrat”; I don’t mean to be humiliating and hurtful: It’s just what, in pre-sensitive times, we used to call a “fact.”

OUCH!  A direct hit!

 

You choose:  Who would you rather be in a position of influence, an honest but dim teenager with a mouth, or to be precise, a tweeting finger, bigger than her miniscule brain; or Mr. Keith 'Vazeline' Vaz MP, a man who took payments as an MP but failed to declare them, a man who  concealed payments from the Hinduja brothers via his wife's company, a man who made false accusations against a police officer and was suspended from the Commons, a man whose office expenses ranked 45th out of 647 MPs and whose second-home expenses ranked 83 out 647.  Needless to say, he lives in Stanmore, a mere 45-minute journey into Westminster.

Read The Mail for the details of this young lovely who, in so many ways, stands for the contemporary 'youf' of this septic Isle and as an example of our wonderful nationalised edukashun serviss.  The fact that she was placed in a position to be made a fool of is, of course, the result of the sort of soppy-daft, pc-non-think so beloved of our 'glorious leaders'.

This creepy-crawly politician is only stuck to the sole of my shoe because the mostly Asian voters of Leicester East are so dim they actually believe he is going to protect their interests rather than his own.  What's "sucker" in Punjabi?

 

My rumbles for the day are now at an end - you will be glad to know!

 

The Bank Holiday Rumble: 1.4.13

Bank Holiday Mondays always feel like Sundays so I am continuing the Sunday Rumble format in which I will, from time to time during the day, ejaculate - look, I do the jokes round here! - sundry thoughts as and when they stumble into my mind.  That means they will not be the usual beautifully crafted, highly intelligent, literate posts you expect on a normal day - and I won't tell you lot again! 

  

The car washer test:  There seems to be a great deal of fuss being made about Ian Duncan-Smith's so-called welfare 'reforms'.  He has admitted publicly that they will not save a penny which, given that most politicians are lying liars by definition, gives me some small hope.  However, what Duncan-Smith does claim is that his 'reforms' will manage the money more sensibly.  I will offer you all, free of charge 'cos I'm generous like that, a simple test as to the efficacy of these 'reforms'.  I make regular use of one of those car valeting services you see everywhere around these days, and yes, it is because I'm a lazy git who doesn't like getting his hands wet!  I very much admire the boys and girls who work there, and do so with incredible energy in all weathers.  I always make a point of asking where they come from.  The answers cover just about every country in Eastern Europe.  The only country never, not ever, mentioned is England!  And how many Brit 'youfs' and 'youfettes' are in receipt of unemployment benefit, I wonder?  When I see Brits working at these places I shall know that the 'reforms' have worked.

 

I told you, didn't I?  A few days ago I provided you all with an audio link to a very shrewd American businessman who, apart from wanting to sell you his services, also spelled out exactly and precisely why the USA is well on its way to the knacker's yard.  The Americans will owe around $20 trillion by the time Obama ends his reign and they will be utterly dependent on being able to borrow at the cheap rates they enjoy today because their dollar is still the reserve currency for much of the world's trade.  Alas, that is already ending as more and more countries agree to drop the dollar and use their own currencies.  I remind you of this because today the excellent Zero Hedge site is reporting that China and Australia have just agreed to ditch the dollar as the currency for their trade.  This is all part of a Sino-Russian plan, already well on its way to completion, to form a trade bloc based on energy supplies with the sole aim of excluding the USA and, come to that, any of its usual glove puppets, ie, us!  "The times they are a -changin'."

 

Footie fans: the truly brain dead:  From the comfort of my own armchair with a constant supply of hot tea (courtesy of the 'Memsahib' whose hip is coming along nicely, thank you for asking, she no longer has to drag herself along on the floor which slowed up delivery recently) I have just watched Chelsea beat Man United on a freezing cold day.  I suppose, just, that there is some justification to leave the comfort and warmth of your home, to travel sometimes hundreds of miles at vast expense and to pay ticket prices that will keep sundry "muddy-mettled rascals" in the millionaire styles to which they have grown accustomed, but surely having arrived there must be better things to do than just stand there chanting imbecilic slogans over and over and over again.  Or is it their way of trying to prove to themselves that were they to submit to a brain scan the needle would move - just!

 

So farewell then, David Miliband, and good riddance!  So 'Big' Dave slinks off to America to run a charity for a million quid a year because his sneaky little bro' nicked what he considered to be his political entitlement.  Fair enough, I suppose, but today he also resigned as a director of the 'footie' club in his constituency because they have just appointed an Italian lout as manager who once expressed his liking for fascism.  Well, David was shocked, I tell you, shocked and instantly made his feelings clear by resigning - whilst probably thanking the Lord he would never have to visit Sunderland again.  Of course, had the Italian oaf expressed his support for communism, David would not have turned one of his well-groomed hairs despite the fact that communism has murdered roughly twenty or is it thirty times more millions of people than that dilletante Hitler.  Perhaps the fact that his dear old dad had been a lifetime supporter of Stalin, a proper mass-murderer, had something to do with it.

 

Even The Economist puts global warming in the deep freeze:  Thanks to Roger Simon at PJ Media I learn that the mighty Economist mag has dumped global warming:

OVER the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat
while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar. The world added roughly
100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is
about a quarter of all the CO₂ put there by humanity since 1750. And yet, as
James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, observes,
“the five-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade.”

And someone must have opened the windows at their London offices because now they are quoting some Russian eye-ball swiveller predicting the freezing end of the world:

Russian scientist Dr Habibullo Abdussamatov, of the St Petersburg Pulkovo
Astronomical Observatory, painted the Doomsday scenario saying the recent
inclement weather [in Europe] simply proved we were heading towards a frozen
planet. 

Dr Abdussamatov believes Earth was on an “unavoidable advance towards
a deep temperature drop”. The last big freeze, known as the Little Ice Age, was
between 1650 and 1850.

I may be crap at predicting American elections but I did warn all of you to 'go long' on Long Johns!

 

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'Fat Boy' Kim skates towards the very thin ice

My trusty observers at NightWatch tell me that 'Fat Boy' Kim has placed all of his missile, rocket and artillery formations on the highest level of readiness which is a 'war imminent basis' and means they are capable of firing within minutes of receiving the command:

In the four Army Corps that are based north of the Demilitarized Zone, the North has deployed in caves and hardened positions about 10,000 howitzers, guns and multiple round rocket launchers with wartime loads of ammunition. The gun density per kilometer is higher than at the major battles on the Soviet Front in World War II and is, in fact, derived from Soviet artillery doctrine.

No-one seems to believe that he really wants war but explanations for his apparently lunatic behaviour vary.  The shrewdest, I think, was a man on Sky News who suggested that his main aim was to attract the attention of President Aloof - ooops, sorry - President Obama and force him into one-to-one negotiations over a new settlement for the Korean peninsular.  This, of course, will give Kim's reputation a tremendous boost and as any settlement will probably include large dollops of American aid for which North Korea is desperate, that will add even more 'lustre to his cluster'!

For once, Obama will be right to remain aloof.  This is primarily a South Korean, Japanese and Chinese problem.  Kim is like a batty old man living in a community who spends all day and night shouting obscenities at the neighbours and threatening to kill them all.  It is up to the neighbours to decide amongst themselves what to do about him - they, after all, have most to lose.

In the meantime, of course, in such a state of high tension the possibility of some soldier somewhere along the border making a mistake and starting a war is a very great possibility.

 

The light at the end of the tunnel is an express train coming fast!

I rarely urge my readers to do anything but in this case I am jumping up and down and waving my arms by way of encouragement - particularly if you are one of my American readers.  What I want you to do, is settle down in a comfy chair with a cup of good coffee - and a very large Scotch - and spend an hour listening to a man with a tale to tell.  He is American and also a businessman so, as you will have guessed, there is a sales pitch but happily that is kept to the very end and may be avoided if so desired.  However, it is the first 50 minutes or so that is riveting and in which he describes exactly and precisely why the USA is rapidly approaching a major catastrophe that will dwarf the recent bank collapses. 

It is, or should be, of major concern to us 'over here' because, as the old saying has it, 'if they sniff we catch a cold'.  However, it seems almost inevitable that this time they are going down not with a sniff but with double pneumonia!  The warning comes in the form of an audio presentation so all you have to do is listen - and gulp at your Scotch.  The central premise is simple.  The American government is printing dollars at eye-watering levels never before seen in their history.  They are doing this in the confident knowledge that because the dollar is the world's reserve currency used by nations everywhere to conduct their business, there will be no ill effects from this money-printing exercise because the dollar will be in constant demand.  Any minute now they, the American government, are about to find out that the dollar has ceased to be a reserve currency for the simple reason that nobody trusts it any more.  When that happens you can say goodbye, America and hello, Zimbabwe!

The effects of a total crash in the value of the dollar on a heavily-armed American society facing an even more heavily-armed government do not bear thinking about.  The gentleman giving the presentation has not convinced me of anything new because I have long festered on my suspicion that American national debt is unsustainable - and today, and for the foreseeable future, that debt can and will only get bigger.  I hasten to add that this is not entirely the fault of the Obama administration, they are simply the last in a long line of 'spendaholic' governments.  By the time Obama leaves office, most experts reckon the debt will have reached $20 trillion.  There are many people in his administration who will be delighted at that state of affairs and look forward with revolutionary fervour to a breakdown in civic society when the bloated chickens come home to roost.

Already China is discreetly easing itself out of dollar holdings.  They are doing it slowly because they hold too much to want to cause a panic.  However what they, and many other nations are doing, is to set up currency agreements which will allow the participants to do their business in currencies other than the dollar.  This alone will be enough to gradually devalue the dollar as you can see from this 10 year chart, courtesy of www.tradingeconomics:

Just look where it was ten years ago and where it is today.  Think of it in reverse, like the water rising slowly and inexorably up inside the SS Titanic!   It is in the nature of these things that it is only at the last minute that suddenly the water rushes in and the ship turns turtle in minutes.   As for my own poor 'septic Isle' I would like to think that the great minds at work in our Treasury under the guidance of our very own wise and shrewd Chancellor of the Exchequer(!) are already surreptitiously getting out of the dollar, of which they own about 135 billion, and setting our nation up ready for the coming financial apocalypse - but I don't because they ain't!

Please do give it a listen: 

http://pro.stansberryresearch.com/1303EOASALYN/LPSIP3XA/

I am grateful to PJ Media for the link

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America's Debt to Income Ratio as Compared with Other Countries

Is China's foreign policy inscrutable because it doesn't exist?

I am grateful to my regular commenter, JK, for sending me a link to an article in the NYTimes written by Prof. Zheng Wang, an expert on foreign policy matters, particularly those of China.  In it, he suggests that part of the problem with China's foreign policy is that it does not exist!  Thinking about it and bearing in mind the last century or two in which, on good days, China was only a small and divided player in strictly regional affairs, adn on bad days, was a wrecked and raped plaything of much greater players on the international scene.  Thus, it is hardly surprising that its sudden rise to global domination leaves it somewhat bewildered as it looks about it from on high and wonders what in hell to do!

Prof. Zheng indorms us that none of the members of the very top standing committees who rule China have any experience in foreign policy.  In any case, he reminds us, their main, indeed, their imperative, concern is how to maintain 'Communist' Party control of a rapidly acquisitive population, that is, a population that seeks not only prosperity but also political power of a sort that is in direct opposition to the existing one party state.  Naturally, the government will, from time to time, use foreign issues in the time honoured way as a means to whip up nationalist fervour, but mostly this is confined to 'neighbourhood' issues like control of the South China Seas.

When it comes to grand strategic plans for China's place in a global context there appears to be a vacuum!  This is dangerous in that we have already suffered with the USA blundering from one folly to another and no clear idea on direction or purpose.  The thought of a totally inexperienced China doing the same does not bear contemplation.  Rather sensibly, they appear to be aware of their shortcomings and - for the moment! - they are not exerting themselves in any one particular direction.  However, as a wise man once said, "Stick around, you ain't seen nuthin' yet!"

 

Feeling happy, are you?

Honestly, the BBC should come with a government health warning!  Driving home today - after my usual early morning swim - God I'm good! - I heard the news presenter say that today was the United Nations' World Happiness Day.  I very nearly drove off the road!  Apparently, this prize collection of crooks, thieves, murderers and rapists believe that on one day a year governments should concentrate their thoughts on what they can do to make their citizens happier - and, no, mass suicide on their part is not an option.  Even so, and in line with my policy of always trying to be helpful and positive, they might like to make a start by questioning the delegate from North Korea because, according to my faithful observers at NightWatch, 'Fat Boy Kim' is taking his hobby of 'playing soldiers' to an extreme degree.  The whole country is close to being on a maximum 'war footing' basis as his military undertake nationwide exercises which means that all production and distribution of food stuffs for the civilian population come to a halt.  Reports from The Daily NK:

[C]onfirm that a partial mobilization of manpower has occurred since 11 March, unlike any in a long time. The only work teams still functioning are those devoted to goods for the armed forces. Production teams that make goods for civilians are participating in or are supporting the training.

Food allocations are based on production output by workers.  Closure of a production line for military training terminates food allocations for the workers on that line. Mobilized workers are fed by the army but their families at home must fend for themselves or receive special allocations from the government or pilfered food from the army. The contacts in North Korea report serious food shortages among the families of the mobilized workers, some of whom have threatened protests. In one major city on the China border, the government made a special allocation to avert a riot.

Doesn't sound like life is a barrel of laughs in North Korea and I wasn't surprised to hear another report on the radio to the effect that huge numbers of North Korean children are showing signs of debilitation and illness due to malnutrition.  If anyone deserves a dose of malnutrition it's 'Fat Boy Kim'!

 

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The Sunday Rumble: 17.03.13

Another Sunday rumble, or perhaps 'grumble' is a better word, as I awake to yet more global warming falling gently from an iron grey sky and settling nicely, thank you for asking!  As usual, I shall add to this litany of moans and groans as the day goes on, so if you are actually feeling rather happy today, then read no further!

'And then they came for your bank savings':  So now you know, and you must be deaf, dumb, blind and lacking a sense of smell if you didn't know it already, that to the apparatchiks who run the Berlin-Brussels axis nothing is sacred, least of all your hard-earned savings which you have entrusted to your local bank.  The Cypriots have just found that out - the hard way - with banks closed until Tuesday whilst the authorities rip off up to 10% of their savings.  Of course, they put it about that what they're really after is the untaxed il-gotten gains of various Russian crooks oligarchs who decided that Cyprus with its, er, Mediterranean banking laws was a haven of first resort.  Call me 'Mr. Cynical' but I wonder how much Russian 'moolah' was shifted electronically on Wednesday and Thursday when, in return for a nice bung, various apparatchiks quietly tipped them the wink?

Mother Russia is a murderous old bitch!  When I read Tom Rob Smith's best-selling book, Child 44, I promised myself never to read another book by him on the subject of Russia - well, I didn't have to really because Child 44 nauseated me - not, I hasten to add, that Mr. Smith isn't a first-rate writer, he's terrific!  He seems to capture exactly the fear and loathing that existed within Stalin's Soviet Union in which everyone is seeking either to denounce others, or desperately trying not to be denounced themselves.  Anyway, being a hopeless 'bookaholic' I wasn't too surprised to find that somehow, in some mysterious way - nuffin' to do wiv me, honest guv! - someone had slipped a copy of his book Agent 6 into my shopping bag.  I only reached page 25 and already I could feel the nausea returning - when will I ever learn?  Anyway, I was reminded of this by a review at The Atlantic by Benjamin Schwartz of a book called Moscow 1937 written by Prof. Karl Schlögel:

Schlögel’s book is a fragmentary yet meticulous social history of Moscow in the grip of the Great Terror—the period from the summer of 1936 to the end of 1938, when the already sanguinary Bolshevik regime let loose on itself its apparatus of suppression, purging, in waves, all Soviet institutions and at all levels of society, from the nomenklatura, the highest echelons of administrative, cultural, and scientific life, through the high command of the Red Army, to the engineers and apparatchiks, down to the factory workers and peasants. It is an almost impossibly rich masterpiece. [...]

In this chapter and throughout his book, Schlögel is the master of the chilling counterpoint. He subtly makes clear to readers that the 1936 Directory [the equivalent of our Dictionary of National Biography] is brimming with the names of people destined for the abattoir, and he notes that this edition of the Directory was, perforce, the final one: “No editorial board could have kept pace with the frantic rate at which people were driven from their posts and destroyed while their places were taken by others.” Completed on the eve of the Terror, this last Directory “encapsulates a moment in time in which the accusers and the accused, the perpetrators and the victims, the executioners and the executed of the morrow, still sit side by side.”

Once again, and not for the first time, I fall to my knees and thank the Gods of Good Fortune that I was born English!

There's no fool like an educated fool:  And here I give you - no, no, please, there's no charge and he's all yours - Prof. Geoffrey Miller, not just a fool but a dangerous one, to boot.  In a (thankfully) short article at Edge, this eye-swivelling maniac urges on us the advantages of Chinese eugenics:

There is unusually close cooperation in China between government, academia, medicine, education, media, parents, and consumerism in promoting a utopian Han ethno-state. Given what I understand of evolutionary behavior genetics, I expect—and hope—that they will succeed. The welfare and happiness of the world's most populous country depends upon it.

I cannot be bothered to take up all the hideous nonsense this man writes but I would remind him that there is nothing unusual about "close cooperation in China" because, you stupid, master-race theorist, it's a one party dictatorship in which everyone does what they're told - or else - so if you admire it that much, Prof. Miller, why don't you fuck off and live there!  (Apologies for my language but I haven't read this sort of vile vomit since the late Herr Hitler did us all a favour and topped himself!)

How are your alkenones hanging?  I ask, not that I have the remotest idea what an 'alkenode' is when it's at home, but because some less-than-scientific HAF called Marcott has just published a paper indicating 'The Hockey Stick' of all 'hockey sticks'!  He and his little helpers base their record of galloping global warming in the last century by using ocean core samples as proxies.  Very good, you might think, and quite rightly you will be alarmed at the way that temperatures have rocketed up, up and away such that the end of the world really must be nigh.  Unfortunately, that meddlesome nuisance, Steve McIntyre, decided to take a closer look and - whodathunkit? - it appears that the HAFs concerned altered the dates of some of their data.  This, shall we call it, carelessness with regard to dates had rather a significant result, as this diagram, courtesy of McIntyre's Climate Audit site shows:

 

'Les flics' finally spiral out of action:  Yes, yes, I know it's a rather heavy-handed sub-title but last night Spiral 4 came to an end on BBC4 which is a personal catastrophe for me because the other two women in my life will be no more - unless they bring it back for a fifth serial.  You have days left to watch most of the episodes on your I-Player-thingie (whatever that it is) or perhaps there are DVD sets available.  Most of the time I had only the vaguest idea of what was going on in the series - so no change there, then! -  but I didn't care just so long as my two ladies kept appearing.  First, Caroline Proust whom I hope fervently will one day handcuff me and throw away the key!

 

And then there is the sexiest 'lawyer' I have ever come across - no, I admit, not a hard test - the gorgeous Audrey Fleurot.  Whenever I am in legal trouble, and assuming that Ms. Anna Raccoon is unavailable, then this is the lady I want to defend me - and quite honestly I won't care very much if I lose!

Now I have a problem!  What on earth am I going to do with my empty Saturday nights?

 

Zis iss ein German yoke:  Which probably means you won't get it!  However, as the new Gauleiters of Greater Germany (er, that's Europe to you and me) set about stealing money from people's bank accounts in order to teach them fiscal discipline so that they can be loaned more money - vich zey vill pay back on time viz interest - sorry, that's enough cod German - an article on the DW.de site will give you a smile.  According to the story:

Highly indebted, without access to capital, viewed suspiciously by creditors - . Half the country's debts were canceled 60 years ago this week - the foundation of the "economic miracle." [...]

It was only with the London Debt Agreement of 1953 that the German economy was given room to breathe again, says historian Ursula Rombeck-Jaschinski of Stuttgart University: "One could even argue that the economic miracle would have been impossible without the debt agreement."

Ah, yes, now remind me, what exactly is the German for 'don't do as we did just do as we tell you - or you will be shot'?

 

I am now out of rumbles for today!

 

A "Chinese dream", or a nightmare?

The new president of China,  Xi Jinping, has delivered his equivalent of a 'state of the union' speech in which he lays down the guiding aims for the next ten years of his administration.  It is summed up in the phrase "A Chinese Dream".  As always with these elliptical statements it is not easy to be definitive as to how this Chinese dream is to be achieved or even, in detailed terms, what it actually is.  I suppose you could sum it up as 'get richer, get stronger'!  However, what is interesting, according to my alert observers at NightWatch, is that he first gave a  virtually unreported version of this speech to the military.  They were encouraged to undertake a period of intense re-education so that all military personnel were aware of the aim which is "to win in war", but also, and rather oddly to my occidental eyes, they were also encouraged to maintain "good behaviour"!  I gather this mean something more than the British equivalent of telling the troops to stop having punch-ups on a Saturday night!  In Chinese terms, which can only be read between the lines, it implies that the rule of the Communist Party of China over the miltary is, and will remain, absolute. 

I recommend Andrew Erickson to anyone seeking a fairly balanced analysis of Chinese military capabilities.  He points out that although the Chinese military budget has increased every year (with one exception) for the last 20 years, the latest increase in terms of a percentage of the total government budget is actually slightly less.  Also, he reminds us that whilst the Chinese are able to apply overwhelming force in or around their vicinity, they are still nowhere near the size of the American military which, because of its global interests, is spread further but thinner.

On the civilian front, Chairman Xi faces even greater problems.  Anthony Bolton, a well-known investor in Chinese markets, put it this way in The Telegraph:

“There is a new generation of internationally educated, internet-informed
individuals who will push for reforms,” he said. “They are aware of the
realities of their country and their government in a way that no previous
generation has been. The people will want a say.”

There is not too much difficulty in maintaining power in an autocratic, one party dictatorship, especially if you have hit upon state capitalism as a means of increasing wealth for your people.  However, beyond a certain point, the people begin to yearn for other things besides just houses and holidays.  Increasingly, they grow irritated by the corruption which always attends state-run enterprises and they can become downright angry at the heavy-handed clout of authorities in their towns and villages.  Today, courtesy of the internet they can see and read and hear that there are other ways and other systems of government.

So Chairman Xi has a delicate path to tread.  I gain an impression, very slight and il-informed, obviously, that Chairman Xi is rather an intelligent man who will be determined but careful in pursuit of his goals.  I just hope the White House contains equal intelligence!

 

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2,592 for, 1 against: so who DIDN'T vote Xi Jinping for President?

Chinese People Must Define Their Own Dream

Korean Konflict or Kon Trick?

Sorry about the even-more-peurile-than-normal heading to this post but the military temperature is rising on the Korean peninsular.  According to my trusty, old warriors at NightWatch the bellicosity from the North Koreans has reached levels not seen since 1988.  Not only have they unilaterally abrogated the ceasefire set in place at the end of the last Korean war but now their government-controlled media are ratcheting up the sense of crisis amongst their own people, warning them of imminent war.  'Fat Boy' Kim has paid an official visit to the artillery units which fired on the off-shore Islands owned by South Korea a few years ago.  The NightWatch boys and girls reckon that the North Koreans will now be in a high state of readiness for war with all ICBMs loaded and ready to fire on the word of command.

Meanwhile, back in Beijing, the silence is deafening!  I cannot believe they are happy about the possibility of a war - especially a nuclear war - breaking out on their borders.  The leadership in China maintains its political control via the constant increase in trade and wealth shared amongst its people.  If that is disrupted and zillions of Chinese suddenly loose jobs and incomes they have become used to, the government will quickly be in trouble.

The problem with 'Fat Boy' Kim's antics is that there are too many actors involved - in the two Koreas, in Beijing, in Washington and Tokyo, and thus the chances of mistakes and misapprehensions increases hugely.  However, perhaps now, people will realise the dangers of loonies being allowed to 'go nuclear' - and they do not come much loonier than those in Tehran - except possibly in Pyongyang!

 

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What is going on in Cloud Cuckoo Land?

Like old men everywhere I am constantly warning of troubles to come but the good news is that my forecasting skills are, shall we say?, negligible verging on downright incompetent - yes, that sums it up nicely!  Perhaps it is my daily 'intrep' from those shadowy chaps at NightWatch that is giving me increasingly bad vibes from the 'People's Democratic Loony-bin' that is North Korea.  Under the leadership, if that is quite the word, of 'Kim Bill-ee-Bun-ter', the fat teenager who allegedly runs the asylum, North Korea has poked its greatest supporter, the Chinese, not in one but in both eyes by firing off an ICBM and then letting off an A-bomb.  The Chinese appear helpless to control this teen-age hooligan and therefore those who might be seriously damaged by his yobbish behaviour, the South Koreans, are beginning to look hard at defending themselves:

South Korea: Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman Army Major General Kim Yong-hyun warned on 6 March, "If North Korea carries out provocations that threaten the lives and safety of South Koreans, our military will carry out strong and resolute retaliations."

The South Korean statement advised that if provoked by North Korea, the South would attack the North's 'command leadership.'

Meanwhile, Japanese obsevers have noted that the North Korean authorities have begun camouflaging civilian lorries, buses and cars, an activity that could indicate the possibility of war.  However, the North Koreans are adept at ratcheting up tension in order to win concessions and this might just be another example of it.  However, Kim Jong Un is a very young man whose domestic position is not entirely secure and one wonders if he has the skill to ride the one-wheeled bike without falling off - and taking a few million people with him!

 

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'A farewell to arms'

A depressingly accurate editorial in this week's 'Speccie' (no link to the editorial) entitled "Little Britain".  Perhaps 'Miniscule Titchy Britain' might have been even more accurate.  The writing on the wall, or perhaps, the writing down of our armed forces, has been evident since 'Dave' cut the defence budget but simultaneously increased the Foreign Aid budget by exactly the same amount.  What bullets will not achieve, apparently bedpans and blankets will!  Anyway, it is now clear that it is not just that Britain has no appetite for foreign adventures/projecting power (you choose!), the fact is that today we are incapable of it.  The French, with a little help from their friends(!), managed to fly a few troops to Mali in order to shoot up some 'Fuzzie-wuzzies' who quickly ran away but who, once reorganised, now appear to be coming back.  In the meantime, nos chers alliés, having run out of real bombs, were forced to drop concrete bombs during their recent Malian campaign.  And 'Dave', with all the dexterity of a card-sharp, has now reversed his earlier policy by ear-marking part of the Aid budget to the military.  By jingo, it's this sort of clear, decisive thinking that has got us where we are today! 

We're fucked, the French are fucked, NATO is fucked - and Obama doesn't give a fuck!  He, of course and not without cause, is fed up with defending Europeans who refuse to cough up a reasonable amount of dosh for the service provided, and anyway he has turned away to face what he considers to be a truly grand strategic problem - China.  Given the potential riches already flowing from shale oil, his interest in the Middle East is also waning.  If Europe is still highly dependent on Arab oil then, he will let it be known, let them take on the burden of providing the security for it.  It is now clear beyond doubt that he has no intention of lifting a finger to stop Iran gaining nuclear capability.  All those many Europeans and Brits who moaned and groaned about 'irresponsible American adventurism' now have what they wished for.  Let's hope they enjoy it!

 

Do you have that eerie feeling that things are too quiet?

Please don't misunderstand, I'm not knocking quiet times, I like them - boring is good in my book, especially when it applies to international affairs.  But still, somehow, in some way, it don't feel right!

Take Europe for example.  Nothing has changed fundamentally, half of them are flat broke, they haven't managed to take even faltering steps towards unification, and yet the markets seem supine.  Sky News are running some adverts for a forthcoming report on conditions in Spain and the other 'Mediterranean' countries and they are truly appalling.  Whole families sitting linked arm to arm round their homes in an effort to thwart the bailiffs coming to repossess them.  I do realise that it is necessary to take statistics from such places with due caution but on the other hand all reports indicate massive youth unemployment of the sort that set off revolutions in countries on the southern side of the Med.  And yet ... and yet ... I read somewhere in the last few (for me, hectic!) days a report based on polling evidence that although the populations concerned - Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Irish - are on the rack, support for remaining inside Europe and the euro is still strong.  Apparently they are all terrified of reverting back to their own currencies which is, of course, their only real chance of prospering again reasonably quickly.  They might not like the German boot on their necks but they are prepared to shut their eyes and kiss it!

Meanwhile, over on the other side of the globe - thank God! - the North Koreans are proving yet again that the loonies are in charge of the asylum, first firing an ICBM and then letting off a nuclear firework.  Happily, for the moment at any rate, this seems to be more of a Chinese problem than anyone else's - although South Koreans and Japanese might think differently!  It is now crystal clear that either China is unable to control N. Korea, or, is secretly quite happy for them to kick sand in the face of their opponents who are mostly China's opponents as well.  My trusty 'intel operators' at NightWatch sum it up thus:

US and Allied deterrence measures have prevented war for six decades, but lately have had no measurable influence in deterring North Korean provocations, preventing the development of nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems or in stopping sales of North Korean missiles and conventional weapons to Pakistan, Iran, Syria and Libya. The US also has shown itself recently to be slow or unable to respond to provocations in a timely fashion. As a result, the new North Korean leader seems less intimidated by the US than were his forbears.

China cannot or will not restrain North Korea. [My emphasis]

What is even more worrying is that the pompous, ignorant and arrogant dimwit in the White House appears to have no concerns and instead concentrates what passes for his mind on how to spend more and yet more dollars he does not possess on utter futilities like so-called 'green industries'.  Even if 'sequestration' does not occur in a few weeks, he still intends to slash and burn defence spending whilst he diverts funds towards the Democrat voters of America.  In the meantime, North Korea either sells to, or advises on, nuclear weaponry and delivery systems to every enemy of the USA, Iran being one of the first in the queue.  Back in Washington, 'Mr. Smug 'n' Mighty', with his nose raised, concentrates on delivering ponderous speeches concerned almost totally with American domestic politics.  He is Wilson and Roosevelt combined.

See what I mean?  It's all just too damned quiet!

 

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Why do I instantly recoil in horror at this?

Sometimes you learn that the future is now!  Thus it is with national eugenics which, whilst it once enjoyed intellectual popularity here amongst the Left, fell into disrepute when the national socialist Adolph Hitler actually put it into practice with his dreams of a new Germanic master-race.  But no idea, once it is out of the bag and however bad it is, can be quite put to death, and this particular monster has arisen again, this time in China according to an article in Edge by Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist.  If you have any doubts or prejudices concerning people who call themselves 'evolutionary psychologists', then this will confirm them in spades!

According to Mr. Miller: 

But crucially, Comprehensive National Power also includes "biopower": creating the world's highest-quality human capital in terms of the Chinese population's genes, health, and education (see Governing China's Population by Susan Greenhalgh and Edwin Winkler).

         Chinese biopower has ancient roots in the concept of "yousheng" ("good         birth"—which has the same literal meaning as "eugenics"). For a thousand         years, China has been ruled by a cognitive meritocracy selected through the         highly competitive imperial exams. The brightest young men became the         scholar-officials who ruled the masses, amassed wealth, attracted multiple wives,         and had more children. The current "gaokao" exams for university admission,         taken by more than 10 million young Chinese per year, are just the updated         version of these imperial exams—the route to educational, occupation, financial,         and marital success. With the relaxation of the one-child policy, wealthier couples         can now pay a "social fostering fee" (shehui fuyangfei) to have an extra child,         restoring China's traditional link between intelligence, education, wealth, and         reproductive success.

        [Sorry the above quotation will not layout properly]

 

Needless to say, this goes hand-in-hand with a 1995 law which forbids people with heritable mental or physical disorders from marrying.   Mr. Miller, damn his eyes, is not unsympathetic and sneers at the likely response from those existing civilisations still bearing the remnants of a Judeo-Christian tradition:

My real worry is the Western response. The most likely response, given Euro-American ideological biases, would be a bioethical panic that leads to criticism of Chinese population policy with the same self-righteous hypocrisy that we have shown in criticizing various Chinese socio-cultural policies. But the global stakes are too high for us to act that stupidly and short-sightedly. A more mature response would be based on mutual civilizational respect, asking—what can we learn from what the Chinese are doing, how can we help them, and how can they help us to keep up as they create their brave new world? 

My only response to Mr. Miller is to repeat the words of a colonel of a very distinguished cavalry regiment writing his confidential report on a young subaltern: "I would hesitate to breed from this officer."  Likewise, with Mr. Miller! 

 

Message to America: DON'T GIVE UP YOUR GUNS!

I beg you, America, do not, under any circumstances, fall for the blandishments, the pleadings, the tearful implorings, the constant repetition of SHLOCK-HORROR stories, the stern rebukes from your 'Mr. Pompous President', and allow those lying-liar government reptiles to take away your 2nd Amendment right to bear arms.  The Statists want you to be helpless and totally in their thrall.  They know that if they can disarm the American population a huge barrier to their ambitions will be removed.  Of course, it goes without saying that were you to give up the right to bear arms the state will not protect you, anymore than the Norwegian state protected its citizens this year, or Her Majesty's government protected her subjects at Dunblane and Hungerford.  Governments are always and forever useless and untrustworthy.  They will not 'ban guns' they will simply stop you from owning them whilst the evil and the mad will continue to buy and sell them at their leisure.  If you doubt me, move to Chicago!

If some lunatic takes it into his or her head to kill as many people as possible they will find a way even if they cannot lay hands on a gun - a vehicle driven into a crowd will do the job nicely but I doubt that there will then be calls to ban vehicles by 'President Humbug' particularly as he and his government are now the principal shareholders in General Motors!  The best defence against killers attempting mass murder with a fire-arm or anything else is to have plenty of armed people.  One man with a concealed weapon would have saved several of the people killed around that Congresswoman who was shot and wounded recently.  If you want some concrete examples of how mass shootings were thwarted by legally armed citizens then take a look at the GunWatch site.

Above all, America, just remember that if you are armed you have a very slight chance of defending yourself, not just against a malefactor, but against a rabid state determined to control every aspect of your lives!

(This ends my weekly broadcast to the American people who I know really appreciate my advice!)

 ADDITIONAL:  This is hot off the presses - er, well, actually, it was a few days ago but what with my  social life serious studies I missed the reference at IHTM to a story in the Internation Herald Tribune in which China urges America to quickly adopt strong gun control measures.  Well, they would, wouldn't they?!  Needless to say, in law-abiding, peaceful China no-one but the government has the right to bear arms.  Consequently, and with bitter irony, the story also reports that on the same Friday as the American massacre, a madman in Henan Province stabbed 22 children with a knife and wounded an 85-year old lady.  Apparently, he failed to kill any of them but several had fingers and ears cut off.  Odd, isn't it, when you really need a policeman with a big gun you can never find one!

 AN ADDITIONAL ADD-ON!  In the comments below, my e-pal, 'DM', links to an excellent, must read article in The Telegraph by Brendan O'Neill who has very pertinent comments to make concerning the East-West coast and mainly metropolitan-based animus against middle, and mostly Southern, America when it comes to gun laws. 

Frack me - this is serious!

It’s hard enough predicting the future but it’s just as hard predicting the outcome when the future becomes the now!  I confess to suffering severe ‘gobsmack’ when I read the editorial in the current edition of The Spectator (no link to the actual piece).  The opening paragraph gives you your first smack – unless you are an energy expert:

For decades, America has dreamed about becoming self-sufficient in terms of energy, and ending its reliance on unsavoury Arab regimes.  Now this dream seems within reach.  The International Energy Agency this week forecast that America is undergoing a fuel revolution, and that it will overtake Saudi Arabia to become the world’s biggest oil producer by the end of this decade.  [My emphasis]  By 2035, America should be able to meet all of its own energy needs.  Energy prices are already plummeting and global manufacturers have started to pullout of Europe and relocate to the southern states to cut bills.  An economic miracle is on the way.

This arises from the enormous and so far barely tapped shale oil fields from which oil and gas can be extracted by 'fracking', the use of water under immense pressure.  I confess immediately my inability to work out the full implications of this.  The Spectator helps by reminding us that the US Navy spends $80 billion – I’ll repeat that, shall I? - $80 billion a year patrolling the sea lanes in the Gulf in order to protect the free flow of oil.  How long they will keep that up when they have no need of the wretched stuff is anyone’s guess?  Of course, we will still need it, as will the Europeans, bedeviled as we are by a Green lobby whose stupidity is only exceeded by its wickedness.  Thus, we will be spending more and yet more on ridiculous and mostly useless wind farms and other fantasies from the ‘Green Fruitcake Fraternity’ as they do everything in their not inconsiderable power to stop any efforts to exploit the shale oil reserves in Lancashire which are lying there like a golden lake.

Still, it’s an ill wind that fails to blow off someone’s hat and give us all a laugh so two sets of rascals will feel a chill.  Obviously some of the worst regimes in the Middle East will come under enormous pressure as revenues drop, most especially, Iran.  Also, that nice Mr. ‘Pouty’ Putin, who live off the hog of petrodollars flowing in from the Caspian could slowly but inexorably find himself – and his people – reliving austerity times just when the Russian people were beginning to enjoy the ‘Good Life’.

Meanwhile, according to The Spectator, international companies are ‘up and offing’ to America to take advantage of cheap energy whilst ‘Dim’ Dave remains wedded to soppy Green policies that will ruin us all.  It is no consolation to know that the Germans are in an even bigger bugger's muddle over energy policy than us!  In the meantime China will take full advantage of lower energy costs and grow even more powerful so we must be grateful that if the USA does not turn fully socialist it should be able to keep ahead of China.

No doubt there are other eventualities and I just hope that in the West there are some clever and sophisticated geo-strategists working them out.  Well, a man can hope, can't he?

 

'Glasnost', China-style!

So the suits 'wunnit'!  In other words, one lot of suited, smiling, smiling, smiling men (God, how they smile!) with died black hair have taken over from another bunch of suited men who didn't smile quite so much.  At least the suits were standardised American-style politician suits, not those faux-pleb suits the old Maoists used to affect, so that's an improvement  So what's changed?

Well, the first thing that has changed is that this lot have a perfect shit-storm of problems to deal with unlike their predecessors who simply dumped some of the worst aspects of Marxism and after allowing a bit of pseudo-capitalism to operate they then sat back and watched the money roll in. I call it 'pseudo-capitalism' because of course it was really an uneasy mixture of state-capitalism on the Hitler/Putin model allied with good (or do I mean 'bad'?), old-fashioned gangsterism.  It is a sort of vicious, self-deluding opiate, rather like the so-called 'quantitative easing' we are getting addicted to, which looks good, feels good and by golly - it leaves you feeling like shit!

About twenty years ago you could have pointed to the mass of the Chinese people - and, boy, are there ever masses of them! - and summed them up accurately as an example of a lumpen proletariat.  No doubt, like the rest of humanity, they had their wants and desires and hopes but there was absolutely no chance of them getting any of it so they just concentrated on staying alive.  But now, courtesy of pseudo-capitalism, they have been inundated with baubles, bangles and beads.  And now - they want more.  And more.  And still more!  And the ones who haven't yet had their share but have seen the others enjoying theirs, want it,too, like now, or better still - yesterday!  Even a hint that this golden stream might dry to a dribble will provoke an anger that the men in suits would be well advised to avoid.

As always, the times they are a-changin', and the new men in their new suits will have to grapple with the problems that arise when the money does not flow in at the rate they, and their people, expect.  For a start, they will have to grip the gangsters and wring out of them the money that belongs to China.  By and large and on the whole, gangsters don't care for that sort of thing, and when a nation is riddled from top to bottom with corruption it might be difficult for the 'suits' to find allies in their efforts to enforce a tax-collecting policy.  Equally difficult is the fact that their state-controlled banks are all technically broke - just like ours! - and when the government - any government - is beginningto feel the pinch, that's the last thing you want to have to deal with.

The other vociferous demand of 'The People' (dread words, especially to a political party who claim to represent them) is that universal irritant to politicans everywhere - freedom.  Of course, in these early days, and in a country as huge as China, the yearnings for liberty are inchoate - but they are growing with the help of the internet.  As John Simpson reported from the 18th Congress of the CCP in this week's Spectator - a corker edition, by the way! - it all took him back nearly 25 years to the past:

And it was then, with a uniformed security guard watching me tolerantly, that I started to get a flashback. Somewhere, some time, I’d done this before. Then I remembered. It was Moscow: the Kremlin conference hall on 28 June 1988, the opening of the 19th Conference of the Soviet Communist Party. The assembled delegates were there to work out what on earth to do. Three years later, of course, history decided for them, and tipped the whole lot into its capacious dustbin.

Simpson's article is well worth reading in full.  Whether Xi Jinping will do any better than Mikhail Gorbachev no one can tell.  All I know for certain is that I would not want his job for, er, all the tea in China!

 

AMERICA! By the LEFT - quick march!

You see, I told you, didn’t I, you wouldn’t listen but I was absolutely right – I am a prat!

Well, Obama won and the outlook is grim.  His apparatchiks will be itching to ram through yet more big spending programmes which will promise heaven today for their supporters in the black, Hispanic and college-educated women sectors of the electorate who, against the forecasts, actually turned out for him.  The administration has already bought the industrial rust belt with their auto bail-outs and that helped them clinch the swing States.  Expect more of the same – because it works – at the ballot box!  By the time of the next election the full costs of ‘Obamacare’ will be more apparent and borrowing and taxing will have to increase to pay for it despite the national debt already being at dizzy and previously unimaginable heights - $16 trillion the last time I looked. 

The only cut back in American government spending will be in the military, always an easy target.  In itself that is not a bad thing.  One senses that both the services themselves and, even more so, the industrial conglomerates behind them are more than somewhat swollen.  However, it depends on where the cuts are made.  Numbers can probably be reduced but high-tech research cannot – and that comes very expensive!  It is necessary to remember at all times that many of the people who surround Obama will not care if a financial crisis hits America, quite the opposite, they would welcome it.  Emergencies require emergency powers, and once enacted and seized they are not lightly given up.

However, the worst is yet to come.  As I have mentioned before, this next term will almost certainly provide Obama with one or two chances to pick Left-wing anti-constitutional judges to the Supreme Court and that will set the political ground rules for the next generation.  In addition, of course, he will be cramming the Federal courts with similar activist judges to entrench his socialist agenda.  Even if some bright, new, young Republican candidate wins the next election he will find himself hogtied by the courts.

Finally, two foreign powers will be pleased with the result – Iran and China.  The Iranians will be delighted that a clearly anti-Israeli president remains in the White House and can be relied upon to provide Netanyahu with minimal support in any attempt to attack Iran’s nuclear sites.  In those circumstances, whether Netanyahu and his government still have the determination to proceed remains to be seen.  The other smiles at this result will be seen in Beijing, where smiles are in short supply!  They will now feel more able to ratchet up the pressure in the South China Sea confident in the knowledge that the very last thing this particular president wants is a confrontation.

The only good thing to come out of this whole disaster is that hopefully I will never hear another Yank talking about “American exeptionalism”.  It was never true in the first place and now it has been shown to be so.  Roughly half the American population rather likes the idea of democratic socialism, government hand-outs and a dependency culture, just like us lot ‘over here’.  In fact, America, why don’t you join the European Union?

Even by my standards that last post was rubbish!

Put it down to Monday morning blues but that last post of mine was a particularly thoughtless piece of grunt-and-grumble.  If one is minded, as I frequently am, to rip into our democracy and its political practitioners then the very least one could do is to come up with something better.  Alas, from time to time I have pondered upon it but produced exactly nothing.  The Romantic in me sometimes yearns for those mythical days when only gentlemen of means went into parliament because they could afford to and thus, in theory, they ruled without personal gain being a priority.  However, the fact is that even in those so-called ‘halcyon’ days, had I been alive and as cantankerous as I am now, then I would have grunted and grumbled in exactly the same way.  And anyway, stupidity is never in short supply!  We all know, do we not, that rule by a single dictator or a single dictatorial political party is a short cut to hell – well, we know it but of course the Russians still haven’t learned which is why Putin and his thugs are slowly putting leg-irons back on them.  However, the Chinese are learning and the democratic push from below is giving their government some very real headaches.  In this day and age of global communication it is increasingly difficult for dictators to operate – although that will not stop them trying.  As for us ‘over here’ and the cousins ‘over there, enjoying the chance to turf the rascals out every few years is a right not to be discarded lightly – even if you only get back more of more or less the same!

 

I take my eyes off China for 5 minutes - and there's trouble!

I am uneasily aware that having started my keen observations of the 'Mysterious Kingdom Polit-Bureau-dom' I have allowed my attention to stray back 'over there'.  Sorry and all that but 'over there' is so much easier to try and understand then 'all the way round there', not least because the former, being more than just scrutable, are hopeless at keeping secrets whilst the latter wouldn't tell you if your zip was undone!  Anyway, I do remember that the Central Committee was supposed to be having a grand 'how's-your-father' this month in which all the new, hand-picked candidates would take their seats at the high table whilst trying not to show that it had all been fixed months ago.  This morning, in a comment thread somewhere down below, the subject of China arose and I realised that actually I had read nothing about this hugely important meeting in any of the MSM for some considerable time.

Happily, George H. Wittman of The American Spectator was to hand with a useful essay explaining, as best he could, what was going on, or to be precise, why nothing was going on - yet!  Remember, it is quite an extraordinary event when the very pinnacle of the ruling Communist Party of China appears to stumble - even slightly.  If the Party machine coughs, how sick is the body politic?  Anyway, first of all, Mr. Wittman reckons the Bo Xilai affair (click on my 'China' category for details) has taken much longer to sort out than originally thought.  He was not a troublesome loner but the leader of a Maoist movement intent on taking China back the 'good old days'.  There's "nowt as queer as folk", as they say north of the M25, and just as large segments of the Russian population revere 'good old Uncle Joe' despite the fact that he murdered them in their millions, so too, in China the greatest mass murderer of all time is still held in high regard.  Anyway, one casualty appears to be a certain Zhou Yongkang, hitherto the top man in charge of Chinese internal security.  He 'agreed' (yeees, quite!) to relinquish his main responsibilities half a year earlier than his retirement date.  Such apparently trivial detail is all you ever get out of Beijing's hall of mirrors.

Even more mystifying is the absence (Not terminal, I trust, Comrade?) of the heir apparent, Xi Jinping, who has not been seen in public for weeks.  He was supposed to be hosting seriously important talks with the military leadership for reasons which can only be guessed at.  Mr. Wittman reports that perhaps serious surgery has intervened and that might have been the cause of the unprecedented delay in the Central Committee meeting which is now due to take place in November.  China and its government faces some gigantic and unbelievably complex problems.  The new Central Committee could either lurch to the extremes or remain more or less centralist.  Loud-mouthed denunciations by American presidential candidates will not help.  "Softlee, softlee, catchee monkey" must be the guiding principle!

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/10/19/china-under-stress

ADDITIONAL:  A note to my Headmaster, 'DM'.  Please, Sir, don't bother, I have already started the hundred lines for the howler in my title and I have changed "of" to "off" and I blame 'SpecSavers'!

 

Please tell me you're lying, Mr. Romney!

It is rather ungracious of me, I know, because only today I received a friendly comment from a Mr. John Gardner who appreciated reading a blog that was not rude about Mitt Romney - and now I am going to be rude about Mitt Romney!  Sorry, but "truth will out".  And no-one spells out economic truths better than Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek.  I have not heard the presidential debates in full, only the excerpts on TV and the written commentary.  However, one thing I keep picking up like a  monotonous  rhythm, is an anti-Chinese shtick which is decidely alarming because it comes regularly from both candidates!  Once again, it seems, we are hearing the dim, dumb clamour of fear and loathing from the Great American Public (GAP) and it is being played upon by Obama and Romney, each attempting to wave the flag higher and more vigorously than their opponent.

Obama may be forgiven because he is, at heart, just another political shyster, this time one hiding behind what I suspect is a totally fraudulent academic record which provides him with a veneer of intellectualism - to the brain dead, that is!  Romney, on the other hand, knows better, or should do, and thus his efforts to outbid Obama on how "tough" he's going to be with China is fraud of the highest, or lowest, calibre.  As Boudreaux puts it, much better than me:

Each man insists that America’s economy can be harmed by inexpensive imports – in other words, harmed by opportunities for voluntary exchanges that lower Americans’ cost of living.

By promising to raise taxes on Americans who buy Chinese-made goods, Mr. Romney again promised to break his campaign promise to not raise taxes.  That he is unaware of the contradiction isn’t promising.

Thus, the GAP (just like their British counterparts from time to time) are encouraged to support a politician who will increase their cost of living by banning cheap imports!  I mean, would you vote for such a thing ?  Oh!  You did once - sucker! - how old were you?

Mr. Obama is no better.  He bragged that he “saved a thousand jobs” with his “tough” trade action that – by raising taxes on Americans who buy Chinese-made tires – ensured “that China was not flooding our domestic market with cheap tires.”

By this logic, the President’s policy is inexcusably lame.  If creating more jobs in U.S. tire factories justifies forcing consumers to pay higher prices for tires, the Obama administration should also outlaw the sale of used tires (which, like low-priced imports, are “flooding our domestic market”).  Indeed, the president should seek legislation mandating that all rubber used to make tires be non-vulcanized.  The resulting decline in tire durability will create even more jobs in U.S. tire factories by “protecting” our market from being “flooded” with cheap tire durability – that is, with tires that last for tens of thousands of miles before needing to be replaced.

If it was just economics (or 'freakonomics' more like) perhaps we might forgive them but their swaggeringly aggressive attitude goes dangerously beyond cheap Chinese imports.  They are whipping up a war scenario.  This time, to the surprise of my readers, I will quote no less an authority than Prof Paul Krugman, er, this is the earlier Paul Krugman, the one who appeared to possess considerable intelligence until he put it down somewhere and forgot it:

I believe that if the rhetoric that portrays international trade as a struggle continues to dominate the discourse, then policy debate will in the end be dominated by men like [protectionist author of The Trap, Sir James] Goldsmith, who are willing to take that rhetoric to its logical conclusion.  That is, trade will be treated as war, and the current system of relatively open world markets will disintegrate because nobody but a few professors believes in the ideology of free trade.

And that will be a shame, because for all their faults the professors are right.  The conflict among nations that so many policy intellectuals imagine prevails is an illusion; but it is an illusion that can destroy the reality of mutual gains from trade.

That comes courtesy, yet again, of Cafe Hayek and is a quote from a 1995 essay by Paul Krugman.

In my poor, meagre opinion, Sino-American relations are going to be absolutely critical during the first half of the 21st century.  The sort of huckster boasting and bragging engaged in by both candidates will be watched with close attention in Beijing and may come back to haunt them - and us!

 

The Sunday Rumble 23.09.12

He opened his mouth and let his belly rumble:  Thus spake, not Zarathustra, but that bumptious little twat, Andrew Mitchell MP.  In his, by now, infamous, foul-mouthed rant against sundry members of the Plod whose particular duty at the end of Downing Street is to protect the lives of Mr. Mitchell and his ilk even to the point of giving up their own lives to do so, he inadvertently confirmed what many of us had suspected that, despite an education so expensive that it could have kept several dozen immigrant families on welfare for life, he is, himself, as thick as a plank.  To mouth off at length and at considerable volume at the end of Downing Street, an area only exceeded in its density of hacks by the nearest Westminster pub, was as stupid as shovelling shed-loads of tax-payers' dosh (or my dosh, as I fondly think of it) as aid payments to their poor and destitute to places like India where they are busy building their first nuclear bomb.  This he did with considerable vigour and actually had the brass nerve to boast of it!  It seems to me that with him and Dave and George as examples, one must fervently support the return of Grammar Schools, not just to rescue the, er, "plebs" from the wasteland of Comprehensive Schools, but also the gentry from their obviously rotten but expensive Public Schools where they appear to learn nothing.

When I take over American foreign policy from 'HillBilly':  I may well shoot myself!  Conducting the foreign policy of a great power is the nearest you will ever get to playing three dimensional chess against a quantum computer - and if that isn't random enough you can throw in a large dollop of human nature, too.  It is, of course, tremendously easy to criticise Secretaries of State - which is why I do it so frequently - and it is even easier to do so after the events with which they have had to struggle.  At the moment no one knows who will be conducting American foreign policy over the next four years but who ever it is, he or she has my sympathy.  To take but one area of massive complexity and huge danger, consider the Pacific rim in general and the South China Sea in particular.  Chinese determination to claim sovereign ownership of various, mostly uninhabited islands, has already begun to provoke hostility and fear amongst its neighbours.  A new Chinese leadership is about to take over and they are all too well aware that pride, perhaps over-weening pride, has been aroused in the Chinese population which expects its government to do whatever it takes to enforce China's claims.  However, the government is also well aware that the Chinese people are rapidly approaching hard times.  The fantastic rush to riches of the past 20 years is coming to a halt.  In the old days, dirt poor peasants just did what they were told but there is no one more furious than a newly-enriched bourgeois suddenly facing impoverishment.  America, of course, will be watched and judged by the smaller nations of the Pacific rim as to how it faces up, or faces down, Chinese ambitions.

This man is thick enough to be a politician:  I give you what's left of Mr. David Villalobotomy, ooops, sorry Mr. Villalobos, a man who just loves pussy - look, I do the jokes round here so stop sniggering! - in particular he loved this one:

In fact, he loved it so much that, in his own words, "he wanted to be one with the tiger" and so, as reported by AP, he jumped into the tiger compound in the Bronx Zoo.  Yeeeeeees, quite!  Fortunately he was enabled to escape by the prompt action of the keepers and, in the circs, his injuries are fairly light.  I wonder if this prat man has ever considered a career in politics?  With his survival skills he'd slaughter them in the Senate!

The Ides of September!

I expect the chaps at the FO are doing 24-hour shifts this month (not!) given the potential turbulence building up in foreign affairs.  Tomorrow the German Court pronounces on Merkel's efforts at European tap-dancing.  One looks to Supreme Courts for clear, straightforward rulings but as the American equivalent showed just recently they can be more slippery than the warranty contract from a second-hand car dealer!  Whilst I would stand on the table and sing the German national anthem if they were to stamp their legal jackboots all over the current confection, I am not bothering to learn the words because I expect the usual pile of fudge.

Meanwhile, back East, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and their government are readying themselves for change at the very top.  Needless to say, this is all done with absolute secrecy behind closed doors which used to work but, in this day and age of personal and global communications, does not anymore.  For example, Xi Jinping, the man slated to be the next Party Secretary, has apparently gone missing, or at least, he has not been seen in public for a week or so and has cancelled various scheduled meetings with foreign visitors, including 'HillBilly'.  Needless to say, the Chinese internet has gone viral with unsubstantiated rumours which have now been picked up by the western media.

I was struck by an item in Ferdinand Mount's superb book, Full Circle (of which, more later - you have been warned!), in which he describes the way in which the ancient Greeks and Romans used to call in the populace in their tens of thousands in order discuss and decide on political matters.  Today, the internet is the equivalent of those forums and the CCP is floundering in its efforts to control it.  Apart from anything else, the CCP have long suffered with a credibility problem given their lack of political 'legitimacy'.  Corruption and misrule is rife throughout the regions, as the recent Bo Xilai affair demonstrated.  Times are getting hard again in China due to the global economy and the Party is struggling to deal with it.  Their banks are broke and several regional governments are getting out of control.  There are factions within the CCP who yearn for a return to Mao-ism and they will do their best to whip up nationalism over Chinese claims to various islands in the South China Sea.  One piece of information I picked up from those old 'Intel-hands' at 'NightWatch' was the incredible fact that a law was passed in 2005 which would inflict the death penalty on any Chinese leader who allowed any part of Chinese territory to be ceded - and that includes those islands that the Chinese think they own!

"Beware of interesting times" - now who said that?  Oh yes, some Chinese chap!

 

Go east, young man! OK, so it's back to China, then.

I started my investigation, no, my amateurish probing, into China a few weeks ago (see 'China' under 'Categories' in the side-bar) with great enthusiasm and then, somehow, in some way, I was side-tracked.  Story of my life, really!  Anyway, it has been niggling away at me, especially with that fine example of Chinese justice in action at the trial of Gu Kailai plastered across the media in recent days.  But still, Olympian distractions followed by American electoral thrills and spills diverted my attention.  But today, I came across a fascinating article by Minxin Pei on The Diplomat site.  Quite apart from his Chinese ethnicity, he seems to be a very shrewd observer, all the more so because he confirms my (as in 'me, me, me'!) suspicions concerning the real, as opposed to the apparent, strength of China.

He begins, quite rightly, by emphasising how tricky it is to gauge a nation's real strength.  Too many factors are at play to make it an exact science:

One obvious problem is the measurement of power.  Shall we look at the size of a country's economy or its level of wealth? Should we also consider the momentum and sustainability of its growth?  Is its external environment a legitimate variable to include in calculating its power since any country's power is relative to that of its potential adversaries?

And misjudging another adversarial country is all too easy as the Japanese found out after they kicked sand in the face of the American sleeping giant in 1941.  Even so, Mr. Minxin Pei tries his best to judge more closely than most the true strength of China today and comes to the conclusion that they have some deep and fundamental problems to overcome.  He dates the decline from ('Dim' Dave please note!) the end of the Beijing Olympics.  The global financial crisis hit China and caused a drop in the growth rate:

To be sure, Beijing's stimulus package of 2008-2009, fueled by deficit spending and a proliferation of credit, managed to avoid a recession and produce one more year of double-digit growth in 2010.  For awhile, Beijing's ability to keep its economic growth high was lauded around the world as a sign of its strong leadership and resilience.  Little did we know that China paid a huge price for a misguided and wasteful stimulus program.  The bulk of its stimulus package, roughly $1.5 trillion (with two-thirds in the form of loans from state-owned banks), was squandered on fixed-asset investments, such as infrastructure, factories, and commercial real estate.   As a result, many of these projects are not economically viable and will saddle the banking system with a mountain of non-performing loans.  The real estate bubble has maintained its froth.  The macroeconomic imbalance between investment and household consumption has barely improved.

Remember, dear reader, my stories of those fantastic cities without hardly a single inhabitant?  Just like those blocks of empty apartments that cover the seafront of southern Spain from Gibralter to Barcelona, there are zillions tied up in what are now absolutely useless, non-performing loans.  I have read elsewhere that the state-owned Chinese banking sector is seriously distressed.

There is a far more deep-seated problem the Chinese have to face and that is their demographic.  For the first time the proportion of Chinese of working age has started to drop and the number of elderly has begun to increase considerably:

In 2010, 8.6 percent of the population was 65 and older.  By 2025, the figure will likely be 14.3 percent.  An aging population will increase labor costs, reduce savings and investments, inflate healthcare and pension costs — and slow down growth.

Any drop in employment for whatever reason will instantly begin to cause suffering to Chinese families.  Already, the Chinese people, 'armed', so to speak, with modern methods of communication are able very easily to let their feelings be known.  The Communist Party of China knows that its legitimacy is paper-thin but any effort to shift from one-party rule to democracy will be highly risky particularly if it is forced to take place in hard economic times.  The ordinary Chinese people strike me, from this distance, to be the very opposite of the disciplined, ant-like marchers we saw at the Beijing games.  They are a vociferous and independent-minded lot who have tasted the fruits of personal wealth.  If the milk and honey ever cease to flow who knows what their re-action will be?

I would add two final thoughts of my own.  China is run on the basis of state-controlled capitalism.  That is an oxymoron both in a grammatical sense and also in logical terms.  Sooner or later the Chinese will be forced to face the fact that governments cannot control the impulses of capitalism except in the sense of laying down a set of laws for all under which the capitalists can be free to pursue their personal interests.  Until they sort out the incoherence implicit in state-controlled capitalism, the fault line will remain. Second, I have always believed that there is a centrifugal force inherent in a huge nation like China which might lie dormant for decades or even centuries but is never completely absent.  There will be rich, powerful and international Chinese leaders in the regions who might think they would be better off on their own.  They might not succeed in their ambitions but their efforts could prove disasterous.

 

You don't need an aircraft carrier, General, you need a worm!

Apologies for the slight slowdown around here but I am under a certain amount of domestic pressure at the moment, which roughly translates as 'the Memsahib is a bit crock and I'm having to do things I normally take for granted.  I have warned her that much more of this and I'm going to trade her in for new model!

Anyway, I have been amused (slightly) by China's efforts to build and operate an aircraft carrier.  This has caused the Indians to redouble their efforts to bring their aircraft carrier capacity up to the maximum.  It reminds me of all those admirals between the wars who followed Adm. Fisher's pre-WWI policy of building bigger and bigger battleships with bigger and bigger guns.  After the First War it was the cheeky young officers who saw that the battleship era was over and that aircraft carriers were the new queen on the naval chessboard.  Today, of course, it is missiles, both attack and defence missiles, which are critical and, I guess, a titchy little destroyer now carries ten times more destructive power than Adm. Yamamoto's favourite 18" gun battleship, the Yamato.

But tomorrow, I suspect, it is going to be 'electronics' that will be key to success on the battlefield.  Of course, I use the word 'electronics' in the widest sense, not least because I am a man who gives himself a silent cheer everytime I manage to switch my computer on and off!  As the bankers have learned - the hard and expensive way - just recently, we are all utterly reliant on 'electronics'.  When they go wrong, or just go off, we are well and truly stuffed.  It is essential, I believe, that armies and navies need to practice operations without 'electronics' and see how far they get and how well they do.  Being essential, my guess is that that they don't bother!

I am provoked to these musings on modern warfare by a small story on the BBC News site introducing us to 'The Worm'!  It's a pity this is written and not spoken because it really needs that American guy who does the voice-overs for thrillers to use his deep-pitched, gravelly voice to say omminously, "The Worm is coming!"  Here it is:

Doesn't look much, I admit, but the possibilities are manifold.  It's the latest robot made for the Pentagon and it imitates not so much "the action of the tiger" but more that of the worm! Made of a flexible mesh 'skin' with wires around it, the operator can send pulses down which makes the 'body' contract and expand and slowly, 0.2" per second, cross ground.  So be careful if you are walking along scanning the skies for a drone so small it looks like a bird (that too exists!) because you might tread on a 'worm'.

Right, that's enough meandering for this morning, I will return later.

 

Some Olympic sniggers

"'E a proper pronker", they might be saying in Beijing for poor Liu Xiang who settled himself carefully into his starting blocks for his heat of the 110m hurdles, then, on the start, sprinted off at high speed - straight into the first hurdle!  No, no, Liu, old lad, you're supposed to jump the bloody thing not knock it over.  Still, he did better than the last Olympics when he only managed two paces before his hamstring parted with a crack that sounded like false-start signal from the pistol.  To be fair, at the games before that he actually won the gold medal.  Just think, all that training, all that dedication and, no doubt, all that non-stop bullying from the Party's sport commissars - and all for absolutely nothing.

China's Liu Xiang falls onto the track during his men's 110m hurdles round 1 heat at the London 2012 Olympic Games at the Olympic Stadium August 7, 2012.
(EDDIE KEOGH/REUTERS)  The Globe and Mail

Really, I suppose, that was tragedy rather than comedy but this is definitely giggle-snigger ammo and it is well and truly aimed at those big-mouth Aussies who swaggered about at past Olympics letting us all know that Poms were pathetic at sports, little better than a bunch of 'Sheilas', they kept telling us.  Where are they now? 12th, with only four golds, 12 silvers and 9 bronze - oh dear, what a pity, never mind!  Where are we?  Modesty forbids but only the Yanks and the Chinks are in front of us and if you take it on a population comparison basis we are ahead of both of them.

[...]

Sorry for that short pause but overcome with emotion, or stunned with disbelief, I felt moved to sing "God Save the Queen" but not for too long, thank goodness, because I had forgotten most of the words.

 

The Chinese really do deserve a better government

A few posts back I wrote about an old and very poor Chinese lady who picked up live but discarded babies from rubbish tips and nurtured them.  Today, I'm back on the subject of China and the Chinese because I have been provoked by John Simpson's article in last week's Spectator(£).  In it, he describes what he calls the 'office of last resort', that is, the place where, possibly, ordinary Chinese citizens may take their complaints and requests for compensation and/or justice for wrongs inflicted on them by local government.  I stress the word 'possibly' because it is extremely likely that before you and your petition reach this 'office of last resort' you and your family will have been attacked, beaten, jailed and your home demolished.  That, you see, is the Chinese way!

So, you would expect this office, or, to give it its proper Chinese title, guojia xinfang ju (the State Bureau for Letters and Calls) to be deserted and, for appearance's sake, staffed by a single clerk with the cushiest job in the world.  You would be wrong.  According to Simpson, every day there is a crowd of petitioners, usually middle-aged or elderly and all of them poor.  They come from all over China and their stories are appalling.  They are watched constantly by a policeman who, at the first sign of trouble - and Simpson and his camera crew were definite trouble in police eyes - will call for re-inforcements.  Before they arrived, Simpson collected together a handfull of their stories which they thrust upon him.  Here are a couple of examples which, as Simpson stresses, cannot be verified by him, but who the hell would go through what these desperate people go through to try and get redress for a pack of lies?

Chen Tanzhang, from Fu'an in Fujian province, is now 54.  In 1993 [Eh? That's 19 years ago!]his 8 year old daughter Xiaofang ('Little Fragrance') went missing.  The next day, the Public Security Bureau told him to come and pick up her body from its basement car park.  It was Xiaofang's.  No one helped him: he had to carry her body to the local mortuary.  He claims she was raped and murdered by someone close to the deputy party secretary.  This man was tried  and sentenced to 18 years, but released after a year.  Mr. Chen has been petitioning ever since.  He has no money, existing only on handouts from friends.

[...]

Jiang Shunsheng, from Hunan province, used to be a village party secretary, until he was accused of corruption.  His post was taken by a relative of the county party secretary.  Mr. Jiang was jailed for a total of 14 months for petitioning Beijing, and while he was in prison several detainees were told to beat him up.  His wife was also arrested and abused.  Now their 13-year-old son has been refused admission to the local school.

And so on, and on, and on.  Apparently this idea of an 'office of last resort' dates back to emperor times when it acted as a sort of safety valve for local disputes with local authorities.  The national leadership of the Chinese Communist Party adopted it as a means of distancing themselves from misbehaving local parties and, on the rare occasions when wrongs are (sort of) righted, they gain the credit.

The State Bureau for Letters and Calls - how Orwell would have loved that one!

She collected rubbish - and babies!

This blog is, of course, an avid collector and distributor of moans, groans, grumps and whinges.  All the unconsidered peccadilloes, sins, stupidites and downrigth crimes of humanity are faithfully recorded here  - well, not all of them but a goodly, or badly, selection of them!  However, I would not wish you to suppose that this blog is writtten by a miserable old misanthrope, on the contrary, I am always ready, willing and able (that's enough with the lists, already! Ed.) to bring to your attention the good deeds of humanity.  And being serious for a moment, good deeds do not come much better than those of Lou Xiaoying of Jinhua, in the eastern Zhejiang province of China, as reported by The Daily Mail.

This lady, now 88 years of age has, along with her late husband, managed to keep body and soul together by collecting discarded rubbish and then recycling any of the useful bits and pieces.  As a result of China's 'One Child' policy combined with a natural urge to have male children, unwanted and discarded babies are a common phenomenon in China.  This lady has been finding them regularly: 

Lou Xiaoying, now 88 and suffering from kidney failure, found and raised more than 30 abandoned Chinese babies from the streets of Jinhua, in the eastern Zhejiang province where she managed to make a living by recycling rubbish.

She and her late husband Li Zin, who died 17 years ago, kept four of the children and passed the others onto friends and family to start new lives.

Her youngest son Zhang Qilin - now aged just seven - was found in a dustbin by Lou when she was 82.

 

Lou is now dying from kidney failure. She is pictured here with two of the children she helped rescued. 

Lou, left, caring her the babies with her husband Li Zin. She would give them to friends and family after she rescued them.

The compound word 'heartwarming' is a cliché but sometimes only a cliché expresses exactly what is called for.  For what it's worth, I salute you Lou Xiaoying.

The Sunday Rumble 29.7.12

What is it with American politicians? Mitt Romney, never high in my admittedly il-informed estimation, came to this country allegedly to cement 'the Special Relationship' but in fact to collect shed-loads of dosh from ex-patriate Americans for his election campaign.  All he had to do whilst here was to keep his mouth shut, nod, smile and if absolutely forced to answer questions 'just say nicely-nicely'.  Her Maj has been doing it for 60 years although I admit she doesn't smile all that often - who would with a job like hers?!  But no, 'Thick Mitt' opens his 'stoopid' mouth and criticises his hosts.  Meanwhile, 'over there' the President, no less, completely at a loss for words without his tele-prompter (he's a university intellectual, don'cha know!) tells zillions of small businessmen that they did not build up their little companies, Uncle Sam did!  I mean, politicians are at least supposed to be good at sucking up to voters but Obama can't even manage that.

Dodging the bullet of reality:  There has been, rightly, an uproar in America over the slaughter of 12 people in a cinema.  So great was the furore that the President felt it necessary to give up some golfing and schmoozing-for-donations time to visit the city of Aurora and commiserate with the families.  Meanwhile, back in Obama's political home town, Chicago, 28 people have already been slaughtered this month!  Did you see any headlines?  No, nor me!  As for a presidential visit - fagetabatit!

What are the odds on Boris?  In this country it usually helps a politician if he is thought to be a bit eccentric because we all have a soft spot for people, particularly toffs, prepared, in a not too serious way, to blithely disregard the usual norms.  It helps even more if somehow the politician can contrive to leave the impression that, actually, behind the apparent daftness there is a very good mind at work.  All of this Boris Johnson does with supreme ease.  He is obviously positioning himself for a return to parliament and a run at the top job when the Stupid Party Conservative Party realises that it has elected as its leader the dimmest light bulb ever to pass through Eton without ever once being switched on.  I have no idea if Boris has what it takes to run the country but I do suspect that it would, in parts, be rather amusing!

Who da thunkit?  Well, not that mighty intellectual colossus in The White House or any of the Democrat brain-boxes who surround him, apparently.  Obama and his polit-bureau have taken a consistently hostile line against the building of an oil/gas pipe-line from Canada down into central USA in order to take advantage of huge new oil and gas resources found in their northern neighbour's territory.  Instead they spent their time and their taxpayers' money shovelling zillions into corrupt, so called 'alternative energy' enterprises like Solyndra which have taken the money and promptly gone bust.  Needless to say, the Chinese have stepped in quickly and are about to sign a $15 bn deal with the Canadians which will mean that if the Americans want any they will have to buy it from the Chinese.  Sounds of "Duh! I never thoughta that one, Barney!" are to be heard in The White House.

The perfect holiday read?  We are all used to hotels offering us porn channels on the TVs in the rooms but, accordingto those rascals at IHTM, some enterprising hotel-keeper in the Lake District has replaced the copies of the Gideon Bible usually to be found in the bedside tables with copies of Fifty Shades of Grey, the latest block-busting, or perhaps, 'ball-breaking', piece of pornogrpahy that is top of all the big seller lists.  It, and the two other volumes that follow it, are written by a lady which at first makes them sound slightly alluring.  Alas, I caught a glimpse of a photograph of the lady concerned and instantly such interest as I had, er, shrivelled.  The Memsahib's best friend has loaned her a copy and she keeps telling me that it is absolute rubbish but, oddly, the house has been rather quiet over recent days with far fewer of the usual peremptory orders because she has her nose stuck inthis book!  I sneaked a look  (natch!) when she was out  but the first sentence I read was "His eyes burned into me with passion" at which point such 'passion' as I could muster fled.  What a dire, turgid sentence and I cannot believe the composer of it could excite me in the slightest.  Anyway, I gather a lot of it is concerned with S&M and as I have a pain threshold on the minus scale, I doubt whether it would interest me.

 

Guns 'n' Loonies!

Not too much time today so here are a few random thoughts on a topic always popular first thing on a Monday morning - mass murder!  'Over there' the usual suspects are howling for more stringent gun laws, or to be precise, anti-gun laws.  The fact that Colorado already has fairly strict laws is, apparently, of no interest to those with a political/social axe to grind.  Nor does the possibility occur to them that if just one man had been carrying a concealed weapon in that audience several lives might have been saved.  Equally, if carrying weapons was commonplace even a nutter would think twice before trying to get his name into the record books given that he would be unlikely to live long enough to complete his task.  Going to the other extreme, I doubt there is a nation in the world with stricter gun laws than Norway but somehow, holding up or quoting the statute concerned failed to stop Anders Breivik murdering 69 people with a gun - not counting the 8 he killed with a bomb.

Given the circs this is not an irony I particularly enjoy but it is worth reminding everyone that over twice as many people have been murdered in Chicago this month than were killed in Aurora.  Funnily enough, or nauseating enough depending on your point of view, President Obama whose political home is Chicago did not feel the necessity of visiting the 'Windy City' to commisserate with those relatives, they were just left to ponder the truth of that old saying "same old same old".  Illinois and Chicago have very tough anti-gun laws but as anyone with half a brain would quickly work out, such laws only apply to the law-abiding who then become helpless victims in the face of gun-toting criminals.

 

Do not, under any circs, miss this!

Well, if you live in the UK, that is.  Tonight on BBC2 at 11.30 they are showing the 2006 film version of The Painted Veil.  An apparently very slight tale of sin and redemption by that crafty, in all senses of the word, old master, Somerset Maugham.  Superbly well-acted, and the scenery from Guilin in Guanxi province simply takes your breath away.  I just hope it shows up as well on a small screen.

Some critics sniffed at the 'smallness' of the story but Maugham knew better.  Inside a human relationship there is a whole universe of conflicting emotions and that genuine worth and even heroism may lay dormant until events conspire to bring it forth.  This is a first-rate film that honours a first-class writer.

 

"China is on the cusp of a deflationary vortex"

Thus spake, or rather, wrote, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Daily Telegraph.  His article reminds us that there is no hiding place in this new, 21st century, global economy.  The old British saying that if America sneezed we caught a cold is completely out of date.  Today, economic disasters in one area spread round the world with the speed of the 1918 influenza epidemic.  I have mentioned before my doubts concerning the Chinese economy when I provided reports on all those brand, new cities which had been built on borrowed money and which were deserted.  It reminded me of southern Spain in the late '90s when all you could see for miles and miles along the coast line were hundreds of cranes and block after block of empty flats and villas. A E-P quotes a Chinese economist:

"While an economy-wide generalized deflation is yet to be seen, the deflationary spiral looks to have started in some industrial sectors, attesting to considerable stress with the economy. Persistent deflation can be poisonous," said Xianfang Ren from IHS Global Insight in Beijing.

A good indicator of the financial sense of well-being amongst affluent, middle-class Chinese is the casino revenues in Macau.  The Chinese have gambling fever the way we have 'footie' fever.  A E-P reports that the revenues have dropped 11% in June.  He points us to the very informative Also Sprach Analyst site which provides 10 big indicators that all is far from well 'out there':

1:  Heavy equipment makers who provide financial deals for their customers to purchase are finding it increasingly difficult to collect their dues.

2: Steelmakers' profits have collapsed for lack of demand.

3: Some steelmakers are producing but many steel traders further down the line are going out of business.

4: Through lack of demand from heavy industry coal stocks are enormous and some warehouses are almost full.

5: Both coal miners and steelmakers are diversifying into new businesses - including selling pigs!

6: The cotton inventory at the ports is huge partly due to speculators coming unstuck as the price of cotton fell.

7:  As mentioned before, the Macau casino revenues have dropped. 

8: When the Chinese government tightened policy last year bank loans were hard to get so a new and shadowy system of 'Trusts' grew up but now the companies who used these devices are finding it increasingly difficult to repay.  Many of them are real estate developers.

9: Yet another dodgy banking practice has come to light inone province when a fair-sized company went broke.  Unfortunately, many smaller companies were accessing bank loans on the basis of another company guaranteeing their borrowing.  It turns out, (natch!) that all the companies in this particular area were all guaranteeing each other's loans.  Cue falling dominoes!

10: The Chinese yuan/renmimbi is falling.  The government is happy for that but it still indicates problems.

A E-P sums it up thus:

But at the end of the day, the country is bursting with industrial over-capacity. As Caixin reported recently, eight of the ten largest shipyards did not receive any new orders in the first five months of the year.

Albert Edwards from Societe Generale said the danger now is that China suddenly lurches into a deeper downturn, unleashing a flood of excess goods onto global markets and sending a powerful deflationary impulse across the world.

Well, if they do release a flood of cheap goods at least my tailor, 'M. A. Talan', will be able to keep me in the style to which I have grown accustomed with chinos for £14 or less, perhaps!

 

More creepy coincidence

This coincidence business is happening more and more often.  Only the other day I told you about the excellent but gut-wrenchingly awful Child 44 written by Tom Rob Smith.  The opening chapter describes in wincing detail the horrors of the Ukrainian famine.  I have read some of the history books on this mass murder wrought on his own people by Joseph Stalin but somehow statistics never quite convey the full and loathsome flavour.  In just one chapter Mr. Smith does what a dozen history books can never do - make you feel ill.

That was a few days ago but last night I decided to watch a programme I had recorded on my 'super-dooper-do-flicker-recording-thingie' (thanks, Rupe!) concerning the life and somewhat mysterious death of a Welsh reporter called Gareth Jones (1905-1935).  The programme, on BBC4, was called, rather intriguingly, Hitler, Stalin and Mr. Jones.  I am forced to agree with Ian Hollingshead in The Telegraph who thought that the very remarkable life and death of Gareth Jones was ill-served by this rather poor documentary. 

 

Jones was from a middle-class, Welch background and attained a first class degree in modern languages at Cambridge.  He seemed to have an effortless ability to identify the important circles in which an aspiring young man with no connections should mix and as a result, Hollingsworth writes:

He graduated from Cambridge in 1930 and spent the next five years working variously for Lloyd George, The Times, the Economist, Rockefeller and British intelligence. He also managed to meet Randolph Hearst, share a 16-seat aircraft with Hitler, whom he likened to a “middle-class grocer”, and have dinner with Goebbels.

How Somerset Maugham or John le Carré would have enjoyed knowing him!  However, back to my creepy coincidence.  He first made a name for himself by visiting the Soviet Union - he had learned Russian - as a journalist.  This was in the early '30s when Stalin's version of "hope 'n' change" had begun in the Ukraine.  Rather shrewdly, Jones skipped off the train before it reached its destination where he would have been met by Party apparatchiks.  Making his own way he saw the truth which was a deliberate policy of mass starvation.  We now know, or at least, estimate, that some 10 million men, women and children perished in the Ukraine during this period.  Jones reported this via The Times and all hell erupted over his head, led by The New York Times and its despicable Moscow correspondent, Walter Duranty, who ran a headline: “Russians hungry, but not starving”.  (Heavens to Betsy, the NYT lying for communism, 'who'da thunkit'?)

Jones was now a marked man but he continued his travels moving into ever higher circles of influence.  Eventually, in the mid '30s, following his nose to yet another potential trouble spot, he went into inner Mongolia and the border between China, Russia and Japanese-controlled Manchukuo.  There, in a desert wasteland, in the company of an exceedingly dodgy German of very mixed loyalties, he was taken prisoner by some bandits.  Somehow, the German was freed but Jones was killed. 

A short life but one that was lived to the full.   Come on, Mr. le Carré, there's a cracking book to be written here - and an even better film.  But in the meantime I wish these creepy coincidences would leave me alone!

 

It's not what you know but who you know - that can prove dangerous in China!

The Bo Xilai story continues.  For those unfamiliar with it let me explain that it began late last year with the death in China of a British businessman, Neil Heywood, a man with strong MI6 connections.  His death was quickly put down to excess alcohol by the Chinese authorities who with indecent haste had his body cremated before any autopsy could be held.  That, however, was but the first ripple on the hitherto calm Chinese pool. The next event was the sudden disappearance of the local police and security chief who turned up at the American consulate seeking asylum.  Eventually he came out and was immediately rushed to Beijing.  At the same time the local Party chief, Bo Xilai, a man about to reach the very highest ruling committee in the land, was arrested along with his wife.

After that everything went quiet in the Chinese way of these things but now a 'zillionaire' friend of Bo Xilai's wife has also disappeared and is thought to be 'helping the authorities with their enquiries'!  At the same time, the Cambodian government has let it be known that the Chinese have requested the extradition of a French resident, Patrick Henri Devillers, who was another intimate with the Bo family, particularly Mr. Bo's wife, Gu Kailai.  The plot thickens, rather like a Chinese sweet and sour sauce.  The Communist Party of China 'moves in mysterious ways its (secret) wonders to perform'!

I am grateful to the WSJ for the latest information.

 

Well, If Richard North doesn't know what's happening how the hell should I?

I have it on very good authority - oh, alright then, I guess - that Richard North of EU Referendum gets up at 3.00 a.m. every morning and reads every newspaper in the world before knocking out a couple of blistering blog posts before breakfast!  Honestly, I don't know how he does it.  Given the name of his blog you will not be surprised to know that most of his posts are on the sorry state of Europe.  I gave up on Europe some time ago.  Well, I tried, dammit, I tried to make sense of what was happening but, not being an original thinker, I had to rely on the 'experts', much as Richard North does.  But today he has done what I did, metaphorically, some time ago which was to throw my hands in the air, shrug and admit that I haven't a clue what's going on.  Today, Dr. North likens it to a game of three dimensional chess and with the sort of typical petty larceny for which this blagging blog is (in)famous, I hereby give you his illustration of it:

However, the EU shenanigans are more like a game of three dimensional chess played by several different players all of whom cheat and lie and many of whom believe the game should end in radically different ways.  Hence, Dr. North's difficulties in trying - and boy, does he try! - to explain to us all exactly what is going on:

What is becoming very clearly apparent – if it was not already so – is that the eurocrisis is being played out at multiple levels. Only some of those are visible, with by no means all of the players declared.

No one is in possession of the complete facts, those who have some will not necessarily understand them, and some of what is being passed off as fact is actually disinformation – or outright lies. This is very much a case of, if you think you understand what is going on, you haven't been listening. (My emphasis)

He refers to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's latest in The Telegraph in which the different monetary requirements needed to bail out Spain sound like an auction: I have e40bn here - ah, e250bn over there - and now e350bn - but wait, a late estimate just in - e370bn to e450bn!  The two main European stability funds, EFSF/ESM, claim they can raise a further e500bn between them in addition to what has been promised to Greece.  But what happens when Italy wobbles?  The Chinese are not sticking around to find out:

The Chinese issued their own verdict on Thursday. The country's sovereign wealth fund said it will not buy any more debt in Europe until the region takes radical steps to restore credibility. "The risk is too big, and the return too low," said Lou Jiwei, the chairman of the China Investment Corporation.

"Europe hasn't got the right policies in place. There is a risk that the euro zone may fall apart and that risk is rising," he told the Wall Street Journal. The EFSF had hoped to sell yuan `Panda bonds' but this may prove hard.

This decision must have been taken at the very highest levels in the Chinese government because an enormous amount of Chinese trade - and thus jobs and wealth - depends on the European market.  Even so, Richard North reminds us that the Chinese are not called 'inscrutable' for nothing so even their 'final' decision might not be the last word!  He continues by pointing out the complexities which arise from all the very different pressures being applied in different directions by the 'nation states' inside the euro zone.  Added to this, Dr. North bewails the "shoddy reporting" by most of the British MSM:

This tiresome trivialisation is a further element to the three-dimensional chess game. One has to deal not only with events, but with the way they are reported, the reports themselves creating their own reality as people prefer them to the real thing.

The trouble is that when the "real" reality intrudes, it will come as a dreadful shock, accompanied no doubt by squawks of "betrayal" from people who feel they have been misled.

As my title states quite clearly, if a highly intelligent man like Dr. North, who spends most of his days watching every move on this three dimensional chess game, has more or less given up trying to work out what is happening then I am totally unashamed to sum the whole farrago up in the words of a song by The Who (although I'm not too sure who The Who are!)

The song is over
It's all behind me
I should have known it
She tried to find me

 This song is over
I'm left with only tears
I must remember
Even if it takes a million years

Unfortunately the memories of most politicians stretch back no further than the previous election - and their vision only reaches as far as the next one!

The Law of the Sea - or the Jungle!

I have written before on the subject of China's claims over the South China Sea and on some of the implications that arise from it.  I am grateful to Max Boot of Commentary for pointing me in the direction of an article by Jane Perlez in the NYT on this tricky subject which could soon come to dominate the headlines, not least because it will provide a litmus test for Sino-American relations well into the future.

In essence, China claims territorial rights to the entire South China Sea which, quite apart from the zillions of dollars-worth of international trade which flows through it on a daily basis, is believed to contain untold amounts of wealth in the form of mineral, oil and gas deposits in its sea bed.  Already, there is a dispute building between China and the the Philippines over the 'Scarborough Islands' - and with a name like that they should jolly well be British, dammit! - with frigates and armed patrol boats facing off against each other.

Hanging over the entire dispute is the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.  The delicious irony is that China has signed it but so far the American Senate has refused to ratify it - since Reagan refused to sign it in 1982!  As Max Boot explains:

China has actually signed the Law of the Sea Treaty, but that is not preventing it from asserting a cockamamie “right” to do what it wants within 200 miles of its coast–and within 200 miles of each group of tiny rocks and islands in the South China Sea that Beijing implausibly claims as its national territory. If taken seriously, China’s claims would give it access to the entire sea, even though those waters are also claimed by the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Brunei. The Law of the Sea Treaty, by contrast, recognizes freedom of navigation for any nation only 12 miles beyond a country’s shoreline.

American policy is in something of a muddle - so no change there, then - because rather wisely they view with suspicion any increase in so-called 'international law' which they suspect is yet another entanglement designed to hog-tie America.  However, in this case, they now find themselves unable to deploy the Law of the Sea against China because they are not a party to it!

The Chinese are similarly divided.  Their populace is in a state - potentially a dangerous state - of nationalistic fervour over the issue and in this they are joined by the Chinese military who are determined that the Sea be taken under Chinese control in its entirety.  The Chinese Foreign Ministry is more cautious and looks for some sort of deal.

Meanwhile the Americans remain determined to resist Chinese ambitions and has indicated that by stationing US marines in north Australia and, a truly mouth-watering irony, is pushing for closer military links with Vietnam whose own relations with China are described as uneasy.

Watch this space!

 

 

In dealing with China, mind your 'guanxi' and 'mianzi'!

Yes, the garden is virtually finished, thank you for asking, and as usual it demonstrated yet again Old Sod's immutable Law of Gardening, that is, when you have only one small pot waiting to be filled you will run out of compost!  It is then necessary to drive to the garden centre, buy another great bag of the stuff which may will give you a hernia lifting it in and out of the boot of your car, of which you will use approxiamtely 3.2% and when you go back to the bag of compost next Spring it will be mouldy and growing mushrooms.  I now intend to spend the rest of the Summer gazing at my garden from the depths of a deckchair until such time as the weeds obscure the view!

Now on to more important matters, guanxi and mianzi, to be exact.  I have been progressing with Paul Cheng's excellent book but only slowly.  Not for any deficiencies in his prose or the subject matter but simply because of time pressures.  In chapter six he raises these two tricky nuances within Chinese society because they are trememndously important to the Chinese.  They have rough equivalents in western society but it is the differences that are important. Guanxi is the name given by the Chinese to the circle of connections one gradually builds up in the course of adult life in which one person does another a favour and thus obligates their recipient.  In some cases, Mr. Cheng admits, this amounts to good, old-fashioned  bribery and corruption - but definitely not in all cases.  Chinese law, for the time being, does not reach western standards, not least because it takes account of guanxi but gradually, as it strives to match international requirements, that will change.  In the meantime, it is necessary for those dealing with the Chinese to recognise this quid pro quo attitude in which you are expected to give as well as receive.  In that way, mutual trust slowly accrues and suddenly doors will open for you and opportunities will arise.  It is, I suppose, the exact opposite of the American business philosophy summed up in the immortal words, "Never give a sucker an even break!"

Mianzi, in a sense, simply flows out of guanxi.  In essence, it means 'face', or, if you like, dignity, that is, your dignity and the dignity of your Chinese interlocutor.  Whatever the outcome of your negotiations with a Chinese, be it business or politics, it is absolutely essential to pursue your aims in such a way that your opposite number does not lose 'face' by your successful achievement.  Putting it bluntly, you must 'give him an out', as he will strive to do for you if he gains his ends.

All of this gives you some idea of the subtlety required by westerners in dealing with the Chinese and it is with some dismay that one considers the attitude of your average 'Congress critter', so many of whom are simply loud-mouthed dimwits.  Their only excuse is that they mirror the ignorance displayed daily in large swathes of the American MSM which in turn preaches to the converted, so to speak, amongst the Great American Public.  It's not much different 'over here' but we don't count these days.  If I had my way I would make Cheng's book required reading by every Congressman and every member of staff at the State Department.

China: sort of similar but different!

I have been reading some more of Paul Cheng's (Zheng Mingxun's) book On Equal Terms in which he attempts, and I think succeeds, in explaining modern China to western readers.  Certainly, if you wish to begin to understand the Chinese political and social psyche this book is essential reading.  What strikes me about about Mr. Cheng's description is not so much the differences between 'us and them' but the (sort of) similarities.  China is a one-party state but the Party itself is far from monolithic.  It contains within it, in broad terms, a Left and Right wing.  There are those who yearn for a return to purist Mao-ism and those who are eager to seize the advantages, as they see it, of capitalism, albeit, capitalism guided by the Party:

Today, the country has a hybrid economy, neither fully communist nor fully capitalist, run by a government that has evolved away from genuine top-down control yet is not subject to the kind of constitutional checks and balances associated with Western democracies.  Integrating the private sector into the country's socialist market economy continues to be a huge and complex transition. 

You might think that one-party rule is very foreign to our system - but think about it again!  Would it really make a Chinese noodle's worth of difference if 'Edenoidal Ed' was running the country as opposed to 'Dim Dave'?  We now have a political class running our country.  Take away the extreme fringe and you have a soft, wobbly centre whose only real interest is ensuring they remain part of the political class and a system which almost guarantees them their "brief hour upon the stage".  To their regret and irritation, they remain subjected to the unremitting laws of economics which, if breached too often or too carelessly, will wreak havoc on them.  Also, if national affairs lead to sustained and stormy times, even the people might demand their revenge, as our European neighbours are beginning to find out.

However, a large difference between 'us and them' lies in the nature of the political class.  Ours is almost entirely ill-educated, inefficient and unintelligent.  I'm not suggesting that the Chinese have somehow abolished these universal weaknesses but they have a very strict system for weeding out some of them:

Here it is worth looking at the process of becoming a government employee, which is very rigorous in China. Officials in public institutions are trained and retrained through approximately three thousand party schools before they are eligible for promotion.  Any misconduct is first investigated by the party before being turned over to the civilan justice system.  The tentacles of the state and thus the party go well beyond the government. 

Of course, whilst Mr. Cheng doesn't mention it, we all know, or can guess, that the purity of the sytem is not virgo intacto!  Human nature being what it is, there is bound to be cronyism at best and outright corruption at worst, but even so, at least officialdom is trained for the job on the basis fo some rigorous examinations and tests which is in direct contrast to the mandarins of Whitehall with their 2nd class degrees in social studies from Cleckheaton Poly-versity!

Alas, I must return to the Churchyard now, having failed yesterday to complete the cutting of the grass in the south-east corner.  I will return later with some thoughts on possibly the greatest menace to the stability of the world as this new, giant, Chinese cuckoo grows in the global nest - American politicians!

 

China 101 - and a half!

Sorry, sorry, but this is but the first of several lessons on China, the facts of which emanate from Mr. Paul Cheng's book On Equal Terms, and I stress that the half-arsed opinions are mine!  Happily, this is mostly fact and requires little in the way of my opinion.  It is a description of exactly how the Chinese government is made up.  Apart from my vague notion that they have a president and a prime minister, I had no idea what constitutes the remainder of the government.

Of course, as we all know, China is a one-party state under the rule of the Communist Party of China (CPP).  Needless to say, the intelligent amongst you will know that just because there is only one party it should not be construed that differences of opinion, philosophy, policy and personalities does not thrive!  However, it is part of the Chinese psyche, at least, amongst the ruling classes, to strive mightily to keep such differences private within the caucus.  Anyway, at the very top of the power mountain is the Standing Committee (of the Politbureau).  Today, this consists of nine members but later this year it is due for a major shake-up.  All Politbureau members  must retire at the age of 68 and by chance that means that 7 of the Standing Committee members will be standing down.  I read elsewhere that there was talk of reducing the Standing Committee to only 7 members this year but I have not seen it confirmed.  You may remember that Bo Xilai, the rising star who fell to earth with a crash following the death of a British businessman in a Chinese hotel, was destined to be a new member of the Committee.  Obviously, the president and the prime minister are automatically members of the Committee but both these gentlemen are due to retire and the character and personality of the newcomers will be of critical importance.  As Mr. Cheng puts it with almost British understatement:

This is why there is currently a considerable amount of political juggling between factions within the Party to fill these slots.

 This Standing Committee and the wider Politbureau itself answers every five years to the Party Congress:

The Party Congress is convened primarily to determine changes in the Party's leadership.  In addition, it reviews and makes changes, where necessary, to the Party's constitution.  It also selects the Party's Central Committee of some 370 members.  The Central Committee does not exercise authority as a corporate body in the same way that a legislature would.  It is, however, important in that its membership is composed of leading figures of the party, the state, and the military.  The Party Congress tends to be ceremonial, whereas the Central Committee meetings have often been arenas for real debate and discussions on Party policy.

There is also another organisation, the National People's Congress (as opposed to the Party Congress) which meets every year.  In theory, 3,000 strong, this stands above all others but:

. . . in the past it has been more of a symbolic organization endorsing proposals previously ironed out by the Communist Party leadership.

I have run out of time now but I will try and finish this off tomorrow because there are a few more organisations, not least the military, whose function needs to be explained.

 

Another glimpse through the bamboo curtain

My 'Sino-source' arrived safely in the UK and we enjoyed a Sunday lunch, well, I enjoyed it but he, poor fellow, was subjected to an interrogation by me on current aspects of China so perhaps he wished he had stayed in Hong Kong!  By the way, I should make clear that any conclusions I come to concerning China are my own, my 'Sino-source' may or, more likely, may not, agree with them!

Anyway, the first excellent thing he produced was some copies of the Caixin magazine.  From 1st of May this will be a monthly magazine but they run a website called English Caixin which is worth bookmarking.  It is mainly concerned with business but also comments on internal and external political and social affairs.  If, like me, you wish to gain some sort of insight into the mystery that is China then you could not start better than with Caixin.

The second excellent item he produced for me was a book called On Equal Terms: Redefining China's Relationship with America and the West by Zheng Mingxun (Paul Cheng to his western friends!)  I have only just finished the Introduction but already I admire Mr. Cheng enormously.  He is typical of that new(-ish) breed of Chinese-Americans not, I hasten to say, through any mixture of blood but simply by a life lived on the two continents.  In this book, Mr. Cheng seeks to explain each side to the other in order to avoid or at least alleviate future disputes and misunderstandings.  Already it is confirming my gloomy suspicion that there are probably many educated and sophisticated Chinese, like Mr. Cheng, who are capable of seeing both sides but I fear that such mutuality is a rarity amongst the American political class of both Right and Left.  When I have finished the book, I will write further.

In the meantime, the invaluable NightWatch bulletin (you see, my spies are everywhere!) informs me that the dispute between China and the Philipinnes over "the Scarborough Shoal (the Chinese name is Huangyan Island)" is continuing.  It was news to me but apparently in 2005 the Chinese government, that is, the Chinese Comunist Party, passed an Anti-Seccession Act which bars any future government from surrendering any sovereignty over land considered by the Chinese government to be Chinese!  This, of course, ties the hands of the current (and future) leadership from attempting any sort of negotiated deal other than complete surrender by the Philipinnes.  It also bodes ill for future trouble spots.

 

Too soon to say - but what the hell!

The Chen imbroglio currently entangling Sino-American diplomatic relations is a real litmus test for both nations.  Alas, the results of the test will not be known for some considerable time but, as regulars here at D&N will know, lack of information never stops us having an opinion!

The latest information I have is that the Chinese government have let it be known that if Mr. Chen applies in the normal way for permission to 'study abroad' it is minded to grant that permission. That, of course, would be an ideal solution saving face all round.   No-one seems to know for sure exactly what happened and what was said and agreed during Mr. Chen's stay in the American embassy and if Mr. Chen has any sense he will keep it to himself until such time as he has succeeded in gaining American citizenship.  On the other side, the Chinese government at its highest level is obviously having difficulty coping with the lower stratas of their bureaucracy, particularly their security departments, who seem to be stupid enough to believe, in this digital age, that power grows out the end of a police truncheon!  Equally, on the American side, the Republicans confirm - again - their reputation as the 'Stoopid Party' by allowing Romney to bellow ridiculous attacks on Obama without, so far, the slightest evidence that he has mishandled this highly delicate diplomatic minuet.  Note to Romney: when the Chinese shoot Chen and all his family, then is the time to start raising the roof but not before!

I repeat, no-one has the full picture on this devilish tricky little incident that neither side anticipated or wanted.  Eventually the history books will tell all, or at least most, of what went on, and then we will be able to judge the wisdom, or lack there-of, applied by both governments.  I really do hope that at the highest level both governments discover, albeit gingerly, that in a crisis they both possess cool minds that can see through to longer and more important aims and objectives.  The future of Sino-American relations contains a long list of potential disagreements of a truly catastrophic nature so the need for a mutually sophisticated relationship is crucial.

 

The Sunday Rumble 29:4:12

Jock prelate spouts BLX:  I'm feeling a tad grumpy this morning.  First of all my swimming pool is closed for the day so I missed my morning swim, and second, I awoke to the keening whine of some Jock prelate spouting 'A1 blx' as he accused Cameron of "immorality" because he wasn't stealing enough from the rich to give to the 'poor'.  Have matters deteriorated to such an extent that even Cardinals nowadays sound like spotty 'stoodents' in a demo?  Why do we not hear them thundering from their pulpits on the subject of real immorality of the simple, straightforward type that Jesus Christ would have understood?  Truly, the Pharisees have taken over the temples of the Lord!

Gutless Cameron missed his chance:  You may enjoy all sort of vices as a political leader but the one you must avoid at all costs is cowardice.  Cameron lost his nerve before the election and failed to go for a strong, unambivalent Right-wing set of policies which, in my opinion, would have given the Tory party an over-all majority.  Instead he has the dreadful 'il-Lib-non-Dems' hung round his neck like a dead albatross.  I suspect that to begin with he was fairly happy because it shielded him from, using what I suspect to be his words, ' those dreadful Right-wing oiks' in his own party.  At the end of last year Europe was a total shambles and there were more than enough disagreements of real substance between 'us and them', and between Tories and Lib-Dems, for him to have backed Clegg into a corner forcing him to break the coalition and thus engender an election earlier this year.  Now his chance has gone and all the sins of omission and commission have caught up with him and his useless gaggle of ministers.  For the past week the MSM, of all colours, have been writing his political obituary.  The quicker he goes the better but God only knows who will take his place. 

"Oh what a tangled web we weave ...":  When first we practice picking and choosing which nice, cuddly, furry or feathered things to preserve!  Thus, the State of Oregon is in a bugger's muddle because some-one talked the Government into protecting sea lions who promptly grunted something in 'Sea-Lionese' to the effect of, "Thanks, buddy, now where're all those salmon?" before they lumbered off to kill and eat zillions of them.  This forced the authorities to rescind the Federal protection law and the sea lions learned the hard way never to trust what governments say because thousands of them were shot!  Now it is the turn of the double-breasted cormorants.  They, apparently, have grown so fat on baby salmon trying desperately to reach the ocean that they can barely fly!  Hitherto a protected species they are now set for one last dive!  My thanks to Drudge.

Total incompetence knows no barriers:  It is a sort of relief to know that the Chinese, who we all credit with being "damned clever little devils, don'cha know" are, in reality, as clod-hoppingly useless as us!  Apparently, a blind - repeat blind - political dissident who was under house arrest and 24-hour surveillance which included dozens of not-so-secret policemen and the use of searchlights on his house at night, managed to escape with his immediate family and reach sanctuary at the American consulate.  This raises a fascinating question - do Chinese blush?  Aha, I bet you never thought of that one before!

Now I know the real reason:  The old friend and fellow thesp who pleaded an absolute and unbreakable prior appointment which prevented him from playing Abhorson the executioner on Monday night, and which resulted in me being dragged reluctantly, darlings, back onto the stage for (yet another) final farewell performance, has been found out!  On Monday night United are playing City to decide who wins the Premier League.  I have just spoken to him and hoped that his conscience pricks him as he sits in his armchair watching the match whilst  I suffer for his art!  He denies it all, of course.

"Oh, the horror, the horror!":  I just went downstairs to make a cup of tea and as ususal Sky News was running on the 'telly'.  It was a newspaper round-up programme and I took one look, and then another to be certain, and seeing that I was right - the panelists were the "fat, black clown" and Max 'spank me quick' Mosley - I fled upstairs unable to face it.  Where do they find these people?  And even more pertinent, why don't they ever ask me?

Are Europeans imitating Lear?  According to Roger Kimball at PJMedia they are beginning to sound like him:

“No, no, no, no!”  Thus quoth Lear to Cordelia near the end of the grimmest play Shakespeare wrote.

As my friend John Allison observes,  Europe is acting a lot like Lear on his way to prison.

“No” said the Italians on November 12, 2011. They sent away Silvio Berlusconi who served on and off for a cumulative 10 years from 1994 through 2011 and was Italy’s longest-serving Prime Minister ever.

“No” said the Spanish on November 20, 2011 to the Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, two-term Prime Minister from 2004-2011, replacing him with the conservative People’s Party led by Mariano Rajoy.

“No” said Geert Wilders, Party for Freedom leader on April 21, 2012 to his coalition partner, Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Liberal Party, sending Holland to a likely caretaker government and election on September 12.

Ditto the French and the Greeks. And this procession of negatives means —what? [My emphasis]

Our rulers would answer with another Shakespearean quote: "A question not to be asked"!

Must I go to night school to order a coffee?  This is a late addition but I need to go and make a coffee and it reminded me of my increasing irritation - oh, alright then, grumpiness - over the problem of ordering a coffee these days.  "Black coffee, please", I say to the Polish/Latvian/Czech/Estonian girl behind the counter.  She then reels off a list of names - in perfect English, I should make clear - none of which mean a thing to me.  My polite good humour vanishes and I lean across the counter placing my nose a few inches from hers (poor thing) and snarl, "Just give me a strong, black coffee!"  Well-trained and inherently courteous she smiles and asks, "Large, medium or small?" Cue: snapping, snarling, grumpy, old sod jumping up and down with mouth opening and closing, fists clenching and unclenching and  . . . a highly intellectual and philosophical discussion on the essential Platonic meaning of 'large' and 'small' does not ensue!

 

Through the bamboo darkly!

I am still peering as hard as I can into the mystery that is Chinese affairs and with a little help from friends and from the experts in the media I am beginning to discern a sort of pattern.  First of all, most of the experts seem to think that the Bo Xilai affair was a personal matter that flared up and went out of control and thereby offered the 'moderates' in the government the chance to strike down a man who, whilst being enormously rich himself, yearned for a return to good old-fashioned Mao-ism.  According to Jonathan Fenby in The NYT, the timing was perfect because the CCP (Communist Party of China) is due to hold its five-yearly congress later in the year and several places on the 9-man standing committee of the polit-bureau, the highest organ of power in the land, are up for grabs.  Bo Xilai had been making a hard play for one of the places not least because the multi-metropolitan province he ran has a population of over 32 million!  His grip on this power-base was beginning to give him every appearance of being an old-fashioned warlord with all the possibilities of schism that entails and which the Party could not accept.

But, as Fenby points out, the Bo Xilai affair is a symptom not a cause.  The fact is, or appears to be, that the there is a very real difference of political philosophy emerging amongst the Chinese leadership and it arises because of, and how Karl Marx must be chuckling, "internal contradictions".  Most people in the west assume that China is growing in wealth and power and to an extent that is true, but at the same time huge problems are also arising.  Some are, so to speak, 'technnocratic' like a growing shortage of water in the north, a huge increase in pollution, fairly useless regulations on health and safety and corruption being rife and growing.  A falling birth-rate and an enormous aging population is already looming large.  At a more political level is the realisation that China's economic model, tremendously successful over the last 30 years, is now out of date - and if that reminds you of the UK you will have an idea of the difficutlies for any government trying to re-jig an economy.  Apart from anything else, the government, as such, was not really responsible for the 'Chinese miracle'.  It was, like all true capitalist explosions, the result of myriad small, local and actually illegal activities by peasant farmers and small shopkeepers and businessmen acting with a nod and a wink (and probably a backhander) in conjunction with local Party apparatchiks.  (From personal experience during my nearly three years in Singapore I cannot stress too highly the entrepreneurial drive that seems to abide in so many Chinese.)

However, whilst individual Chinese entrepreneurs built up their businesses, the government made sure to hold on tight to the main institutions of the economy - the banks and the big state-owned enterprises.  In other words, the Chinese polit-bureau is now facing the sort of huge institutional barriers to progress and freedom that Margaret Thatcher in the UK had to take on in the 1980s.  Gradually, in the Chinese way, they seem to be making a start.  Their currency has been allowed to have a wider band within which to float against other currencies - particularly the dollar.  The state-owned banks are under pressure to operate under the same market disciplines that the smaller private banks have to do.  Of course, all these changes are pushed forward on the "softly, softly, catchee monkey" principle and any signs of ill-discipline like that which regularly afflicts the internet is swiftly dealt with.

And, of course, even in this 'global village' of international business there is still a 'Chinese way' of doing business which harks back to the first rumbustuous beginnings of the industrial revolution in England and the gradual civilising of the 'wild west' in America as Michael J. de la Merced reports in The NYT:

It may be a tiny Chinese educational company worth a little over $200 million. But the ChinaCast Education Corporation has found itself embroiled in a battle worthy of a John Grisham novel.

Its ousted chief executive, Ron Chan, has been accused of aiding in the disappearance of ChinaCast’s chops — ornate corporate seals that are needed to approve everything from paychecks to contracts.

And this week, more than a dozen men claiming an association with Mr. Chan burst into the company’s Shanghai office twice, violently carting off several computers from the finance department, according to a United States regulatory filing late on Thursday.

As one local American expatriate put it:

“What you have here are Western systems of corporate governance that don’t work with strong-willed Chinese C.E.O.’s,” said Paul Gillis, a professor at the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University.

You can say that again:

The company disclosed in its regulatory filing that it was investigating the unauthorized transfer of ownership in several of its colleges to unknown people.

Then on Monday, as ChinaCast was preparing to pay out wages, several men burst into the Shanghai office, demanding the financial department’s computers. These people forcibly took the equipment and punched at least one of the company’s outside lawyers, according to a letter to employees from Mr. Feng.

On Tuesday, another group of men claiming to have Mr. Chan’s approval ordered an electrical blackout to stop the workday, according to the memo. ChinaCast called in the police to throw the people out.

Operating in China might be described as 'a velly lisky business'! 

There are, of course, two other areas of Chinese governance which are going to be hugely important in the next 50 years.  Like so many other nations both now and in the past, there is a sort of symbiotic relationship between military and foreign policy but it is not clear at this stage who is leading, the soldiers or the diplomats.  I have come across very little information on the People's Army although a recent article by Adam Lowther and Panayotis A. Yannakogeorgos in The American Interest cast some light on the Second Artillery Corps which is the formation designated as the custodian and operator of Chinese nuclear weaponry.  The authors sum up the questions that arise:

In the modern Chinese military treatise The Science of Campaigns, the essence of Chinese nuclear strategy is described as lying "in the ingenious selection of targets, ingenious choice of timing opportunities, ingenious use of forces and firepower, and the ingenious application of operational methods." This prompts several questions: Who is targeted? What is the objective? When will it happen? Where will the Chinese deploy it? And why and how will they do it?

Worryingly, they say that Chinese strategy is based firmly on memories of the "century of humiliation" inflicted on China by the hands of 'foreigners'.  One can't blame them but one hopes that they are not overly obsessive!  Even so, one man who has studied the country's history:

Alistair Ian Johnston has pointed out in his analysis of three thousand years of Chinese military history, when China was at its weakest, it employed a strategy of appeasement. When it grew stronger but remained relatively weak, China employed a defensive strategy. When China was militarily superior, it took the offense

I don't suppose it is too difficult to discern Chines foreign policy aims which can be summed up as a desire for much greater power in South East Asia and the Pacific.  The possibilities (or in some cases - Taiwan - the probabilities) are manifold.  As I have remarked before, the Americans need a very shrewd and long-term policy in its dealings with China.  This means that idiots like Romney threatening to indulge in an economic war from day one of his presidency need to be sat upon.  The Americans should remember Theodore Roosevelt's words: "Speak softly, and carry a big stick."

 

A Chinese opera!

A friend sent me a report from wantchinatimes.com, a news organisation based in Taiwan.  It manages the impossible by introducing even more murk and mystery into the Bo Xilai affair whilst simultaneously providing some excellent background information.

Comrade Bo, the now disgraced former head of the Party in Chongquing, was the son of an 'Immortal', that is, the son of a man who soldiered with Mao and took part in the famous 'Long March'.  Needless to say, he was rewarded by Mao with imprisonment and disgrace.  Eventually his son, Bo Xilai, wormed his way back into favour.  In this, he was aided by marriage to the daughter of an appatchik family called Li Danyu.

As you can see, he probably did not marry her for her looks!  However, the connection to a 'distinguished' family with connections in the Party hierarchy gave Bo Xilai the safe base he needed to grease his way up the Party pole.  Again, with all the inevitability of a play by Shakespeare, no sooner had begun to achieve a status and power base of his own, to use the crude but neat Americanism, he 'ditched the bitch' and married Gu Kalai, and quite apart from her connections as the daughter of a senior general you can see the attraction:

Well, so far, so normal, but alas for poor old Bo Xilai, the ex-Mrs Bo was not one to let bygones be bygones.  Just the opposite, she mounted a sustained and fierce campaign against her former husband using all her connections to smear his reputation as he rose further up the Party ladder:

Bo Xilai's first wife has continued to be a thorn in his side throughout his career. Over the last ten years she has sent numerous letters of petition, following him wherever he went and telling everyone about his adulterous behavior. One insider described Li Danyu as a bomb that has been tracking Bo Xilai for over ten years.

This year, Bo Xilai was on the threshold of being offered a top job at the 18th Party Congress in which major leadershiop changes are expected.  His first wife's constant denigration was of such a nature that he had his own son by her arrested as a means of blackmailing her into silence.  Very shortly thereafter, his Chief of Police tried to defect, first to the British, then to the Americans.  Now, of course, Bo Xilai and his second wife are under arrest.  The mystery death of the Englishman, Neil Heywood, remains unsolved.

I am almost tempted to paraphrase one of my favourite sayings - only in China!  But of course, this sort of tale is as old as Mankind.  The ancient Greek tragedians would be familiar with the outlines.  My only wish and hope is that amongst the zillions of Chinese citizens there is an oriental Shakespeare quietly scribbling the outlines of a new play.  I stress the word 'play' because Chinese opera is a cacophonous racket fit only for masochists to listen to.  If I have any Chinese readers, I apologise, of course, but  . . .

 

 

The Chinese mirror - one-way, two-way or a three-fold mirror?

I am trying, in between my attempts to study pre-war Japanese society, to get to grips with the huge conundrum that is China today.  To that end I have just read an article by Gordon G. Chang (who has figured on this blog before) in Forbes Magazine.  In it, Mr. Chang maintains that it was not the CCP (Communist Party of China) that permitted the growth of free enterprise capitalism in China but the disobedience of ordinary people supported by local bureaucrats who turned a blind eye:

Deng [Xiaoping] began his tenure as China’s paramount leader by adhering to orthodox communist economics and trying to implement a ten-year plan. Yet early failure to meet goals forced him to back away from command-economy tactics and permit individual initiative.

Peasants on large collective farms, for example, were allowed to form “work groups” to tend designated plots. Central policies, however, specifically prohibited these groupings from including just one family. But Beijing’s policy did not last long: Families started to till their own land--and local officials condoned the clear violation of central rules.

Subterfuge on the farm was followed by subterfuge in the towns and cities. Private industry was strictly prohibited, but entrepreneurs flourished by operating their businesses as “red hat” collectives and enterprises--private companies operating under the guise of state ownership. Deng’s reforms succeeded only because the Chinese people disobeyed Deng’s rules.

The current leader, Premier Wen ­Jiabao, took fright in 2008 and ordered a massive stimulus policy.  According to Mr. Chang, those particular chickens have now come home to roost in the form of inflation, wild stock market fluctuations and an eye-watering property bubble:

China now has all the high-speed rail lines to nowhere and “ghost cities” it can handle. And the country has more debt than it can pay back, ­especially at the provincial level. As economist Lang Hsien Ping says, every province in China is Greece. The country’s debt-to-GDP ratio is about the same or worse than America’s, depending on how Beijing’s “hidden debt” is counted.

As I have remarked before, my own, utterly trustworthy, gut-instinct is not to believe a single piece of Chinese government economic data!  Particularly as Mr. Chang brings bad news:

Today, however, China’s leaders are on an antireform kick as they seek to bolster the prospects of massive state enterprises and restrict opportunities for foreign investors and domestic entrepreneurs. Especially since the middle of the last decade they have blocked ­acquisitions of local businesses by foreigners, increased state control of enterprises, employed predatory tactics against multinationals and diverted credit away from private enterprises. As they say in China these days, “The Communist Party is now the economy.”

I would not, because I could not, argue with Mr. Chang's more expert knowledge of Chinese affairs but my impression from other news sources was the opposite, that the Chinese government was making moves to integrate further into global financial and trading systems.  But what do I know?  Don't answer that!

 

The Sunday Rumble 15:4:12

I haven't indulged in a Sunday rumble for some time.  For newcomers, what happens is that instead of droning on and on, and then on for a bit more, on one subject, I sit here scratching myself and emitting short burps in different directions on different subjects.

Titanic RIP:  And, boy oh boy, do I mean REST in peace!  I don't know about you but I am sick to death of all this Titanic stuff, there seems to be no end to it.  Of course, there are no really decent wars or famines going on at the moment and so the MSM, bless their smelly socks, have nothing else to waste their ink or their running time on.  Of course, it's worth a pause and a quick thought or three but not his constant ghoulish obsession.

Darlings, I was wonderful!  I know you have all been on tenterhooks wanting to know how my rehearsals went for the important, nay, critical, role of Abhorson in Shakespeare's wonderful play Ye Olde Mysterie of Abhorson, ooops, Measure for Measure.  I think I can say with all modesty that I was a tremendous success.  The rest of the cast, including my understudy, who have been rehearsing the play for some time now were left in stunned silence at the end of my two scenes and one was heard to mutter, "Darling, wonderful isn't the word!"  Of course, it remains a mystery to me as to why the Bard in all his wisdom chose to give quite so many scenes to that bloody nun and Duke but that's the problem with writers, they never listen to actors!

China again - but no politics:  I missed the first half of the Chinese Grand Prix because I was swimming - oh, by the way, have I mentioned that I - oh, right - I have - fine, move on then, shall I? - anyway, I caught the last half and it was the best F1 race I hace seen for some time.  Many moons ago, in part of my rickety-rackety life, I was involved with one of the F1 teams and spent some time following 'the circus' round Europe.  As a man whose interest in cars has always rested somewhere on the minus scale I was surprised to find myself rather hooked on it.  However, like a lot of sports, you really do need to be there.  The sheer brute power of those machines can only be appreciated up close and personal, as it were.  Even so, today's race was terrific.  I think only one driver fell out and the remainder were really racing - at one stage there were three cars side by side hurtling towards a corner - exciting stuff and the fact that no-one was shunted off is a magnificent tribute to the skill of the drivers.  If you can catch a late recording of the race, watch it!  One oddity, I noticed, was the very low turnout of spectators.  I can't believe the Chinese are not interested.  Perhaps the organisers priced it too high, or perhaps times are beginning to get hard in China.

Prize-winning humbuggery:  I am grateful to my e-pal, Dom, who responded to my post on just one of the reasons why Obama and his wrecking crew need to go.  I reported, with glee, the tale of that intrepid investigator, James O'Keefe, who managed to waltz in to a voting office and obtain Attorney-General John Holder's voting ballot because, in line with government policy, no ID was required. All American Left-wing opinion and organisations are resolutely opposed to making voter ID a requirement and you do not need to be Brain of America to guess why.  Anyway, Dom sent me a film from the admirable PJTV who despatched reporters to various bastions of liberal organisations including, of course, John Holder's department and none were permitted to enter without proof of identity.  Watch the film - but have a sick-bucket to hand!

Will 'Dim Dave' make it to the next election?  All prime ministers go through a period of squalls and showers but usually they are confined to the perceived differences between them and their electorate.  The difference today is that Cameron is losing, at an accelerating rate, the support of his own backbenchers and his party workers.  They are catching up with what this erudite blog has been telling them for the last two years, that Cameron simply isn't very bright.  He's an Old Etonian twit with absolutely no political philosophy - and not only do I doubt he would understand what that meant, I doubt he could even spell it!  According to various reports, which began as whispers but are now being spoken out loud, he disdains the so-called 'worker bees' who keep the Tory party running in the country and surrounds himself with ex-public schoolboys of his own ilk.  He has never run anything in his life - and it's beginning to show.  So I ask, will he make it to the next election?  And if he's knifed in the back, who will play Brutus? 

A deadly beauty:  In the history of warfare was there ever a more beautiful but deadly weapon designed than the Vickers Supermarine Spitfire?  Even to today it still looks lethal. 

I am thrilled that we have cut a deal with the Burmese government to extract the twenty Spitfires which were buried there at the end of WWII.  If they can be restored they will be worth a fortune and what I hope is that the government will sell off some of them to provide a trust fund to keep, say, three of them in Britain as a heritage project.  If 'Dim Dave' does that I will forgive him his many sins!