Chinese flag? Thank you Sir, that'll do nicely.
So you're in a bar and you know that sitting opposite you is a gun seller, you ask him to supply you with the parts of a gun and ask if he can then teach you how to use it.
He says "No Problem," but then asks "what you are going to do with it when you can use it?"
"I'm going to sell it to a mate who knows how to use it and he's going to kill you."
It seems far fetched but this is exactly how international trade works and rarely has the hypocrisy of trade and politics been so well illustrated than the Hezbollah-Israel confrontation that is currently in the news.
Israel buys arms from the United States, from where it also buys weapon technology. Israel sells arms and technology to China. China then sells its weapons and know-how to Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia. Iran sells the arms to Hezbollah who use them to kill Israeli's.
Chinese weapon teams are in Libya and it is negotiating with Syria on the sale of MII ballistic missiles, China being one of the few countries in the world that can actually supply them. The problem has been created by the West to some extent, China lags behind the U.S.A, Europe, Japan and even Russia in the usual economic markets and has therefore turned to offering a service that no other country can be seen to be doing so openly.
The trade deal with Israel is worth between $1 and $3 billion dollars to Israel. China has 1,000 technicians based full time in Saudi Arabia where it is advising on weapons and installations, this is in return for the 17% of its oil needs that China imports from Saudi Arabia.
China seems beyond criticism in this and other matters, human rights abuses are ignored, can you imagine South Africa being given the 1980 Olympics whilst apartheid existed? I don't think so, but mention abuse and the 2008 games in the same sentence and you are accused of being simplistic in your ideals. The government in Beijing currently ackowledges that 3,000 individuals are in prison for "counter-revolutionary" or political crimes this is far below Western estimates - and don't mention Tibet.
The Chinese government has recently told 1.3 billion of its citizens that they must learn English to become more competitive, how ironic is that - we have 60 million English speakers in this country and yet are so uncompetitive we outsource work to China, India and Taiwan. Oh, and don't mention Taiwan either - well not in the company of somebody from the mainland anyway.
China will be the 21st Century's superpower. It's the bully waiting to be let out of detention so that it can impose itself on the world playground. With Europe gripped by terrorist fears, real or imagined, the USA running itself into the ground like some global PC Plod and Russia on the brink of an alcohol fuelled collapse in birth rates it's a great time to be Chinese.
Reminds me of the joke about one in five people being Chinese, "In our house we have five people, Mum, Dad, Me, Trevor and Chu Wong - I've always had my doubts about Trevor."
No comments:
Post a Comment