Recently in China Category

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard gently dismisses yesterday's Robert Fisk report about secret meetings between the Chinese and Arabs seeking to end dollar hegemony ... but he explains why the end of the dollar's hegemony is happening anyway. Excerpt:

What matters is where OPEC oil producers and rising export powers choose to invest their surpluses. If they cease to rotate this wealth into US Treasuries, mortgage bonds, and other US assets, the dollar must weaken over time.

"Everybody in the world is massively overweight the US dollar," said David Bloom, currency chief at HSBC. "As they invest a little here and little there in other currencies, or gold, it slowly erodes the dollar. It is like sterling after World War One. Everybody can see it's happening."

"In the US they have near zero rates, external deficits, and public debt sky-rocketing to 100pc of GDP, and on top of that they are printing money. It is the perfect storm for the dollar," he said.

Natural forces, in other words.

Why move to the drying-out American West when you can get "Jackson Hole" in China? A closer look at "Jackson Hole" (complete with "church") here.

Translation of this ad, (according to ShanghaiList):

Students are our future, but when something happens to them, who will help and protect them? Chongqing Huaxi Women's Hospital has started Students Care Month, where those students who come to get an abortion can get 50% off if they show their student ids. Abortion surgeries are the most advanced in the world, won't stretch (your womb), won't hurt, it's quick, and you can do what you want afterward, it won't affect your studies or your work.

China has 13 million abortions per year -- equivalent to the entire state of Pennsylvania and, relative to population size, roughly four times the US rate.

There are no words for this kind of degeneracy. The thing speaks for itself.

Of course I don't approve of rioting, but the Chinese government has been crapping on the Muslim Uighur minority for a very long time, dispossessing them in their own land (as it has done to the Tibetans, moving ethnic Han Chinese in as a matter of state policy). ABC News tonight aired footage of a mob of Han Chinese beating a lone Uighur with sticks. Mind you, this blog is one of the last places you will find me supporting Muslim rioters, but for pity's sake, who could blame the Uighurs for fighting back? Writes one Uighur leader in exile:

Uighur resentment at government policy has only intensified with the razing of an ancient centre for Uighur culture: the Old City of Kashgar. The Old City, which has served as a cradle of Uighur civilisation for centuries and which was an important stop on the Silk Road, is being reduced to rubble, and its population of 220,000 Uighurs is being forcibly moved to cinderblock apartments on the outskirts of the city. Uighurs were not given a voice in the project, and are being forced to watch in silence as their homes, and their history, are bulldozed away.

This crescendo of the destruction of Uighurs' culture is what brought Uighurs to the streets. Though they must have known they would be subjected to extreme force, the Uighurs' desperation seems to have outweighed their fear. Theirs was a desperate call to be heard, in the face of an authoritarian regime that crushes any dissent. Theirs was a call for freedom and justice.

Question: Why is it cause for celebration and cheer in the West when the Tibetans riot against Chinese oppression, but a cause for alarm and condemnation when the Uighurs do the same thing? If the Uighurs were trying to establish a Taliban-like state, that would be one thing. But I've not seen evidence that they want anything more than to be treated with justice, especially in their own historic land. If you have other information, please share it.

David Brooks writes today about the future of US-China relations -- this, from a heated debate about whether the US and China face a future of competition, or cooperation. Brooks concludes:

I came to the debate agreeing more with Fallows and left the same way, but I was impressed by how powerfully Ferguson made his case. And I was struck by their agreement about what to do. This conversation, like many conversations these days, gets back to America's debt. Until the U.S. gets its fiscal house in order, relations with countries like China will be fundamentally insecure.

The first thought I had after reading this piece was: we will never, ever get our debt situation settled. Unfortunately, I'm still waiting for the next thought, but it won't come. I really cannot imagine a situation in which we will embrace national austerity for the sake of paying down our insane and immoral levels of debt. We'll just have to crash, and crash hard. Unless, of course, our new ant overlords take over first.

Seriously, can you imagine the US paying down its debt? If so, give me the politically and culturally plausible scenario. Honestly, I want to be convinced.