How China got a U.S. senator to do its political bidding

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/how-china-got-a-us-senator-to-do-its-political-bidding/2017/12/17/8eee82c6-e1dc-11e7-8679-a9728984779c_story.html?utm_term=.24c2a532b45c

by smacktoward • 9 years ago

159 105 9 years ago

washingtonpost.com

Top19• 9 years ago

The amount of corruption I’ve heard against US Senators is staggering. I had no idea stuff like this was done except maybe in some cartoon version of the 1870’s Gilded Age.

Good example, Max Baucus shorted various financial companies for petty/risky wins as he was helping construct the 2008 bailout. He then later became the ambassador to China :(

Financial markets were experiencing the greatest volatility on record. Trillions of dollars in stock profits were being washed away. But for Bachus it was different. According to his financial disclosure statements, Bachus netted as much as $50,000 in capital gains by aggressively playing the market during this volatile period. And he netted tens of thousands more in early 2009, when financial reforms were put in place. What makes these results impressive is the fact that options trading is extremely risky. There is a rule of thumb in the financial industry that 75% of options are worthless when it comes time to redeem them, and that 80% of options traders lose money.

http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/excerpt-peter-schweizers-bo...

stevenwoo• 9 years ago

Congress specifically excluded themselves from insider trading laws. It's outrageous but that makes it pretty much a free for all for US congress folks to do insider trading.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/congress-insiders-above-the-law...

alien_at_work2• 9 years ago

I've often wondered about starting a fund where I simply follow any trades certain congress members are making. That's not insider info at that point, right? I guess this strategy can't work for some reason (or others would be exploiting it) but what is the reason? Time delay?

austincheney• 9 years ago

The amount of corruption I’ve heard against US Senators is staggering.

Perhaps, but there was no indication of corruption in the article.

justicezyx• 9 years ago

First, Chinese government has no human rights abuse in Tibet; they developed the area and treat the people well. Second, corruption is everywhere, if there is not China, there will be another country. The election system is not to find the people loyal to voters.

jchoksi• 9 years ago

First, Chinese government has no human rights abuse in Tibet

Hah!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China

https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2017/country-chapters/china...

coupdejarnac• 9 years ago

Don't spend your 50 cents all in one place.

jessaustin3• 9 years ago

If that's what an account that old with that much karma is doing, we have to be impressed by the commitment at least.

mindslight• 9 years ago

That's unkind - you know GP couldn't have been paid a whole 50 cents for a comment that bad.

telltruth4• 9 years ago

You are going to have massive downvotes and its actually well deserved for once because you are exactly are type of people who needs to be stopped spreading Chinese government propaganda on Tibet.

It is pretty well documented what China is doing to Tibet, its people, its natural resources and its culture. Building roads and trains are NOT for Tibetan people. They are there to enable mass migration, putting out massive military infrastructures and shuttle the natural resources out of Tibet. Britain also built such infrastructure in its colonies for exact same reasons.

China has completely swamped Tibet with overflow of Chinese people who look down on native Tibetans, take away all well paying jobs and positions of power and force native populations to lose their own culture and adopt Chinese culture instead. There is virtually no differences between British colonization and Chinese occupation of Tibet. Thanks to toothless world leadership, Chinese economy and little importance of Tibet as country, all these is being ignored and accepted. This is all documented in tremendous details. How can you deny this? Are you in China and unable to access all these material?

Did you knew that China does not allow foreigners to go to Tibet unless they get "special permit"? And you know who would never get "special permit"? Journalists! They don't even want others to know how bad things are anymore like in North Korea. Just munch on that fact for a second.

dm3730• 9 years ago

They are there to enable mass migration, putting out massive military infrastructures and shuttle the natural resources out of Tibet.
virtually no differences between British colonization and Chinese occupation of Tibet.

There is one huge difference. The British already successfully got away with it. Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada are the resulting trophies. Almost got South Africa too.

DrScump• 9 years ago

These allegations are tame compared with what Richard Blum's (husband of Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-CA) financial interests with the Chinese have done. The Chinese even benefited from elements of her so-called Desert Protection Act.

compliance_data• 9 years ago

Is there an article you could link to? Interested in the details

propman• 9 years ago

Foreign influence in congress may not be the biggest threat to Democracy, but it is one of my biggest pet peeves. A country has vastly greater resources that any other individual, business or entitity. A foreign country's intentions are also potentially far more nefarious than a company lobbying to make more profit in a capatilistic system or an individual wanting government policies to be shaped more according to his needs.

A foreign country should not be allowed so much access. This kind of reminds me how in one of the Wikileak emails, Clinton removed a country from a list of human rights violators for a mere donation. China is far far worse than a small country and this is peanuts in the grand scheme of things. I sincerely don't understand why no one can publically reprimand China for turning into a dystopian dictatorship before our eyes. Xi orders complete video and cellphone surveillance, black bagging without trial, abolishes term limits, makes disappear any rival billionaire or elite, and no one says a darn thing. Instead, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerburg are in the front row clapping. Literally. Xi announces all this and they congratulate him and clap in the front row.

We take a lot of tech freedoms for granted.

telltruth4• 9 years ago

To me it looks like US Congress is dirt cheap. Just few thousand dollars to pass laws that would have massive impact! Top countries spend billions on military and trying to revive their economies. With a tiny fraction of that budget you can buy lots of US politicians legally and easily generate desired effect. The beauty of this whole thing is that everything is legal. Rich folks even made sure you can have unlimited "donations". BTW, this is used to be called bribes and people were used to sent to prison for accepting that.

I can't stop but wondering if there is a startup opportunity here. What if it was possible to create a market to buy and sell politicians which was more efficient? May be we can dress it up little better... How about buy and sell "political cause"? Unlimited money allowed for each auctioning! Each political cause can then have underlying actual politician that gets part of the proceeds via campaign donations but all parties get to remain anonymous. No need to debate gun laws. Who ever is able to beat auction gets their say.

glenstein2• 9 years ago

I think it only looks dirt cheap if you're looking exclusively at campaign contributions. But the real influence of lobbying comes from managing entire networks of influence surrounding a person. A politician will suddenly know people who can help them manage their money, set their best friend up with investors so they can start their new business, help get their kid into the best school, help them find a lucrative career after politics, etc. I'm sure it's all extremely expensive.

michaelt• 9 years ago

  To me it looks like US Congress is dirt cheap. [...] No
  need to debate gun laws. Who ever is able to beat auction
  gets their say.

The cost of a bribe depends on multiple factors - but one of the most key ones is how important an issue is in terms of publicity and re-election chances.

A senator won't take a bribe that lets them buy campaign ads that get them 3000 votes if it requires them to take a position that loses them 4000 votes.

So it's cheap to bribe a politician to support some trivial matter that won't make the news, like not auditing the use of subsidised water for agriculture; but expensive to bribe a politician on matters voters will find out about and care about, like abortion and gun control.

This is part of what gives groups like the NRA their power; by keeping their members informed, they convert trivial, cheap-to-bribe issues into important, expensive-to-bribe issues.

shams93• 9 years ago

Thanks to the Citizen's United decision that Chinese transnational corporation has the same free speech rights to contribute to a political than an individual US citizen has. While a foreign country can't directly give money to a politician its trivial for them to use a cutout corporation to pass money and influence. And since we recognize corporations as people the US subsidiary of the Chinese cutout has full free speech rights and the ability to give effectively unlimited contributions to campaigns.

coldcode• 9 years ago

I long for the days when you had to bring bags of cash to bribe a congressperson. CU made it simple and hard to trace and even harder to prove.

pas• 9 years ago

This kind of reminds me how in one of the Wikileak emails, Clinton removed a country from a list of human rights violators for a mere donation.

Could you dig that up so we can see it?

omarforgotpwd2• 9 years ago

Yeah, I'd love to see info on this. What country was it?

sien• 9 years ago

The article bangs on about how China got a single US congressman.

Israel has enormous influence over the whole of congress.

http://original.antiwar.com/smith-grant/2017/07/17/aipac-sti...

Mearsheimer and Walt is still the big book on the subject:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Fore...

The US give Israel billions of dollars in foreign aid every year. Allows them to disgregard UN resolutions and prevents the recognition of Palestine.

Israel has nuclear weapons and is outside the Non proliferation treaty and yet the US goes crazy about other countries that try to get weapons.

Meanwhile AIPAC isn't even registered as something foreign.

This can be happily discussed online and in every non US country it amazes people how a tiny country like Israel can get the US to support them no matter what they do.

Now even Jerusalem is recognized as the capital of Israel, by one country in the whole world.

joejerryronnie• 9 years ago

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

shliachtx• 9 years ago

Israel has enormous influence over the whole of congress.

No, Israel has enormous support by Americans so it gets a lot of support by Congress. No surprises there, that is how a democracy should function.

The US give Israel billions of dollars in foreign aid every year.

Because they are a democratic ally with a stable government in a highly volatile region. Of course, there can be legitimate debate if that level of funding is a good idea, but it is entirely within reason. Additionally, much of the funding was in exchange for repeated concessions from Israel in peace talks which were always rebuffed and rejected by Palestinian leadership.

Allows them to disgregard UN resolutions and prevents the recognition of Palestine.

...by which they are uniquely singled out and targeted by countries with tremendous human rights violations such as Syria, Iran, etc.

Israel has nuclear weapons and is outside the Non proliferation treaty and yet the US goes crazy about other countries that try to get weapons.

Because Israel is a stable democracy under existential threat by it's neighbors, as opposed to, say, Iran or North Korea which are destabilizers.

Meanwhile AIPAC isn't even registered as something foreign.

Because it isn't. AIPAC is made up of and supported by American citizens. And this is where these arguments begin to take an undertone of antisemitism. The assumption that AIPAC is a foreign organization implies that it's members (primarily Jews) are foreign by virtue of being Jewish.

Now even Jerusalem is recognized as the capital of Israel, by one country in the whole world.

Because it is their capital. America recognizes Seoul as capital of South Korea and Pyongyang as capital of North Korea, does it not?

godzillabrennus• 9 years ago

Reminds me of how the NRA is supported by a small but active part of the population that votes.

Jews may be small in number but I would bet dollars to Latka’s that they vote.

If Tech issues brought people out to vote like guns or Israel I bet we would have more engineers in Congress.

tome2• 9 years ago

Israel has never been a signatory to the NPT (unlike North Korea and Iran). As far as I understand they are under no obligations not to develop nuclear weapons technology and they do not have the right to help with civilian nuclear infrastructure programmes that signatories have.

christmasity• 9 years ago

It's hard for major newspapers to publish critical articles on israel because of the israeli influence in news media. Not to mention the amount of jewish owners, investors, editors and journalists.

Do you expect a Josh Rogin to write a critical article on israel? Do you really expect washington post to publish negative articles on israel?

The editor of washingtonpost is martin baron, a child of israeli immigrants to the US.

The guy who wrote the op-ed and the editor both have ties to israel. What are the chances of a negative article regarding israel?

skj2• 9 years ago

FYI: http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/apr/28/...

Unless you meant something else, just more garbage.

Vinnl• 9 years ago

I have a different but somewhat similar concern: whatever the US (or other influential country's) government does also largely impacts my country, yet we have no democratic say in that what-so-ever.

learc83• 9 years ago

This kind of reminds me how in one of the Wikileak emails, Clinton removed a country from a list of human rights violators for a mere donation.

This is just flat out wrong. There was a rumor going around that a donation got Algeria taken off of a list of state sponsors of terror.

The problem is that it was never on that list in the first place.

conistonwater• 9 years ago

That's pretty fucked up, http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/apr/28/...

SkyMarshal• 9 years ago

Also worth reading (linked in the sidebar of the OP):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/chin...

telltruth4• 9 years ago

WaPo had been doing great reporting these days. I just don't know how much money they lose in ad revenue by being behind paywall. Any summery of the article?

dmode• 9 years ago

Sorry, if you think they are doing great reporting, isn't it worth to pay for a subscription? It is dirt cheap for Prime members

telltruth4• 9 years ago

No it isn't because there are other dozens of such outlets there. I can't buy dozens of subscriptions for everyone doing good reporting. Either they have to come up with some subscription bundle that covers large number of outlets (like Netflix or Google Music) or rely on ad revenues. I just don't know why these people don't think of this and just assume people would just swipe away their credit cards for new subscriptions.

corvallis3• 9 years ago

Do you feel that quality journalism should be free to you? Did your parents subscribe to a newspaper when you were growing up? Not sure why one would feel entitled to a work product without compensating the creator for it when it clearly has value to that consumer.

totalZero• 9 years ago

1) Publishing and distribution costs are far less online than with print.

2) News organizations have a long history of generating revenue by advertisement, and this is especially the case for many highly trafficked websites.

3) The owners of the newspaper benefit from a wider reach, because it allows them to better influence the public.

4) News websites, in many cases, either used to be free or still are.

5) The price of a full subscription may not be fair for someone who only wants to be able to read the occasional article linked from HN/reddit/friends.

diogenescynic• 9 years ago

S&P and Moody’s and other credit rating agencies need to downgrade the US for our total and complete political dysfunction. We are being passed by as other counties address real problems, while we argue about plain as day facts that only one political party in the world still refuses to acknowledge. America’s power will continue to fade the longer republicans are in power.

Feniks2• 9 years ago

The US has decided that its politicians are for auction. I don't see why its a problem if the bidding is from China instead of Comcast? Besides foreign governments have been lobbying in Washington for decades. There is a whole industry about it.

perseusprime11• 9 years ago

I agree. This is how we are setup. U.S foriegn policy is important for trade, immigration, war, sanctions, etc. There is no other way to get your story through without lobbying.

colanderman• 9 years ago

Isn't that the purpose of diplomats?

"The main functions of diplomats are: representation and protection of the interests and nationals of the sending state; initiation and facilitation of strategic agreements; treaties and conventions; promotion of information; trade and commerce; technology" [1]

Why are we permitting lobbyists to usurp this role?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomat

verylongaccount• 9 years ago

What particularly strikes me about this story is the highly selective concern. What about all the lobbying done by Israel and Saudi Arabia?

ainiriand• 9 years ago

What a piece of corrupt shit, pardon my french. I have a strong belief that US senators are, in its vast majority, completely innocent and this does a lot of harm to the 'clean' ones.

_bfhp• 9 years ago

Barbara Lee was the only representative in Congress to vote against the 2001 AUMF

puppetmaster42• 9 years ago

Old news: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/clinton-foundation-scandal... .

Also Russia, Ukraine, Saudi.

Our current POTUS seems will not be influenced by China.

thrillgore• 9 years ago

Probably because Russia outbid them.

lamarpye• 9 years ago

That is probably why we stopped fracking when Trump was elected. To help the Russians.

mac010213• 9 years ago

Senators do a lot of underhanded stuff.

But, in this case, if it were put to a vote, probably the senator's constituents in Montana would want him to do exactly what he's doing?

candiodari2• 9 years ago

What I thought was really funny was how the Clinton foundation lost pretty much all it's foreign funding in a matter of weeks after Hillary lost the election.

Who knew that even Australia, both the premier privately AND the government bribed the US president ?

I wonder what they pay for ...

http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/au...

Ukranian billionaires: (who, by the way definitely did not earn his wealth. In a way, this guy got it from Putin, or at least certainly approved by Putin)

http://prn.fm/clinton-foundations-deep-financial-ties-to-ukr...

Norway's government:

https://www.thelocal.no/20160704/norways-funding-of-clinton-...

Irish "businessman" (who got his wealth from government monopolies, I might add)

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/us/denis-o-brien-and-d...

Googling around you find many others, like the beheader-in-chief, the king of Saudi Arabia. Chinese politicians. More Russian oligarchs. Etc.

And here is what they paid for:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/emails-foundation-resource...

And VERY well paid jobs for the extended family:

https://www.dailywire.com/news/8561/7-things-you-need-know-a...

An example of thier projects an extremely expensive "public" library garden, which comes with a "private residence" and a mini-golf course. The Clintons stay there "on an off", according to the NY Post. (needless to say, most of it was financed, not even by the Clinton foundation itself but by local government)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hrCZbMUYzE

https://nypost.com/2016/10/02/bill-clintons-executive-suite-...

No worries, the Bushes have something similar, and Obama is constructing his version.

jessaustin3• 9 years ago

I'm actually a little worried for the Clintons. Some of those donors might be unaccustomed to having promises broken. Some of those might be unpracticed at forgiveness...

MrZongle2• 9 years ago

The Clintons seem to excel at taking care of the Clintons. I think they'll be just fine.

1_2__4• 9 years ago

NY Post, Washington Examiner, The Daily Wire, and a blog written by someone whose bio starts out "An internationally renowned expert in the field of health and nutrition...".

Perhaps you have sources that aren't part of an insane right-wing echo chamber? Oh wait, no, of course you don't, or you would have posted them. Must be some of that Deep State infecting the MSM (am I doing this "right")?

candiodari2• 9 years ago

Okay, let's give a few more links ... let me know which one is sufficiently left wing (none I guess). Also, please state what exactly you're claiming ... there are plenty of links in here by organisations that certainly have a reputation for integrity so slant, sure, factually inaccurate, certainly not.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/25/arts/design/an-earnest-bui...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2014-10-17/bill-clin...

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2001/mar/12/20010312-02...

http://www.greenroofs.com/projects/pview.php?id=190

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11...

https://www.npr.org/2017/03/01/517840118/arkansas-weighs-whe...

jessaustin3• 9 years ago

One hopes this is just the daily recommended dose of general "fear foreigners!" pablum that WaPo is assigned by its CIA handlers, rather than the first rumblings of the foredoomed "Operation Tibetan Freedom". We've gotten our asses kicked enough this century already; let's chill out for a few decades.

It is ridiculous to think that beef export, in particular, should be held hostage to concerns about injustice in Tibet while the rest of the economy happily bubbles along doing billions and billions in business with China. If WaPo dislikes Montana beef people so much, why not get them kicked off the federal lands they destroy while paying pennies to rent? Ranchers like me who have to actually pay for the land their cattle graze, could support that.

vinceguidry7• 9 years ago

China is an extremely interesting study in geopolitics.

Nations should never be able to do this, rise in prominence completely unobjected. You see examples of this throughout history, whenever one nation starts to expand its power and influence, another nation or group of nations tends to deploy power to check the rise.

Accession of new geopolitical powers is therefore an extremely rare event, a complete failure of the nation's rivals to provide an adequate check. Those checks go all the way to declaration of war if it becomes necessary.

We're seeing that with China, and no one is quite sure why. Russia is falling in line with Chinese interests, the US is just keeping mum, in the same way Europe kept mum for decades while the US rose in prominence.

My theory has to do with nuclear weapons making the 'buck-stops-here' solution politically infeasible. Nuclear weapons didn't meaningfully change conventional warfare, but it threw a monkey wrench into international diplomacy, creating a situation in which China can push relentlessly hard to rise without a corresponding check.

novaleaf• 9 years ago

I think it's because we (global powers) are more civilized these days. In this modern era it's harder (not impossible) to go to war when there isn't an egregious threat/harm present. The populous now needs to feel it's justified.

vinceguidry7• 9 years ago

Civilized? Us? You must have America confused with some other global superpower, like, say, ancient Rome. We've been pursuing one or more wars more or less continuously since WW2. They don't feel like wars to us, because our economic heft is such that fighting a war on foreign soil is pocket change. We just don't call them wars until later, when the historians can finally control the narrative.

adventured• 9 years ago

There are several reasons for it, including your nuclear weapons practical consideration.

- The US allowed China into the WTO, urged by globalist corporations who thought it would be massively to their benefit. That was the spark that sent their economy skyrocketing. Their economy had been growing at a healthy clip, however immediately after joining the WTO it doubled in size in just five years from $1.4t to $2.8t. It is still widely believed, perhaps naively hoped for, by major US corporations and financial interests that China can be a growth opportunity for investment and trade. That keeps the criticism more subdued than it otherwise would have been (and that appears to be gradually fading, as it becomes obvious China is running an almost strictly mercantilist economic nationalism strategy).

- China repaid some of the trade imbalance, which provided them with vast piles of dollars, by buying up a small chunk of US debt. China recognized it as being in their self-interest, just as it was with Japan, providing some additional influence. That bought them a small amount of political cover.

- China has largely stayed out of several prominent spheres of US military dominace, including in the Americas, the Middle East and Europe. That may change of course, as China has begun pushing its military outwards. [1]

- The US has a slightly unusual liking of China, which goes back a century or more. The US protected China from being nuked by Russia in 1969 [2]. The US destroyed the Empire of Japan and fought side by side with the Chinese to push the Japanese out of mainland Asia. The US was primary in working with China to open its economy, including work done by politicians like Nixon / Kissinger, and US companies / investors. The US is among the few global powers of the last 500 years that didn't seek to invade, conquer or humiliate China, but instead traded massively with them and invested massively into them (despite the fact that they were hard Communists and the US Capitalist). There's some kind of kinship (despite the occasional adversarial tones) between the two nations, the US maybe sees some of itself in China's rise. On the economic side there was actually less hysteria in the US about China's rise to global power than there was with Japan during the 1970s and 1980s (with Japan actually overtaking the US GDP per capita figures by 1987), despite China's climb being far more dramatic.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/07/china-djibo...

[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7720461...

vinceguidry7• 9 years ago

I don't think any of these are salient.

In the first place, politics is more often the driver of economics than the other way around. No way would American political leaders sacrifice the good of the nation for the good of individual corporations. To allow China to do this literally means they're sleeping at the wheel. Americans have always been fiercely America-first, up to and well beyond the point of being willing to go to war over it.

This is, quite literally, the one job that a lot of people in government have, to come up with foreign policy strategies and assess the situation and recommend policy to political leadership. Those people are still there, doing their jobs, assessing and recommending. Yet we still have not started pursuing an effective strategy for containing China. Why?

Your other theme, that Americans just somehow like China, doesn't really hold water either. Americans had a similar like for Russians, but that didn't stop us from fighting a decades-long proxy war with them.

American leaders just seem legitimately confused over the direction the nation should be going, allowing China to fill a leadership void. It almost seems like we're just tired of global hegemony.

xster• 9 years ago

These are really interesting points. I'm not an expert but I'm not sure the last point is as simple.

- The US does use subversion to ferment political instability, more or less using the same channels it did to overthrow nationalist governments around the world like Chile, Guatemala, Iran etc. The CIA trained the previous Tibetan regimes' aristocrats in Colorado and paradropped them back in China for a failed guerrilla rebellion Bay of Pigs style. - The CIA/NED actively throws millions at insurrections in China such as in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Tibet etc. They're not hiding it in their website either. - The US may be less worried about China to start with since US military bases and its geopolitical allies surrounds China in every which possible (or relevant) way. China more or less does maritime trading at US's discretion. - Arguably, Nixon/US didn't exactly care about China more or less the same way the US didn't care about South Vietnamese market economy. Nixon personally just wanted to score a leverage on USSR. [https://books.google.com/books/about/Nixon_in_China.html?id=...] - US imperialism in China in the 19th century was fairly standard

AnimalMuppet• 9 years ago

Even without nuclear weapons, I'm pretty sure that the US has no stomach for a toe-to-toe all-out conventional war with China. We're not willing to accept the casualties just to "keep China in check".

vinceguidry7• 9 years ago

We don't really need an all-out conventional war with China in order to check its rise. We just need to make a sufficiently credible threat. Americans are more than willing to go to war in order to do this, we did it all throughout the Cold War, for instance, in order to check the USSR. That was only 50 years ago. This particular geopolitical dynamic goes clear back to the Middle Ages.

Why we are not threatening China at the moment is a complete mystery.

crimsonalucard6• 9 years ago

The us is such a decentralized power that business interests influence policy. China is a business interest. On the political level China seems to be a rival, however the true nature of our relationship is equivalent to that of business partners.

Political leaders will talk shit about china while more powerful big businesses are essentially reliant on trade with china. There is nothing to keep in check because nobody wants to keep china in check.

Another thing is you seem to imply that they need to be kept in check. Centralized powers are better at keeping themselves in check then a decentralized power. No other powerful country in the world right now can even attempt to implement population control the way China did it. If the US becomes an environmental apocalypse in the future its because they couldn't take drastic measures the same way China did with their one child policy. I am aware that there were unintended consequences of the one child policy but i am referring to the underlying motives and capability of carrying out such policies, something that is impossible for the US to do. If anything the US is the runaway power that needs to be kept in check.

vinceguidry7• 9 years ago

Sorry to pierce your holy pope box, but this stuff is really, really, really old. It's way bigger than peoples' economic interest. This deals with forces that people are willing to die for. Think about that for a minute. What causes people to sign up for war? 9 times out of 10, it's for "the good of the country."

How do you define the good of the country? Only against the interests of other countries. What's in the best interests of the US is against the interests of China. That's what this stuff means. And it's a strong enough model to have prevailed for over a thousand years. Foreign policy experts are all over themselves right now wondering what the hell is going on and nobody really has a good answer.

The United States has historically been the global hegemony that dictates how much other nations can get away with. That's something that usually sinks into the minds of the entire population and infuses them with the willingness and desire to fight, not just to safeguard that status, but also to punish insults to that status, even if they're just perceived.

The EU is not an insult to American status. Neither is Russia, Africa, or South America. China is. They're creating global status for themselves that the US has historically held to be within it's purview. It's creating alternatives for countless small nations other than acceding to American dominance.

American politicians are more than capable of setting the economic agenda. They've done this in the past. Why are they not doing this now, in response to geopolitical imperative that's held for every single other nation in the same position has for as long as we can study dominant nations for? China should have expected the American inquisition. The inquisition never came. So they get bolder and bolder. This is far beyond business. This is pride.

America got to rise because the powers in Europe were too busy infighting to recognize the growing nation. Once the world wars concluded, they got their act together and are acting as a bloc to balance the US. The world learned to not ignore rising powers just because they're thousands of miles away.

Look, the US is willing to check North Korea, which serves no real threat to anything but perceived American interests. Yet we're willing to make national news every little thing Kim Jong-Un does, and seriously rattle our sabers against him. Why is North Korea on our radar, but not China?

It's got nothing to do with business. This is pure politics. The only entity capable of drumming up the resources to check China is us, and we're not doing it. By all analyses that have served us well for a thousand years, we're not doing it. Are we just waking up, just now getting ready to perceive the threat? Or is there something else going on? Does America just not care about the position in the world that previous generations spent their entire lives building?

How China got a U.S. senator to do its political bidding

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