urbanSTL

A few thoughts:



1. Chinese holdings in US Treasury bills, bonds, and notes were acquired with full clarity and support on the open market. As such, the Chinese are now tied to the economic well-being of the US. We are not beholden on them; rather, they are invested in the US economy, and how we go is how they go. They’re investors, not mafia loan sharks.



Without going into the dynamics of sovereign investment in USD-based offerings, a few things to consider: China is not the only sovereign purchaser of Treasury bills, bonds, and notes. They are the world’s largest developing economy; they are also the largest gross investor into these Treasury offerings. The stability of the Yuan, their currency (a.k.a. the People’s Money, pronounced “ya-mim-be”) is increased by their holdings in the USD, although not a firm peg.



If you own stock in Home Depot, doesn’t it lead you more often to shop at Home Depot than Lowe’s or some other hardware store?

Now, make it less of a single stock investment and more dependent strategic economic partnership with one of your biggest mutual trading partners, the world’s largest economy, for gross and net imports & exports.

China needs us to thrive for its own well being.



They are not murdering us. If anything, we’ve been stabbing them (reference: Chinese SWF investments into Citi, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Black Rock IPO, et.al.). These with their invested holdings in Treasury offerings have made us the dominant one comparatively.



And, we are far, far richer than them. Look at GDP comparisons (best online reference: the CIA World Fact Book).



2. The US economy has shifted within the last four decades from manufacturing-based to service-based. See Robert Porter and The Comparative Advantage of Nations. That they now make the small crap we buy has been a choice by the US to partition out our lesser-earning industries. Dollar Disparity in earnings is a fact of globalized economics, and the use of Chinese manufacturing is smarter for us to have as a nation.



The jobs the Chinese “took” are largely jobs US workers wouldn’t take. If they offered them all back, most would be declined by us as career work.



3. Yes, it’s still the People’s Republic of China, and they’re not known for compassion with human rights. I stood in Tiananmen Square on the 17th anniversary of the massacre, as CNN was edited out in the hotel room when that story was broadcast. At the square that day, I felt a stronger police and military presence, no doubt, and no one there dared to be brazen about the date.



I’ve never been to Tibet, although I do like the Beastie Boys.



Know that capitalism increases individualism in the minds of the Chinese people, and through these two factors ingrains concepts of democratic representation in the nation. If we want a free and open China, the best way to engage them is with their wallets.



Think of the reverse effects of perestroika and glasnost in the 1980s, when the Soviets encouraged self-expression. The first thing oppressed people with new declarative freedoms demand is an increase in the quality of life, beginning in the USSR with food and shelter, and in this newfound understanding the massed nations brought about a change in global geopolitics, the end of the Cold War, through their new national and transnational self-perceptions. In the PRC, they went the other way, opening stores to new goods and consumer choices. From this, the concepts of individualism have grown more organically, and from these new self-identifiers will spring a change in the self-perception of the Chinese nation and their government.



4. As much as we think it would be cool, we mustn’t think that the Chinese will move into North City “just because”. Remember the Koreans on top of their stores in LA in 1992? The Chinese are far more brazen and less tolerant of certain aspects of US domestic sub-cultural instabilities (broadly speaking, of course). They’d move to new suburbs in the countryside (past the O’Fallons), the urban areas (StL City, west to Clayton), and of course near StL Chinatown.



Where is Chinatown in StL? University City and Olivette, on Olive east of I-170. Great fish shops along there, and I hear good chicken feet.



5. There’s no potential unraveling by Southern IL with Mid America. They’re overflow for Lambert, at best. They cannot and will not derail anything, no matter how pessimistically we may think. This is far bigger than potentially competing de facto independent metro municipalities can hit. China wants to work with MO and StL at Lambert; they don’t know Mascoutah as anything but “they’ve got that, too” Mascoutah didn’t start the negotiations, they’ve been picked up along the road as MO’s been driving.



If they pulled anything volatile to the deal being done, how quick would Claire McCaskill get President Obama to act on StL’s behalf? While he’s from IL, he’s from Chicago, not Mascoutah, and he knows he owes her interests his support.

innov8ion wrote:What are we, the world police?

America. {edited for language January}



Focus: If it's cool enough for Batman, China's good enough for us.