Originally Posted by Rick Hirst

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

Hey Rick, where've you been?

Busy, getting my marriage, my job and my personal life back on track.

Among other things, I promised my wife that I'd spend less time chatting with total strangers and more time talking to her.


Now that I'm settled in my new job at MS, getting counseling and medication, and jogging again, my head is clear enough to spend some time posting here again.

Glad you're back.

Yesterday, I read a version of our 'Taiwan' policy which said that we would consider ourselves obligated to rush to Taiwan's defense in the event of an UNPROVOKED Chinese attack. Could not a unilateral declaration of formal independence by Taiwan, and the full mobilization of Taiwan's military to defend said declaration, despite repeated warnings by China against any such course of action on Taiwan's part, be considered by a reasonable person to be more than sufficient provocation to release us from any such perceived obligation? Hmmm...

Originally Posted by Sabinus Invictus

Yesterday, I read a version of our 'Taiwan' policy which said that we would consider ourselves obligated to rush to Taiwan's defense in the event of an UNPROVOKED Chinese attack. Could not a unilateral declaration of formal independence by Taiwan, and the full mobilization of Taiwan's military to defend said declaration, despite repeated warnings by China against any such course of action on Taiwan's part, be considered by a reasonable person to be more than sufficient provocation to release us from any such perceived obligation? Hmmm...

It depends on who is in power when that happens and what they feel about the Taiwan/China relationship. If, we still adhere to the unprovoked rule, then more than likely we will not rush to Taiwan's aid if they do something like declare independence too early. Even China isn't that stupid to start gallavanting across the strait without a very good reason.

Hopefully I expect absolutely nothing to happen between the two nations in these regards.

Apparently I may have spoken too soon.

China is building its military forces faster than U.S. intelligence and military analysts expected, prompting fears that Beijing will attack Taiwan in the next two years, according to Pentagon officials.

U.S. defense and intelligence officials say all the signs point in one troubling direction: Beijing then will be forced to go to war with the United States, which has vowed to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack.

China's military buildup includes an array of new high-technology weapons, such as warships, submarines, missiles and a maneuverable warhead designed to defeat U.S. missile defenses. Recent intelligence reports also show that China has stepped up military exercises involving amphibious assaults, viewed as another sign that it is preparing for an attack on Taiwan . . .

. . . China's economy has been growing at a rate of at least 10 percent for each of the past 10 years, providing the country's military with the needed funds for modernization.

The combination of a vibrant centralized economy, growing military and increasingly fervent nationalism has transformed China into what many defense officials view as a fascist state.

"We may be seeing in China the first true fascist society on the model of Nazi Germany, where you have this incredible resource base in a commercial economy with strong nationalism, which the military was able to reach into and ramp up incredible production," a senior defense official said.

As far as we can tell, we are at least safe till after the 2008 Olympics.

Originally Posted by Andy '85

Apparently I may have spoken too soon.

China is building its military forces faster than U.S. intelligence and military analysts expected, prompting fears that Beijing will attack Taiwan in the next two years, according to Pentagon officials.

U.S. defense and intelligence officials say all the signs point in one troubling direction: Beijing then will be forced to go to war with the United States, which has vowed to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack.

China's military buildup includes an array of new high-technology weapons, such as warships, submarines, missiles and a maneuverable warhead designed to defeat U.S. missile defenses. Recent intelligence reports also show that China has stepped up military exercises involving amphibious assaults, viewed as another sign that it is preparing for an attack on Taiwan . . .

. . . China's economy has been growing at a rate of at least 10 percent for each of the past 10 years, providing the country's military with the needed funds for modernization.

The combination of a vibrant centralized economy, growing military and increasingly fervent nationalism has transformed China into what many defense officials view as a fascist state.

"We may be seeing in China the first true fascist society on the model of Nazi Germany, where you have this incredible resource base in a commercial economy with strong nationalism, which the military was able to reach into and ramp up incredible production," a senior defense official said.

As far as we can tell, we are at least safe till after the 2008 Olympics.

Yeah, yeah, whatever. "Missile Gap" redux.

Taiwan is safe until China feels it has enough naval power to deter U.S. involvement, and that's probably a decade off.

Could this be the time to frming a Pacific Treaty Organization obligaitng the US, Tawian, Japan, Sourth Korea, and the Philipines to defend the North Pacific from emerging thereats? ANd ot let Lapan, Taiwan, and South Korea go nuclear to deter their nuclear armed predatory neighbors, the PRC and DPRK?

According to economic forecasts on a Purchasing Power Parity basis (this means adjusting the economy for actual production rather than exchange rate measurements) China's economy will emerge as teh world's largest by about 2015. How will the US and its allies in the Pacific deal with a nation that is organized along capitalist-communist hybrid lines that is more economically powerful than itself? Will we be like UK in the latenineteenth century facing an emerging America?

As Marx might say, history occurs the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce.

Originally Posted by Sbarro

According to economic forecasts on a Purchasing Power Parity basis (this means adjusting the economy for actual production rather than exchange rate measurements) China's economy will emerge as teh world's largest by about 2015.

Where are you getting this figure?

Originally Posted by Sbarro

According to economic forecasts on a Purchasing Power Parity basis (this means adjusting the economy for actual production rather than exchange rate measurements) China's economy will emerge as teh world's largest by about 2015. How will the US and its allies in the Pacific deal with a nation that is organized along capitalist-communist hybrid lines that is more economically powerful than itself? Will we be like UK in the latenineteenth century facing an emerging America?

As Marx might say, history occurs the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce.

I also would like to see a cite for this figure. Most of the analyst reports I've been reading have said that China's economy is in danger of overheating. Plus their industrial sector is highly leveraged.
Cite:
http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusin...10002105.shtml

Originally Posted by Boean

Originally Posted by Sbarro

According to economic forecasts on a Purchasing Power Parity basis (this means adjusting the economy for actual production rather than exchange rate measurements) China's economy will emerge as teh world's largest by about 2015. How will the US and its allies in the Pacific deal with a nation that is organized along capitalist-communist hybrid lines that is more economically powerful than itself? Will we be like UK in the latenineteenth century facing an emerging America?

As Marx might say, history occurs the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce.

I also would like to see a cite for this figure. Most of the analyst reports I've been reading have said that China's economy is in danger of overheating. Plus their industrial sector is highly leveraged.
Cite:
http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusin...10002105.shtml

The reason I asked is because, even if their economy were to continue it's growth, I had read that they would reach nominal GDP parity with us around 2015 but that PPP-adjusted GDP would take even longer.

Hello all, wandering in without reading the thread, so my apologies--but I just watched an actually interesting House committee meeting on C-Span about the Unocal purchase and it struck me as being quite uncharacteristically open about the various considerations we need to make in regards to this potentially strategic move given the threats to our national security posed by oil market infrastructure. Did anyone else watch this, or locate a transcript of the meeting? What are the dominant thoughts on the possibility that the Chinese are actually posturing for an economic stranglehold on key resources?

The official Australia conduct towards the regime in Beijing is one of total ass kissing right now; it’s it quite sick. The only people in politics who are criticising official Australian policy towards China are the ‘Christian Conservatives’ and the Greens (I can see an alliance between those two groups forming in the 4T). The rest of our political figures go along with it; the Australian government does things like banning Falun Gong protests from outside the Chinese embassy to doing whatever it takes to get that free trade agreement with China.

I think there is something more than meets the eye in this relationship, China does not really need us, and we are a minor source of raw materials and a market for Chinese goods. However we really need China because China is a huge trading partner and a lot of Australian private sector debt is in Chinese hands, including mortgages.

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

Originally Posted by Sbarro

According to economic forecasts on a Purchasing Power Parity basis (this means adjusting the economy for actual production rather than exchange rate measurements) China's economy will emerge as teh world's largest by about 2015.

Where are you getting this figure?

Figures I've seen for PPP-based Chinese GDP are in the low 4 trillion range--about one-third of the US. Chinese growth has averaged 9% compared to about 3.5% for the US for a differential of 5.5%. This implies 20 years for the Chinese PPP-based GDP to match the US or about 2025.

The 2015 figure implies a PPP-based GDP on the order of 7 trillion which is pretty high, IMO. My guess is it will be later than 2025 because I can't see 9% growth continue for that long.

Originally Posted by Tristan Jones

The official Australia conduct towards the regime in Beijing is one of total ass kissing right now; it’s it quite sick. The only people in politics who are criticising official Australian policy towards China are the ‘Christian Conservatives’ and the Greens (I can see an alliance between those two groups forming in the 4T). The rest of our political figures go along with it; the Australian government does things like banning Falun Gong protests from outside the Chinese embassy to doing whatever it takes to get that free trade agreement with China.

I think there is something more than meets the eye in this relationship, China does not really need us, and we are a minor source of raw materials and a market for Chinese goods. However we really need China because China is a huge trading partner and a lot of Australian private sector debt is in Chinese hands, including mortgages.

Maybe there are also some Australian politicians who are hoping that perhaps China can be convinced to help protect Australia against any potential Indonesian invasion threat, once America is no longer able to do so.

Chinese General Warns of Nuclear Conflict Over Taiwan
By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com International Editor
July 15, 2005

(CNSNews.com) - China is prepared to use nuclear weapons against the United States in the event of a conflict over Taiwan, Western newspapers quoted a senior Chinese military officer as saying Thursday.

Stressing that he was giving his personal views, not official policy, Gen. Zhu Chenghu said that "if the Americans are determined to interfere ... we will be determined to respond."

Zhu said China would prepare itself for the destruction of all of its cities east of Xian - a city in central China - while "the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds ... of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese."

His comments, delivered at a briefing arranged by a Hong Kong foundation, were reported by the Asian Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and International Herald Tribune.

Zhu, who also teaches at China's National Defense University, is reputed to be a "hawk," the papers said, calling his warning the most specific by a senior Chinese official in nearly a decade.

They also quoted Zhu as saying he did not anticipate war with the U.S.

China carried out its first successful nuclear weapons test in 1964 and, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, is estimated to have some 400 strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, as well as stocks of fissile material sufficient to produce many more.

The Pentagon is due next week to provide Congress with its annual assessment of China's military power, a requirement of the National Defense Authorization Act.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said during a conference in Singapore last month that China's military buildup and defense spending was threatening the military balance in Asia.

"China appears to be expanding its missile forces, allowing them to reach targets in many areas of the world, not just the Pacific region, while also expanding its missile capabilities within this region," Rumsfeld said. "China also is improving its ability to project power, and developing advanced systems of military technology."

Earlier this year, the Chinese government enacted a law providing for the use of "non-peaceful" means to prevent the formal breakaway of Taiwan, an island of 22 million people which Beijing claims as part of China.

The U.S. is committed by law to help Taiwan defend itself against unprovoked aggression, and is also its primary weapons supplier.

As I have mentioned before, the key word in the American law mentioned above could well be 'unprovoked' - as in, if Taiwan unilaterally declares independence from China after numerous warnings against any such action, we could well choose to regard that action as providing sufficient just provocation to let us off the hook IRT helping Taiwan.

http://web.nps.navy.mil/~relooney/3040_534.htm

I think my original date was a bit off, but the trend is really the same essentially.

This link explains why.
\

China's economy is now the second largest on a purchasing power parity basis around 6.6 trillion dollars

see Ted C. Fishman's book, China Inc. How the Rise of the next Superpower Challenges America and the World
c. 2005, P 9-10
The figure is baed on the following statisitcs. China's economy in 2003 was 1.4 trilllion dollars on an exchange rate basis. In China, one dollars buys what about $ 4.70 buys in Indianapolis. These figures are never perfect. But they give some rough idea. If you multiplied by this ratio you get 6.6 trillion dollars. This, according to the book, is somewhere around 2/3 of the US economy. The present GDP of the US is nearly 12 or 13 trillion.

A 7 precent gropwth rate, which is very conservative by Chinese standards, would double China's economy in about ten years to 13 trillion dollars. Another decade would take it to 26 trillion dollars. The US, if it continued to grow around 3 precent per year, would reach about 20 trillion dollars at that time. This pattern looks very similar to industrialized Britain and industrializing US around 1900-1914.

Things could always derail China's economy: cutoff of exports to the US, declines in foreign investment due to appreciating currency exchange basis, a decrepit banking system. But the production rate increases are real. China consumes a quarter f the world's steel, about a third of the world's iron and coal, and over 40 percent of the world's cement. Since 2000, China has added the equivalent of the entire US steel production to its own production in that industry.

The increasing demand is not just, or even primarily export based. It is based on real rising standards of living. If there is a real threat it is not from the underdeveloped financial or banking systems. It's from th e800 million or so peasants with stagnating living standards who are looking at their compatriots in the cities see their living standards rise so fast. But even this irons out in the long run because most people move to the cities.

From the CIA Factbook
go to Google type in "China and GDP and CIA" and go to first link

Top of Page
Economy - overview:
In late 1978 the Chinese leadership began moving the economy from a sluggish, inefficient, Soviet-style centrally planned economy to a more market-oriented system. Whereas the system operates within a political framework of strict Communist control, the economic influence of non-state organizations and individual citizens has been steadily increasing. The authorities switched to a system of household and village responsibility in agriculture in place of the old collectivization, increased the authority of local officials and plant managers in industry, permitted a wide variety of small-scale enterprises in services and light manufacturing, and opened the economy to increased foreign trade and investment. The result has been a quadrupling of GDP since 1978. Measured on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis, China in 2004 stood as the second-largest economy in the world after the US, although in per capita terms the country is still poor. Agriculture and industry have posted major gains especially in coastal areas near Hong Kong and opposite Taiwan and in Shanghai, where foreign investment has helped spur output of both domestic and export goods. The leadership, however, often has experienced - as a result of its hybrid system - the worst results of socialism (bureaucracy and lassitude) and of capitalism (growing income disparities and rising unemployment). China thus has periodically backtracked, retightening central controls at intervals. The government has struggled to (a) sustain adequate jobs growth for tens of millions of workers laid off from state-owned enterprises, migrants, and new entrants to the work force; (b) reduce corruption and other economic crimes; and (c) keep afloat the large state-owned enterprises, many of which had been shielded from competition by subsidies and had been losing the ability to pay full wages and pensions. From 100 to 150 million surplus rural workers are adrift between the villages and the cities, many subsisting through part-time, low-paying jobs. Popular resistance, changes in central policy, and loss of authority by rural cadres have weakened China's population control program, which is essential to maintaining long-term growth in living standards. At the same time, one demographic consequence of the "one child" policy is that China is now one of the most rapidly aging countries in the world. Another long-term threat to growth is the deterioration in the environment - notably air pollution, soil erosion, and the steady fall of the water table especially in the north. China continues to lose arable land because of erosion and economic development. As part of its effort to gradually slow the rapid economic growth seen in 2004, Beijing says it will reduce somewhat its spending on infrastructure in 2005, while continuing to focus on poverty relief and through rural tax reform. Accession to the World Trade Organization helps strengthen its ability to maintain strong growth rates but at the same time puts additional pressure on the hybrid system of strong political controls and growing market influences. China has benefited from a huge expansion in computer Internet use, with 94 million users at the end of 2004. Foreign investment remains a strong element in China's remarkable economic growth. Shortages of electric power and raw materials may affect industrial output in 2005. More power generating capacity is scheduled to come on line in 2006. In its rivalry with India as an economic power, China has a lead in the absorption of technology, the rising prominence in world trade, and the alleviation of poverty; India has one important advantage in its relative mastery of the English language, but the number of competent Chinese English-speakers is growing rapidly.
GDP:
purchasing power parity - $7.262 trillion (2004 est.)
GDP - real growth rate:
9.1% (official data) (2004 est.)
GDP - per capita:
purchasing power parity - $5,600 (2004 est.)

I never thought I would be saying this, but:

Thank you Sbarro.

Commentary
.
Fatal Infections in Sichuan China Due to Ebola-SZ77?

Recombinomics Commentary
July 24, 2005


The virus currently circulating in ZiYang SiCuhan is thought to be a strain of Ebola. However, both authorities and the press have been prohibited from alluding it to be so. Even the use of the word "Ebola" has been banned.

Although minimal information has been released, many Chinese believe that the virus circulating in SiChuan is the EB-SZ77 strain of Ebola that first emerged in ShenZhen , between 19 - 27 May this year. However, what is puzzling is that this strain has evolved very rapidly - it can now be transmitted by 3rd party, unlike the other strains which are only blood borne.

The above comments are form a translation of a boxun report indicating that the deaths in Ziyang, southeast of Chengdu in Sichuan province is due to a rapidly evolving strain of Ebola, EB-SZ77. Earlier reports by boxun had described a number of Ebola strains in China. In the earlier report, all isolates were said to be transmitted via blood. However, EB-SZ77 was capable of transmission to birds.

If true, all of this would be cause for concern, H5N1 has been reported in pigs in Indonesia, so infection of swine in Suchuan would be possible in view of its proximity to Qinghai Lake and the recent bird flu outbreak among migratory water fowl.. Moreover, the unprecedented die-off of birds at Qingahi Lake due to H5N1 infections raises concerns about a catastrohic spread of H5N1,

An 18 nucleotide region of H5 is found in the Ebola env gene, signaling the exchange of genetic information between H5N1 and Ebola (the sequence is specific for H5N1 isolates). Variations in sequences between Ebola or Marburg strains has been noted and Ebola like other viruses can evolve rapidly via recombination.

Isolation and sequencing of the virus causing the deaths in Sichuan Province would be useful.

]It's time to take seriously a US-led global recession Lau Nai-keung

2005-10-06 07:37

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english...ent_482807.htm

I think it is time that we should take a serious look at the possibility that the US is going to take us down towards a worldwide recession in one or two year's time.

It is well known that the US is the world's biggest economy, taking up about 30 per cent of global GDP, but it is now also the world's biggest debtor country. According to the most authoritative person on this subject, the US Comptroller General David Walker, who audits the federal government's books, the tab for the long-term promises the US Government has made to creditors, retirees, veterans and the poor amounts to US$43,000 billion, US$145,000 per US citizen, or US$350,000 for every full-time worker.

And this figure does not even take into account all the personal debts such as credit card bills and mortgages. With a low interest rate of 1 per cent running for the past three years in a row, savings plummeted to just 1.8 per cent last year, below 1 per cent since January and at zero in the latest estimate from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In 2000, household debt broke 18 per cent of disposable income for the first time in 20 years. Credit card debt alone averages US$7,200 per household.

The US Government indebtedness is financed this way: The US now runs a trade deficit roughly 6.5 per cent of its GDP and the gap is widened every day. Its citizens are spending ever more on foreign goods, and with the US dollar as the international currency, the US Government just prints money to finance the deficit. And with this money, central banks in the surplus countries purchase most of the US Treasury bonds as currency reserve.

By now, Japan is the largest creditor of the US Government, and the Chinese mainland has been a fervent buyer for the last few years. As for Hong Kong, most if not all of our reserves are in US dollar denominated assets. The US Government in turn uses this foreign borrowed money to finance as much as 90 per cent of the federal deficit which stood at US$412 billion last year. The federal deficit is expected to be running at about US$2 billion a day at the moment.

Put it simply, the Americans have been living way beyond their means for much too long. On top of this, the Bush Administration is cutting tax at least three times while fighting an expensive war in Iraq, which has already cost the country US$700 billion, and currently progressing at US$5.6 billion per month. Now the US economy is dependent on the central banks of Japan, China and other nations to invest in US Treasuries and keep American interest rates down. The low rates keep American consumers snapping up imported goods.

Any economist worth his salt knows that this situation is unsustainable. This includes the country's economic guru driver Alan Greenspan, who recently warned his countrymen that the federal budget deficit would hamper the nation's ability to absorb possible shocks from the soaring trade deficit and the housing boom. Now he may have to add two more worries: soaring oil prices and cyclones.

The US is now clearly in huge trouble, economically, socially, politically, and internationally. The Bush Administration bungled big in cyclone Katrina's aftermath in New Orleans, and then a minor rerun from Rita in Houston, and this will trigger the general outburst of people's dissatisfaction with the government, leading to great internal turmoil lasting for many years. In all likelihood, long-term interest rates are going to rise, and the greatest property bubble the world has witnessed is going to burst in the next one to two years.

The countdown is in progress, and there is no way that anybody can do anything to reverse it either by short-term measures such as fiscal and monetary policy, or through long-term reform of tax policy, entitlement programmes and even the entire federal budget. This is as inevitable as gravity, and it will take place under a new and inexperienced chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. I do not want to sound alarmist, but I see very bad omens.

To make things simple, let us just examine some key economic issues raised by some economists:

What if the dollar plummets? Do stocks follow? How about pensions?

What if interest rates soar? How would all the new homeowners, who stretched to buy with adjustable and interest-only loans, cover their mortgages?

How would consumers with record credit-card debt make their payments? Would they stop buying? Stop taking vacations? What will happen if they go bankrupt? New rules going into effect later this year make it harder on such debtors.

How would a government, which depends on the taxes of a strong economy to operate, keep all its promises?

To us, the good news is that when the country is in deep trouble, the US will not have the energy to pick on China. Even when it is necessary to start another war to divert people's attention, it would pick one much smaller in size and weaker in strength, like Iran. This will provide a much more amicable environment for China to make good use of its "period of strategic opportunity" till 2020 for the country to pass through a turbulent zone between per capita income of US$1,000-3,000.

But in the short term, now the US not only sneezes, and all symptoms indicate that it is going to suffer from a SARS-like trouble, the whole world should take extra precaution not to get infected. One thing is for sure, some time in the not too distant future, every central bank and institutional investor is going to dump US dollar and US Treasury bonds. Once, when a country like South Korea dumps the dollar, the still unsold US Treasuries in the asset column of Asian central banks - US$2,000 billion according to some estimates - will collapse. The cheapened dollar will cause a sudden jump in the US inflation, which forces the Fed to jack up interest rates. A giant leap in inflation will cause a severe recession, or perhaps a depression, in the US. These countries' exports to America will dry up, which in turn will spread the global economic downturn like wildfire.

After the stampede, everybody is going to get hurt, not least the central bank of China, and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, which are major US creditors and with the US as their number one export market. The recent currency reform of the RMB is most timely, and it is about time we should do something about the Hong Kong dollar. At the same time, China should make extra efforts to rekindle internal consumption, and diversify its market really fast before the great US bubble bursts.


(HK Edition 10/06/2005 page2)

Is China drifting towards revolution?

Groundswell of protest feared by party officials

Jonathan Watts
Monday October 10, 2005
The Guardian

Lu Banglie, now missing, feared dead, is typical of the new breed of peasant activists who are giving the Communist party its biggest political headache since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

He was one of the first popularly elected village chiefs in China. In contrast to the students from elite universities who were at the centre of the demonstrations 16 years ago, he spent most of his life - like the vast majority of the 1.3 billion population - as an ordinary farmer.

But growing social inequality, rising awareness of legal rights and the advent of the internet prompted the 34-year-old and many others to campaign in a way that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Taishi, the scene of the beating that appears to have cost Mr Lu his life, has become a symbol of this movement. The protests seek to capitalise on the democratic rights granted to villages at the end of the 1980s, but which have been widely ignored by officials.

Little more than two decades ago, this community on Guangzhou's outskirts was filled with farmers and paddyfields; now many of its 2,000 residents work in the industrial park. But lifestyle changes have failed to keep up with rising expectations. As is the case for most of the tens of thousands of protests each year, frustrations have focused on a land dispute and suspicions of corruption among local cadres. The Taishi saga started on July 28 when 400 villagers petitioned to remove the village chief, Chen Jinsheng, whom they accused of embezzling collective funds from land sales and factory rentals.

Rural unrest throughout China is on the increase. The government says 3.6 million people took part in 74,000 "mass incidents" last year, up from 58,000 in 2003. In April, villagers in Huankantou, in Zhejiang province, beat off 1,000 riot police in a dispute over pollution from chemical factories built on disputed property. In June, six residents of Shengyou village, in Hebei province, 125 miles south of Beijing, were killed by 300 government-hired men seeking to seize farmland from villagers. Last month, hundreds of farmers in Meishan county in Zhejiang staged a demonstration against a battery factory. Hundreds of smaller incidents are thought to go unreported every week.

The tactics in Taishi, however, were more sophisticated than those used by other protesters. Outside legal experts were asked for advice and the protesters used the internet and mobile phones to spread their campaign on bulletin boards and among domestic and foreign journalists.

Human rights activists said they were shocked at the severity of the assault on Mr Lu. "This goes far beyond anything that has happened before," said Ho Wenzhuo of the Empowerment and Rights Institute. "It reveals the mafia-isation of local governments."

Attention will now be focused on the response of Beijing, which has been reassuring investors that it is moving towards a society in which there is greater democracy and respect for the rule of law.

China increasingly looking like adversary:
http://www.energybulletin.net/9814.html

East Asia allies doubt U.S. could win war with China

Originally Posted by [i

Insight[/i]]Most Asian officials have expressed their views privately. Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara has gone public, warning that the United States would lose any war with China.

"In any case, if tension between the United States and China heightens, if each side pulls the trigger, though it may not be stretched to nuclear weapons, and the wider hostilities expand, I believe America cannot win as it has a civic society that must adhere to the value of respecting lives," Mr. Ishihara said in an address to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Mr. Ishihara said U.S. ground forces, with the exception of the Marines, are "extremely incompetent" and would be unable to stem a Chinese conventional attack. Indeed, he asserted that China would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against Asian and American cities—even at the risk of a massive U.S. retaliation.

The governor said the U.S. military could not counter a wave of millions of Chinese soldiers prepared to die in any onslaught against U.S. forces. After 2,000 casualties, he said, the U.S. military would be forced to withdraw.

"Therefore, we need to consider other means to counter China," he said. "The step we should be taking against China, I believe, is economic containment."

Originally Posted by [i

I[/i]]As a result, Asian allies of the United States are quietly preparing to bolster their militaries independent of Washington. So far, the Bush administration has been strongly opposed to an indigenous Japanese defense capability, fearing it would lead to the expulsion of the U.S. military presence from that country.

:arrow: :arrow: :arrow:

Is this the same Ishihara that wrote The Japan That Can Say "No!" years ago?