Book Except: The Coming China Wars -- Pirate Nation in the 21st Century:
China's state-sanctioned thievery
Book Except: The Coming China Wars by Peter Peter Navarro
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/0132281287/ref=dp_proddesc_0/102...
Excerpt. (c) Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Introduction
News Release, October 25, 2012
U.S.-China Chill Melts Down World Markets
NEW YORK―Global stock exchanges were devastated this week by the worst
collapse in history as a wave of panic selling followed the sun from
Asia through Europe and back to Wall Street. The pandemonium was
triggered by a Chinese government announcement that it would no longer
finance the mounting budget and trade deficits of a "profligate United
States" that "refuses to live within its means" and that "insists on
scapegoating China for its own internal economic problems." Nor would
China continue to try to prop up "an increasingly worthless dollar."
As the Chinese began dumping U.S. assets on Wall Street, both stock and
bond prices plummeted. The panic soon spread to other exchanges around
the world as gold soared to more than $1,000 an ounce and fear of a
global depression deepened.
China's actions have been widely interpreted as harsh retaliation for
U.S. congressional passage of stiff protectionist tariffs on a wide
range of manufactured goods. With the presidential election less than a
month away, both houses of Congress up for electoral grabs, and the U.S.
economy stuck in reverse, Republicans and Democrats alike are pushing
additional legislation addressing everything from the growing trade in
Chinese counterfeit goods, illegal drugs, and ballistic missiles to the
international spillover from China's mounting environmental pollution.
It's been a tough year for Sino-U.S. relations. In January, the U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations stormed out in protest over "the
repeated crass commercial use" by China of its U.N. veto to "shield
terrorist regimes such as Iran from diplomatic sanctions in exchange for
oil." In March, China's president abruptly cancelled a state visit after
the U.S. Treasury Department branded China a "currency manipulator."
During an unusually hot August that raised collateral fears of global
warming, the U.S. Pacific Fleet engaged in a tense, week-long standoff
over Taiwan with China's recently acquired, and nuclear
missile-equipped, blue water navy.
Meanwhile, domestic unrest in China continues to escalate as an
increasingly restive population seeks greater income equality, more
worker rights, improved health care, a cleaner environment, a halt to
widespread government corruption, and an end to massive public works
projects such as the Three Gorges Dam that have displaced millions of
people without adequately compensating them. A recent report released by
the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has warned that should such
domestic unrest reach a boiling point in China, the result may be
"sharper military conflicts with the United States, Taiwan, and possibly
even Japan as Chinese leaders seek to unify the now increasingly
fractured nation against a 'common enemy.'"
The best of economic times for China are fast becoming the worst of
times for the rest of us. China's "cowboy capitalism" and amoral foreign
policies are triggering a whole range of economic, financial,
environmental, political, and military tsunamis that threaten to engulf
us―as well as the Chinese people. The ever-growing dangers lay in a
model of rapid, unsustainable economic growth, coupled with a wanton
disregard for both human life and intellectual property. The myriad
dangers from the Coming China Wars are real―and increasingly personal.
Consider these scenarios based on actual events:
*
Your father almost dies from a massive heart attack because the
"Lipitor" prescription he filled on the Internet was laced with Chinese
fakes. Your mother breaks her hip because the phony "Evista" medication
she took for osteoporosis was nothing more than molded Chinese chalk.
Your house gets robbed by a drug addict high on methamphetamines made
from ephedra grass grown on Chinese state-run farms and transported to
New York via Panama by Triad gangs.
*
You walk out of a Wal-Mart with a big smile and a large basket
laden with cheap Chinese goods ranging from a fancy new laser printer
and plasma TV to shirts, socks, and running shoes. Your smile quickly
turns to a frown as your eyes begin to sting and lungs burn from the
Asian "brown cloud" now visible on the horizon. It is 90-proof "Chinese
chog"―a particularly toxic atmospheric smog that has hitchhiked on the
jet stream all the way from China's industrial heartland where
everything in your basket was first manufactured.
*
Your bank balance drops precipitously as rising interest rates
drive your adjustable rate monthly mortgage payment off the charts and
as you shell out more than you ever dreamed to fill your gas tank. Your
mortgage payments are being held hostage to China's
currency-manipulation policies. You pay dearly at the pump because of
the price-shocking effects of China's rapidly rising thirst for oil.
The Coming China Wars is not just a story about how China's emergence as
the world's "factory floor" is affecting you and your pocketbook. The
story is far larger than any one of us or any single country. This book
takes a tough, hard look at the eight major China Wars already well
underway:
1. The Not-So-Swashbuckling Piracy Wars
Following a centuries-old tradition of skullduggery in the South China
Seas, China has become the world's largest pirate nation. China's modern
buccaneers, with the strong support of their government, are not just
stealing software and Hollywood movies on DVDs. They are blatantly
counterfeiting virtually the entire alphabet of goods―from air
conditioners, automobiles, and brake pads to razors, refrigerators, and
the world's most recognizable pharmaceuticals such as Lipitor, Norvasc,
and Viagra.
In the process, these pirates are posing grave health risks to hundreds
of millions of people. They are also destroying all semblance of global
intellectual property law protections vitally needed to spur innovation.
2. The 21st Century Opium Wars
With an unholy triangle of Triad gangsters, international smugglers, and
corrupt Communist Party officials as cartel kingpins, China has emerged
as one of the world's biggest dope dealers. Most despicably, China is
not just the world's "factory floor" for legitimate goods but also for
the so-called precursor chemicals used to produce all four of the
world's major hard drugs: cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and Ecstasy.
China has also retained its historical role as a major transit area for
opium from the Golden Triangle, and it is rapidly emerging as a highly
efficient production center for Ecstasy and speed. Not coincidentally,
Chinese criminal syndicates are awash in illicit cash, and China's
banking system is becoming an important hub for global money laundering.
3. The Air Pollution and Global Warming Wars
With claim to 16 of the world's 20 dirtiest cities in the World Bank's
environmental Hall of Shame, China has been dubiously crowned as the
most polluted nation on Earth. As a result of its rapid
industrialization and lax environmental controls, China's prodigious
toxic emissions are now spewing well beyond its environmentally porous
borders.
Storms regularly rise up from China's Inner Mongolian desert steppes and
blanket Korea and Japan with tons upon tons of toxics-laden dust.
Chinese chog regularly hitchhikes along the jet stream, only to descend
thousands of miles away in big cities such as Los Angeles and Vancouver
and to despoil visibility in pristine towns such as Aspen. With its
belching coal plants and rapidly multiplying automobile fleet, China
will soon eclipse the United States as the single largest contributor to
global warming.
4. The "Blood for Oil" Wars
With its economy rocketing, China has emerged as the world's second
largest petroleum consumer behind only the United States. Astonishingly,
China now accounts for almost half the growth in global oil demand and
is the primary catalyst for an oil market hurtling toward $100 a barrel.
To lock down its petroleum supplies―and lock the rest of the world
out―China has adopted a reprehensible foreign policy based on President
Hu Jintao's amoral mantra of "just business, no political conditions."
It has shipped ballistic missiles and transferred nuclear weapons
technologies to the radical Iranian regime, used its diplomatic veto in
the United Nations to sanction genocide in the Sudan, and facilitated
the looting of public treasuries by dictators in oil- and mineral-rich
African countries from Angola to Zimbabwe.
This unconscionable blood for oil diplomacy has resulted in the
slaughter of millions, the impoverishment of millions more, and a rapid
spike in nuclear proliferation in both the Middle East and Asia.
5. The New Imperialist Wars
In a supreme historical irony, one of imperialism's worst former victims
has become the 21st century's most relentlessly imperialistic nation.
