China Be Flexin'

[prole]

 

In addition to the less-interesting, if related news about its new stealth capabilities, China is doing what rising hegemonic powers do. Remember what that was like?

 

What China wants in exchange for spending big in Europe

 

Chinese Vice Prime Minister Li Keqiang is offering Chinese investment to a struggling Europe. In exchange, China wants improved trade ties with Europe.

 

Chinese Vice Prime Minister Li Keqiang is touring Europe, offering political support, cash, and investment at a critical juncture for the weakened European Union. However, there appear to be strings attached.

 

While Mr. Li's visit saw the formalization of 16 business agreements with Spain worth $7.5 billion, mostly in the private industry, he has indicated that China is also looking for better trade ties with its new European business partners.

 

“We hope that the EU will relax restrictions on high-tech exports to China … and develop trade relations that are balanced and sustainable," Li wrote in an Op-Ed titled “China will be more open to the world” that was published Wednesday in the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

 

RELATED: European debt crisis 101

 

The message is clear, say analysts. Armed with foreign reserves of $2.7 trillion, China is offering its financial muscle to rescue a struggling Europe in exchange for technology and open borders.

 

“China has become the world’s fireman from a financial point of view. It operates the same way everywhere, and high tech is to Europe what commodities are to Africa,” says José Ignacio Torreblanca, senior fellow of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “And Europe doesn’t have a choice but to accept this.”

 

China’s good will is tied to political concessions, although not explicitly.

 

Speaking to business leaders in Madrid, Li said China would “stand by Spain is happiness and sad times,” that it would continue buying sovereign bonds, (depending on market conditions) and that it wanted deeper economic ties.

 

From Germany, China wants more openness for its expanding companies and more technological exchanges. From Europe as a whole, to which Li offered a new era in relations, China wants improved economic ties.

 

“It’s understandable that China has linked its support to progress in closer relation with the EU, lifting of restrictions, and improved potential to exchange high tech. That is still an issue for China and there are some expectations that further progress can be made there as a quid pro quo,” says Vanessa Rossi, senior research fellow on international economics and an expert on Chinese global economic expansion in London-based Chatham House.

 

Some are wary of the latest overture from China, which many European countries still don't trust. The EU’s top diplomat, Catherine Ashton, has tried to bridge internal difference. Consensus is still distant, however, especially in regards to an embargo on selling arms to China that Spain and France have lobbied to relax. Washington still strongly opposes relaxing an arms embargo and is also concerned about technological transfers.

 

For China, however, the juncture is ideal. Struggling European countries that have dragged down the euro and rattled markets are desperate for cash in the form of direct foreign investment. Not surprisingly, Greece, Portugal, and Spain have sought closer relations to Beijing in the aftermath of the economic crisis, and Chinese investment in those countries has soared.

 

“But it doesn’t make much sense for countries like Spain to embark on building closer bilateral relations at the expense of an EU-wide policy,” says Mr. Torreblanca.

 

Not everyone agrees with this sentiment. “We should be very happy to have Chinese investment and not look suspiciously at it, as it happened two years ago. That type of concern has disappeared,” says Ms. Rossi.

 

Regardless of the debate, countries like Spain are happy to respond to Chinese overtures, especially when they translate into billions in cash. In addition to four bilateral economic and political agreements, deals and contracts were signed in the financial, energy, infrastructure, tourism, service, and food sectors.

 

Most of the investment comes from a $7.1 billion deal between Chinese’s energy giant Sinopec and Spain’s Repsol for a 40 percent stake in the latter’s Brazil oil production operations.

 

Mr. Li also endorsed Spain’s plan to attract 300,000 Chinese tourists a year by 2012 and 1 million by 2020 – up from 100,000 tourists a year. A Spanish company will install air traffic control system in two Chinese region and another will sell two power generators. A Chinese company bought a Spanish boiler industry, several wine and olive oil exporting deals were signed, and there was even room to include a deal to export Spain’s famed cured Ibérico ham.

 

In Spain, a country with an unemployment rate of 20 percent, China’s bond-buying and deal-signing worth $7.5 billion translate into lower borrowing costs and more jobs for Spaniards.

 

 

[olyclimber]

Don't worry. JayB says they are fucked. I totally believe him. They aren't capitalist! Jeez, didn't you get the memo?

[Hugh Conway]

Reason #34q2498 that Jay_B is fucked.

 

They are more capitalist than he.

[JayB]

Reminds me of the Japanic of the late 80's.

 

Their economy will continue to grow, they'll become more prosperous and influential over time, but no country has ever had compound growth at 10% a year and China won't be an exception to that rule.

 

If the technocrats running China are as smart as the Chanxiety chorus make them out to be they're probably mostly pre-occupied with having real estate development contributing 60% of their GDP growth, the ~30 million young and mathematically un-marriageable "bare branch" bachelors cruising around, and the demographic consequences of the one-child policy.

 

[JayB]

Besides - isn't this what everyone wanted? Finally - we have a candidate to end the malignant materialist imperial consumer hegemony established by and for the exclusive interest of the Great Satan - right?

 

Judging from the rhetoric issuing forth from the global left from 1917 onwards the rise and dominance of China should be greeted with a chorus of hallelujas, no?

 

China is eating Uncle Sam's lunch, showing him who's boss, delivering him the comeuppance that he's sorely deserved and everyone from Lenin onwards has failed to deliver but finally, finally - the Chinese are here to deliver the knockout punch! All of the liberal values that we cherish will flourish now that the global hegemon has been kicked off of his throne!!!! Multipolitopia - here we come!!!!!

[Hugh Conway]

Reminds me of the Japanic of the late 80's.

 

Their economy will continue to grow, they'll become more prosperous and influential over time, but no country has ever had compound growth at 10% a year and China won't be an exception to that rule.

 

If the technocrats running China are as smart as the Chanxiety chorus make them out to be they're probably mostly pre-occupied with having real estate development contributing 60% of their GDP growth, the ~30 million young and mathematically un-marriageable "bare branch" bachelors cruising around, and the demographic consequences of the one-child policy.

 

all of the oligrachs who produce your talking points are bought and paid for by china

[prole]

Besides - isn't this what everyone wanted? Finally - we have a candidate to end the malignant materialist imperial consumer hegemony established by and for the exclusive interest of the Great Satan - right?

 

Judging from the rhetoric issuing forth from the global left from 1917 onwards the rise and dominance of China should be greeted with a chorus of hallelujas, no?

 

China is eating Uncle Sam's lunch, showing him who's boss, delivering him the comeuppance that he's sorely deserved and everyone from Lenin onwards has failed to deliver but finally, finally - the Chinese are here to deliver the knockout punch! All of the liberal values that we cherish will flourish now that the global hegemon has been kicked off of his throne!!!! Multipolitopia - here we come!!!!!

 

 

One of these days you're going to have to at least make a pretense of understanding the topics that you throw out there as a pretext for going all frothing retarded.

 

Fernand Braudel, Giovanni Arrighi, and Immanuel Wallerstein might be good places to start.

[Lucky Larry]

Quote: The message is clear, say analysts. Armed with foreign reserves of $2.7 trillion, China is offering its financial muscle to rescue a struggling Europe in exchange for technology and open borders.

 

Just curious; does anyone think it is in Chinas interest to crash the US dollar when they hold so many of them. Is this why they won't peg the yen at a higher rate?

Edited January 8, 2011 by Lucky Larry

[billcoe]

Just curious; does anyone think it is in Chinas interest to crash the US dollar when they hold so many of them. Is this why they won't peg the yen at a higher rate higher?

 

I think it is very difficult to know what those people are thinking over there. Their timelines seems to stretch out further than ours. Much of what they spew for internal consumption, curiously, never gets reported here. Certainly not on NPR. Here's one. When I was there in 2006 or 2007, I was told by a party member that it was widely and publicly disseminated that the government would re-embrace, through peace if possible or violence and war if necessary, Taiwan (Republic of China) back into the fold. There was a timeline of 5-10 years. I've never seen anything with anything resembling a timeline here in our news, just a notation of general disapproval and that China doesn't recognize Taiwan.

 

[tvashtarkatena]

The 'Global Left'? LOL

[tvashtarkatena]

That's the kind of made up phrase right wing think tanks like to toss around. They have about as much real meaning as a self-eating watermelon.

Edited January 7, 2011 by tvashtarkatena