Who “Lost” China? — The Sequel (June 28, 2005)
The debate about whether the China National Offshore Oil Corporation should be “allowed” to buy Unocal for close to $20bn (they’ve outbid cheapskate Chevron by nearly $2bn) is raging with a ferocity not seen since the early days of the Cold War. Back then, the question of the day was “Who Lost China?” [sic], as if it was somehow “ours” to “lose”. America’s pugnacious puppet Generalissimo Chang Kai Chek (who had earned the nickname “Cash My Check” by his mercenary dealings with the US State Department) had just fled to Formosa with his entourage of tennis rackets and grand pianos trailing in his wake. “The Chinese people have stood up” declared Mao, precipitating a witch hunt within the State Department that ultimately ended careers and destroyed lives.
Well, times have changed. Somewhat. Now, the overwhelming concern in official Washington is that “protectionism” and “China-bashing” be reigned in before it puts a hole in the pocket of American investors in Asia. There are it is true deep schisms within the ruling establishment which roughly play out to a struggle between “American values” and the ever-present hunger for the Almighty Dollar. One should not make too much of this dichotomy; the Almighty Dollar will win, as it always does, if for no other reason then the “values” choir is always more hot air than substance and is at heart no less mercenary than its “secular” brethren. At the same time, the issues of dealing with the “Chi-Coms” (that’s Nascar talk for the bogey Chinese Communists who are waiting to buy the other 97,297 American companies — they already own parts of Maytag and IBM) are being thrown in sharp relief. China is a looming fact of life. And the Chinese are standing taller than ever.
That, I suspect, is what has much of the American establishment in an uproar.
Jim F.
June 30, 2005 @ 7:46 am
The Chinese government has shown that it is not overly awed by giant US corporations and that it is unwilling to kowtow to them. A case in point, is China’s relationship with Microsoft. The Chinese government has been able to use its market power (as a huge Microsoft customer) to force it do things that it would never have done for any other of its customers. Several years, the Chinese government announced that it was going to switch the platforms for it military network servers from Windows to Linux, on the grounds that reliance upon Windows constututed a standing threat to China’s national security. In addition to the usual vulnerabilities of Windows to viruses, worms and hacker attacks, the Chinese said they feared that Windows platforms might have hidden “back door” by which foreign intelligence services (i.e. NSA, CIA, etc.) might be able to gain access data stored on Chinese military computers. Wielding that threat, the Chinese government was able to win the right to access the source code for Windows, something which no ever Microsoft customer (or anyone else) had ever been able to do before.
http://news.theolympian.com/PalmNews/20030301/wirelessbusiness/12089.html
http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-5083458.html
More recently, it has been publicized that Microsoft has been aiding the Chinese government in its efforts at censoring the Internet in China by providing software that enables the government to enforce censorship rules on blog sites and chatrooms.
Louis Godena
July 3, 2005 @ 10:57 pm
Well, yes, China is openly defiant of western prescriptions on everything from currency revaluation to textile imports to Taiwan. It is even willing to play — to a limited extent — the national card vis a vis Japan. An emerging area where China’s cussed independence is playing out is that of western-style “rule of law”. The PRC, unlike India, is unwilling to adapt its legal system to western norms, preferring instead a sort of “thin theory” rule by law that is more appropriate to China’s traditions and which works better with a one-party state.