China's Military Expenditure : world's second largest economy is also second largest military spender

World military expenditure in 2010 is estimated to have been $1630 billion, an increase of 1.3 per cent in real terms.* The region with the largest increase in military spending was South America, with a 5.8 per cent increase, reaching a total of $63.3 billion, according to new data published today by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). 

http://www.sipri.org/media/pressreleases/2011/milex

http://www.defpro.com/daily/details/949/?SID=99d7114acb063f540d64adc2b9784868

Asia is not supposed to catch up with western countries in economic development and defence expenditure!
Arms race is a bad thing. Only the developed countries are entitled to protect their territorial integrity and  vital global economic interests including expansionism.

http://www.globalissues.org/print/article/75

While it is fine for US and NATO to encircle Russia and China since the Cold War, South America is out of bounds to non-so-friendly foreign powers (Cuban Missile Crisis) and independent-minded regimes governed by "despots" and "autocrats".

It would really be strange for western economies dogged by bankruptcy and successive crises to continue spending. They should sell their arms to earn some cash.  Don't be mistaken. The US is still the largest military spender in the world.

The fear is that "irresponsible" and "undemocratic" governments would be misusing their military acquisitions to threaten western interests. A more worrisome trend is emerging powers fighting amongst themselves, whether for selfish gains or as proxies, would bring about misery and major catastrophes to their innocent populations.

Eurasia : China and Russia under siege with mixed and unintended results (Read : Engdahl and Walberg)

This is an old game, well orchestrated at various levels of influence, soft skills and hard military power to get what they want - anti-communism, energy resources, compliance and continued world domination by post-war victors.

Nevertheless, life is not as simple and the unexpected could spring up to unravel all the hard work. Unintended surprises that came out of Arab spring and the uncontrollable factors may challenge the . US withdrawal from Iraq is not enough to redeem past errors in strategic management and judgement in the name of pursuing high sounding democratic and humanistic goals.

QUOTE :

The ultimate goal of the US is to take the resources of Africa and Middle East under military control to block economic growth in China and Russia, thus taking the whole of Eurasia under control, author and historian William F. Engdahl reveals.

The crisis with the US economy and the dollar system, the conduct of the US foreign policy is all a part of breakdown of the entire superpower structure that was built up after the end of WWII, claims Engdahl.

“Nobody in Washington wants to admit, just as nobody in Britain a hundred years ago wanted to admit that the British Empire was in terminal decline,” claims the author, noting that “All of this is related to the attempt to keep this sole superpower not only intact, but to spread its influence over the rest of the planet.”

William F. Engdahl believes the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa is a plan first announced by George W. Bush at a G8 meeting in 2003 and it was called “The Greater Middle East Project”. 

It was masterminded to take under control for the “democratization” of the entire Islamic world from Afghanistan down through Iran, Pakistan and the oil producing Persian Gulf area, across North Africa all the way to Morocco.

“The so-called Arab Spring had been planned, pre-organized and used by the instigators of the ‘spontaneous’ protests and Twitter revolts in Cairo and Tunisia and so forth,” insists the historian.

Engdahl exposes that the some of the leaders of the protests had been trained in Belgrade, Serbia, by activists of Canvas (the Center for Applied Non-Violent Actions and Strategies) and Otpor (a youth movement that played a significant role ousting the former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic), organizations financed by the US State Department.

Engdahl names two reasons for the US State Department’s designs on the Islamic world.

The first reason is a vast wealth in the hands of the Arab world’s leaders, sovereign wealth funds and resources. The agenda – exactly as it was done with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 – is “the IMF privatization, ‘free market’ economy and so forth so that Western banks and financial agencies and corporations could come in and take the plunder.”

“The second agenda is militarize the oil sources in such places as Libya and the so-called Republic of South Sudan, that are directly strategic to China’s future economic growth,” points Engdahl.

“This is all about controlling Eurasia, something Zbignew Brzezinski talked about back in 1997 in his famous book The Great Chessgame, especially about controlling Russia and China and any potential cohesion of the Eurasian countries economically and politically,” he says.

And the results are already there – in Egypt and Tunisia the democracy has already brought weak economy, while Libya, the country with the highest living standards in all of Africa before the NATO bombings, today is in ruins.

The concern of the Western powers, especially the Pentagon, is the military control of the troubled region, not restoring normality, the historian evaluates. The NTC puppet government’s main concern is giving NATO prominent basing rights – something unheard of during the 42 years of Gaddafi rule.

“The AFRICOM [the Pentagon’s Africa command] is co-ordinating the scene,” William F. Engdahl says, mentioning that “interestingly enough [AFRICOM] was created just after 2006 China’s Africa diplomacy, when 40 heads of African nations were invited to Beijing and enormous deals were signed on oil exploration, building hospitals and infrastructure – anything the IMF did not do in Africa over the last 30 years.”

It is true that the US is acting against Chinese interests and national security but Beijing, that gets around $300 billion every year of trade income, simply has to invest this money somewhere and as there are no markets big enough to absorb such money – Beijing has to buy American treasuries – thus sponsoring the American wars that ironically are directed against Chinese interests.

“For the ‘Gods of Money’ of Wall Street, the only chance of survival and keeping dollar now is finding new areas of loot. The Arab Spring is directed at grabbing and privatizing the vast wealth of the Arab world,” Engdahl concludes.

But the future of the eurozone also looks grim because the Greek financial crisis was planted under the EU back in 2002 by none other than Goldman Sachs.The money trail shows, states Engdahl, that “the Greek crisis was programmed to be detonated at command by Wall Street and the US Treasury, as well as the Federal Reserve in order to defend the reserve currency – the US dollar.”

Engdahl warns that the US is building more and more bases around the world, like 17 new, mostly Air Force, bases in Afghanistan to be ready for the new war with China or probably Russia.

“Given the history more than the Cold War era, Russia can play a very stabilizing and constructive role as a counterforce to this highly dangerous strategy of The Greater Middle East project of NATO and the US,” Engdahl claims. “I would hope they do.”

http://rt.com/news/arab-engdahl-us-africa-273/

This is a good read to follow up on :

POSTMODERN IMPERIALISM
Geopolitics and the Great Games

 -   Eric Walberg

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/07/22/the-great-games/

http://ericwalberg.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=344:eric-walbergs-qpostmodern-imperialism-geopolitics-and-the-great-gamesq-2011&catid=44:books-of-interest&Itemid=97

Previous post in this blog related to Arab Spring :

http://chinainformzen.blogspot.com.au/2011/08/better-pray-that-china-summer-will-pass.html

Good reason why General Liu is urging the leadership to rethink its flawed global investments.

http://chinainformzen.blogspot.com.au/2011/05/general-liu-yuan-says-read-zhang.html

Lunar New Year delicacy - faux synthetic (fake) sharks fin made of gelatine and vegetarian alternatives to prevent cruelty

Sharks fin soup has been a highly sought after delicacy of Chinese and Asian gourmets for centuries. In recent years, many educated and younger generation are foregoing sharks fin dishes for special occasions such as wedding banquets or family reunion dinner on lunar new year's eve.  Some restaurants have volunteered to take sharkfin off their menu and set a good example.

Japanese innovation of making gelatine strips that look and taste like sharksfin have been around for several years now. Though the latest refinement of the technique of the producing fake sharksfin was launched in 2007, the synthetic stuff has been around for decades, just never popular or in high demand. They are increasingly being used in sushi making and adopted to many restaurant dishes such as soups and stir fry omelette. They are even easily available in chilled packets from Asian grocery stores or international sections of specialities supermarkets. The synthetic sharksfin are only a tenth of the price of the real thing.

Yet some uncaring affluent folks who want to flaunt their wealth and status with ostentatious goods are willing to fork out a high price for the "real" sharksfin. They disregard the cruelty and ecological damage just to satisfy their fastidious palates and appetites.

In reality, many culinary experts and chefs have admitted that a small proportion of fake sharksfin is added to the genuine expensive ones which have become very rare. Apparently it is not illegal unless the customer specifically requests for genuine sharksfin.

So you may ask, what is the big deal about converting totally converting to fake sharksfin and give the sea creatures a break and living space.

The only cons of fake sharksfin is that it dissolves more easily in hot water and there could be religious or health objections as the gelatine is believed to be extracted from pork bones.

http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/06/shark-fin-soup---a-cultural-war-environmental-nightmare-and-multi-million-dollar-business/

http://current.com/green/85660721_environmentalists-rejoice-seals-dismayed-new-fake-shark-fins-made-from-pork.htm

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Fake_fins_eye_saving_sharks_Chinese_wallets_999.html


More Food for Thought : Alternatives to Sharksfin and Meat

Vegetarian friends make a tasty soup using mung bean or sweet potato vermicelli (glass noodles) and fibrous "sharksfin" green melon with soy bean stock.

So you see, there is no excuse insisting on sharksfin. It's high time to save the sharks and stop the cruelty.

Liu Yuan's Anti-Corruption drive

Liu Yuan's anti-corruption drive in the military is to carry out the vision of the Communist Party collective leadership to Ito ensure that China's economic progress will not be unravelled.

As the Chinese saying goes, building an enterprise is difficult, but consolidation and preservation is more difficult.

It's plain and simple : for the long term survival of the Chinese. Only by learning from past mistakes, recognising the virtues of humility and take tough decisions could China hope to preserve the gains attained so far.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/chinese-general-to-fight-corruption-20120118-1q6n2.html

A mentor used to counsel that reading too much into something simple and obvious could generate unnecessary wild conspiracy theories. It may satisfy the imaginative but unhelpful in understanding realpolitik. This is a strategic project that cuts across factional struggles.

Because Liu Yuan is the son of Liu Shaoqi, the reformist who dared to stand up against the almighty and megalomaniac Mao Zedong. The late senior Liu was accused and denounced for being a capitalist roader. Now his son may clear his name by fighting against a negative outcome of free wheeling capitalism and liberalism exploited by unethical officials and businesses.

US information freedom regression - lobbyists could alter constitutional rights through SOPA and PIPA legislation

Why is US joining the ranks of repressive nations?  It is motivated mainly by money and power of lobbyists who could force the hands or entice Congressmen to do wonders including curbing freedoms enshrined in the American constitution.


Guess who are the masterminds behind SOPA?  Hollywood executives spend $91m lobbying for approval of Stop Online Piracy Act. Media moguls in the likes of Rupert Murdoch would be supportive of the move to restrain free flow of information.


Information = Knowledge = Power


Those who control information get richer and they would want to keep the rest of the people ignorant and pay for access and sharing of public information.




In China where majority of the population were uneducated, leaders wanted to ensure stability of government for high economic growth (and ultimately protect their positions. However, slowly and steadily, it has been opening up. 


The revolution against anti-democracy millionaires and their lobbyists should continue from Occupy Wall St to protest against info blackout. 

http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/18/2716516/money-power-and-congress-how-lobbyists-will-determine-the-fate-of-sopa

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/dec/15/sopa-bill-congress-online-piracy

China not buffered from global economic shocks and crises - hope for a soft landing in 2012?

While the capitalist model has propelled China to rapid economic growth and wealth generation for a growing number of Chinese enterpreneurs and professionals, it can't run away from the negative effects of the reeling economic gloom affecting China's trade partners.

The major evils are : speculation in the property margin, widening gap between the rich and poor and unemployment.

There is no doubt that China will be dragged down by the US and European nations (except Germany). The question is the extent not whether.

Quote :

Meanwhile, flaws in China’s growth model are becoming obvious. Falling property prices are starting a chain reaction that will have a negative effect on developers, investment, and government revenue. The construction boom is starting to stall, just as net exports have become a drag on growth, owing to weakening US and especially eurozone demand. Having sought to cool the property market by reining in runaway prices, Chinese leaders will be hard put to restart growth.

They are not alone. On the policy side, the US, Europe, and Japan, too, have been postponing the serious economic, fiscal, and financial reforms that are needed to restore sustainable and balanced growth.

Meanwhile, flaws in China’s growth model are becoming obvious. Falling property prices are starting a chain reaction that will have a negative effect on developers, investment, and government revenue. The construction boom is starting to stall, just as net exports have become a drag on growth, owing to weakening US and especially eurozone demand. Having sought to cool the property market by reining in runaway prices, Chinese leaders will be hard put to restart growth.

They are not alone. On the policy side, the US, Europe, and Japan, too, have been postponing the serious economic, fiscal, and financial reforms that are needed to restore sustainable and balanced growth.

http://www.roubini.com/author/nouriel_roubini