prc – Moe Lane

I would… start rethinking any current dependencies on PRC manufacturing products.

This isn’t political, per se: it’s just an observation that current geopolitical events may have an effect on a variety of American industries in the very near future. This absolutely includes the gaming industry, which has become extremely reliant on cheap PRC manufacturers and printers. There may be disruptions in the near future.

Note the repeated use of May. I have no insider information (those links are cold, and dead). I could be imagining things. But I wouldn’t recommend counting on the PRC not to lean on the USA by mucking about with American retail supply chains.

PRC’s Long March 5b incompetently put in orbit, likely to irresponsibly deorbit.

I understand that the People’s Republic of China labors under the limitation of a third-rate political and economic ideology, but really, orbital mechanics are hardly new: “China launched the first module for its space station into orbit late Wednesday, but the mission launcher also reached orbit and is slowly and unpredictably heading back to Earth.” One does hope that it doesn’t land on anything populated.

This is me, trying to wave people off of the Snowden NSA leak story.

Having read it, I have to say: the guy comes off as having a past that looks like it’s going to be rickety under scrutiny; a somewhat self-aggrandizing present; and a future that seems to be largely dependent on the goodwill of the People’s Republic of China.

I mean, Jeez, you don’t go to Hong Kong these days if you’re worried that the local security apparatus might be inclined to snatch-and-grab you for the Americans…

Long-term food issues in the People’s Republic of China.

Interesting point here from Walter Russel Mead on China’s small agricultural problem:

Though China is geographically larger than the United States, it has far less arable land per capita available: 0.08 hectares per person versus 0.53 per person here. And the arable land available in China is shrinking, mostly because of extreme desertification.

So China imports food to help feed its huge and growing population. But its imports vastly outweigh its exports in agricultural products (see the chart below, courtesy Zero Hedge & FAO). And that deficit is going to grow: There will be lots more mouths to feed in the future, and as more and more Chinese enter the middle class, appetites evolve.

Continue reading Long-term food issues in the People’s Republic of China.

Mitt Romney: enabling the PRC’s foreign adventurism?

There’s a lot to talk about with regard to last night’s debate, but I want to drill down on this unforced error made by Team Romney. It’s… subtle, but it’s going to hurt Mitt in unexpected ways. Via the CNN debate transcript (via Ben Domenech’s Transom) comes this fascinating discussion of alternative methods of funding humanitarian aid:

COOPER: Governor Romney, should foreign aid be eliminated?

ROMNEY: Foreign aid has several elements. One of those elements is defense, is to make sure that we are able to have the defense resources we want in certain places of the world. That probably ought to fall under the Department of Defense budget rather than a foreign aid budget.

Part of it is humanitarian aid around the world. I happen to think it doesn’t make a lot of sense for us to borrow money from the Chinese to go give to another country for humanitarian aid. We ought to get the Chinese to take care of the people that are — and think of that borrowed money on today (ph).

Quick response: Mitt Romney wants the ChiComs to do no-strings-attached humanitarian aid? Anybody who could convince them to do that wouldn’t currently be at 25% in primary polling. Continue reading Mitt Romney: enabling the PRC’s foreign adventurism?

Carole Shea-Porter… BROUGHT DOWN BY THE PRC?

That’s the implication, at least: Ms. Shea-Porter is going around telling people that the reason that she lost was because of all that dirty, dirty (and apparently foreign) special interest money. The quote: “They’re in the halls of Congress everywhere, and it means, for example, that you sit on a committee and you say something about concern about Chinese influence or something, you don’t even know if in the next election, somehow or another, they manage to send some money to some group that now doesn’t even have to say where they got it.*”

Let us leave aside for the moment the minor detail of why the PRC would want to topple a fellow-leftist: has the woman no understanding of campaign disclosure rules? It’s not as if the money’s being delivered in paper sacks: we are actually able to know who contributed to various campaigns. For example – and to use her own election race as an example – incoming Congressman Frank Guinta raised a total of 1.53 million this cycle, 21% of which was via PACs (and none of it from, say, the US Chamber of Commerce’s PAC). Ms. Shea-Porter? 1.64 million, 30% via PAC money. Business/ideological in Guinta’s case, labor/ideological in Shea-Porter’s: all perfectly obvious, and all reasonably transparent.

What’s actually bugging Shea-Porter, of course, is that the aforementioned US Chamber of Commerce happened to allocate 149K worth of negative campaign ads against her in the last two weeks of the race; probably not all that necessary (her polling was terrible), but it certainly didn’t help the incumbent much. It nonetheless does give a crumb of rationalization to any progressives out there not yet ready to face objective reality; which is why the soon-to-be-former Representative is implying as overtly as she dares that her election losses were all the fault of the Godless Chinese Hordes. It’s a more appealing narrative to the left than the truth, which is that being an open progressive in the wild is an excellent way to lose one’s election by double digits. Continue reading Carole Shea-Porter… BROUGHT DOWN BY THE PRC?

So much for those “Free Tibet” bumper stickers.

I understand that they can be easily enough removed with a combination of WD-40 and a razor blade. Some people should get cracking with that…

In an attempt to gain favor with China, the United States pressured Tibetan representatives to postpone a meeting between the Dalai Lama and President Obama until after Obama’s summit with his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, scheduled for next month, according to diplomats, government officials and other sources familiar with the talks.

For the first time since 1991, the Tibetan spiritual leader will visit Washington this week and not meet with the president. Since 1991, he has been here 10 times. Most times the meetings have been “drop-in” visits at the White House. The last time he was here, in 2007, however, George W. Bush became the first sitting president to meet with him publicly, at a ceremony at the Capitol in which he awarded the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal, Congress’s highest civilian award.

…because it’s just the first step. Given the passive-aggressive nature of this administration, the next step will be to see whether enough people squawk at this; if they don’t, they’ll start making it ‘difficult’ for the Dalai Lama to visit the United States. And if he passes away, expect the USA to keep its mouth shut and let the PRC do… whatever the PRC plans to do about the religious leader’s successor. All part of the task of the day – which is to improve the PRC’s IMF standing, apparently. Why it’s up to the USA to do that* is a reason known only to God and the President, and I’ll avoid the obvious sneer this time. It seems unfair to taunt people who now have to go out and do work on their cars because of this…

Moe Lane

PS: Via Below the Beltway – and, to answer Doug’s confusion as to which is worse; it’d be if this was done unilaterally. If we negotiated to this it’d at least imply that we got a concession in return, which would be something, from a realpolitik point of view.

Moe Lane

*But if the People’s Republic of China is looking for advice, here’s some for free: try being a democratic republic, run on open market principles. Yes, I know: physician, heal thyself. Still, it’s good advice.

Crossposted to RedState.