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Strategies & Market Trends : ahhaha's ahs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ahhaha who wrote (1993)	4/13/2001 7:50:51 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24758

Hi ahhaha; Re: "Don't Tread on Me". The whole point of the Tripolitan affair was that U.S. merchant vessels were being held for ransom. China is doing nothing of the sort, and has (more or less) peaceful relations with every one of its neighbors. Reports I get back from Hong Kong has that China has ruled that territory so well that the Hong Kongese are moving back from Australia, Canada and the United States. In short, China is being a good guy. Yes we need gun ships, but do we need to do provactive things with them? The phrase is "Walk Softly but Carry a Big Stick." No one doubts that we have the big stick. Our big stick is more economic than military, but shouldn't we be walking softly? Humans are a freedom loving species, and trying to control them with military force is almost hopeless. All those "Star Wars" movies have a central theme that shoots for the human heart, the love of freedom. We must recognize that that truth applies to peoples in other countries as well as our own. Re: "There seems to be an international conspiracy rooted in arms merchandising which has now grown to alarming proportions and stimulated confrontation. China is a big seller of arms worldwide. It has been kept very secret, but is provoking those who know into ever greater concern and attentiveness." This is total, complete BS. The U.S. is the largest seller of arms by a good margin. There are links all over the net with statistics on this. Find me a link showing how much arms China exports, I bet it's way under U.S. exports. Here's a typical link showing this: According to a recent report by the Congressional Research Service, the United States kept its large lead in the global arms market last year. It captured 39 percent of new contracts, totaling $11.8 billion. That's more sales volume than Russia, France, the United Kingdom and China combined. The United States also delivered $18.4 billion worth of arms in 1999, or 54 percent of the worldwide total. iansa.org According to China, they spend 1/43 as much as the U.S. on "defense". Maybe those figures are wrong, but they aren't wrong by much. China is an economic midget. No country that was, at the time, an economic midget has at that time been a military superpower. This is a truism that dates back to the Trojan War. War is the most expensive thing a country can do, and poor nations cannot afford to do it well. Anyway, just so you can hear the Chinese version of all this, here's a link more or less straight from the ChiCom's mouth: White Paper-- China: Arms Control and Disarmament Information Office of the State Council Of the People's Republic of China Beijing, November 1995 Foreword As the world marks the 50th anniversaries of the victories in the global anti-fascist war and China's War of Resistance Against Japan and the founding of the United Nations, it must not be forgotten that twice in this century mankind has suffered from the enormity of world war, that war 'has repeatedly brought man catastrophic suffering. Given the new international situation, the importance of arms control and disarmament has become ever more apparent to the international community, both as a component of national security policies and as an effective measure to reduce the danger of war. China needs a peaceful environment in order to be able to devote itself completely to its socialist modernization programme. Guided by its aspiration to peace and development, China has spared no effort to safeguard international peace, security and stability and afforded the greatest concern to arms control and disarmament. China has always opposed the arms race and advocated that the danger of war be lessened or eliminated through arms control and disarmament. As the international situation has changed, China, while retaining the precondition that the nation maintain necessary defence capabilities, has unilaterally adopted a series of measures aimed at disarmament. These include greatly reducing military staff, reducing defence spending, strictly controlling transfers of sensitive materials, technology and military equipment and converting defence technologies industry to civilian production. China has further made its due contributions as a developing nation and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, proffering many realistic, rational proposals geared to actively promote the international arms control and disarmament process. China's efforts towards arms control and disarmament have proven to the world that it is positive, sincere and responsible regards resolving this issue. China has been and always will remain a reliable force in the cause of safeguarding world peace and promoting mankind's common development. ... China has a fairly low level of defence spending compared with that announced by other countries. It spent only US$ 6.39 billion on defence in 1994 (calculated at the average annual exchange rate of the RMB yuan to the US dollar), 2.3 percent that spent by the United States, 18.3 percent that by Britain, 18.6 percent that by France and 13.9 percent that by Japan. Per capita defence spending by that year was only US$ 5.36. ... fas.org -- Carl