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Politics : The Arab-Israeli Solution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth V. McNutt who wrote (369)	4/24/2001 3:33:10 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Respond to of 2279

and a good part of that $100 billion goes directly to the PLA as they participate in ownership of these companies. Actually, I'm not so sure that the PLA has many business interests left. One of the things the "reformers" within the communist party were demanding was for the PLA to divest itself of its business interests and become a "professional" military. Unfortunately, the PLA leadership still are members of the communist party, and thus share political power. Some have speculated that the PLA misinformed Jiang Zemin about the events that caused the aircraft accident, causing him to take a hard line with the US over this apology issue based upon false information from his generals. However, I tend to disagree with that scenario since I would have to believe he is astute enough to realize the US pilots would not be so aggressive as to take on a armed supersonic fighter. Of course, he might have "acted" like he accepted the PLA's claims, hoping to drag them into such an embarrassing situation that their power in the party was later subverted over this lie they were advancing. There are many possible scenarios people can run. We could just assume that Jiang feels the rate of change that he and Zhu Rongji (what has happened to his power base?) has advanced too rapidly, setting into motion events that are a threat to his power and the power of the communists in China. Either way.. this whole incident was a carefully calculated response aimed at undermining the power of some group that Jiang wants to control, whether than be intermal (the PLA), or external (the US). But we can be certain that, deprived of their businesses, the PLA will morph itself into a Chinese version of the Military-Industrial complex that Eisenhower warned the American people about. It will prove to be a drain on China's economic growth. Btw, JDSU is laying off 5,000 workers as you all might have heard. What you may not have heard is that many of those jobs are set to go to China. I certainly wouldn't be willing to advise such an approach considering the potential political risk that out there. Hawk