Hi CB, I am done posting to myself. I am back in HK. Feels good at home. I feel better now. Here is why …
I signed off on the sale of another power plant, to that nice USD 200 millionaire with two daughters studying in Canada, and thus making another capitalist in China happy. But to be really happy, he needs to put more money into factories around the plant, so as to bring up the steam to electricity ratio of the co-generation setup, and realize the full potential of the plant.
This means he needs to invest more money, take more risks, and he is not willing to do so unless two things happen, one before, one in his estimation.
Before he invests more money in building factories around the plant, he wants the local government partner quit being his minority partner in the power plant, and the local government will do so, because they are worried of being shouted at in standing in the way of potential progress, and they are promoted on the basis of how much privatization they can implement. The government guys have quotas to meet.
My new friend, in his estimation, must be convinced that his property rights will improve with the passing of time, and that his assets can generate new assets by making things that people in China and abroad wants to buy, else he would not have bought the plant.
And, then, magically, the central government needs to satisfy my friend on the issue of property rights through the continued improvement of laws, many of which are copied from abroad, with no IP fees paid, so as to keep workers employed, so that the workers do not overthrow the government. Of course, absent my capitalist friend, the government can always have more workers work on weapon manufacturing, or simpler still, let them over run SE Asia as freedom seeking immigrants.
So, in sum, in good nature, your husband is wrong and is not qualified to vote on the issues, and here is why, specifically and precisely:
<<1. Falungong is a peaceful meditation group.>>
Many, if not most cults and even proper mainstream religions have been used and abused by politicians for their own aims. FLG is a cult. I have seen them, and they scare me, with their placid eyes, silence, and willingness to pour gasoline on their drugged daughters, and then set them alight. China is too complicated and too weak at the moment to have folks learn how to pilot Boeings to crash into buildings. FLG is a cult, not because a few foreigners say they are not, but because most Chinese say they are. Democracy thrives even under dictatorship of many.
This is not about religion, it is about order. FLG is a cult manipulated from a house in New Jersey, by a wealthy man who had embezzled money, and who is connected to a bunch of very odd organizations, some of them across the strait from Fujian province.
If FLG is a peaceful meditation group, then WACO is a fine commune, and Islam, in all its variations, is a progressive force husbanded by 20% of the world's population, mostly living under the poverty line.
<<2. We are selling you the rope with which to hang us - actually you're selling us the rope with which to hang us and using the money to buy missiles and other weapons.>>
You are buying so that 20% of the world's population can work to build up a stake in this world, produce fine capitalists, and send children overseas for schooling, and not have to come take what they need, or cheer on other when these others come take what you have.
China, in all of America's short history, has been reacting to America. America failed its leadership obligation, and here now is a new chance to do the right thing.
<<3. China is a Communist dictatorship where the money goes to the state rather than the private sector>>
Ancient history. China was, because America rejected China’s hand.
And so, you see, is it more likely that H is right, sitting in a living room far away from the action out here, or Jay, doing deals in the midst of yet another Hakka (Deng Xiao Ping was a Hakka) inspired revolution. Is H right, or that very knowledgeable Mr Lee of Singapore. Or, to put it another way, in a legal fashion, is there a reasonable doubt that your H could be wrong?
And, given that your H believes in what he believes in, what does he propose? Will it work? If you do not depend on the self-interest of the Chinese population to make progress, what do you hope to do as an alternative? Who is with the US should it go on a crusade against China? There are enough crusades going on already, no?
Interestingly, Bush will soon have to make a choice of his priorities, and I believe he has already made them, if China joins the WTO this coming Monday.
news.ft.com
Any how, to another connected topic, I understand the hedge funds all got their mmarching orders from the Central Banks, and I therefore am thinking of buying into two US stocks come Monday, come what may. What are you thinking of doing?
Chugs, Jay |
