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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (8836)	7/7/2004 5:53:11 PM
From: yard_man	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

I think the answer to that is what they are billed out at -- got to include overheads??

To: RealMuLan who wrote (8836)	7/7/2004 8:16:20 PM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

GUNSHIPS AND OPIUM by Dan Denning On a strange geopolitical note, the Pentagon announced this week that the Navy will be deploying seven aircraft carrier groups around the world in an operation designed to give the "ability to provide significant combat power to the President in response to a national emergency or crisis." The Navy calls it part of its "surge tactics," the ability to project a lot of force in a lot of places at one time. Initial reports were that all seven carrier groups would be deployed near the South China Sea. If that were true, it would be a not so subtle attempt to tell China that the U.S. means business about Taiwan. It would also be a big strategic gamble, putting that many inviting targets in such close proximity to lethal anti- ship missiles. But it turns out not to be true. That is, not all seven groups are going to be in the same region as an unprecedented "show of force." The Navy's purpose is to conduct joint operations with other countries and project U.S. force in five separate theaters at the same time. There may be more than one carrier group near China. But there assuredly won't be seven in the same theater. If anyone steals the election in 2004, it's going to be the Chinese. China may be very close to picking a time to go after Taiwan while the U.S is preoccupied in Iraq. That might seem rash. But think about it in terms of winning without fighting. Question: When could the Chinese attack Taiwan without provoking a U.S. response? Answer: At a time when political pressure constrains the U.S. from responding. Bush sending carrier groups into the straits of Taiwan weeks before a general election? Is the American media mature enough to see that as a legitimate response to honor our agreements with Taiwan? Or would critics be right in calling it election year brinkmanship? Either way, it would be a bold challenge and the last thing the President needed at such a time. It could also happen early in the next term of either President. The same logic applies. Challenge early and get your opponent on his strategic heels. If this sounds nuts I understand. Do governments really think this way about one another? Yes, apparently, they do, thus operation Summer Pulse. You'd be hard pressed to find two more paranoid defense establishments in the world than the American and the Chinese. It's hard to imagine, with $124 billion in trade between them and their economic futures now intimately intertwined, that America and China would go to war over Taiwan. But both appear determined to do just that if they feel they have to. Let's hope they don't have to. Even if the Americans succeed in staring down the Chinese this summer, they won't have won any points with Chinese policymakers. China has seen this kind of thing before. And it's still bitter about it. When I was in the Forbidden City, none of the relics or artifacts were there. Why? They're all in Britain and France. In the 1830's Britain's East India Company was exporting tons of opium to China. According to Wikipedia.com, it traded the opium for tea and manufactured goods. As you might expect, all that opium created a lot of addicts. The imperial government (Qing Empire) made opium illegal in 1836 and began closing down the dens. And here's an interesting note if you like looking for historic parallels. According to an essay posted on the Washington State University website, one of the big grievances that caused the war was that the British refused to hand over British citizens charged with crimes in China to the Chinese legal system. The British considered China's legal system barbaric. The Chinese, naturally, resented having foreign soldiers exempt from domestic laws. The British spent two years running their gunships up and down the coast, bombarding the Chinese into submission. And in 1942 the Treaty of Nanking reopened the opium trade and exempted British citizens from Chinese law (it's all sounding so familiar.) Two years later France and the U.S. also signed similar treaties with China. The war planted historic seeds of resentment that still flower today. It's probably hard for English and American students of history to understand this kind of resentment, England and America never having suffered occupation and military defeat in the modern world. My point in bringing this whole interlude up is that China is just now nursing a national sense of growing power. Trying to subdue it by reenacting the kind of diplomacy that's recalled as a national shame at the hands of the West is likely to fire up even more Chinese nationalism. It's likely to provoke the Chinese into "doing something" about Taiwan. Perhaps the strategy is to put military pressure on China and hope that it leads to cracks in the political façade. The first opium war forcibly opened up China for free trade (especially for opium). A new war broke out in the period from 1856 to 1860. This time, the British and French united under one command and pressed for even more advantage. They were joined by Russia and the United States (which was about to have problems of its own.) In the second opium war the Western powers succeeded in driving the emperor from his palace in Peking and occupying the city. The eventual settlement of the war opened up ten more Chinese ports to trade, made it permissible for foreign ships (including warships) to navigate the Yangtze river, allowed Chinese workers the right to work overseas, gave foreigners the right to travel inside China, and granted Christians the right to own property and proselytize. The West is still trying to get China to open up, but on Western terms. And we're still using guns to do it. The Chinese, for their part, are rolling back political freedoms in Hong Kong and rattling sabers at Taiwan. Who's going to win this time? And will it take more than an economic war to find out? Regards, Dan Denning for The Daily Reckoning

To: RealMuLan who wrote (8836)	7/7/2004 11:22:05 PM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116555

Pfizer: China Overturns Viagra Patent Updated: Wednesday, Jul. 7, 2004 - 5:20 PM BEIJING (AP) - Chinese authorities have overturned Pfizer Inc.'s patent for Viagra in a widely watched case over how much China will protect the intellectual property rights of foreign companies. wtop.com The article reports that 90% of the Viagra sold in Shanghai is counterfit ============================================================ OK YIWU - your take? Mish