Analysis: China looks across Asia and sees new threats

BEIJING (Reuters) - Heads of government attending Asian summits hoping to fathom China's foreign policy mood swings might spare a thought for Beijing's own leaders, who fear their expanding influence is attracting a new circle of potential foes not fans.
China's diplomacy throughout 2011 has stressed the ruling Communist Party's desire to set aside recent regional feuds as it focuses on a leadership handover next year.
Beijing has sought to rein in tensions with Vietnam and the Philippines over the South China Sea and avoided ire over Japan's recent arrest of a Chinese boat captain in Japanese waters. And, crucially, Beijing and Washington have worked to contain rows over China's currency, trade, security, North Korea and Taiwan.
President Hu Jintao's meetings with U.S. President Barack Obama and other leaders at the APEC summit in Hawaii on the weekend should reinforce that steadying message, as will Premier Wen Jiabao's talks in Bali at the East Asia Summit on November 19, which Obama is also due to attend.

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A Chinese property tycoon is one step closer to getting Icelandic approval for his plans to buy a large swathe of land for a tourist resort, an economic affairs ministry memo released Thursday showed. Huang Nubo asked the Icelandic government in late August for permission to buy 300 square kilometres (200 square miles) of Icelandic wilderness to build a resort, since the land is partly owned by the government and approval is required for a non-resident of the European Economic Area to buy land. Huang has said he wants to build a luxury resort with a hotel, golf course and sports facilities, and Europe's biggest nature reserve.

Icelandic observers have suggested that Huang's purchase could help Beijing get a foothold in the Arctic region, as the melting ice cap means lucrative oil and gas deposits under the seabed could soon become accessible and shorter shipping routes open up.

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HONOLULU (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and China's Hu Jintao will pitch differing trade agendas on Saturday as an antidote to weak global growth, as they try to sidestep the European debt crisis looming over an Asia-Pacific summit.

The heads of the world's two biggest economies will address business leaders in back-to-back morning speeches at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO summit in Honolulu, and later meet face to face. But Obama and Hu do not see eye to eye on how best to promote transpacific trade.

Obama arrived in Hawaii late on Friday at the start of a nine-day Asian trip during which he will attempt to reassert U.S. influence over the region's course in economic and security affairs. An unstated goal is to ensure China does not muscle the United States aside from its traditional Pacific role.

Obama hopes to leave his native state with at least the outline of a final deal on the Transpacific Partnership, a regional trade pact being negotiated between the United States and eight other countries.

China is not part of these trade talks, and views them warily. The differing views were captured on Friday in a politely pointed public exchange between top American and Chinese trade officials. Asked whether China would join the TPP, as the talks are known, a Chinese official, Assistant Commerce Minister Yu Jianhua, noted that no invitation had been sent to Beijing.

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The Great Wall around China: President Barack Obama is expected to reveal plans to station about 500 to 1000 Marines at a barracks in Darwin and to expand the US navy’s use of bases at the Northern Territory capital and in Perth in Western Australia. “The US could build their forces up quickly in places like Australia out of missile range from China,” a professor of international security at Sydney University, Alan Dupont, told the Telegraph. “A lot of Japanese facilities in Okinawa are quite vulnerable to the new generation of Chinese missile capabilities. It is arguably one of the most important shifts in both US and Australian strategic policy in the past 20 years.” Australia’s defense minister, Stephen Smith, said Australia would seek to expand “practical cooperation” with the US but would not agree to a Marine base in the country. At present, the main US military presence in Australia is limited to a joint satellite tracking station at Pine Gap, in the Northern Territory, and a naval communication station in Western Australia. President Obama, who was born in Hawaii [really in AFRICA} and calls himself “America’s first Pacific president,” has overseen a shift in focus away from the Middle East to the Asia Pacific. The US has signaled an expansion of defense ties across the region, including with Vietnam and Singapore. However, the plan to expand the US presence in Australia has raised concerns among some analysts that it could escalate regional tensions and damage relations with China. -Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/8883558/US-to-station-troops-in-northern-Australia-as-fears-of-Chinas-Pacific-presence-grow.html

Obama: America's 'Been A Little Bit Lazy'...
VIDEO: http://tv.breitbart.com/obama-americas-been-a-little-bit-lazy/
What about a president whose vacation time is more important then leading the nation and whose vacations expenses exceed more then an average American may make in a lifetime?



http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/13/us-apec-obama-ceo-china-idUSTRE7AC03220111113
Obama warns Hu of U.S. frustrations on trade
HONOLULU | Sun Nov 13, 2011 - (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama sought to ratchet up pressure on China over its currency and trade policies, warning Chinese President Hu Jintao on Saturday that Americans were growing "impatient and frustrated" over economic relations.

Obama, under pressure to create jobs at home and trying to highlight U.S. influence abroad, adopted a more steely tone with Hu than he has at other recent meetings with his Chinese counterpart.

At a forum of business leaders that began his first day at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, Obama said China must play by international rules when it comes to trade and must stop poaching U.S. intellectual property.

"What I have said since I first came into office and what we've exhibited in terms of our interactions with the Chinese is we want you to play by the rules. And currency is probably a good example," Obama said, referring to long-standing U.S. requests for China to let the yuan float freely.

"For an economy like the United States -- where our biggest competitive advantage is our knowledge, our innovation, our patents, our copyrights -- for us not to get the kind of protection we need in a large marketplace like China is not acceptable," Obama said.

U.S. officials said private talks Obama and Hu held later focused heavily on economic issues and that the U.S. president conveyed growing American concerns about the trade relationship.

"He made it very clear that the American people and the American business community were growing increasingly impatient and frustrated with the state of change in China economic policy and the evolution of the U.S.-China economic relationship," senior White House aide Michael Froman told reporters.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama was "very direct" with Hu on the trade issues.

It was unclear what effect Obama's complaints, which seemed aimed in part at a domestic U.S. audience, would have on China. Beijing holds leverage of its own as the United States' largest foreign creditor, holding more than $1.1 trillion in U.S. debt.

China argues that it has already allowed the yuan to rise significantly, and has complained it has not been given adequate access to invest in U.S. industries.

Hu stressed cooperation rather than confrontation.

Seated side-by-side with the U.S. president before their closed-door meeting, Hu -- alluding to the European debt crisis -- said that in turbulent times it was all the more important that the United States and China "increase their communication and coordination" on economic matters.

"A LITTLE BIT LAZY"

read more at link http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/13/us-apec-obama-ceo-china-idUSTRE7AC03220111113


Personal Note: Most Americans have no clue what is going on with China other than that Big Business outsourced jobs to Mexico, India and then China.

What Americans are really frustrated with is how government leaders are in bed with crooks (the bankers and the oil industry who control the policies of this nation) and sacrificed main street for wall street leaving American citizens responsible for an odious debt they did not create. And what this president along with many politician don't realize it that it is no longer "business as usual" as a sleeping dragon (citizens from around the world) are awakening and taking a stand against the global Wall Street banksters. In reality, a global civil financial war is only in the beginning stages.

(Reuters) - President Hu Jintao sought to soothe the nerves of foreign businesses over market conditions in China on Saturday and vowed to boost his country's global role amid growing uncertainty and trade protectionism.

"The new mechanism for global economic governance should reflect the changes in the world economic landscape," Hu told executives at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Honolulu.

"It should observe the principle of mutual respect and collective decision-making and increase the representation and voice of emerging markets and developing countries," he said, urging a more "balanced partnership" for development and governance.

Hu and U.S. President Barack Obama, who spoke at the same forum shortly after the Chinese leader, have not seen eye to eye on how to address pan-Pacific trade among the 21 APEC members during the annual summit.

Relations between Washington and Beijing are beset by disagreements over China's trade and currency practices, U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, China's military buildup in the Pacific and China's human rights record.

China has been reluctant to sign trade deals that would subject it to U.S-led efforts to further open its economy to foreign players because that would put pressure on its state-owned enterprises.

The differing views were captured on Friday in a politely pointed exchange between American and Chinese trade officials, when the U.S. trade representative refuted China's claim that it had not been invited to join a regional free-trade pact being negotiated by at least nine countries.

On Saturday, Hu said China was committed to free trade in the Asia-Pacific but also called for progress in the stalled Doha round of trade talks at the World Trade Organization. Read more at link above...


Obama seeks to hitch U.S. economy to Asian growth
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/11/us-apec-obama-f-idUSTRE7AA2GQ20111111
(Reuters) - With Europe mired in crisis, President Barack Obama is launching a charm offensive this week to hitch the U.S. economy to growth opportunities in Asia that he hopes can help power the recovery he needs for re-election. Read more at link above...



Personal Note: This will not help Obama for a number of reasons. The U.S. has enough of its own oil to last over 200 years and then some. According to inside sources it has more oil than all of the mid-east put together. There is no reason for the US to be in debt or even tax it's citizens if oil was declared as a natural resource belonging to the nation and to be used by the nation to rebuild its infrastructure. The primary issue is how can he snooker the American public to get back into office. His thinking is flawed. As long as the American public is burdened by an Odious debt that Obama supported to bail out Wall Street and allow oil prices to remain so high that some couples have to sale their grandmother's jewels just to pay the gas bill (this is not a joke) to get to work his credibility as a leader will continue to deteriorate. This is a man is more focused on his next expensive vacation at taxpayer expense then on actually leading a nation out of debt.

However, his rear may be hauled out of the fire when the IQD revalues along with all the other nations that have invested in it so this makes it anybody's ball game. The problem is that Wall Street is looking for another bailout and there have been zero charges or prosecutions of those who would rip off Main Street - meaning both Congress and these bankster business men are operating unto a law to themselves at the expense of American citizens and outside of mainstream criminal justice system. This is what has inflamed and fueled the Occupy Wall Street movement and this movement will not end until justice as been served and these crooks are held accountable. Many of the fiscal bailouts (financial institutions) have been making huge profits. That money should be paid back to the citizens they got the money from in the first place and until it is paid back - or the Odious debt is forgiven, this U.S. and global financial revolution will just continue to grow.

Chinese ratings agency threatens US with new debt downgrade
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/nov/12/chins-threatens-us-with-new-debt-downgrade
The Guardian, Friday 11 November 2011 - The head of China's biggest ratings agency, Dagong Global Credit Rating, is warning that it may downgrade the US's sovereign debt rating again because of Washington's failure to tackle the federal budget deficit.

The remarks by Dagong's chairman, Guan Jianzhong, to be broadcast in an interview with al-Jazeera on Saturday morning, come at the end of another week of deep turmoil for the world economy.

Dagong, which has maintained a pessimistic outlook on US fiscal policy, has been leading the charge to downgrade US debt over the last 12 months, lowering the US rating from AA to A+ a year ago.

In August it downgraded US debt again, to A. Days later, Standard & Poor's followed in its wake, becoming the first western agency to downgrade US debt after the threat of a default was narrowly avoided following weeks of political squabbling in Washington over whether President Obama should be allowed to raise the US debt ceiling.

Guan's intervention comes as another embarrassing political standoff over budget policy looms in Washington. The cross-party "supercommittee" given the job of finding ways to cut the budget deficit is reportedly deadlocked, with Republicans refusing to countenance the tax rises being suggested by Democrats. The committee is due to report by 23 November, but there are fears they could fail to reach agreement, prompting a new crisis.

....China is the largest foreign buyer of US government debt – accounting for around third of all foreign-held US securities – despite the fact it has gradually reduced its holdings since the S&P downgrade and has also lost heavily on its large holdings of US currency.

Since the summer – and the debt-ceiling crisis – China has become ever more vocal about what it describes as the US "addiction" to debt, warning in August that more "devastating credit rating cuts" and global economic turmoil were around the corner unless Washington learned to live within its means.

The Xinhua news agency issued a commentary that cautioned: "The US government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone."

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Canadian PM eyes China after US pipeline delay
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.93c1b5af9b6cb71a17bf389563809eb2.671&show_article=1
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Sunday that he was looking at exporting more oil to China after the United States delayed a decision on a controversial pipeline.
President Barack Obama's administration last week put off a decision on Keystone XL project after a major protest campaign by environmentalists, who say the pipeline would be prone to accidents and worsen climate change.

The conservative Canadian leader, taking part in a summit in Hawaii hosted by Obama said the pipeline decision had produced "extremely negative reactions" and that he discussed oil exports with Chinese President Hu Jintao.

"This does underscore the necessity of Canada making sure that we are able to access Asian markets for our energy products," Harper told reporters. "I indicated that yesterday (Saturday) to President Hu of China."

The Harper government has pressed Obama to approve the 1,700-mile (2,700-kilometer) pipeline extension, which would stretch through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma before ending up in Texas.

Canada, the pipeline's lead company TransCanada, and Obama's Republican opponents say the $7 billion project would provide the United States with a stable source of energy from an ally and create thousands of jobs.
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What do people buy from corner stores in China?
http://www.danwei.com/what-do-people-from-corner-stores-in-china/
I spent China’s October holiday traveling across the country on a work trip. In each city I visited, I went to a small corner store (known in China as xiaomaibu 小卖部). Such stores sell a range of goods similar to convenience stores, but usually packed into a tiny space. Many xiaomaibu‘s are so small that you cannot walk into them, but have to ask the vendor for what you want through a window. I asked the person manning each store to tell me the most popular item they sold, and then took a portrait.
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This is crazy. New photos have appeared in Google Maps showing unidentified titanic structures in the middle of the Chinese desert. The first one is an intricate network of what appears to be huge metallic stripes. Is this a military experiment?

Update 2: readers are finding even more weird stuff.
They seem to be wide lines drawn with some white material. Or maybe the dust have been dug by machinery.

It's located in Dunhuang, Jiuquan, Gansu, north of the Shule River, which crosses the Tibetan Plateau to the west into the Kumtag Desert. It covers an area approximately one mile long by more than 3,000 feet wide.

The tracks are perfectly executed, and they seem to be designed to be seen from orbit.

Perhaps it's some kind of targeting or calibrating grid for Chinese spy satellites? Maybe it's a QR code for aliens? Nobody really knows.

You can check it out yourself in Google Maps http://maps.google.com/maps?q=40.452107,93.742118&hl=de&ll=40.447764,93.744299&spn=0.005201,0.010107&num=1&t=h&vpsrc=6&z=17

Read rest of article at link http://gizmodo.com/5859081/why-is-china-building-these-gigantic-structures-in-the-middle-of-the-desert