I've been reading world news recently with a feeling of irony. With the world economy generally in recession, with some economies in crisis (e.g. the United States), Wen Jia Bao Premier of China the other day expressed concern that China's investment in US Treasury Bonds could be at risk, and asked the United States to safe-guard Chinese assests and other investments.
Its ironic because here you have a Top Communist Official talking about treasury bonds - a Capitalist instrument of investment and asking the party to which it has lent money or otherwise made an investment to help safe guard that investment. Ironic isn't it? The communists telling the capitalists to make sure they are good stewards of the lenders' money.
If anything, the Chinese (and when I say Chinese I mean Chinese from mainland China, not the Overseas Chinese). Anyway, the Chinese are just about one of the most business and capitalist minded people on the face of the earth. Today, the Chinese Communists are only Communist by Name. The Chinese have been doing business, conducting international trade both on land via the silk road and via the sea for hundreds if not thousands of years.
China had its own lending and financial institutions run as private businesses during the times of the Chinese emperors. Doing business is second nature to Chinese.
Today, China holds about $730 Billion Singapore dollars in US Treasury Bonds. It is the 3rd largest economy in the world. And is today the largest creditor (aka lender) to the United States, which I will point out is supposedly the worlds largest Capitalist economy.
Ironic isn't it?
Moreover, today the Chinese Communists leadership is stressing development in the economy, social justice, human rights, scientific based progress and development in strategic areas (e.g. defence, food production, resources management), research & development, and the fight against corruption which it has recognised could cause the weakening and eventual downfall of government (in this case, itself the Chinese Communist Party). Isn't it ironic that while the Chinese communist can clearly see that corruption weakens government while justice, the rule of law, democracy (yes democracy!) and human rights leads to strengthening of government in the long term, the bastions of "democracy" & "human rights" aka the United States seems to have forgotten these very same universal values which have made it "The Greatest Nation on Earth".
Today, corporate America is rife with corruption at the highest levels and self-serving CEOs who milk the companies they run and reward themselves with fat pay-outs when they run those companies into bankruptcy. Whats worse, the current economic crisis was caused basically by the failure of American institutions - the banks, the regulators, the government in general, even the failure of ordinary citizens who spend what they don't have on what they can't afford. Today the United States within is rife with violence (esp gun violence) and crime while overseas, it carries out killing, imprisonment, and torture carried on foreign shores and justifies it as its "war against terror". America it seems has lost the very values of individual freedom, democracy and human rights as espoused by its founding fathers. Fighting terror by toppling governments, occupying other countries, killing innocent cilivians and providing arms and training to other criminals to do more of the killing doesn't guarantee a win to the war (whatever the "war" is and however the "win" is defined). One needs to go after the perpetrators of the crime and fix the root causes of terrorism. Bush on the other hand did more to ruin the American economy and strengthen the hand of terrorists and extremists than Osama Bin Laden ever could. If Osama is still alive, he's probably comforting himself that Bush the idiot has done what he alone could never have achieved. There'll be many more Osamas after he's gone.
Now back to the economic mess- If this crisis had started in Asia, the lecture from Western nations, we would not hear the end of. Lectures on good corporate governance, accountability, transparancy and the proper enforcement of law (or the lack thereof) will be the topics Asian countries would be lectured on. Moverover had this crisis started in Asia, there would no doubt be accusations of corruption, nepotism, currency manipulation, unfair trading practices, insider trading, improper government intervention and so on. True, corruption and nepotism is rife in certain Asian governments, but as someone said, "You shouldn't throw stones at others when you yourself live in a glass house."
Here and
here are the related news reports on China's US Treasury Bonds.
