Sol Sanders Archive

But a quick rundown reads something like this:

Contrary to expectations, or should we say hopes, of interested parties not least the world trading and financial community, the Chinese economy is foundering. The exaggerated hopes that high rates of growth would return there and become a motor for more rapid world economic recovery were always groundless. But when Beijing went on a “stimulus” rampage and speculatively bought up raw materials and oil in the spring, the fantasies took flight. The reality is that there is every evidence that Chinese Communist Party managers of what is still a largely government-owned economy are even more bemused than their colleagues in the Obama Administration and in Europe by the effects of the international credit crunch and worldwide recession.

Furthermore, the Chinese in an effort to shore up their flagging gross national product — falling below the level conventional wisdom at home and abroad said was necessary to keep the civil peace — is resorting to even more protectionist devices to push exports and continue to accumulate huge American dollar debt in their $2 trillion reserve hoard. With huge lobbies on both ends, in a period of economic downturn, U.S.-China trade problems are getting stickier and stickier. In late June, for example, in an effort to enforce health standards by banning cooked chicken product imports from China, Washington was faced with a Beijing move to block $350 million worth of U.S. raw chicken imports at a time when that American industry’s productivity is breaking the priceline and threatening bankruptcy for some of the major producers.

The increasing jerky and ineffective Beijing mercantilist policy feints in contrary directions are leading to growing dissatisfaction with the regime and explosions of violence — which while censored at home and largely ignored by the rest of the world — could spell instability for the regime.

All of this prejudices Beijing’s presumed role as the overwhelmingly No. 1 trading partner and therefore witness — and perhaps interloper — in a growing crisis of the regime in North Korea. Just as most of the world believed the neo-Prussian Communist state in East Germany was impregnable, much has been made of the totalitarian nature of the Pyongyang regime. True, it has had as other Communist regimes before it, the ability to create frightening weapons of mass destruction while solving no domestic social problem, but it is now facing that litmus test of all regimes and governments, the succession issue.

The Chinese Communists, in their earlier days when there was more respect for the tenets of Marxist-Leninist-Maoism, always decried the royal dynastic order in North Korea. Now their worst fears are being fulfilled: the regime has a terminally ill dictator, a presumptive if genealogically disputed young heir with virtually no experience and learning, an uncle regent probably with ambitions, and a group of conniving generals the product of long years of finagling by the royal family Kim. [Paging Shakespeare’s Richard III!] In that environment with its own views of its national interest convoluted and probably contradictory — China presumably fears an implosion, the possibility of reunited Korea under Seoul’s tutelage, refugee flows — and grateful for a weapon against the U.S. and Japan, Beijing’s intervention is probably paralyzed.

South Korea, perhaps the world’s most spectacularly successful example of modernization of an ancient society, has regained its traditional conservative character after a decade of failed policies of appeasement of the North. Ironically, it was President Lee Myung-bac at a recent Washington press conference who took the stage to warn the North that its bombast could not succeed against a more powerful U.S.-South Korean alliance. President Barack Hussein Obama sat there casting what has in some only half joking circles been characterized as his evil eye for American allies who still call on Washington to lead rather than apologize. So far at least, Lee has faced down North Korean threats including a goodly number of ”sleepers” in his own realm — he is canceling corrupt and failed exchanges that helped keep the bankrupt North alive and feed its starving people . And he is stepping up to the plate on long-delayed coordination of American, Korean, and possibly even Japanese, defense against the growing menace of Pyongyang’s missiles, nuclear ambitions, and proliferation.

That menace is likely to continue since its weapon development, is threat to the peace and stability in Northeast Asia, and its economy based on tapping into international crime [money laundering, counterfeiting, etc.] and selling weapons and technology of mass destruction, are the regime’s only survival technique. That is, it will continue until it implodes and there is regime change.

Not an uninterested observers is the world’s No. 1 silent partner, Japan, but still the world’s second economy although again plunged in recession. One hapless conservative prime minister after another has failed to give the country the inspired if controversial leadership of popular Prime Minister Koichiro Koizumi [2001-06]. The country is on auto-pilot. Japanese agile corporate structures have made a recovery from the Bubble Economy, and, indeed, faced with over capacity and increasing productivity at home are on a quiet but effective overseas consolidation and investment spree. The bureaucrats, somewhat chastened by their encounter with populism during the five years of Koizumism which partially restructured the economy toward market economics, are back in charge trying to reverse the changeover. The long-term demographic catastrophe that faces the country with the fastest aging population of the first world with all those implications is being largely ignored.

But there is a growing awareness of the dangerous region in which the Japanese live, the growing threat of a Chinese military buildup to what end no one knows, and the nasty little North Koreans. That has brought the old, old issue of the Japanese pacifist constitution, the contradictory steady rearmament, the reliability of an Obama-led nuclear umbrella, and Tokyo’s role out in the open as never before. Japan’s leftwing mainstream media continue, of course, to look in the other direction giving the few foreigner observers paying attention , perhaps, a false image of what may be in the leadership’s if not the public’s mind. An election due in the fall could either continue the political stalemate — a neutered conservative party or an opposition consisting of conflicting “outs” — or produce a genuine political realignment of Japanese parties. That latter possibility, in turn, could bring on new policies and if North Korea cannot be curbed, the inevitable move toward nuclear armaments — followed by the same decision in South Korea.

Taiwan, the issue which has always been seen as the tripwire in the region, is quiescent. for the moment. President Ma Ying-cheou who represents a return of the domination of the Mainland refugee stream in the Island’s history, leader of a reformed Kuomintang [Nationalist] Party which old Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek would never have recognized, is tiptoeing through a mine field. His policy of even closer integration with the Mainland economy is dictated, his business community and the multinational corporations tell him, to stay competitive with an export-led economy, especially in the depths of a world recession. But permitting even restricted investment by government-owned Mainland companies and opening up direct communications and transportation which is part of his program is fraught. And in a democratic environment unprecedented in Chinese history, he still has a formidable opposition of “native” Taiwanese who want their cake and to eat it too with his popularity waning in the face of the continuing economic downturn.

A major move to upgrade Taiwan’s defense forces with a $6.5 billion American arms purchase is apparently still on track with the Obama Administration. How much that redresses the military balance is far from clear. Beijing has not removed the growing forest of missile deployment which faces the Island for all its sweet talk replacing its former ineffective threats. At what point the Chinese military buildup, and/or coupled with economic infiltration, becomes an effective counter to any possibility of a promised American intervention to prevent a Beijing military adventure is a conundrum no one has an answer for — probably neither in Beijing, Washington nor Taipei. But that time may be coming and no one in Beijing has yet even signed off by protocol with ruling out aggression.

To add to this explosive mix, nowhere are the contradictions and ambiguities in the Obama foreign policy line more apparent than in this region.

However much the young president tries to cast his policies as a break with the Bush Administration’s past, the combination of American national interest and the learning curve are having their effect on modifying campaign promises. Defense Sec. Robert Gates may have his way with the Congress’ military expenditures in trimming spending on an anti-missile defense. But the North Korean’s continuing missiles testing are a powerful weapon in the hands of his Congressional critics, some of whom see defense industry jobs disappearing in a time of economic downturn.

However futile, the effort to return the North Koreans to the so-called Six Party negotiating table — a ploy which yielded so little for the Bush Administration — is still the announced Obama policy under a notoriously dovish new ambassador. But as in its earlier existence, it is running into the reality that only severe economic sanctions are left short of military force in coming to terms with Pyongyang. Just in late June trying again to enforce those sanctions on North Korean dummy companies turned into a sideswipe at Pyongyang’s missile sales and collaboration with Tehran — where, of course, even in the face of the mullahs’ scorn, Obama is trying to start a serious negotiation over nuclear weapons. Two South Korean companies passing technology to Tehran were put on the Treasury Department’s list. Furthermore, pursuit of any really effective sanctions policy against Pyongyang will force the Obama Administration — as it did the Bush Administration when it invoked them for a short period — to move on Chinese companies which do a great deal of North Korean business, some of its obvious fronting for Pyongyang.

Nothing demonstrates, of course, more the need to grapple with China’s refusal to put the screws to North Korea as it professes in public statements to be for denuclearization of the peninsula. That’s true in Japan, too, where too many Tokyo politicians are the butt of whispering campaigns about their connections with Japanese organized crime so often associated with the country’s Korean ethnic mafia. The Obama Administration in late June was dispatching, again, someone to talk to Beijing about its supposed efforts to bring the North Koreans to heel.

These intertwining problems are then complex and unpredictable since developments in any sector or among the major players are likely to have immediate and unpredictable reverberations all along the line throughout the region and in relations with Washington. The Obama Administration’s penchant for recantation for past U.S. mistakes, apologies, and opening the door to all and sundry for ”comprehensive” settlements might appear to ameliorate “the environment” for negotiations. But there is a long history in each of these issues. And that history did not begin when Barack Hussein Obama took office.