It may be time to ask weather or not we are being offered a fair editorial from any of the major national or international English language news outlet.  In contrast to continuous diet of stories about the lawlessness of the country, specifically in relation to IP (Intellectual Property) the Wall Street Journal has today run a story about a victory for a British company in a major IP dispute.

Let’s think about this. The Chinese see our elites in the west lying and cheating their so called electorate on a daily basis.  Why would they think of doing anything different themselves.  It’s no good the pot calling the kettle black.  Until we get fair and detailed analysis instead of elaborated sound-bites and selective reporting of the facts, how can we ask the same from the Chinese.  And quite honestly, why should they offer it.

Thorough and honest reporting, without pandering to the political myopia of media owners and editors and the power brokers who lie behind them, is a sign to the Chinese that they can trust our media.  It is a form of flattery but there is nothing wrong with that.  Good civic work should be acknowledged and rewarded.  Not only this but it send the message that we are prepared to educate our populations about the very positive developments inside the PRC.  Some reciprocity is certainly expected and will no doubt be forthcoming.  As a propaganda too, honesty and flattery are very much underrated.  They shouldn’t be, especially with our friends in the East.

I like this one because it ties in a lot of stuff that makes me sound clever.  It’s also possible, in theory.

To begin. The Peoples Republic of China will become the richest, most powerful country on the planet, this is a fact. It’s a fact like no other and will change everything.   Chinese will one day come to challenge English as the lingua franka.  Their culture will enter ours in Europe and America in ways which we have never experienced.  Never experienced because the melting together of western cultures that has been our transnational (western) experience for the past few 100 years, and certainly in living memory, has been a far more protracted, subtle and altogether familiar affair.  The import of cultural ideas, food, aesthetics and so on from further afield has until now been a fairly genteel process, done for the most part on our (the West’s) terms.   But what happens when people start wanting to be like the Chinese?  I’m talking about your sons and daughters.  Eat, dress, talk, sing and dance, think like them.  How about that?

In my opinion it’s this thought that’s terrified the elites in the West for the past 30 or 40 years.  Recently this fear, since perhaps the last oil spike ($160 per barrel?), has got out of control.  ‘The time is upon us…’, they are thinking.  The yellow peril is no longer going to be a peril.  Yellow is gonna be a way of life.

In reaction to this fear, certain courses of action have been devised that would, it’s hoped, place the West in a more, shall we say, dynamic position.

So what were, or indeed are, these courses of action?  Well, war is out of the question.  Or is it?  More on that in a moment.  Traditional economic bullying is a non-starter.  Why choose the strongest weapon in your enemies armor?  Industrial espionage – too risky when so many of ones own interests are in the same field of operations.  In fact, all the hands-on stuff is out of the question.  Propaganda?  Well, we are in the middle of that right now; the Google spat is very revealing in this respect.  The only other arms length, directed form off attack could possibly be cyber warfare…  But that could backfire.  So back to good old fashioned warfare, and back, in fact, to the credit crunch.

The credit crunch, or more simply put, a massive global downturn, is a weapon.  Think about this for a moment.  Anything you can pick up and throw is a weapon, even if that’s your most expensive tool.  The question we should be asking is, what would a massive downturn in China produce?  Who knows?  But it can only be good news for the West in terms of global military and indeed economic strategy.  Don’t believe those who say China is going to make America more wealthy; wealth is relative, as is power.  And if you go from 1st to 2nd place, you are less wealthy.  Simple.

So how do we pick up and throw a massive downturn.  Well, as this is going to be a global option it is also going to be, metaphorically speaking, the nuclear option.  It is going to hurt you and it is going to hurt some of your friends – maybe mortally (sorry Iceland, Greece et al.).  How do you manufacture and deploy, with some degree of accuracy, a financial melt down?  Not as difficult as you may think.  You could start by pumping the ecomomy full of cheap money – easy credit.  Which is exactly what the Bush II administration did, causing a massive consumer bubble.  By consumer I am refering to household – i.e. houses.

Conspiracy point no.1.  Nobody can convincingly say that the various central banks did not realise what was going on in sub prime.  They knew.

And they knew what the results would be.

The rest is a well known story.  The credit market freezes; economies are stopped dead; international trade, and this is key, grinds to a halt.

Who loses?  Well everyone.  But really, who loses, or should I say, who has the most to lose?  The answer is China.  The answer is the Han controlled Chinese Communist Party.  They have a lot to lose.  There are 1.3bn souls and a lot of real estate out west.  Translate that to economic terms.

Who is weak?  Why and how are they weak?  The western elites? Not at all. Open market democracy is firm and growing firm across the world.  It’s wealthy, intelligent, connected, committed and for the most part, willing.  So who else?  The Russians?  Yes.  They are still poor on a per capita basis but this isn’t the point.  They had plenty of money from high oil prices, but the credit crunch saw to that.  They soon changed their tune when prices went down to $40 pb.  The Chinese? Yes.  But not because of oil.  They don’t have any.

The Chinese are weak, as we all know, as they keep telling us themselves, because they are 1.3bn.  ONE POINT THREE BILLION PEOPLE. If you live in the west, in Europe or America, you can’t imagine this.  You children may come to understand what this means one day but for now, you are only just beginning to get a vague idea.

A major downturn could cause unrest, possibly insurgency and possibly, quite possibly, some form of uprising, which would then spiral out of control, with a little help.  This is the hope of the Anglican, blue blooded American elite.  There are so many ways for them to benefit from this scenario.  Most importantly, in relative terms, it would make them more wealthy.

But what if it doesn’t work?  Well, it hasn’t so far. But there are a couple of interesting fall back positions that are worth mentioning.  Firstly, there’s the biggest stimulus spending operation ever know going ahead in the PRC.  At the very least this will focus the capitalist intuition.  Domestic consumer spending there is part of this equation.  Secondly there are interest rates.  Maintaining a 10% growth rate draws attention, a lot of attention.  Inflows of capital and the concurrent cheap money have caused another bubble that could explode if not well managed.  As such, the revaluation of the Yuan is imminent, and not a moment too soon for the rest of the capitalised world.

That’s it.  That’s the theory.  The main objective didn’t work, hasn’t worked but it has brought us all closer together and there were some fantastic spin offs with the Russians, who have never been so forthcoming as far as I can remember.

If you are interested in this murky world of currency manipulation or currency wars then you could read Currency Wars, written by Song Hongbin.   However, if you think this blog’s load of cr@p then go here, ..

Sergey Brin, Google boss, naturally freaks and decides to blow the whistle which he backs up with an ultimatum. The central CCP denies everything.  The point here is that for the centrists and the ‘lefties’ in the CCP, it’s perfectly clear who the culprits are, it is themselves… I mean it is the other CCP, the ones I mentioned before, with the jack boots poking out from the bottom of their suits.

This division could be seen as just one episode in a series of  events that have been plaguing the Party top brass since early last year when the effects of the economic crises were being felt in China.

The centrists and leftists in CCP  tried to play down the whole issue but the dye is cast.  Hillary wades in, Barack stays clear.

I am sure that within the party there is frustration with the hard-liners for this attack.  It will only make domestic and international public relations worse, something that the CCP is very sensitive to as it’s ongoing position on and view of its own population is one of ‘don’t get them wound up; keep them pacified whilst we grow, grow, grow..’.

In short, it’s apparent that the whole episode has backfired on the hard-liners.  The international liberal movement can justifiably celebrate a victory in the form of an Ultras own goal.

Unfortunately the celebrations are somewhat dampened by you know who:

This could’ve, should’ve been the perfect opportunity for US president to softly chide the CCP, even on a personal level.  His noble restraint and understanding tone would have had many times the force of Clinton’s yapping.  If only the Administration knew the Chinese Zeitgeist a little better.  But the Americans are, and always have been, the kind of essentialists that Edward Said famously describes.  How do they expect to lead by example?