Today's Good, Bad, and Ugly on China

Dateline: above the garage in Portsmouth, 8 April

Got an email today from DC-based journalist requesting interview about China and energy, saying I was "expert" in this field. I'm not, actually. I've just written a bunch about the intersection of that field and everything else.

China's huge growth in energy touches upon so many aspects of the global economy that it impacts just about everything, which is why the subject is necessarily treated by so many non-China energy experts, like myself. Same thing applies to a host of other resource questions like food, whereófor exampleóyou get food non-experts like David Isenberg feeling the need to comment on how China impacts everyone else (he of telephone and network expertise). China is just that big and just that growing.

Plus China's just that motivated by current events. Story today in NY Times ("China, as Summer Nears, Braces for Power Shortages: Problem Continues to Hamper Growth," by Chris Buckley, 8 April, p. W1.) gives you a sense of the gun the Beijing leadership feels it's under. Remember, if you don't got the resources, you don't got the growth. And no growth means no stability, and . . . well, you know the rest.

If not, then buy the book.

But it's that sort of understanding of what China is facing that leads me to say, "These guys are ripe for deals!" Thus an underlying theme of my piece for the Washington Post's Outlook section this Sunday (today officially locked into place by the editors there): there is no country in the world more interested than China in stability in the Middle East. This is a huge leverage we have over them, if only the grand strategists on our end simply gazed beyond the tips of their noses (or maybe just past the straits of Taiwan). An advantage in negotiations is when you know somebody needs something very bad and it's within your power to help them get itófor a price.

What do we ask China for in return? How about 20,000 peacekeeping troops in Iraq?

But nooooh! Can't disturb the perfect historical trajectory of the "near-peer competitor" so much desired by Pentagon war planners. If we did that, they'd end up having to figure out how to wage peace as effectively as they wage war.

Hmmm.

You know, that all starts to come together kinda nice when you think of it Ö

And that's what I told Juyan Zhang of the Washington Observer Weekly when he interviewed me by phone today. [The man had the gall to ask me how I wanted to be identified! Why, as the author of Ö! He also asked if he might quote my blog. Sigh! If you must!]

That was the Bad (so I started in the middle!), now here's the Ugly.