■"China banks on new energy plan," by Le-Min Lim and Loretta Ng, International Herald Tribune, 24 November 2004, http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2004/11/23/bloomberg/sxcoal.html.
>■"Latin America Isn't Likely to Send More Oil to U.S.: Increasing output requires money that the region's cash-strapped governments lack," by David Luhnow, Wall Street Journal, 29 November 2004, p. A2.
First article sent to me by reader details a new Chinese energy plan to produce gasoline directly from coal in a series of coal-to-liquids plants built in conjunction with Royal/Dutch Shell:
The plans tie in with the Chinese government's drive to cut reliance on crude oil, said Wu Guihui, an official with the National Development and Reform Commission. Those plans, which include building more nuclear power plants, finding and importing more natural gas and building the world's biggest hydropower plantóthe Three Gorges Damóhave been given added impetus by the gain in oil prices.
So when China starts pouring money into Latin America, it's simply taking advantage of the capacity there, as it will everywhere else it can across the planet. Since the most stable reserves sites are already taken by oil companies from the Old Core, expect China to go into the more desperate and risky situations, including those the U.S. tries to isolate for political reasonsólike Iran.
All this energy-driven activity can put China on the wrong side of Gap conflicts that the United States gets drawn into, like Sudan, and all these "conflicts" only reinforce the perception that "rising China" must be a threat to the United Statesóhence we must do things like counter China's military influence and rising threat to Taiwan.
It amazes me how people are so quick to see energy as the root cause for many U.S. foreign policy decisions and yet seem to miss it completely on China. For Beijing, just like us, there is a profound military-market nexus that cannot be ignored.
The danger is, of course, that military planners on both sides routinely ignore that reality, preferring to plan splendid wars. There is a reason why "resource wars" is a big fad right now in national security planning circles. And that reason is, big-ticket platform planners are looking for new scenarios to justify their desired "requirements" in light of the rise in funding going toward the Global War on Terrorism.
It's that underlying reality that also makes the Swans.com review so asinine in its logic.