The email sent will contain a link to this article, the article title, and an article excerpt (if available). For security reasons, your IP address will also be included in the sent email.
■"Do China And U.S. Face Same Woes?" by Floyd Norris, New York Times, 10 June 2005, p. C1.
■"China Weighs Modest Currency Change," by Keith Bradsher, New York Times, 10 June 2005, p. C4.
■"Getting Around Pyongyang's Hard-Liners," op-ed by Selig S. Harrison, Washington Post, 10 June 2005, p. A23.
Facinating piece by Norrris, comparing the plight of big corps on both sides (state-run on Chinese side, private on ours). Both types have taken on a lot of welfare functions for their employees over the years (China because it was socialist for so long, in America because employment with a major company was supposed to be rewarding in that way (lots of bene's, otherwise why put up with the bureaucracy?). When China cuts back on the state-run companies, abandoned workers are left without a host of support nets. Ditto here in the states, where healthcare and pensions seem to be going the way of the dinosaur with each passing year.
Bit of a Catch-22 brewing: our corps want relief from all their financial legacy woes and seek it through revaluation of the Chinese yuan, but that revaluation is resisted by China because it fears political unrest is too many state-run enterprises are sunk too fast by a rising yuan.
China will move to a floating yuan, something we talked about a lot roughly five years ago in the economic security exercises I ran atop the World Trade Center with Cantor Fitzgerald. But Beijing is smart enough not to create a giant do-loop with the yuan floating solely against the dollar (I don't think anyone in their right mind wants such a focused float, because what hurts America could hurt China could hurt America and so on).
So hopefully China's 9-man leadership group, known as the Standing Committee of the Party's Politburo, will make this move sooner as opposed to later, so we can seek real cooperation with Beijing on North Korea.
And yes, as Harrrison points out, I am aware that getting the Chinese to pressure Pyongyang pisses off the hard-liners there, due to past bad blood between the two. I just don't care if getting Beijing to go hard on Kim recalls 19th Century dynamics between the two. Simply put, nothing but Kim's downfall will bring any reformist element to the fore in North Korea. Harrison, with all his years of first-hand experience, still can't get off his appeasement shtick.
We should all be tired of being reasonable with Pyongyang. And I've got a good 3 million reasons why.
Return to Article
