There are 35 comments.

1. Coolidge
   DonG (skeptic)

   @DonG

   11:39 AM EDT ⋅ Apr 19, 2020

   11.  Systematic industrial espionage.

    

   The DNC like the corporate media like a lot of academia is bought off.  The guys at South Park nailed it last fall.  (very foul language)

2. Moderator
   Painter Jean

   @PainterJean

   12:28 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 19, 2020

   If China can be shown to be the villain, and not Trump, the DNC loses the ability to pin the country’s misery on him. So, what’s worse – kowtowing to the hostile Chinese, or not being able to blame Trump? For Democrats, the choice is easy!

3. Inactive
   Jon1979

   @Jon1979

   1:27 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 19, 2020

   Painter Jean (View Comment):

   If China can be shown to be the villain, and not Trump, the DNC loses the ability to pin the country’s misery on him. So, what’s worse – kowtowing to the hostile Chinese, or not being able to blame Trump? For Democrats, the choice is easy!

   It would be easier to pull that off if this was simply a domestic problem. That fact that it’s not, and that China has antagonized people with their failure to provide forewarning about the virus, their attempt to downplay their infection rates and puff up their recovery rates, their sending test kits and masks to Europe with 50-70 percent failure rates, their targeting of African residents in China for scapegoating of a viral outbreak they’re responsible for, and their attempt to use shipments of generic drugs and other items as a weapon to mute criticism of the regime by blackmailing counties to remain quiet means the Democrats have a lot of leaks to plug.

   They can’t simply demonize Trump and his supporters by throwing race cards and spinning blame shifting to the White House and/or Red state governors, if the Europeans, African nations, and other nations in Asia are also going after China’s leadership. That’s would leave the Dems pretty much saying all those other nations are tools of Trump and his minions, while the DNC would be left to partner with Xi and the WHO leadership to try and claim they’re the moral and the aggrieved ones here. Which might work for some Hollywood and other pop culture types, but no swing voters are going to buy that.

4. Thatcher
   The Scarecrow

   @TheScarecrow

   

   4:46 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 19, 2020

   Painter Jean (View Comment):

   If China can be shown to be the villain, and not Trump, the DNC loses the ability to pin the country’s misery on him. So, what’s worse – kowtowing to the hostile Chinese, or not being able to blame Trump? For Democrats, the choice is easy!

   Plus the Democrats have to be able to memory-hole the fact that Trump has been saying we have to stand up to China before it’s too late since the Republican debates.  And they all of course called him a racist.  All of this must not be remembered.

5. Thatcher
   The Scarecrow

   @TheScarecrow

   

   4:59 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 19, 2020

   I have read several analyses like this lately. (Well, I guess we must all have, since I read them here.)

   One of them – it might have been a General with experience in China interviewed on the Dennis Miller program – said that it is and has always been the CCP’s goal to restore China to its former (500 years ago?) glory as the center of the universe. Dominant in the entire world. Then things will be as they should be, forever.

   In this pursuit, our continued existence is not necessary. Only the land and buildings – much of which they already own. When we fought the Cold War, the Soviets wanted to dominate, and be strongest, and complete the glorious revolution by converting all of us into workers for the great socialist state. They had no interest in our extermination, just our conversion.

   But it sounds like the CCP has a different set of priorities. They want to dominate the world, but return it to the Chinese.  It’s more of a racial thing. We are not Chinese, and never can be – conversion isn’t in the picture. So we don’t figure in the plan.  So if many or most of us die in the process of restoration, oh well, not important. Probably better, in fact. The West is defined as being made up of individuals, and a Communist Party has no use for individuals.

   If something like this is true, we’d better figure it out quick, because this is going to be a war like nobody has ever imagined.

6. Coolidge
   Headedwest

   @Headedwest

   5:27 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 19, 2020

   I once lived in Connecticut.  Murphy is the biggest fan of Iran and China in the senate.  It would not shock me in the slightest if I learned he’s a paid agent.

7. Thatcher
   WalterSobchakEsq

   @WalterSobchakEsq

   Post author

   8:36 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 19, 2020

   It has been 245 years. The battle was fought on 19 April 1775. The ride began late in the evening, on 18 April.

   Some one needs to summon his ghost to ride through the streets of our cities calling to the citizens: “The Chinese are out”.

   Paul Revere’s Ride

   
   By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

   Listen, my children, and you shall hear

   Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

   On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;

   Hardly a man is now alive

   Who remembers that famous day and year.

   He said to his friend, “If the British march

   By land or sea from the town to-night,

   Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch

   Of the North Church tower as a signal light,—

   One, if by land, and two, if by sea;

   And I on the opposite shore will be,

   Ready to ride and spread the alarm

   Through every Middlesex village and farm,

   For the country folk to be up and to arm.”

   Then he said, “Good night!” and with muffled oar

   Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,

   Just as the moon rose over the bay,

   Where swinging wide at her moorings lay

   The Somerset, British man-of-war;

   A phantom ship, with each mast and spar

   Across the moon like a prison bar,

   And a huge black hulk, that was magnified

   By its own reflection in the tide.

   Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street,

   Wanders and watches with eager ears,

   Till in the silence around him he hears

   The muster of men at the barrack door,

   The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,

   And the measured tread of the grenadiers,

   Marching down to their boats on the shore.

   Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,

   By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,

   To the belfry-chamber overhead,

   And startled the pigeons from their perch

   On the sombre rafters, that round him made

   Masses and moving shapes of shade, —

   By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,

   To the highest window in the wall,

   Where he paused to listen and look down

   A moment on the roofs of the town,

   And the moonlight flowing over all.

   Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,

   In their night-encampment on the hill,

   Wrapped in silence so deep and still

   That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,

   The watchful night-wind, as it went

   Creeping along from tent to tent,

   And seeming to whisper, “All is well!”

   A moment only he feels the spell

   Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread

   Of the lonely belfry and the dead;

   For suddenly all his thoughts are bent

   On a shadowy something far away,

   Where the river widens to meet the bay, —

   A line of black that bends and floats

   On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.

   Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,

   Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride

   On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.

   Now he patted his horse’s side,

   Now gazed at the landscape far and near,

   Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,

   And turned and tightened his saddle girth;

   But mostly he watched with eager search

   The belfry-tower of the Old North Church,

   As it rose above the graves on the hill,

   Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.

   And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height

   A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!

   He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,

   But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight

   A second lamp in the belfry burns!

   A hurry of hoofs in a village street,

   A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,

   And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark

   Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:

   That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,

   The fate of a nation was riding that night;

   And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,

   Kindled the land into flame with its heat.

   He has left the village and mounted the steep,

   And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,

   Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;

   And under the alders, that skirt its edge,

   Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,

   Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

   It was twelve by the village clock,

   When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.

   He heard the crowing of the cock,

   And the barking of the farmer’s dog,

   And felt the damp of the river fog,

   That rises after the sun goes down.

   It was one by the village clock,

   When he galloped into Lexington.

   He saw the gilded weathercock

   Swim in the moonlight as he passed,

   And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,

   Gaze at him with a spectral glare,

   As if they already stood aghast

   At the bloody work they would look upon.

   It was two by the village clock,

   When he came to the bridge in Concord town.

   He heard the bleating of the flock,

   And the twitter of birds among the trees,

   And felt the breath of the morning breeze

   Blowing over the meadows brown.

   And one was safe and asleep in his bed

   Who at the bridge would be first to fall,

   Who that day would be lying dead,

   Pierced by a British musket-ball.

   You know the rest. In the books you have read,

   How the British Regulars fired and fled, —

   How the farmers gave them ball for ball,

   From behind each fence and farm-yard wall,

   Chasing the red-coats down the lane,

   Then crossing the fields to emerge again

   Under the trees at the turn of the road,

   And only pausing to fire and load.

   So through the night rode Paul Revere;

   And so through the night went his cry of alarm

   To every Middlesex village and farm, —

   A cry of defiance and not of fear,

   A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,

   And a word that shall echo forevermore!

   For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,

   Through all our history, to the last,

   In the hour of darkness and peril and need,

   The people will waken and listen to hear

   The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,

   And the midnight message of Paul Revere.
8. Member
   Rodin

   @Rodin

   7:45 AM EDT ⋅ Apr 20, 2020

   Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech was the closest thing we got to a declaration of Cold War I. What is the moment that people accept that Cold War II is underway? From the speech —

   I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war. What they desire is the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines. But what we have to consider here today while time remains, is the permanent prevention of war and the establishment of conditions of freedom and democracy as rapidly as possible in all countries. Our difficulties and dangers will not be removed by closing our eyes to them. They will not be removed by mere waiting to see what happens; nor will they be removed by a policy of appeasement. What is needed is a settlement, and the longer this is delayed, the more difficult it will be and the greater our dangers will become.

   From what I have seen of our Russian friends and Allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness. For that reason the old doctrine of a balance of power is unsound. We cannot afford, if we can help it, to work on narrow margins, offering temptations to a trial of strength. If the Western Democracies stand together in strict adherence to the principles will be immense and no one is likely to molest them. If however they become divided of falter in their duty and if these all-important years are allowed to slip away then indeed catastrophe may overwhelm us all.

   Last time I saw it all coming and I cried aloud to my own fellow-countrymen and to the world, but no one paid any attention. Up till the year 1933 or even 1935, Germany might have been saved from the awful fate which has overtaken here and we might all have been spared the miseries Hitler let loose upon mankind. there never was a war in history easier to prevent by timely action than the one which has just desolated such great areas of the globe. It could have been prevented in my belief without the firing of a single shot, and Germany might be powerful, prosperous and honored today; but no one would listen and one by one we were all sucked into the awful whirlpool. We surely, ladies and gentlemen, I put it to you, surely, we must not let it happen again.

   Substitute China for Russia and acknowledge the influence they have already gained in dividing the interests of the West. If COVID-19 is not a rallying point for push back on China, nothing is.

9. Inactive
   Ontheleftcoast

   @Ontheleftcoast

   5:06 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 21, 2020

   Lee Smith’s Tablet Magazine piece looks at the origins:

   [T]he wisdom of exporting millions of American manufacturing jobs and large parts of critical supply chains for everything from medication to ventilators to a hostile overseas power is looking ever more questionable, as a novel pathogen of Chinese origin has wreaked havoc on the American economy and locked the entire country indoors. In retrospect, Richard M. Nixon’s 1972 meeting with Mao Zedong marked not only the opening of China, but also a nearly 50-year delusion about the nature of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its compatibility with America’s own economy and society.

   For Kissinger, as for others, there was money at stake as well. “Kissinger was completely ‘played’ by the party,” says one experienced D.C. China hand. “His consulting enterprise, Kissinger Associates, built their ‘business’ around enabling the Chinese Communist Party and convincing Western business leaders that they needed to leave their ‘business judgment’ at the border and simply accept the party’s conditions as the price of entry into the China market.”

   The links between leading American politicians and companies and the Chinese leadership are now likely to come under increased scrutiny.

   First on that list of those deserving of close attention is the senior U.S. senator from California, Dianne Feinstein—a longtime member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence—who briefly made headlines a few years ago when reports surfaced that she had been forced to fire a longtime aide after learning from the FBI that he had been recruited on behalf of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

   No one represents the marriage of American policy toward China and doing business with the PRC better than Feinstein. Her promotion of trade with China to advance the interests of her constituents turned into apologetics on behalf of the Communist Party, as it aided her political ascent and augmented her husband’s portfolio. In October, USA Today listed Feinstein as the sixth-richest member of Congress, with a net worth of $58.5 million—a sum that vastly understates her actual wealth. Richard Blum, her husband, is himself worth at least another $1 billion.

   The delusion was the the US could make China over in its own image. But the PRC has its own ideas.

   In April 2013, the party’s Central Committee circulated a “Communique on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere.” Document No. 9, as it came to be called, explained the confrontation with the Washington-led liberal international system in stark terms—China’s enemy, it argued, is the West. Party cadres were required to wage an “intense struggle” against “false trends,” including Western constitutional democracy, human rights, and freedom of speech—especially journalism—which the Communists defined as instruments used to weaken the party.

   SARS-CoV-2 has shown that Feinstein’s party and the establishment typified by Kissinger are eager to spread China’s central control and social credit viruses in the USA.

10. Member
    MarciN

    @MarciN

    6:43 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 21, 2020

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):

    Lee Smith’s Tablet Magazine piece looks at the origins:

    [T]he wisdom of exporting millions of American manufacturing jobs and large parts of critical supply chains for everything from medication to ventilators to a hostile overseas power is looking ever more questionable, as a novel pathogen of Chinese origin has wreaked havoc on the American economy and locked the entire country indoors. In retrospect, Richard M. Nixon’s 1972 meeting with Mao Zedong marked not only the opening of China, but also a nearly 50-year delusion about the nature of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its compatibility with America’s own economy and society. . . .

    For Kissinger, as for others, there was money at stake as well. “Kissinger was completely ‘played’ by the party,” says one experienced D.C. China hand. “His consulting enterprise, Kissinger Associates, built their ‘business’ around enabling the Chinese Communist Party and convincing Western business leaders that they needed to leave their ‘business judgment’ at the border and simply accept the party’s conditions as the price of entry into the China market.”

    The links between leading American politicians and companies and the Chinese leadership are now likely to come under increased scrutiny.

    I can see how Kissinger’s actions at that time might be interpreted that way by some people, but most people, including me, believe his intention was to put an American wedge between the USSR and Chinese Communists. That he succeeded is to his everlasting credit.

    I read a couple of books three years ago on the history of education in postwar China. The books were written by Zhu Yongxin, the secretary of education in China during that entire 50-year time period. The Chinese Communists looked to the USSR Communists for instruction on, for example, how to interpret Marx and how to implement communism in the “right way,” as if there were such a thing and as if Marx wrote sacred texts.

    I came away from reading these books with a new respect for Henry Kissinger’s wisdom in inserting us between the Russian and Chinese Communists.

    Kissinger’s life story shaped him as a conservative anti-socialist:

    Kissinger was born Heinz Alfred Kissinger in Fürth, Bavaria, Germany in 1923 to a family of German Jews. His father, Louis Kissinger (1887–1982), was a schoolteacher. His mother, Paula (Stern) Kissinger (1901–1998), from Leutershausen, was a homemaker. Kissinger has a younger brother, Walter Kissinger (born 1924). The surname Kissinger was adopted in 1817 by his great-great-grandfather Meyer Löb, after the Bavarian spa town of Bad Kissingen. In his youth, Kissinger enjoyed playing soccer, and played for the youth wing of his favorite club, SpVgg Fürth, which was one of the nation’s best clubs at the time. In 1938, when Kissinger was 15 years old, he fled Germany with his family as a result of Nazi persecution. His family briefly emigrated to London, England, before arriving in New York on September 5.

11. Inactive
    Jon1979

    @Jon1979

    6:54 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 21, 2020

    MarciN (View Comment):

     

    I can see how Kissinger’s actions at that time might be interpreted that way by some people, but most people, including me, believe his intention was to put an American wedge between the USSR and Chinese Communists. That he succeeded is to his everlasting credit.

    I read a couple of books three years ago on the history of education in postwar China. The books were written by Zhu Yongxin, the secretary of education in China during that entire time period. The Chinese Communists looked to the USSR Communists for instruction on, for example, how to interpret Marx and how to implement communism in the “right way,” as if there such a thing and as if Marx wrote sacred texts.

    I came away from reading these books with a new respect for Henry Kissinger’s wisdom in inserting us between the Russian and Chinese Communists.

    Kissinger’s action to push Nixon into rapprochement with China came after the Sino-Soviet border clashes in 1969, and as the U.S. was still in the Vietnam conflict. Different times. Our mistake was in thinking, after the Gang of Four was beaten and Deng Xiaoping began the period of economic liberalization, that the change would eventually cause China’s leadership to also allow more political freedom. That got beaten back at Tienanmen Square, and the current Chinese leadership under Xi comes with the belief they can micro-manage the Chinese economy and use it even more towards political ends than the regimes immediately before it.

    The fact that the COVID outbreak came immediately after the initial protests in Hong Kong over Xi’s regime trying to curb the island’s freedom set the stage for the current actions, to where you have to be willfully blind and/or paid off by China not to realize what’s going on.

     

12. Contributor
    James Lileks

    @jameslileks

    6:54 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 21, 2020

    The Scarecrow (View Comment):
    But it sounds like the CCP has a different set of priorities. They want to dominate the world, but return it to the Chinese.

    So I understand from reading this and/or that about the cultural roots of Xi’s goals, but . . . how can they expect to get something they never had? “Returning” the world to the Chinese suggests they possessed it once, but lost it. Occasional regional domination is one thing, but it’s hardly the world. 

13. Member
    MarciN

    @MarciN

    7:25 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 21, 2020

    Jon1979 (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):

     

    I can see how Kissinger’s actions at that time might be interpreted that way by some people, but most people, including me, believe his intention was to put an American wedge between the USSR and Chinese Communists. That he succeeded is to his everlasting credit.

    I read a couple of books three years ago on the history of education in postwar China. The books were written by Zhu Yongxin, the secretary of education in China during that entire time period. The Chinese Communists looked to the USSR Communists for instruction on, for example, how to interpret Marx and how to implement communism in the “right way,” as if there such a thing and as if Marx wrote sacred texts.

    I came away from reading these books with a new respect for Henry Kissinger’s wisdom in inserting us between the Russian and Chinese Communists.

    Kissinger’s action to push Nixon into rapprochement with China came after the Sino-Soviet border clashes in 1969, and as the U.S. was still in the Vietnam conflict. Different times. Our mistake was in thinking, after the Gang of Four was beaten and Deng Xiaoping began the period of economic liberalization, that the change would eventually cause China’s leadership to also allow more political freedom. That got beaten back at Tienanmen Square, and the current Chinese leadership under Xi comes with the belief they can micro-manage the Chinese economy and use it even more towards political ends than the regimes immediately before it.

    The fact that the COVID outbreak came immediately after the initial protests in Hong Kong over Xi’s regime trying to curb the island’s freedom set the stage for the current actions, to where you have to be willfully blind and/or paid off by China not to realize what’s going on.

    I agree with this characterization, but I am still confident that the overarching issue was to put us between the USSR and the Chinese Communists. 

     

14. Member
    Sisyphus (Rolling Stone)

    @Sisyphus

    

    7:42 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 21, 2020

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    The Scarecrow (View Comment):
    But it sounds like the CCP has a different set of priorities. They want to dominate the world, but return it to the Chinese.

    So I understand from reading this and/or that about the cultural roots of Xi’s goals, but . . . how can they expect to get something they never had? “Returning” the world to the Chinese suggests they possessed it once, but lost it. Occasional regional domination is one thing, but it’s hardly the world.

    It is their myth. However far the world extends, they should dominate. Xi thinks he is on the path. Inevitable, to coin a phrase. This is going to be a tough transition but flights to and from China? History. Travel to and from China? Sorry, that will be a month quarantine at a government facility. If it’s permitted at all.

    The pandemic didn’t break during the climax of the impeachment by accident. It was already bubbling when Trump got his trade deal with the Chinese he was so proud of.

    The media and politicians have managed the public so hamhandedly into the crisis Trump won. Pelosi and Xi have been trying to buffalo Trump since the day he was elected. But the stupidity has spilled over and the threat is obvious. Biden isn’t going to help the Dems on this with his history.

    Let’s see how long it takes Apple to reposition their manufacturing operations. Given the PR hits they’ve taken for their operations there, I’ll bet they have plans ready to go.

    It will be interesting to see how long it takes Big Pharma to remember how to make drugs again. Snowflakes are going to need to toughen up.

15. Inactive
    Jon1979

    @Jon1979

    8:47 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 21, 2020

    MarciN (View Comment):

    Jon1979 (View Comment):

    Kissinger’s action to push Nixon into rapprochement with China came after the Sino-Soviet border clashes in 1969, and as the U.S. was still in the Vietnam conflict. Different times. Our mistake was in thinking, after the Gang of Four was beaten and Deng Xiaoping began the period of economic liberalization, that the change would eventually cause China’s leadership to also allow more political freedom. That got beaten back at Tienanmen Square, and the current Chinese leadership under Xi comes with the belief they can micro-manage the Chinese economy and use it even more towards political ends than the regimes immediately before it.

    The fact that the COVID outbreak came immediately after the initial protests in Hong Kong over Xi’s regime trying to curb the island’s freedom set the stage for the current actions, to where you have to be willfully blind and/or paid off by China not to realize what’s going on.

    I agree with this characterization, but I am still confident that the overarching issue was to put us between the USSR and the Chinese Communists.

    Yes. Mao’s actions had weakened China to the point that while they were a threat to their immediate neighbors, they weren’t a global danger in the late 1960s as the Soviet Union was. The Nixon-Kissinger overture was meant to lock in the Russian-Chinese hostility, after U.S. officials in the first 20 years after Mao’s takeover feared a Sino-Soviet alliance.

     

16. Member
    The Reticulator

    @TheReticulator

    8:48 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 21, 2020

    Sisyphus (Rolling Stone) (View Comment):
    It will be interesting to see how long it takes Big Pharma to remember how to make drugs again. Snowflakes are going to need to toughen up.

    There has been a lot of consolidation of drug companies. I used to joke to the people who worked there that the one near us was a Work-Free Drug-Place. But it was actually a good company and came up with a number of good products. Most of the people I knew who worked there were in the research division.  But it was bought out by a bigger company, which was still a good company and still researched new products. Then that company was bought out by an even bigger company that had a reputation for being able to schmooze the regulators, even if it didn’t have any new drugs in the pipeline other than the ones it got when it gobbled up smaller companies.  Research was discontinued in our community, and the researchers had to move elsewhere if they wanted to stay with the company. Some of them are still with it, to judge by my seldom-used LinkedIn account, but it’s not a company known for coming up with new products. Some people who stayed with it a number of years said it has an arrogant management that doesn’t think it has anything to learn from the companies it swallowed up. (Yes, there is some bitterness about what happened. Use your own salt as seasoning.) 

17. Member
    Sisyphus (Rolling Stone)

    @Sisyphus

    

    9:16 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 21, 2020

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    Sisyphus (Rolling Stone) (View Comment):
    It will be interesting to see how long it takes Big Pharma to remember how to make drugs again. Snowflakes are going to need to toughen up.

    There has been a lot of consolidation of drug companies. I used to joke to the people who worked there that the one near us was a Work-Free Drug-Place. But it was actually a good company and came up with a number of good products. Most of the people I knew who worked there were in the research division. But it was bought out by a bigger company, which was still a good company and still researched new products. Then that company was bought out by an even bigger company that had a reputation for being able to schmooze the regulators, even if it didn’t have any new drugs in the pipeline other than the ones it got when it gobbled up smaller companies. Research was discontinued in our community, and the researchers had to move elsewhere if they wanted to stay with the company. Some of them are still with it, to judge by my seldom-used LinkedIn account, but it’s not a company known for coming up with new products. Some people who stayed with it a number of years said it has an arrogant management that doesn’t think it has anything to learn from the companies it swallowed up. (Yes, there is some bitterness about what happened. Use your own salt as seasoning.)

    Sounds like a sterling market opportunity to me. And I’ve seen the ravages of “creative destruction” up close, I am not an unconditional fan. Externalities matter. So who is going to undertake the manufacture of low return generics long past their patents? And how far will the FDA unclinch to streamline the transition in the name of national security?

18. Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast

    @Ontheleftcoast

    10:19 PM EDT ⋅ Apr 21, 2020

    MarciN (View Comment):
    I can see how Kissinger’s actions at that time might be interpreted that way by some people, but most people, including me, believe his intention was to put an American wedge between the USSR and Chinese Communists. That he succeeded is to his everlasting credit. 

    Yes, separating the PRC and the USSR was a worthwhile thing to do. But Smith is pointing out unintended consequences. First, Kissinger is not a neutral third party:

    For Kissinger, as for others, there was money at stake as well. “Kissinger was completely ‘played’ by the party,” says one experienced D.C. China hand. “His consulting enterprise, Kissinger Associates, built their ‘business’ around enabling the Chinese Communist Party and convincing Western business leaders that they needed to leave their ‘business judgment’ at the border and simply accept the party’s conditions as the price of entry into the China market.”

    But mainly Smith thinks that Kissinger holds fantasies about China; Western fantasies that predate Mao. I think he’s on to something.

    [T]he conviction [inherited from the Christian missionaries whose thinking shaped US policy towards China for well over a century] that China was ripe to be remade in America’s image continued to form the thinking of the American policy establishment. Their optimism was not wholly misplaced. America’s use of economic development to drive political liberalization had shown repeated successes in the post-WWII period. “It’s the strategy we used most consistently since the end of WWII,” says Matthew Turpin, who served as China director for Trump’s National Security Council staff in 2018-19, and held a similar position at the Pentagon under the Obama administration between 2013 and 2017.

    “We used it with postwar Italy and Germany and Japan in the 1940s. In the ‘70s we used it with Spain, and in the ‘80s we used it with South Korea and Taiwan. And we used that approach after the fall of the Berlin Wall with the countries of Eastern Europe. The strategy has a logic to it. So, we thought the same with China. Building China’s economy and accustoming its leadership to the peace that is a natural consequence of prosperity would lead to political liberalization.”

    The problem is that Chinese leadership saw through America’s strategy. You didn’t need to be steeped in Marxist doctrine to see that the capitalists understood China as an untapped resource just waiting to be exploited. China was a self-baiting trap and all Mao and his successors had to do was wait for the Americans to wander in.

    And:

    In retrospect, some American politicians on the right now admit that their assumptions about the PRC were horribly mistaken. “We thought getting them into a rules-based system would gradually permeate their culture and that’d be a big step in the right direction,” said Newt Gingrich, author of the 2019 book Trump vs. China: America’s Greatest Challenge. “That was all wrong.” 

19. Member
    Sisyphus (Rolling Stone)

    @Sisyphus

    

    4:26 AM EDT ⋅ Apr 22, 2020

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):
    But mainly Smith thinks that Kissinger holds fantasies about China; Western fantasies that predate Mao. I think he’s on to something.

    Because Kissinger has wet dreams of collecting massive funds from CCP sources at Buddhist Temples. Oh, wait, sorry, that was Vice President Al Gore.

    Or of using federal defense contractor Loral to sell US strategic missile secrets to the CCP. Oh, oops, that was President Bill Clinton.

    Or of leasing strategic container port facilities at Long Beach for forty years to the CCP, also giving CCP agents total surveillance capability over the Port of Los Angeles and nearby naval bases. Wait, no, that was champion of the oppressed President Barack Obama.

    Yes, Kissinger supported the initial terms. Terms that could have worked if American administrations had applied steady pressure for Chinese political reform. It was homegrown American corruption out of places like Tennessee, Arkansas, and Illinois that allowed the miserable outcome over decades of beak wetting.

    But, yeah, Kissinger is the real villain. Thanks for clearing that up for us.

20. Thatcher
    The Scarecrow

    @TheScarecrow

    

    5:05 AM EDT ⋅ Apr 22, 2020

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    The Scarecrow (View Comment):
    But it sounds like the CCP has a different set of priorities. They want to dominate the world, but return it to the Chinese.

    So I understand from reading this and/or that about the cultural roots of Xi’s goals, but . . . how can they expect to get something they never had? “Returning” the world to the Chinese suggests they possessed it once, but lost it. Occasional regional domination is one thing, but it’s hardly the world.

    Yes, I was wondering about that too. That’s why I inserted that “500 years ago?” question – I also don’t know what they’re talking about.  But I guess if they believe it, and can convince their subjects that it is true, we have just as big a problem.

21. Inactive
    Jules PA

    @JulesPA

    6:54 AM EDT ⋅ Apr 22, 2020

    MarciN (View Comment):

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):

    Lee Smith’s Tablet Magazine piece looks at the origins:

    [T]he wisdom of exporting millions of American manufacturing jobs and large parts of critical supply chains for everything from medication to ventilators to a hostile overseas power is looking ever more questionable, as a novel pathogen of Chinese origin has wreaked havoc on the American economy and locked the entire country indoors. In retrospect, Richard M. Nixon’s 1972 meeting with Mao Zedong marked not only the opening of China, but also a nearly 50-year delusion about the nature of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its compatibility with America’s own economy and society. . . .

    For Kissinger, as for others, there was money at stake as well. “Kissinger was completely ‘played’ by the party,” says one experienced D.C. China hand. “His consulting enterprise, Kissinger Associates, built their ‘business’ around enabling the Chinese Communist Party and convincing Western business leaders that they needed to leave their ‘business judgment’ at the border and simply accept the party’s conditions as the price of entry into the China market.”

    The links between leading American politicians and companies and the Chinese leadership are now likely to come under increased scrutiny.

    I can see how Kissinger’s actions at that time might be interpreted that way by some people, but most people, including me, believe his intention was to put an American wedge between the USSR and Chinese Communists. That he succeeded is to his everlasting credit.

    I read a couple of books three years ago on the history of education in postwar China. The books were written by Zhu Yongxin, the secretary of education in China during that entire time period. The Chinese Communists looked to the USSR Communists for instruction on, for example, how to interpret Marx and how to implement communism in the “right way,” as if there such a thing and as if Marx wrote sacred texts.

    I came away from reading these books with a new respect for Henry Kissinger’s wisdom in inserting us between the Russian and Chinese Communists.

    Kissinger’s life story shaped him as a conservative anti-socialist:

    Kissinger was born Heinz Alfred Kissinger in Fürth, Bavaria, Germany in 1923 to a family of German Jews. His father, Louis Kissinger (1887–1982), was a schoolteacher. His mother, Paula (Stern) Kissinger (1901–1998), from Leutershausen, was a homemaker. Kissinger has a younger brother, Walter Kissinger (born 1924). The surname Kissinger was adopted in 1817 by his great-great-grandfather Meyer Löb, after the Bavarian spa town of Bad Kissingen. In his youth, Kissinger enjoyed playing soccer, and played for the youth wing of his favorite club, SpVgg Fürth, which was one of the nation’s best clubs at the time. In 1938, when Kissinger was 15 years old, he fled Germany with his family as a result of Nazi persecution. His family briefly emigrated to London, England, before arriving in New York on September 5.

     

     

    I am so glad the Kissenger family escaped Nazi Germany and persecution. 

    Virus are part of life, the same as evil people. We should fight both. 

    That includes the destructive cadre of people who lead the CCP. 

    In the same way Hitler demanded loyalty to party, the same for the people of China. 

    How can Americans find a way to connect with the humans in China, and empower them to embrace freedom, and conquer the slavery of the CCP?

    Is there a remnant of freedom loving Chinese? Our biggest mistake seems to be in permitting the CCP wholesale freedom to send their representatives here. 

    How many Chinese immigrants DEFECT from the CCP? Embracing the principles of Freedom?

    And how can we empower those that do convert to Freedom to influence, support, and bring hope to the Chinese left behind, enslaved by the CCP? 

    Is there no 21st Century Underground Railroad. That would be a globalist effort I could support.

     

22. Inactive
    Jules PA

    @JulesPA

    6:57 AM EDT ⋅ Apr 22, 2020

    Jon1979 (View Comment):

    The fact that the COVID outbreak came immediately after the initial protests in Hong Kong over Xi’s regime trying to curb the island’s freedom set the stage for the current actions, to where you have to be willfully blind and/or paid off by China not to realize what’s going on.

     

    can you elaborate? I am not blind, but I seem to have lost my glasses regarding this. 

23. Inactive
    Jules PA

    @JulesPA

    6:59 AM EDT ⋅ Apr 22, 2020

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    The Scarecrow (View Comment):
    But it sounds like the CCP has a different set of priorities. They want to dominate the world, but return it to the Chinese.

    So I understand from reading this and/or that about the cultural roots of Xi’s goals, but . . . how can they expect to get something they never had? “Returning” the world to the Chinese suggests they possessed it once, but lost it. Occasional regional domination is one thing, but it’s hardly the world.

    But if they successfully gain dominance through globalism, would that not be the 21st Century version of “regional” dominance? 

    I’ve heard it said the Chinese play the long game. Im certain we need to change or thinking and play the linger game. Otherwise, they will gain supremacy. 

24. Inactive
    Jules PA

    @JulesPA

    7:08 AM EDT ⋅ Apr 22, 2020

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):
    I can see how Kissinger’s actions at that time might be interpreted that way by some people, but most people, including me, believe his intention was to put an American wedge between the USSR and Chinese Communists. That he succeeded is to his everlasting credit.

    Yes, separating the PRC and the USSR was a worthwhile thing to do. But Smith is pointing out unintended consequences. First, Kissinger is not a neutral third party:

    For Kissinger, as for others, there was money at stake as well. “Kissinger was completely ‘played’ by the party,” says one experienced D.C. China hand. “His consulting enterprise, Kissinger Associates, built their ‘business’ around enabling the Chinese Communist Party and convincing Western business leaders that they needed to leave their ‘business judgment’ at the border and simply accept the party’s conditions as the price of entry into the China market.”

    But mainly Smith thinks that Kissinger holds fantasies about China; Western fantasies that predate Mao. I think he’s on to something.

    [T]he conviction [inherited from the Christian missionaries whose thinking shaped US policy towards China for well over a century] that China was ripe to be remade in America’s image continued to form the thinking of the American policy establishment. Their optimism was not wholly misplaced. America’s use of economic development to drive political liberalization had shown repeated successes in the post-WWII period. “It’s the strategy we used most consistently since the end of WWII,” says Matthew Turpin, who served as China director for Trump’s National Security Council staff in 2018-19, and held a similar position at the Pentagon under the Obama administration between 2013 and 2017.

    “We used it with postwar Italy and Germany and Japan in the 1940s. In the ‘70s we used it with Spain, and in the ‘80s we used it with South Korea and Taiwan. And we used that approach after the fall of the Berlin Wall with the countries of Eastern Europe. The strategy has a logic to it. So, we thought the same with China. Building China’s economy and accustoming its leadership to the peace that is a natural consequence of prosperity would lead to political liberalization.”

    The problem is that Chinese leadership saw through America’s strategy. You didn’t need to be steeped in Marxist doctrine to see that the capitalists understood China as an untapped resource just waiting to be exploited. China was a self-baiting trap and all Mao and his successors had to do was wait for the Americans to wander in.

    And:

    In retrospect, some American politicians on the right now admit that their assumptions about the PRC were horribly mistaken. “We thought getting them into a rules-based system would gradually permeate their culture and that’d be a big step in the right direction,” said Newt Gingrich, author of the 2019 book Trump vs. China: America’s Greatest Challenge. “That was all wrong.”

    Isn’t our biggest mistake in letting China (and other companies) operate in our markets outside the stringent rules, taxation, and obligations forced on our American companies?

    Sadly, it may be our political leaders sold us out to line their pockets. 

    What is the long path to regaining control and becoming self-sufficient?

     

25. Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast

    @Ontheleftcoast

    7:19 AM EDT ⋅ Apr 22, 2020

    MarciN (View Comment):

    Jon1979 (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):

     

    I can see how Kissinger’s actions at that time might be interpreted that way by some people, but most people, including me, believe his intention was to put an American wedge between the USSR and Chinese Communists. That he succeeded is to his everlasting credit.

    I read a couple of books three years ago on the history of education in postwar China. The books were written by Zhu Yongxin, the secretary of education in China during that entire time period. The Chinese Communists looked to the USSR Communists for instruction on, for example, how to interpret Marx and how to implement communism in the “right way,” as if there such a thing and as if Marx wrote sacred texts.

    I came away from reading these books with a new respect for Henry Kissinger’s wisdom in inserting us between the Russian and Chinese Communists.

    Kissinger’s action to push Nixon into rapprochement with China came after the Sino-Soviet border clashes in 1969, and as the U.S. was still in the Vietnam conflict. Different times. Our mistake was in thinking, after the Gang of Four was beaten and Deng Xiaoping began the period of economic liberalization, that the change would eventually cause China’s leadership to also allow more political freedom. That got beaten back at Tienanmen Square, and the current Chinese leadership under Xi comes with the belief they can micro-manage the Chinese economy and use it even more towards political ends than the regimes immediately before it.

    The fact that the COVID outbreak came immediately after the initial protests in Hong Kong over Xi’s regime trying to curb the island’s freedom set the stage for the current actions, to where you have to be willfully blind and/or paid off by China not to realize what’s going on.

    I agree with this characterization, but I am still confident that the overarching issue was to put us between the USSR and the Chinese Communists.

    It was. Permanent Normal Trade Relations was later, and has Republican fingerprints all over it.

    BILL TITLE: To Authorize Extension of Nondiscriminatory Treatment (Normal Trade Relations Treatment) to the People’s Republic of China

    House of Representatives	Ayes	Noes	PRES	NV
    Republican	164	57		1
    Democratic	73	138

    The Senate was 83-15 with two abstentions.

    The objections were about China’s belligerent attitude, job protection, human rights, and trade rule violations.  

    Newt: “We thought getting them into a rules-based system would gradually permeate their culture and that’d be a big step in the right direction…” 

    How’s that been working out for us?

26. Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast

    @Ontheleftcoast

    7:26 AM EDT ⋅ Apr 22, 2020

    Sisyphus (Rolling Stone) (View Comment):
    It will be interesting to see how long it takes Big Pharma to remember how to make drugs again.

    The big corporations don’t want to leave China. We also have serious technology and manufacturing deficits, including STEM education (now poisoned by the SJWs) and lack of skills.

    David Goldman at Asia Times:

    Self-sufficiency in strategic goods is expensive, but national security is like JP Morgan’s yacht: If you have to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it. Self-sufficiency in all manufacturing is a different matter; imports from China now amount to roughly a quarter of total US manufacturing output, and the cost of domestic substitutes would be far greater than that, because the US doesn’t have the skills to replace a great deal of Chinese production. 

    China shipped $70 billion of smartphones to the US in 2018 and $45 billion worth of computers. Here is Apple CEO Tim Cook on why Apple makes I-phones in China: “China has moved into very advanced manufacturing, so you find in China the intersection of craftsman kind of skill, and sophisticated robotics and the computer science world. That intersection, which is very rare to find anywhere, that kind of skill, is very important to our business because of the precision and quality level that we like.

    […]

    Cook added: “The products we do require really advanced tooling, and the precision that you have to have, the tooling and working with the materials that we do are state of the art. And the tooling skill is very deep here. In the US you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I’m not sure we could fill the room. In China you could fill multiple football fields.”

    And:

    Meanwhile, Russia, China’s de facto partner in a range of high-tech industries, graduated nearly twice as many engineers as the United States in 2015. Russian engineers are first rate, as the Israelis well know; mass immigration of Russian Jews brought about 150,000 scientists and engineers to Israel, and turned the small country into a pocket superpower. Together, China and Russia have an eight-to-one advantage over the United States in engineering graduates.

    And:

    . . .the lead time will be a generation. 

    The obstacles are formidable. As Edward Dougherty, distinguished professor of engineering at Texas A&M University, wrote last year in Asia Times, “The mathematics necessary for this modern engineering developed rapidly through the 1950s and was required for graduate engineering students in good programs. This requirement has been dropped in most of today’s American universities. Instead, engineers are groping around trying to find solutions by playing with a computer. On the other hand, in Iran, students are required to study the relevant mathematics at the undergraduate level. As a nation, we have, with forethought, decided that our children should have inferior educations to Iranian and Chinese children.”

     

27. Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast

    @Ontheleftcoast

    7:32 AM EDT ⋅ Apr 22, 2020

    Jules PA (View Comment):

    Isn’t our biggest mistake in letting China (and other companies) operate in our markets outside the stringent rules, taxation, and obligations forced on our American companies?

    Sadly, it may be our political leaders sold us out to line their pockets. 

    What is the long path to regaining control and becoming self-sufficient?

    If education in the US were fixed today (killing the administrative bloat and purging the SJWs; that has to happen in business and industry, too,) it’s at least a generation. Since those are major Democrat power centers and indoctrination operations, it’s not going to happen fast. That parasitic drain on the US economy will continue.

28. Member
    The Reticulator

    @TheReticulator

    8:48 AM EDT ⋅ Apr 22, 2020

    Sisyphus (Rolling Stone) (View Comment):
    Sounds like a sterling market opportunity to me. And I’ve seen the ravages of “creative destruction” up close, I am not an unconditional fan. Externalities matter. So who is going to undertake the manufacture of low return generics long past their patents? And how far will the FDA unclinch to streamline the transition in the name of national security?

    I can’t think of anything that would provoke me to invest in a pharma startup. If you have an idea for a Tesla and some of the necessary charisma and experience, you can round up some serious startup cash. But there is an idea at the start of it. What idea is anyone going to use to start up pharmaceutical company? The ideas for new drugs are not the brainchildren of lone entrepreneurs, as far as I know.

    The huge costs for FDA approval are an obstacle, but even if that process were to be reformed, it would still be an expensive business.

    As for fostering the manufacture of low return generics, I don’t have any ideas.

29. Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast

    @Ontheleftcoast

    8:53 AM EDT ⋅ Apr 22, 2020

     J.D. Vance:

    . . .The CCP has lied and manipulated international institutions in a way that ensures the deaths of thousands of additional Americans.

    The virus has revealed an American economy built on consumption, reliant for production on regimes either indifferent or actively hostile to our national interest. Production, where it still exists in our country, clusters in megacities, where “knowledge economy” workers live uptown from the low-wage servants (disproportionately immigrants) who clean their laundry, care for their children, and serve their food.

    Perhaps we shouldn’t build our cities like that. Perhaps we should make things in America. And if not all things, then at least enough so that the next time China unleashes a plague, it can’t threaten us with a loss of medicines and protective equipment.

    [. . .]

    But debate the lockdowns we will, because they are more pressing to the people who fund our political distractions. And what’s more important to them than ending the lockdowns is not ending the globalization gravy train.

    Peter Thiel recently observed that one of the best barometers of globalization is the share of corporate sector profits going to the financial sector. When you have an economy built on borrowing money from China and then buying the stuff it makes, you need a robust financial sector. Getting all that money from the U.S. to China, and then there and back again, takes, well, money. And for two decades, while America has consumed much and made little, there has been no better industry than moving fake currency from one location to another.  Even if you zoom out from the finance industry, it is hard to find an American tycoon who hasn’t benefitted, directly or indirectly, from the rise of Beijing.

    And if you look at the boards of most of our big conservative institutions, you’ll find many of those people. Increasingly, they talk a big game about China. They’ll express concern for the Uighurs, who are undoubtedly an oppressed people. They may even encourage a satellite military conflict in the years to come, because it won’t be their children loading the magazines or firing the rifles.

    But there will be precious few resources for those designing the policies to shift a substantial share of our manufacturing capacity back to the United States. There will be limited campaign dollars for politicians who advocate those policies. It is one thing to offer platitudes for the Uighurs, and I suspect we’ll hear many of them in the years to come. It is another thing entirely to tell Apple’s leadership that they can’t flog them half to death for failing to meet production deadlines, or to tell the S&P’s shareholders that they will no longer benefit from the labor arbitrage of China’s slave camps. It is one thing to whine at NBA owners and superstars for bending the knee to the Chinese Communist Party and another to make them pay for doing so.

30. Inactive
    Jules PA

    @JulesPA

    9:01 AM EDT ⋅ Apr 22, 2020

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):

    Jon1979 (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):

     

    I can see how Kissinger’s actions at that time might be interpreted that way by some people, but most people, including me, believe his intention was to put an American wedge between the USSR and Chinese Communists. That he succeeded is to his everlasting credit.

    I read a couple of books three years ago on the history of education in postwar China. The books were written by Zhu Yongxin, the secretary of education in China during that entire time period. The Chinese Communists looked to the USSR Communists for instruction on, for example, how to interpret Marx and how to implement communism in the “right way,” as if there such a thing and as if Marx wrote sacred texts.

    I came away from reading these books with a new respect for Henry Kissinger’s wisdom in inserting us between the Russian and Chinese Communists.

    Kissinger’s action to push Nixon into rapprochement with China came after the Sino-Soviet border clashes in 1969, and as the U.S. was still in the Vietnam conflict. Different times. Our mistake was in thinking, after the Gang of Four was beaten and Deng Xiaoping began the period of economic liberalization, that the change would eventually cause China’s leadership to also allow more political freedom. That got beaten back at Tienanmen Square, and the current Chinese leadership under Xi comes with the belief they can micro-manage the Chinese economy and use it even more towards political ends than the regimes immediately before it.

    The fact that the COVID outbreak came immediately after the initial protests in Hong Kong over Xi’s regime trying to curb the island’s freedom set the stage for the current actions, to where you have to be willfully blind and/or paid off by China not to realize what’s going on.

    I agree with this characterization, but I am still confident that the overarching issue was to put us between the USSR and the Chinese Communists.

    It was. Permanent Normal Trade Relations was later, and has Republican fingerprints all over it.

    BILL TITLE: To Authorize Extension of Nondiscriminatory Treatment (Normal Trade Relations Treatment) to the People’s Republic of China

    House of Representatives	Ayes	Noes	PRES	NV
    Republican	164	57		1
    Democratic	73	138

    The Senate was 83-15 with two abstentions.

    The objections were about China’s belligerent attitude, job protection, human rights, and trade rule violations.

    Newt: “We thought getting them into a rules-based system would gradually permeate their culture and that’d be a big step in the right direction…”

    How’s that been working out for us?

    It was conceivable to think that could have been an outcome, alas it is not so. 

    We can manage relations with China in the same way we learn to treat Coronavirus, by observing, acting and adapting, to get the result we can live with. 

    The foundational principles are important. I think that is where there is disagreement on both China, and Coronavirus.