Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Coming Soon to a Political Ad Near You
The Port of Long Beach China scandal will soon become a political issue again. Obama gifted China the second-largest container port in the United States — strategically placed next to the largest, the Port of Los Angeles. But Trump undid it before the pandemic while Dems frantically tried to impeach him. Orange man bad?
Under a long-term deal sealed by the Obama administration, a Chinese Communist company was set to control the second-busiest container port in the United States. In an unreported Trump administration victory, the Communists are out after a drawn-out national security review forced a unit of China-based COSCO Shipping Holdings Co. (Orient Overseas Container Line—OOCL) to sell the cherished container terminal business, which handles among the largest freight of imports into the U.S.
It all started with a 40-year container terminal lease between the Port of Long Beach in southern California and Hong Kong. The Obama administration proudly signed the agreement in 2012 giving China control of America’s second-largest container port behind the nearby Port of Los Angeles. One of the Trump administration’s first big moves was to get the Communists out of the Port of Long Beach. After a national security review and federal intervention, the Long Beach terminal business, which handles millions of containers annually, is finally being sold to an Australian company called Macquarie Infrastructure Partners. That essentially kills China’s decades-long contract with the Obama administration.
Where was the obligatory orange man racist MSM denunciation for undoing the good works of St. Barack? You would think someone would have noticed. But, of course, only a madman would suggest Xi unleashed a pandemic in a mad fit of revenge over a real estate deal that went pear-shaped. That would be crazy talk.
Published in Foreign Policy
It may have been a good idea, but it was doubtlessly motivated by racism and xenophobia – muh docks! You just can’t talk about kicking the Chinese out of the port deal without understanding the long history of anti-Sino sentiment on the West Coast, going back to the 1888 Seattle riot, which sought to expel all Chinese from the city. And that was just six years after the Chinese Exclusion Act, a forerunner of Trump’s recent anti-immigration decree.
Obama’s deal was a hopeful sign (a single flower, perhaps, but one of a thousand that might bloom) that sought to heal the wounds of the past. While there might be some arguments against giving the Chinese Communist Party a foothold in the Long Beach port area, the majority of people cheering the decision are motivated by nativism and an irrational, knee-jerk demonization of the global economic system that has lifted so many out of poverty. We can only hope that a Biden administration will reverse the decision, and an American port handling hundreds of thousands of containers annually is returned to Chinese control.
(Paul Krugman pauses, looks at his computer screen, thinks “maybe save that one for after Joe’s elected,” and files it in the folder named “2021 column fodder.” He chooses the file name “Mending Ties,” and is prompted to rename the file, as there are already 16 with that name.)
trivia: Long Beach has a large Cambodian community
Is China in Control of the Panama Canal? (2012)
Panama the new flashpoint in China’s growing presence in Latin America
Relax, it’s all Trumps fault after all.
Editorial: While America slept, China gained a stranglehold on the Panama Canal
Except it has been going on a long time, and we don’t have control over what assets Panama allows to be sold to whom.
All it takes is one nuke hidden in a container in every port to blackmail the world . . .
When I read the OP, I thought, oh, that is great news. But on reading your comment, I was dropped off the cliff, “Holy cow, Lileks has gone hard left, and needs an exorcism. The world is now over.”
That was a wake-up more powerful than espresso or a steep roller-coaster.
Thanks.
Of course the Panama Canal comments terrify me.
If Lileks had poked that tongue into that cheek any harder, it would have gone right through. I loved it.
I think it is ironic that China fought two wars with the mighty British empire to keep British opium out of China and now we have China sourced opioids killing 70,000 Americans a year. Is that an act of war or not? When the Wuhan Flu deaths have exceeded the opioid deaths, is that an act of war?
Yes, but which is the real Lileks? Bwahaha!
Your clue is in the “thousand flowers” reference, which I figured gave away the game. ;)
Obviously, no true fellow traveler would normally confound Mao’s Hundred Flowers with George H. W. Bush’s Thousand Points of Light, but you obviously needed to slip in such a slip to provide you deniability when Trumps jack-booted storm troopers seize you from your forced quarantine and take you mustard colored muscle shirt as evidence of your perfidy! I predict a very long weekend for you, my tricky friend!
FIFY.
Good man! Thanks for the catch!