It seems that the budding economic superpower of the 21st Century, the one that doesn’t buy into the ideological nonsense of “Free Trade” is now in the spotlight of new revelations from Wikileaks on the eve of a Presidential state visit by China’s head honcho, Hu Jintao:
Chinese President Hu Jintao this week restated pledges to crack down on illegal business practices and painted a rosy picture for foreign investors, but confidential U.S. diplomatic cables tell a far different story for U.S. businesses. […]
Hu’s glossy view on the eve of his state visit to Washington this week is a very different take from the unvarnished one offered in a secret January 2010 memo to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from Jon M. Huntsman, the U.S. ambassador to China. The memo was one of hundreds of classified documents released late last year by the website WikiLeaks.
“Strong Chinese economic and export growth coupled with an artificially undervalued RMB (currency) will further heighten focus on our huge trade deficit with China. Widespread perceptions that China’s industrial policies are rolling back market access add to the overall sense that China plays unfairly in the global marketplace,” Huntsman noted in the confidential memo. “Other emerging issues, like Google’s problems (censorship and ad hoc bans) and new rules on indigenous innovation, create a drumbeat of bad news stories for firms seeking to do business in China.”
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/18/106996/wikileaks-memo-belies-hus-glossy.html#ixzz1BQVHm0zE
The US wants to try Assaunge for espionage. Sweden is out to get him for alleged sexual crimes he committed several years ago. I imagine China wouldn’t bother with legal niceties, and just line him up against a wall and shoot him. Hope he has some really good stuff on China in his so-called poison pill. His enemies are adding up rapidly, including members of the US Press Corps, some of whom consider him a worthy target for assassination as a terrorist.
Then again, isn’t what he’s doing what our vaunted news media here and elsewhere is supposed to be doing: investigative journalism to expose the abuses of power by the governments and corporations that seek to control every aspect of our lives for their benefit? Oh wait. That was before the Mega-Media corporations bought up all the news organizations in this country. Being a journalist today no longer requires one to expose the misdeeds of governments and multi-national corparions (BP, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Koch Industries, Health Insurance companies, to name but a few).
To be an American journalist these days all you need is a big mouth and a willingness to spread half-truths and the occasional zombie lies in the name of being “fair and balanced.” And you have to like cocktail weenies.
So, never mind. And Julian, good luck. You’re going to need it.
