"The Truth About China"
                                                                                                                              

Questions and Answers are cited below as "Q" and "A"

1. Q: From whence comes "The Truth About China"?

A: From the Opinion section of "The Wall Street Journal," Friday, April 20, 2007.

2. Q: Is it important to get "The Truth About China"?

A: Probably one of the most important contributions to the world's ultimate progress or decay, would be "The Truth About China."

3. Q: Is there likely to be debate about "The Truth About China"?

A: Yes.

4. Q: Why?

A: Because current media disclosures reveal other "truths" about China.

5. Q: What are they?

A: That China's claimed rate of growth is inviting already rumbling massive discontent and,

     (a) Is not sustainable, and

     (b) will not end rumbling massive discontent.

6. Q: What is China's economic growth rate?

A: "The Party claims a 10% annual growth rate." ...Economist Mao Yushi, "doing his own calculations, arrives at a rate of about 8% per year, -- vigorous, but no 'miracle,' as some in the West describe it."

Moreover, Yushi "believes that the current growth rate isn't sustainable: natural bottlenecks ñ scarcity of energy, raw materials, and especially water - will get in the way."

Also, Mr. Mao says that the fact that investment decisions frequently obey political considerations instead of the market, -- has helped to generate an unemployment rate that is likely closer to 20% than to the officially acknowledged 3.5%.

"...200 million of China's subjects, fortunate to work for an expanding global market, are increasingly enjoying a middle-class standard of living. The remaining one billion, however, are among the poorest and most exploited people in the world, lacking even minimal rights and public services." [Emphasis added.]

7. Q: What is this rumbling discontent?

A: "There has been an explosion of revolts in the vast countryside. The government estimates the number of public clashes with the authorities (some occurring in the industrial suburbs too) at 60,000 a year. But some experts think the true figure is upward of 150,000 and increasing."

8. Q: Are there other truths about China contradicting its Western press image as a superpower?

A:  (1) The Aids crisis is largely denied and ignored. "The government's initial reaction was to deny that the problem existed, cordon off AIDS-affected areas and let the sick die (a pattern that the government tried to repeat when SARS broke out).

     (2) The Chinese Connection to the Darfur Genocide.

"China is pouring billions of dollars into Sudan. Beijing purchases an overwhelming majority of Sudan's annual oil exports and state-owned China National Petroleum Corp., - an official partner of the upcoming Olympic Games - owns the largest shares in each of Sudan's two major oil consortia. The Sudanese government uses as much as 80% of proceeds from those sales to fund its brutal Janjaweed proxy militia and purchase their instruments of destruction: bombers, assault helicopters, armored vehicles and small arms, most of them of Chinese manufacture."

"But there is now one thing that China may hold more dear than their unfettered access to Sudanese oil: their successful staging of the 2008 Summer Olympics."

"As one of the few players whose support is indispensable to Sudan, China has the power to, at the very least, insist that Khartoum accept a robust international peacekeeping force to protect defenseless civilians in Darfur." (www.miafarrow.org/editorials.html)

America's Fear of China

"China's overall surplus and America's overall deficit have less to do with the value of the Yuan than with Chinese saving and American profligacy..."

"China is a scapegoat for broader economic anxieties to do with stagnant wages, rising income-inequality and dwindling health and pension benefits." (The Economist, May 19, 2007)

"One World, One Dream," China's slogan for its 2008 Olympics

Meeting of the U.S.-China Strategic Economic
Dialogue May 22, 2007

The Strategic Economic Dialogue (SED) is a forum to manage an open and honest economic relationship between China and the U.S. which is pivotal to the future of the global economy.

"There is a growing skepticism in each country about the other's intentions. Unfortunately, in America this is manifesting itself as anti-China sentiment as China becomes a symbol of the real and imagined downside of global competition."

Opening Statement by Secretary
Henry M. Paulson, Jr.
at the May 2007 Meeting of the U.S. - China Strategic
Economic Dialogue

"The United States is supportive of a stable and prosperous China. We are not afraid of the competition. We welcome it, because competition makes us stronger. It is therefore in our interest to support China's continuing efforts to open its economy. As I have said before, our policy disagreements are not about the direction of change, but about the pace of change. Americans have many virtues - we are hard-working, innovative people - but we are also impatient. Even the notion of a "dialogue" may seem too passive for America's action-oriented ethic. It is up to us, over these two days and in the work that follows, to show that words are precursors to action."
(www.treasury.gov/press/release/hp414.htm)

General Attitudes Toward China

"Americans lean toward negative views of China's role in the world, its government, economic system, leadership, and its human rights record. There is little optimism that the human rights record will improve or that China will become more democratic. Trust in China is fairly low."

General Engagement with China

"Despite the public's cool feelings toward China, a majority generally favors engaging China diplomatically and economically."

Trade With China

"A strong majority of Americans favors trade with China and a plurality believes that, on balance, it benefits the US. But several factors dampen enthusiasm for greater US-China trade. In addition to concerns about China's human rights record, there are concerns about the impact on US jobs and wages, an image of China as an unfair trader, the belief that China benefits from China-US trade more than the US, and skepticism about whether increased trade will result in changes in China." (www.americans-world/org/digest/regional)

China and the Competition for Oil and Gas in Asia

"While its economic dynamism stimulates continued growth in Asia, China's increasing demand for energy is creating intense competition, particularly with Japan."

"Its need to diversify has promoted closer relations with Central Asia, the Middle East and the oil producing countries of Africa and Latin America, but the jury is still out on whether China's concerns for secure energy supply will lead to international cooperation against terrorism or fuel the already heated competition for oil and gas." (www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/capr/2004)

* * *

cc: George W. Bush, President
George H.W. Bush, Former President
Richard Cheney, Vice President
John Kerry, Senator
Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State
Robert M. Gates, Secretary of Defense
Colonel Oliver North
Michael Chertoff, Secretary of Homeland Security
Alberto Gonzales, U.S. Attorney General
Barack Obama, U.S. Senator
Tony Blair, Prime Minister of Great Britain
Jack Straw, British Foreign Secretary
Newt Gingrich, Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives
Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister of Israel
His Excellency Daniel Ayalon Ambassador of Israel
Benjamin Netanyahu, Economy Minister for the Israeli Government
Israel's "Women In Green"
National Unity Coalition for Israel
Arianna Huffington, Syndicated Columnist
Yohanan Ramati, Chairman, Jerusalem Institute for Western Defense
Gerardo Joffe, FLAME (Facts & Logic About the Middle East)
Mortimer Zuckerman, Editor in Chief - US News and World Report
Time Magazine
Washington Post - Attn: Bob Woodward
International Jerusalem Post
The Weekly Standard - Bill Kristol, Editor
The Wall Street Journal - Editorial and Op-Ed Department
The New York Times, Op-Ed Department
Los Angeles Times, Op-Ed Department
Dr. and Mrs. Jordan Phillips, Medical Books for China International