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China Trade Surplus
A-letter~ China and the US.
Date: 11/8/2005 2:21:12 PM ( 19 y ) ... viewed 1433 times BOB BAUMAN FROM BEIJING:
Strange how disorienting being in the Orient is.
I'm writing this about 35,000 feet in the air aboard a Thai
Airways flight from Bangkok to Beijing, somewhere over
central China. My trusty laptop desktop tells me it's 2:00
AM EST, Tuesday, Nov. 8, back in hurricane ravaged
south Florida. Here in the Chinese stratosphere it is two
in the afternoon the same day. A week of R&R in Thailand
mercifully allowed my body, if not my mind, to adapt to the
earth's rotation and my insignificant place therein.
I am more than curious as to what I will see when I land in
Beijing.
I was last here at Easter time, 1980, just as Deng Xiaoping's
move towards a freer market economy began in earnest. I
vividly recall that when disembarking from US Air Force Two
and entering the VIP Lounge of the Beijing terminal, we were
greeted with glass showcases containing bottles of Coca
Cola displayed like valuable artifacts -- perhaps meant to
reassure a plane load of visiting US congresspersons that
Americans were welcome to the Middle Kingdom.
Those quaint days of the first Chinese steps towards world
and US trade, after the Nixon-Kissinger détente, begun in 1972,
are long gone.
Total Chinese exports are forecast to hit US$745bn this year and
imports are projected to rise 18% to US$655bn. China's trade
surplus is set to rise to a record $90bn (£50.5bn) in 2005. Not
to mention the billions in US Treasury bills owned by the
Chinese government, propping up the deficit spending USA.
And its GDP has grown almost 10% in the last 9 quarters.
When last I was in China it was a nation barely emerging onto
the world scene. Today it is an incipient world power with
trade deals all over the globe. The millions in drab, padded
Mao jackets I saw then have been replaced with a new, rich
middle class, and millions of peasants who no doubt want a
share of the more or less free market pie.
As our Sovereign Society tour progresses through Beijing,
Shanghai, Hangzhou and Hong Kong, I'll give you my
impressions of the New China, 25 years later.
That the way that it looks from high over the so-called
Peoples Republic of China.
BOB BAUMAN, Editor
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