Monitor The Strategic Trends

Introduction:

China has climbed from an isolated backward country into one with a growing influence capable of becoming a superpower rivaling the United States.

In recent years, China has bought, borrowed, or stolen technology, which has catapulted its military capabilities into the modern high-tech arena. No one can match China for sheer numbers of people, and now it can challenge most of the world in technological achievements. The Clinton administration blindly sold sensitive technology to China and reportedly received campaign financing in return.

The human rights abuses have received less attention lately as various foreign leaders flock to pay state visits to the country and give little or no condemnation of China's human rights record. It seems that it is more important to placate than to demand reform. In the meanwhile, forced abortions and sterilization continue to be state policy, and political and religious persecution continues unchecked.

The "red dragon" no longer sleeps. It is already anticipating a war with the United States in the next decade or so and may one day prove to be a mighty adversary for anyone who gets in the way.

Just as China has emerged as a mass manufacturer, India is emerging as a giant in services. Technical and managerial strengths in both China and India are becoming more important that cheap assembly labor. And, their relative strengths are complementary, not competitive. For example, China has excelled in mass manufacturing, with multi-billion-dollar electronics and heavy industrial plants; India has specialized in software, design, services, and precision industry. Their efficiency in back-office processing alone is legendary and outsourcing such work is expected to quadruple by 2010 to over $56 billion per year!

These two emerging giants will transform the entire global economy. China and India account for one-third of the worlds population. For the past two decades, China has been growing at 9.5% per year, and India at 6% per year.Both are projected to continue at an annual rate of 7-8% for at least the next ten years. By mid-century, China should overtake the U.S. as #1. Together, China and India could account for almost half of the total global output.

Indias younger workforce will give it a chance to catch up to China. Due to its one-child policy, Chinas working age population will peak at 1 billion in 2015 and then shrink steadily. India has nearly 500 million people (twice the population of the U.S.) under the age of 19 and higher fertility rates. By mid-century, India is expected to have 1.6 billion people, 220 million more workers than China.

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Strategic Update: 2010 and Beyond - China by Mary Miller, Director of Research

China Update, Part 3: Communism in China by Mary Miller, Koinonia Institute

China Update, Part 2: Economics in China by Mary Miller, Koinonia Institute

China Update, Part 1: Religion in China by Chuck Missler

Kings of the East, Part 2 The Rise of India by Chuck Missler

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From Our Private Modem: Feeding the Dragon? by Chuck Missler

News Sources

NEW! China Deepens Energy Partnership With Arab States - As the world's biggest energy consumer, China's roaring appetite for stable oil and gas supplies is driving its Gulf push — a relationship made clearer last month when Premier Wen Jiabao traveled to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. In Saudi Arabia, Wen specifically called for the two countries to "deepen their energy partnership" and increase trade in oil and gas. State oil giant Saudi Aramco and Chinese refiner Sinopec just finalized plans to jointly build a refinery in the Red Sea city of Yanbu capable of handling 400,000 barrels of oil a day. The two companies and Exxon Mobil Corp. are already partners in a refinery in eastern China. Nearby Iran was not on Wen's January itinerary even though China remains Iran's trop crude oil buyer and its powerful state energy companies have rights to exploit untapped Iranian oil reserves.

Russia Seeking Closer Ties With China - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Chinese leaders opened two days of meetings Tuesday aimed at boosting relations amid strains over declining military sales and stalled talks over energy deals. Besides a struggle to increase trade and agree on sales of Russian gas to fuel China's booming economy, Moscow is also unhappy with China's copying of Russian fighter jets and other military hardware and recently announced the arrest of a Chinese man accused of seeking to buy military secrets. Putin's two-day visit follows his recent announcement that he plans to swap jobs next year with President Dmitry Medvedev. Many observers say that transition could see Russia turn eastward after years of warming ties with the West under Medvedev.

China Not Pleased With US Senate Currency Manipulation Bill - China expressed strong objections on Tuesday to a bill in the United States Senate that would threaten to impose higher tariffs on some Chinese goods over its currency policies. The tariffs would be in retaliation for what some American lawmakers and economists say is a Chinese policy of keeping its currency artificially depressed, to give its exports a price advantage. The Senate voted 79 to 19 on Monday to open debate on the bill, which would require the Treasury Department to determine whether China is manipulating its currency, and then order the Commerce Department to impose tariffs on certain Chinese goods as a punitive countermeasure.

US Wants China To Stop Undervaluing Its Currency - The Senate will move forward next week on legislation that aims to encourage China to raise the value of its currency as a way to strengthen the U.S. job market. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the Senate will take up the bi-partisan currency legislation next week, and that he feels "very comfortable" it will be passed. The Senate bill would require the U.S. Commerce Department to investigate if a country is undervaluing its currency, which would be regarded as a government subsidy under U.S. law. Affected U.S. companies would then be allowed to seek retaliatory tariffs on goods imported from the country.

Blind Forced Abortion Opponent Headed To Personal Prison - Blind forced abortion opponent Chen Guangcheng and his wife, Yuan Weijing, will be transferred to a small prison built specifically for them, according to a Radio Free Asia report. They will be separated from their five-year-old daughter in the move. Their young son, living with relatives, was reportedly strip-searched leaving the family home. Chen was arrested in 2006 for exposing evidence that 130,000 forced abortions and involuntary sterilizations were performed on women in Linyi County, Shandong Province in a single year.

Burmese Lives Ruined In Thailand - Ye worked for eight months on one boat. He was never paid for his work and forbidden to keep any cash of his own. Compared to Burma, whose government is often damned as repressive, he felt Thailand was even more like a prison. Once a worker boards a fishing boat, he said, there was often no escape. Finally, however, Ye was able to escape. He said he could never forgive the captain. He wanted all Burmese thinking of coming to Thailand to hear his story, so they could be spared the same fate. Sanda, a Christian Chin woman, was trafficked by a Mon couple to work at a construction site in Thailand, only to find herself working without pay in the fishing industry and sexually enslaved. "There is no law here," Sanda said. She does not want any more Burmese people to come to the Kingdom and suffer as she has.

Vietnamese Christians Savagely Beaten - Sixteen men and women were severely beaten in a police attack against indigenous minority Christians in the central highlands of Vietnam this July. The youngest victim was a 13-year-old girl. Vietnam has a long-standing practice of harassing and arresting Christians who are unaffiliated with the government-sanctioned religious bodies in the nation. According to Scott Johnson, with the Montagnard Foundation, "The Vietnamese government has targeted indigenous Degar Montagnards for simply being members of Christian house churches in a long running policy designed to eliminate independent Christian house churches. Hundreds of Degar Montagnards remain in prison today, and in custody many prisoners are brutally tortured and even killed."

Biden Not 'Second-Guessing' China's One-Child Policy - "But as I was talking to some of your leaders, you share a similar concern here in China. You have no safety net," US Vice President Joe Biden said in prepared remarks. "Your policy has been one which I fully understand - I'm not second-guessing - of one child per family. The result being that you're in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable." China's one-child policy has stirred global controversy since it was implemented, as it has resulted in massive campaigns of forced abortions and sterilizations, fines for families violating the rule, sentences to prison and forced labor camps for violators and their families who shelter them from government officials, home detention, loss of jobs or government benefits, beatings and other human rights abuses.

Biden Off To Talk Economics With China - US Vice President Joe Biden is flying to China for talks likely to focus on the economy after the downgrading of US debt and ensuing market turmoil. China is the US government's biggest foreign creditor, holding $1 trillion of debt, and has called on it to do more to reduce its budget deficit. Officials say Mr Biden will explain the finer points of a "very strong deficit reduction package" agreed by Congress. China's state-run media was scathing over the recent political showdown in the US over how to increase the debt ceiling and avert a financial default. State media criticised the US "addiction to debt", calling it irresponsible and demanding that America live within its means.

North Korea Nosediving Says Korean Journalist - The head of a leading news service covering North Korea is predicting that the ruling communist regime is headed for the dustbin of history - and soon. "North Korea will collapse, of course, but the question is how long it might take," Park In-ho, president of the Seoul-based Daily NK, told The Washington Times. His confidence stems from the North Korean regime's plunging popular support, its lack of funds and its loss of diplomatic support - including from former sponsor China.

US Invites North Korea To Resume Nuclear Talks - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday that the U.S. had invited a top North Korean envoy to New York to talk about ways to resume long-stalled talks aimed at halting North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons. The U.S. invitation to the North came after senior diplomats from North and South Korea met Friday on the sidelines of a regional meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations here and pledged to try to return to the so-called six-party talks, which also involve China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

Japan Quake Death Toll Nearing 15,000 - The death toll from the recent 9.0-magnitude quake and tsunami in Japan has reached 14,919 people, while 9,893 remain unaccounted for, Kyodo news agency reported on Monday citing police data. Among six prefectures affected by the March 11 disaster, Miyagi registered the highest number of victims - 8,924. About 119,000 people have been evacuated from the disaster zone and accommodated in 2,400 temporary refuge centers in 18 prefectures across the country.

North Korea Cyber-Bombs South Korea - In an act described by a South Korean prosecutor as "unprecedented cyber terror", North Korea launched distributed denial-of-service attacks against a Southern banking co-operative. These attacks - known as "DDoS" - are a basic tool in the cyber warfare armoury. Millions of the bank's customers were locked out of their ATMs and credit cards for days on end. It's a very different kind of warfare - no deaths, no blood, but enormous inconvenience for a large number of people, and plenty of economic damage.

North Korea Holds 200,000 In Political Prison Death Camps - Satellite imagery has revealed new details of the extraordinary size of North Korea's secret gulags, which are now believed to contain more than 200,000 political prisoners. "For decades the authorities have refused to admit to the existence of mass political prison camps. These are places out of sight of the rest of the world whose inmates were treated essentially as slaves," Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific director Sam Zarifi said Monday. The American Association for the Advancement of Science has compared new satellite photos taken last month with images of a decade ago. This analysis showed a significant increase in the scale of the camps, said Amnesty. In one camp, Kwamliso 15, at Yodok, thousands of people are detained for guilt-by-association because their relatives have been arrested.

China Tells US 'Don't Interfere' - The Chinese government warned on Tuesday against using human rights disputes as what it called a tool to meddle, ahead of talks with the United States that will focus on complaints about Beijing's crackdown on dissent. The US State Department has said it wants to discuss with China "the recent negative trend of forced disappearances, extralegal detention, and arrests and convictions."

Japan Crisis Has Hit Chernobyl Levels - Japan raised the crisis level at its crippled nuclear plant Tuesday to a severity on par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, citing high overall radiation leaks that have contaminated the air, tap water, vegetables and seawater. Japanese nuclear regulators said they raised the rating from 5 to 7 -- the highest level on an international scale of nuclear accidents overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency -- after new assessments of radiation leaks from the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant since it was disabled by the March 11 tsunami.

Shortage Of Girls In The East - Sex selection in parts of China and India will produce a 10% to 20% excess in males in the next 20 years, according to a new study. Many couples in China, India and South Korea prefer sons. This cultural pattern combined with the use of ultrasound technology for sex selection over the past two decades has produced the shift, said the authors of an analysis published Monday in the Journal of the Canadian Medical Assn. All of these countries have laws against sex-selective abortion, but the laws are rarely enforced. The trend is not without major social implications. Many more men will be unable to marry. Violence, crime and psychological problems are expected to rise because of the imbalance.

One Day Campaign Seeks Religious Freedom For North Korea - Release International has launched a new campaign calling upon North Korea to protect the human rights of Christians. The One Day campaign is asking people to sign a petition calling for religious freedom in the reclusive communist country, where all forms of Christian meeting, literature and Bibles are forbidden. As one of the worst persecutors of Christians in the world, believers there are frequently detained, tortured and sent to labour camps because of their faith. "The food crisis is bad in North Korea," said one former prisoner, "but it is even worse in the camps. People die of malnutrition. If anyone was found praying they would disappear."

Kings of the East - MP3 Download - Chuck Missler What are the prophetic implications of the King's of the East and their rise as a world superpower? Click for more information - MP3 Download