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During his two-day trip to Greece, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has promised to come to Greece's rescue and buy much of their debt through Greek bond offerings. He went on to state that he expects to increase ties with Greece in a wide variety of areas. "With its foreign exchange reserve, China has already bought and is holding Greek bonds and will keep a positive stance in participating and buying bonds that Greece will issue," Wen said, speaking through an interpreter.
This reminds me of the earlier trade agreements between China and Venezuela, where the Asian powerhouse promised $20 billion in aid over several years. While I was in Venezuela, I noticed a lot of talk about that aid and how much it will help the country's economy. When Chavez inaugurated the new thermoelectric power plant at Termozulia, he acknowledged how much the Chinese aid was able to bring that plant to fruition.
Chavez conveniently forgot to mention that Americans were working on the plant to begin with and were largely responsible for its construction. The same will hold true later this year when the thermoelectric power plants at Sidor come on line. In an earlier article, I mentioned the fact that Sidor was already praising the Chinese investment of its plants under construction and made no mention of the American firm building the plant. Though the plants themselves weren't directly mentioned, they are part of the overall improvement of Sidor and are part of their procurement process.
Ever since the beginning of the economic crisis China has been awash with American taxpayer money. We shouldn't forget the $2 trillion that China took in US treasury bonds over the past few years in order to keep the US dollar propped up amid the greatest transfer of wealth in human history. Those bonds were essential in order to shore up the "loss" the banksters claimed were going to destroy them if they couldn't get reimbursed. Once again, China came to the rescue.
While the US economy is trying to grow by military means and is the only country to start wars in this new and young century, China is trying to grow through economic and commercial means. The US uses weapons of mass destruction to intimidate nations around the world, China uses US taxpayer dollars to invite nations into stronger economic ties.
The $150 billion or so necessary to see Greece through its troubled times is no more than a drop in the bucket for China. China is more than willing to take the $2 trillion of US taxpayer money, issued to them as treasury bonds, in order to increase its trading status around the world. China could easily afford ten more Greece's without batting an eyelash. While their rapport with the rest of the world is being built on improved economic ties, the US rapport is quickly painting America into a dead-end corner of evil and destruction.
The American insistence on using only military means and solutions to its perceived world problems proves once again the old adage, "When all you have is a hammer, then all your problems start looking like nails."
