Money – Symphony

Apple sales are up in China, which creates a problem on two fronts. First, the doomsayers were wrong about tariffs crashing economies. If the tariffs aren’t making a difference according to the globalist economists, then why did they object? They’re the “experts”, after all. Shouldn’t they have foreseen that tariffs wouldn’t matter? The second problematic front is that an American company’s success seems to be a problem for the Chinese.

Apple doesn’t filter and censor content from personal users, but Chinese state-media outlets seem to think it should. Even though Apple proved that China is good for business, someone had to find fault. Good news just won’t do these days.

So, now it’s Apple vs China rather than Apple in China. It seems Apple was also duped by the globalist economists into vesting one fifth of its sales in a relationship that wasn’t going to last. Watch. This looks like a preemptive step to take action against Apple, who would do well to start pulling out of China before its assets get appropriated for the benefit of the Chinese people.

The swelling trade war between the US and China isn’t going away. Dating back to the Opium Wars, the West will push and push as long as most of the money flows downhill into China. While China compares tariffs, Trump balances cash flow.

More importantly, China could be entering another “danger zone” of its own. Painting Trump as an enemy in China’s own newspapers could inspire dissidents within China that they have support from the US. The best response for China’s own stability would be to report that Trump’s tariffs were intended to help China’s economy more than the US. That would be more likely to promote unity among the Chinese people. But, the state didn’t think of that before press time and the newspapers can’t be recalled, even when owned by the state.

China is, indeed calm, just as it claims. There should be no question that China believes the flow of money into China is fair. Chinese don’t want to be unfair, after all. China should only have favorable trade because China deserves it. Beigjing isn’t out to hurt anyone, unless they are denied the extra favor that the world owes to China. So, don’t let the Western press convince you that China is more of a monster than it actually is. We can all be monsters at times.

In Cadence

Cadence of Conflict: Asia, August 14, 2017

SymphonyAugust 14, 2017August 14, 2017

A campaign is slowly mounting its ground swell against Philippine President Duterte concerning his past corruption. The Philippines is littered with classic “mafia-machine” style corruption, making it generally easy to find scandals on politicians. This has been building against the new Filipino president since about the same time the Philippines has needed aid from the US against ISIS, all while the Filipino president campaigns on a continued platform of moving away from the US so as not to be “dependent” on anyone, a normal sentiment in Filipino populism.

A similar media war is mounting against both China and North Korea. This week, they came together in a story about “Made in China” -labeled goods actually being made in North Korea. Also, an old story was rehashed about the Chinese using “scientific underwater drones” in the South Sea, which could be used for military purposes, if nothing more than to make underwater maps for the Chinese and to spot American submarines.

It’s not far-fetched or newsworthy to claim that the Chinese could use academic or scientific tools for the military. China wouldn’t be the first to perform military operations in the name of “science”. China’s diesel-powered aircraft carrier, the Soviet-made Liaoning, was purchased from Russia to be little more than a “floating museum”. Now, it has been reverse-engineered to model at least four more aircraft carriers from China. China’s underwater drones first made headlines not long after the Chinese captured a similar drone from the US.

There seems to be a trend that China’s tech is reverse-engineered, not invented. More interestingly is the role the US has played. Better said, how the US has played China. It wasn’t fair, but it was avoidable.

China wouldn’t have most of its tech or its money for these military aggressions if American tech companies weren’t outsourcing jobs to China. Companies only did that because Americans were obsessed with saving a few pennies on their goods. The country learned to copy those goods and took American money doing it, then got a big wallet, then got a big head. If the US had confronted “Shame” culture in its cultural exchanges—government, business, and otherwise—and educated whatever Chinese people they met in daily dealings and insisted on using the Biblical view of “repentance unto hope”, China’s government wouldn’t be trying to “save face” quite so much and might even be cleaning things up at home a bit more.

Then, we have foiled military operations, this week, a crash in Australia. A truly-gone-awry military operation won’t be so easily plastered across headlines. The West is trying to look weak in the eyes of the Chinese while mounting a press war against China and North Korea to stir popular support for action. That action is, indeed, becoming necessary, but only after unnecessary trade money and methods made it so.

The swelling conflict in the Pacific could have all been avoided if Americans had simply insisted on paying a few more pennies to buy American. But, it’s too late to turn back. Now, American taxpayers will have to pay for an expensive, otherwise unnecessary war against their manufacturer.

Everyone is accountable for their own choices, but the US knew better. Americans know the Bible’s teaching “to get one’s own life in order first” and to confront “Shame” by teaching the good news of “forgiveness”. But, the US didn’t do that with China, not in business and not even the Christians in dealing with Chinese churches in America. While it is all sad, the bigger victim is China.