This is pleasing.

What is China up to?

First, there is a recall on toys due to lead paint.

Second, there is a recall on pet food due to some by-product that is fatal

Third, there is a recall on medicine due to some by-product is fatal.

Is this because they want to wipe out all Americans by poisioning us and our pets rather than resorting to nuclear war?

Bill Maher put it best in his New Rules segment for Aug 24, 2007.

And finally, New Rule If you were surprised that the Chinese don't care about toy safety, then the child who needs protecting is you. Over the last couple of months, American consumers have been learning a shocking lesson about supply and demand: if you demand products that don't cost anything, people will make them out of poison, mud and ••••. Now, since April, approximately 17 million toys in the United States, all of them made in China, have been recalled.

He goes on for several more paragraphs, I would have linked it but the board won't let me do it. It keeps telling me that I'm trying to put formating tags inside of it. If you want to read the rest of it go here:

http://www.hbo.com/billmaher/new_rules/20070824.html

and go about half way down the page.

I think the Chinese are learning an equally shocking lesson about supply and demand: if your supply is tained, the people who demand it will send it back.

The way I see it, China and the U.S. are in a sort of economic Cold War. Instead of mutually-assured destruction, we have mutually-assured economic collapse. China holds a large amount of U.S. debt, and the U.S. is China's largest customer. If China calls in the debt, the U.S. stops buying and if the U.S. stops buying, China calls in the debt. Both economies collapse.

You may have heard the news that Google has threatened to pull out of China (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/technology/companies/13hacker.html).

The reason behind this is that Google and about 30 other major companies have been under attack. The latest news is that these attacks have been traced to the Chinese government, rather than just "hackers".

The State Department has gotten involved ("Stop or I shall have to send you a sternly worded letter"). Is this the beginning of a formal cyber-war?

I've long enjoyed reading the books and the weekly online What's New column by University of Maryland Professor Robert L. Park. Park often decries pseudoscience and superstition, and is known for talking about population control, something I've notice even other high-profile skeptics not talk about much.

But in his most recent What's New, he said something I found highly questionable:

China pledged to reduce the rate at which its emissions are increasing. Well, at least they're talking, but emission rate is a second-order problem. First we should worry about the worlds uncontrolled fertility rate. Reduce the population and emissions will be reduced proportionately. It is the only emissions-control policy that is guaranteed to work. Chinas leaders know more about the population problem than anybody, having undertaken the courageous one-child policy to avert an inevitable catastrophe from Maos wacky economic theories.

Excuse me?

Courageous?

You're talking about the policy that includes or has led to female infanticide,¹ underreporting of female births² forced abortions and sterilizations³, and possibly China's gender imbalance⁴?

I'm sorry, Professor, but with all due respect, you can make far better choices in how you go about advocating population control than to point to a program like this.

Sources:
1
-http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/27-12142004-416868.html US State Department position
-http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199697/ldhansrd/vo961218/text/61218-08.htm regarding Human Rights in China and Tibet
-http://www.amnesty.ie/content/view/full/1683/
-Sarah Lubman. San Jose Mercury News, date=2000-03-15 "Experts Allege Infanticide In China 'Missing' Girls Killed, Abandoned, Pair Say"

2
-M. G. Merli and A. E. Raftery. 1990. "Are births under-reported in rural China? Manipulation of statistical records in response to China's population policies", Demography 37 (February): 109-126
-Johansson, Sten; Nygren, Olga (1991). "The missing girls of China: a new demographic account". Population and Development Review (Population Council) 17 (1): 35–51. doi:10.2307/1972351. http://jstor.org/stable/1972351.
-Merli, M. Giovanna; Raftery, Adrian E. (2000). "Are births underreported in rural China?". Demography 37 (1): 109 126.

3
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/1336466/Chinese-region-must-conduct-20000-abortions.html

4
http://pewglobal.org/2008/07/22/the-chinese-celebrate-their-roaring-economy-as-they-struggle-with-its-costs/

I don't have a source off the top of my head, but I've heard that China's one-child policy has set them up for a severe population imbalance (too many elderly, not enough young people) in the next few decades--kind of like what the U.S. is starting to go through with the baby boomers retiring, but much worse.

China has been up to a lot lately.

Tightening its grip on Hong Kong. When H.K. reverted to Chinese control, in 1997, it was supposed to remain semi-autonomous for the next fifty years, which meant until 2047. Clearly China has decided not to wait.

And there is their muscle flexing towards Taiwan (not that this is new, mind you, China has been gnashing its teeth over Taiwan for decades now). But now they're making noise about invasion.

And what is the world going to do about it. We saw what happens when you appeased bullies like this with the Munich Agreement of 1938 (Peace in our time). Of course, the big difference is that Nazi Germany didn't have nuclear weapons. China does.

Scary, isn't it.

And there is their muscle flexing towards Taiwan (not that this is new, mind you, China has been gnashing its teeth over Taiwan for decades now). But now they're making noise about invasion.

Why haven't they retaken Taiwan long ago? What was it that stopped them? That's what I want to know.

Because now there is a convenient pandemic that has kept the world distracted. In fact, it's possible that is why the Chinese cooked COVID up in the first place. To throw the world into panic and confusion. And while we're all running around like chickens with our heads cut off, China had a free hand to do as it pleases. And that includes tightening its grip on Hong Kong and threatening to take Taiwan.

Of course, this just a theory I have, and I hope I'm wrong. Because, if I'm right about this, James Bond is not going to show up and save the day. In the real world, sometimes the bad guys win.