In September, I blogged about an incident where China retaliated against Japan in a dispute over a maritime collision by halting shipments of rare earth minerals to Japan. Faced with the possible shutdown of portions of its industries due to the Chinese embargo, Japan “caved” and yielded in the dispute. China has just done the same thing to the USA in a dispute between the two nations. This is a very important story which is not getting a lot of media coverage. China certainly expects the USA to “cave” as did Japan to whatever demands China is making behind closed doors.
The first link reports that the American-Chinese dispute resulted from an announcement by the USA that it would investigate China for possible mega-billions in illegal Chinese subsidies to Chinese industries. China responded by embargoing the shipment of key rare earth minerals to the USA, exactly the same heavy-handed maneuver that China used to hammer Japan into submission. Due to foolish decisions made by western decision-makers to allow China to have a monopoly over such rare earth mineral productions, China has the whip-hand to bludgeon other nations into line by withholding these rare earth minerals from nations which need them for many high-tech civilian and military applications. Indeed, the first link reports that China has control of over 95% of the rare earth mineral shipments in the world—a phenomenal monopoly! This Chinese monopoly exists even though the second link notes the USA used to dominate this market. The USA foolishly shut down its own production facilities so quickly that the second link states that in one case, “the Chinese literally packed up all the equipment in a US production facility and shipped it to China.” It should be noted that this instance of national lunacy occurred during the Bush administration.
How did China get such a monopoly over such a strategic commodity? American and western decision-makers foolishly gave it to them by making themselves dependent on Chinese low-cost production. In pursuit of short-term financial bottom-line gains, American and western decision-makers handed long-term control over their national economies to China. In retrospect, this has to be one of the dumbest decisions ever made by the USA in terms of national security interests.
Paul Krugman has a column in the New York Times which is critical of the western decision-makers who allowed this strategic dependency on China to occur. Mr. Krugman is certainly right in making that point, but he still manifests the striking blindness of America’s elites toward China’s increasingly aggressive actions and intentions. Mr. Krugman opines that China’s harsh actions indicate that it “isn’t prepared to assume the responsibilities that go with [superpower] status.” Mr. Krugman is expressing the deeply held self-delusions of the Babylon the Great crowd that inhabits Wall Street and the halls of American power. They assumed they could “manage” China by sharing the insider greed-created wealth with Chinese leaders. I think they assumed China’s leaders would be as motivated by personal greed as were the leaders of the western elites (see Revelation 18:3). China’s leaders are manifesting a different goal altogether. They saw a way to trap the western nations into a position of dependency on China and then lowering the boom on the western nations in a bid for global dominance. So far, things are working out pretty much as China planned it to occur.
Until the western elites get their heads out of the sand (I’m tempted to use a stronger metaphor here) and realize that China has the Western nations and their global elites in their gunsights, the West will not bestir itself to start taking meaningful (and urgently-needed) actions to defend itself against China’s bellicose intentions. Ezekiel 38-39 prophesied the arrangements of today’s modern international alliances with remarkable accuracy, confirming that only a Supreme Creator could have made such prophecies and implemented them 2500 years after they were first uttered and written down in the Bible. This gives us high assurance that the rest of the prophecy will also be fulfilled precisely as God inspired it. To see an in-depth examination of what Ezekiel 38-39 prophesies for the years just ahead of us (and the powerful effect it will have on your life), I invite you read my free article, What Ezekiel 38-39 Reveals About a Future World War III, available at the home page of this website.
I want to thank an alert reader for tipping me off to this story!
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.6f626669dcc738e805f26ad8400c014c.51&show_article=1
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/opinion/18krugman.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
