Flashback

Cowboy Codpiece's recent Asian trip....

China's buying spree and voracious markets provide the underpinning for the peaceful coexistence that everyone wants, [Chinese ambassador, Lu Shumin said on a recent visit to Indonesia].

Contrast this with the dour message from the United States. Congratulations, said President Bush to the Indonesians during his short stopover in October, for "hunting and finding dangerous killers." Cannily, China has wasted little time in capitalizing on the United States preoccupation with the campaign on terror to greatly expand its influence in Asia.

..."After Afghanistan, after Iraq, after bringing democracy to the Middle East, when the United States refocuses on Asia, it will find a much different China in a much different region," James J. Przystup, a research fellow at the National Defense University, wrote recently.

...Karim Raslan, a Malaysian lawyer and writer who traveled to Washington recently on a Fulbright scholarship, put it this way. The American "obsession" with terror seems tedious to Asians, he said. "We've all got to live, we've all got to make money," said Mr. Raslan. "The Chinese want to make money and so do we."

So as American tourists have vanished from an area made uninviting by State Department travel warnings, Chinese tourists have started to arrive. They are pouring into Malaysia (with a substantial minority Chinese population) and Singapore (majority Chinese) where they can talk to the locals and are not afraid to go out at night. They are beginning to buy big-ticket items — five-figure diamond watches, designer clothes — that used to be favored by modish Japanese and American tourists.

Most disturbing for the United States, China's surging economy has much to offer America's most important Asian allies. Japan's rebound is being driven by a surge in exports to China. Australia's healthy economy is being kept that way by Chinese investments in liquid natural gas projects. China is now South Korea's largest trading partner.  article

I've been speculating for a while now that China is the next superpower...that prosperity moves around the globe, and it's moving out of America and into China. The signs seem to be there.

You can't have a healthy, prosperous, forward-looking society that is simultaneously shrouded in fear and secrecy, and that looks out upon the world and sees a horde of enemies plotting to destroy it. That's what we've become.

In Thailand at the meeting for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, "there was no question that [Communist China's] Hu was the better appreciated one," a Thai official said to me. "He outshone Bush in most of the attendees' eyes." The trips ended with the two making back-to-back visits to Australia. Bush was greeted with demonstrations, his address to Parliament interrupted by hecklers. Hu, on the other hand, got a 20-minute standing ovation from Parliament. "It is Hu's visit rather than George W. Bush's that will provide a lingering sense of satisfaction and security about Australia's place in the region," wrote the Australian, a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch and not given to knee-jerk anti-Americanism.

What is going on here? How does the chief representative of the world's oldest constitutional democracy lose a popularity contest to the leader of a Leninist party?

...Bush's trips to Southeast Asia and Australia focused single-mindedly on the war on terror. Karim Raslan, a Malaysian writer, explained the local reaction: "Bush came to an economic group [APEC] and talked obsessively about terror. He sees all of us through that one prism. Yes, we worry about terror, but frankly that's not the sum of our lives. We have many other problems. We're retooling our economies, we're wondering how to deal with the rise of China, we're trying to address health, social and environmental problems. Hu talked about all this; he talked about our agenda, not just his agenda."   article

Obviously, His Slowliness doesn't know there is any other agenda besides his own. And perhaps he doesn't care.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.