Who’s Really Pulling the Purse Strings? (Part 2 of 3)

Click here to read Part One, Part Three

In part one we discussed how there is a world movement to devalue the American currency, which is one front in the war on terrorism, and part of America’s struggle with globalism. Now, we want to look at some recent and current world events that point to who, indeed, is really pulling the purse strings in this battle.

Foreign Policy in Focus, in its March 9, 2007 article entitled China Provokes Debate in Africa, explains:

If not yet the biggest external player in Africa, China is certainly the most dynamic. It now accounts for 60% of oil exports from Sudan and 35% of those from Angola. Chinese firms mine copper in Zambia and Congo-Brazzaville, cobalt in the Congo, gold in South Africa, and uranium in Zimbabwe. Its ecological footprint is large, says Michelle Chan-Fishel of Friends of the Earth International, consuming as it does 46% of Gabon’s forest exports, 60% of timber exported from Equatorial Guinea, and 11% of timber exports from Cameroon.

Regarding Chinese influence in Africa, Steve Daley, of Spiked Online, explains how China is pulling Africa’s purse strings:

The potential rise of China as ‘lender of first resort’ fuels anxieties among G8 leaders that debt cancellation has unwittingly provided African elites with an escape mechanism from Western influence. Chinese lending and investment is widely seen as bypassing the rules that Western governments and institutions routinely impose on African countries. Furthermore, Ghana plans to issue bonds in the Eurobond market in July to raise upwards of $500million. Nigeria and other African countries look set to follow on the same path.

Africa is not the only place China is seeking financial domination. Back in 2000, Discerning the Times Digest and Newsbytes reported:

China has recently announced that it is establishing a First and Second Island Defense Lines within which it would consider its zone of influence. China has repeatedly defined that no nation can intervene in any way within its zone of influences. By announcing these lines of defense, China is establishing it as the power of this global region. (see map)

A little closer to home, Emily Schwartz Greco of the Institute for Policy Studies writes in, Chinese Influence on the Rise in Latin America:

In January and February [of 2005], Chinese Vice President Zeng Qinghong followed his boss’s visit with his own entourage of officials and top business executives. During these two aggressive trips to pursue investment in strategic areas, China stepped into potentially contentious turf when they signed an accord with Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez for future Venezuelan oil and gas exploration. Zeng also offered Venezuela a $700 million credit line for new housing construction to help reduce Venezuelan poverty, ignoring U.S. whining over Chavez’s ‘authoritarianism.’

Also very close to home, at the end of 1999, the U.S. ceded control of “two ports at each end of the [Panama] Canal [to] Hong Kong’s Hutchison Whampoa company, run by Li Ka-shing, who is closely associated with the Beijing regime…[which gave] China’s Communist Party de facto control over the most strategic waterway in the West,” according to Thomas H. Moorer, former chairman of the [U.S.] Joint Chiefs of Staff.

So, we see China has been extending it’s financial sphere of influence worldwide. In part three, we will examine China’s long term strategy, and what the strategy of the United States needs to be in order to protect the American economy.