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Sat, now you'll get your wish.
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Posted 12/2/2016 23:52 (#5672304 - in reply to #5672148)
Subject: RE:Zen, try to think of it like the Chinese might.



Death comes to us all. Life's but a walking shadow		Let's just suppose an island say the size of Cuba but US territory, was fifty miles off the coast of Virgina and at the end of the Civil War, some Confederates fled to it and occupied it with the military support of Britain. Let's suppose that at the time the US didn't have the military capacity to prevail. Can you imagine the resentment that would fester here?
Every nation makes the mistake of somehow believing that they alone have the right to be arrogant and unreasonable while every other nation has to be rational and only interested in their economic self-interest. I'll give you an example. Britain just voted for Brexit and if you listened to the advocates of Brexit they believed that the Europeans would negotiate a very generous trade agreement just because Britain is a significant market for European goods. They still believed this despite the fact that the Europeans have closed ranks and adamantly said otherwise. Now, some months later, senior British government officials concerned with Brexit are quietly starting to suggest that: Whoa, wait a minute, maybe the Europeans really do deeply resent all the mean and untrue things we said about them and are determined to punish us.
That's not the way the world works, people are people and they don't have to be completely rational just because you ( or I) think they should be.
Now, all that aside, what might the Chinese response be? If I were the Chinese, I would move aggressively to expand soybean production in South American and Africa. There are still vast acreages available in Brazil and the Brazilians just lack the resources. Soybeans will grow perfectly well in parts of Africa, I know because I worked on soybean agronomy in Africa. It will be a longer term more difficult project but there happens to be a good deal of under-utilized land in Africa. And as we saw, when the South Africans moved into [arts of Nigeria and applied modern farming practices productivity skyrocketed.
But to your point about the arms sales. The Chinese may have tolerated those arms sales because the US didn't directly and overtly repudiate their territorial claim to Taiwan. Remember, Nixon's idea was that eventually China & Taiwan would evolve to the point that an armed confrontation would no longer be necessary. China would mature politically and Taiwan would naturally re-integrate. Trump's phone call just put that all into question.
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