Note - from June 24th 2009, this blog has migrated from Blogger to a self-hosted version. Click here to go straight there.
How's this for interesting. Did you know -
- Sudan's largest trading partner is CHINA
- the largest foreign investor in Sudan's oil industry is... CHINA
- that US$6billion was spent last month buying Canada's largest mining company... by CHINA
- that there are several thousand PLA troops in Southern Sudan (the PLA is the People's Liberation Army... from CHINA)
- that a UN Security Council Resolution on Darfur - imposing sanctions on Sudan's oil industry - was shelved after a threatened veto by... CHINA
China has been quietly moving to shore up its geostrategic position, particularly with reference to pre-empting (get it?) any US plans to fabricate an excuse for "intervention" in the oil-rich Horn of Africa.
That is why there's been no rush for the US to "liberate" Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Sudan or any of the other oil-rich countries in Africa. Basically, if the US tried to bring "Freedom Freedom Freedom OI" (in exchange for the oil, of course) to any of those countries, China would retaliate.
To paraphrase Monty Python... They're so inscrutable... never try and scrute a Chinaman.
The US has been watching the wrong ball.
Also, there is a very interesting article in the Washington Post (read it here) which shows that foreign purchases of US Treasuries absolutely evaporated in September, and furthermore contains this interesting snippet:
The Chinese -- whose Treasury holdings have tripled since 2000, to $172 billion -- have already begun buying more euro-denominated assets, said Rebecca Patterson, a senior currency strategist at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
Earlier this year, both China and India diverted tens of billions of their dollar holdings to domestic projects, with China pumping $45 billion into its banks and India devoting $15 billion to infrastructure projects.
