Hu has been knocking about the planet on carefully prearranged trips. He has come with a briefcase stuffed with papers to sign and is successfully closing many important deals. His latest trip has been to solidify China's relations and influences with two important future allies: Canada and Mexico.
Our neighbors and two major borders. This is a classic Go game move. Our main body of stones are now flanked on both sides with increasingly hostile stones. If we try to "flip" them we can go down in ruins. We have stones crimping China: Japan and Taiwan. We used to have South Korea, too, but have rapidly lost influence over them and now they are very questionable.
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I like reading diplomatic stories. If I had to read American ones, I would go insane since most of them are a chronicle of our blundering blunderbuss approach to getting our way which seems more and more desperate. Just this week, in preparation for the UN celebrations of their founding, Bush is busy begging Blair to help him in his PR disaster called "Hurricane Brownie." Maybe Bush can get Hu to help him, too. Hu is meeting with him. The Chinese have prepared for this by sending a top diplomat to meet quietly and secretly with Bush Sr. in Maine last month. Now they lick their chops, seeing a fatally damaged President as the person they get to dissect at their leisure.
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