Nicaragua gives Chinese firm contract to build alternative to Panama Canal | World news. Nicaragua has awarded a Chinese company a 100-year concession to build an alternative to the Panama Canal, in a step that looks set to have profound geopolitical ramifications. The president of the country's national assembly, Rene Nuñez, announced the $40bn (£26bn) project, which will reinforce Beijing's growing influence on global trade and weaken US dominance over the key shipping route between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The name of the company and other details have yet to be released, but the opposition congressman Luis Callejas said the government planned to grant a 100-year lease to the Chinese operator. The national assembly will debate two bills on the project, including an outline for an environmental impact assessment, on Friday. Nicaragua's president, Daniel Ortega, said recently that the new channel would be built through the waters of Lake Nicaragua.
Additional reporting by Gareth Richards. Renewing America » Obama Slapdown on Chinese Wind Deal Sends Wrong Message. Wind turbines operate at a wind farm near Milford, Utah (George Frey/Courtesy Reuters). President Obama has become the first president in 22 years to issue a formal order blocking a foreign investment into the United States on national security grounds. The decision, which denies the acquisition of a small Oregon wind farm project by a Chinese-owned company, will unfortunately be seen as yet another signal – this time from the highest possible level — that the United States does not really want Chinese investment. And for an economy still struggling to create jobs, that’s the wrong signal to send. The action by Obama is the first presidential rejection of a foreign acquisition on security grounds since President George H.W.
Bush blocked a Chinese aerospace company from acquiring Mamco, a Seattle maker of aerospace components. The timing could hardly be worse, coming just as Chinese reluctance to enter the U.S. market seemed to have ended. Romney stirs up anti-China vote. US Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney continues to push a tough stance toward China as the US elections draw close, but observers downplayed his sharp rhetoric as pandering to voters. Romney's policy toward China is coming into focus after he advanced a set of military strategies that include arms sales to Taiwan, following previously announced blueprints mainly pointing to trade relations with Beijing.
The candidate, locked in firece competition with sitting president Barack Obama, stated that the US under his administration would maintain adequate military power with its regional partners and expand its naval force in the west Pacific, Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV reported Thursday. He also stressed that the country would provide Taiwan with enough fighters and other military facilities, according to the report.
"I don't think the governor support for Taiwan is new. "But the actual policies after taking office won't be as harsh as candidates claim during the stump speeches. Mitt Romney vu par la Chine. Paru dans leJDD Pékin montre une certaine inquiétude autour d'une élection éventuelle de Romney. (Reuters) "Les Chinois ont donné très peu d'indications sur leurs préférences pendant la campagne. Ce n'est que dans les toutes dernières semaines qu'on a pu voir monter une inquiétude à Pékin autour d'une élection éventuelle de Romney.
Il y a deux catégories de gens en Chine. Xi Jinping [le futur dirigeant chinois] s'est très peu livré. Garance Le Caisne - Le Journal du Dimanche. Chen’s friend: U.S. conveyed Chinese threat against wife. Chen Guangcheng's friend Bob Fu, president of ChinaAid, told a congressional commission Thursday that Chen only agreed to leave the U.S. Embassy in Beijing after U.S. officials conveyed a threat from the Chinese government that Chen would never see his wife again if he didn't leave the embassy that day.
Fu has been in contact with Chen directly throughout the ordeal and told the Congressional Executive Commission on China (CECC) today that he had spoken to Chen Wednesday night as Chen and his family remained in a Beijing hospital, unable to leave or receive visitors. U.S. officials have insisted that Chen left the embassy of his own volition after agreeing to the terms of a deal U.S. officials struck with the Chinese government. But Fu said Chen's real motivation was fear. "According to my conversations last night with Mr. U.S. officials deny that they conveyed any physical or legal threats to Chen. Chen may have interpreted those comments as an implicit threat, observers said.
China-US: Power in perspective. As Michael Beckley acknowledges in his reply to Mark Thirlwell, it is hard to say definitively whether America is declining economically relative to China, because it depends what you measure. On some measures it is, and on others it's not. So the next question is: which measures should we pay attention to? And that depends on why we are interested. In the present debate, flowing from Michael's excellent essay in International Security, we are interested in what the economic trends mean for America's strategic and political power, particularly in relation to China. And we are interested in that primarily because of the implications of shifts in relative power for America's management of its relationship with China.
So we have three questions to answer before we can draw strategic policy conclusions from the economic data. Let's look at them briefly in turn. Which measure? Obviously, this is only right within limits. Again, it is not clear how far this is true. How big a shift? US arms sales to Taiwan: impact on Sino-American relations. Author: Carlyle A Thayer, UNSW Canberra The Obama Administration’s decision to sell Taiwan an arms package worth $5.85 billion is a carefully calibrated decision designed to meet US legal obligations under the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979. It is also a decision that carefully calibrates the impact on Sino–American relations at a time of improved relations not only between Washington and Beijing but between Beijing and Taipei.
The Taiwan Relations Act imposes two legal obligations on the US Government. First it requires that the US ‘provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character.’ Second, it requires the United States — in reality the Pacific Command — ‘to maintain the capacity … to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardise the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan’.
The announcement of the arms sale could not come at a more delicate time. President Obama faces re-election in November. This criticism is misplaced. U.S. Challenges China on Island Chain. Why China Won’t Engage. Global Security Newswire - U.S. Wants Nuclear Force Talks With China. PrintShareEmailTwitterFacebookLinkedIn The United States hopes to foster "strategic stability" with China through talks on the two nations' nuclear arsenals and deterrence postures, Kyodo News reported Saturday (see GSN, Aug. 18). Two-way military talks have been on hold since the beginning of the year after the Obama administration signed off on a $6 billion weapons deal with Taiwan, the autonomous island nation that Beijing claims as its territory (see GSN, Feb. 2).
"We hope that, when [military exchanges] resume, this will be a priority for China, as it is for the U.S., a high-level U.S. Defense Department official told Kyodo (see GSN, June 3). The 2010 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review declared, "With China, the purpose of a dialogue on strategic stability is to provide a venue and mechanism for each side to communicate its views about the other's strategies, policies and programs on nuclear weapons and other strategic capabilities.
" "How many [submarines] will they have? 2005 : The Future ofU.S.-China Relations : Is Conflict Inevitable ? (Aaron L. Friedberg)