As an international man of mystery I have to say that I am proud of China for the way they've come around as a preeminent world power in the last decade. Just check out this list of facts I found on the internet..
#1 It was recently announced that China’s Dalian Wanda Group has bought U.S. movie theater chain AMC Entertainment for a whopping 2.6 billion dollars. This deal represents China's biggest corporate takeover of a U.S. firm ever.
#2 Earlier this month, the Federal Reserve announced that it has given approval for banks owned by the Chinese government to buy stakes in U.S.-owned banks.
#3 A few days ago Reuters reported that China is now able to completely bypass Wall Street and purchase U.S. debt directly from the U.S. Treasury Department.
#4 A recent investigation by the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services found more than one million counterfeit Chinese parts in the Department of Defense supply chain. How in the world could we be so stupid?
#5 After being bailed out by U.S. taxpayers, General Motors is currently involved in 11 joint ventures with companies owned by the Chinese government. The price for entering into many of these "joint ventures" was a transfer of "state of the art technology" from General Motors to the communist Chinese.
#6 A Chinese company known as "Sino-Michigan Properties LLC" has purchased 200 acres of land near the town of Milan, Michigan. The goal is to build a "China City" with artificial lakes, a Chinese cultural center and hundreds of housing units for Chinese citizens.
#7 As I reported on recently, corporations controlled by the Chinese government have been rapidly buying up U.S. oil and gas deposits worth billions of dollars.
#8 Chinese investors have been gobbling up real estate all over New York City. The following is from a recent Forbes article....
According to a recent report in the New York Times, investors from China are “snapping up luxury apartments” and are planning to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on commercial and residential projects like Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn. Chinese companies also have signed major leases at the Empire State Building and at 1 World Trade Center, the report said.
#9 The Chinese are also doing huge real estate deals in cities in the middle part of the country. The following example is from an article in the Toledo Blade....
Dashing Pacific Group Ltd., which has already purchased the nearby Docks restaurant complex for $2.15 million, put its $3.8 million offer to buy the southern 69 acres at the Marina District in East Toledo back on the table for approval by Toledo City Council. Additionally, Dashing Pacific Chairman Yuan Xiaohong, in a letter signed in Hangzhou, said the firm wants a two-year option to buy the decommissioned Toledo Edison power plant property on the site.
#10 According to ABC News, major road and bridge projects all over the United States are being built by Chinese companies. Meanwhile, there are millions upon millions of blue collar American workers that cannot find jobs. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent ABC News article....
In New York there is a $400 million renovation project on the Alexander Hamilton Bridge.
In California, there is a $7.2 billion project to rebuild the Bay Bridge connecting San Francisco and Oakland.
In Alaska, there is a proposal for a $190 million bridge project.
These projects sound like steps in the right direction, but much of the work is going to Chinese government-owned firms.
"When we subsidize jobs in China, we're not creating any wealth in the United States," said Scott Paul, executive director for the Alliance for American Manufacturing.
#11 The new World Trade Center tower is going to include glass that has been imported from China.
#12 The new Martin Luther King memorial on the National Mall was made in China.
#13 Check out this incredible photo which contrasts the decline of Detroit over the years with the amazing rise of Shanghai, China.
#14 A couple of years ago, a large Chinese company was considering building "a 10,000- to 30,000-acre technology zone for industry, retail cente..." just south of Boise, Idaho.
#15 Our trade deficit with China in 2011 was $295.5 billion. That was the largest trade deficit that one country has had with another country in the history of the planet.
#16 In 2011, our trade deficit with China was 28 times larger than it was back in 1990 and more than 49,000 times larger than it was back in 1985.
#17 Back in 1998, the United States had 25 percent of the world’s high-tech export market and China had just 10 percent. Today, China's high-tech exports are more than twice the size of U.S. high-tech exports.
#18 America has lost more than a quarter of all of its high-tech manufacturing jobs over the past ten years.
#19 According to the Economic Policy Institute, America is losing half a million jobs to China every single year.
#20 The U.S. spends about 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States. Does that sound like "fair trade" to you?
#21 While we allow Chinese goods to freely flood our shores, China just keeps slapping new tariffs on American-made goods. According to the New York Times, a Jeep Grand Cherokee that costs $27,490 in the United States costs about $85,000 in China thanks to all the tariffs.
#22 According to U.S. Representative Betty Sutton, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day closed down in the United States during 2010.
#23 The United States has lost an average of approximately 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month and more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities in the United States have been shut down since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
#24 The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.
#25 Between December 2000 and December 2010, 38 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Ohio were lost, 42 percent of the manufacturing jobs in North Carolina were lost and 48 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Michigan were lost.
#26 In 2010, China produced more than twice as many automobiles as the United States did.
#27 In 2010, China produced 627 million metric tons of steel. The United States only produced 80 million metric tons of steel.
#28 In 2010, China produced 7.3 million metric tons of cotton. The United States only produced 3.4 million metric tons of cotton.
#29 Today, China produces nearly twice as much beer as the United States does.
#30 85 percent of all artificial Christmas trees are made in China.
#31 China is now the number one producer of wind and solar power on the entire globe.
#32 Chinese solar panel production was about 50 times larger in 2010 than it was in 2005.
#33 Right now, China is producing more than three times as much coal as the United States does.
#34 China is now the number one supplier of components that are critical to the operation of U.S. defense systems.
#35 According to author Clyde Prestowitz, China's number one export to the U.S. is computer equipment. According to an article in U.S. News & World Report, during 2010 the number one U.S. export to China was "scrap and trash".
#36 According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades.
#37 The United States had been the leading consumer of energy on the globe for about 100 years, but during the summer of 2010 China took over the number one spot.
#38 15 years ago, China was 14th in the world in published scientific research articles. But now, China is expected to pass the United States and become number one very shortly.
#39 China now awards more doctoral degrees in engineering each year than the United States does.
#40 China now possesses the fastest supercomputer on the entire planet.
#41 China now has the world's fastest train and the world's most extensive high-speed rail network.
#42 The Chinese economy has grown 7 times faster than the U.S. economy has over the past decade.
#43 The Chinese economy is projected to be larger than the U.S. economy by 2016.
#44 One economist is projecting that the Chinese economy will be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040
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