The most powerful man on the planet dropped into visit the people in Iowa who helped launch his climb to power. No, I don’t mean President Obama, I mean Vice President Xi Jinping (shee jeen ping). In a year he will ascend to the Presidency, or as he’s known in China, Comrade Chairman of Communist Party Central Committee.
Despite a heavy diplomatic schedule, Comrade Xi insisted on stopping to visit the farm family in Iowa who put him up in their spare room for two nights in 1985. He was a minor party official from a remote agricultural province back then, seeking to improve pork production in China. He succeeded, and next year he will begin overseeing a five year plan that will leapfrog the People’s Republic past the United States as the world's dominant economic power.
To emphasize his roots in agriculture, the Chairman had a new purchasing agreement for $15 billion worth of soybeans signed by his trade representatives while he visited Iowa. China now buys every fourth row of soybeans grown in the US. These massive purchases amount to little more than a rounding error in China’s trade surplus with the US. They use a lot of the extra cash to buy up copper mines and such around the world. Those USDs end up in the cash reserves of third world countries, who, so-far, haven’t figured out that they traded the copper mine for a handful of magic beans, not soybeans.
Know as an economic reformer throughout his career, Mr Xi is also known as being very conservative on government issues. The Obama Administration was careful to show him all the pomp worthy of a world leader. The Bush Administration didn’t show this level of respect when his predecessor made the same tour just before his ascension to power. But another ten years of Reaganomics have made China into our biggest banker, and you have to be courteous to the guy who can call your loan.
The truth is that China doesn’t really have that much power over us. That is, they wouldn’t have it if our country was run by people who worked for us instead working for the transnational corporations controlled by a handful of billionaire capitalists. We don’t really borrow money from China, = no US government checks are payable in renminbi.
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