There was an article in the 'Guardian' of 15th October, where it is reported that the Chinese sovereign wealth fund has bought a 1 billion pound sterling stake in BP.(1) This means that the fund has built up a stake of some 1% in the oil giant. Not much, however, considering the importance of BP, it is worth taking note of and all the more so considering the Chinese stake in the investment bank Morgan Stanley.(2) The Chinese are buying into two of the three pillars that have supported Anglo-Saxon domination of the world for the last century (3) and if we think that there would be some trepidation because of this in Washington and London a report in this week's 'New York Times' would appear to indicate otherwise.
It seems that the IMF does not have the money, for "Uncle Sam" and friends to buy their sycophants and set the conditions that will keep a number of countries like the Ukraine on their side and convince countries like Belarus to come over. This, of course, is standard procedure and facilitates the rape of those countries assets, and sets the West up strategically for the "Great Game". Now, we have Gordon Brown asking the Chinese for money to support the IMF.(4) Looking not only to the Gulf states for help Brown says, "“China also has very substantial reserves,” he added. “There are a number of countries that actually can do quite a lot in the immediate future to make sure that the international community has sufficient resources to support countries that get themselves into difficulties.”(5) The question, of course, arises, why should the Chinese help? Remember that the head of the World Bank has always been an American and the head of the IMF a European and that, as we all know, the Americans and the Europeans have been running the show for a pretty long time, while, as already stated setting their "conditions" and robbing the "debtors" of their resources.
The Chinese are in Africa, giving soft loans and discovering that after the conditions set by the IMF, conditions that have kept that continent and, indeed, countries all over the world firmly in the West's pocket, those soft loans, and the Chinese presence that comes with them, are viewed by many countries as the lesser evil and it could even be that the Chinese model is becoming an alternative to a financial system, which, has been in place to support the West's hegemony. Of course, it might be that the West is ready to share the global hegemony cake with the Chinese and ready because it doesn't have an alternative. Nevertheless, while the Chinese might be tempted to help, we can be sure that if they do, this will, indeed, entail a reordering of the world financial system and, a priori, at least some sharing of global power.
Such a scenario can function as long as there is no real clash of geopolitical interests between the West and China. However, while this might ultimately be good news for the strategists in Washington and Beijing it will not be welcome in Africa and in those other places where the Chinese are providing soft loans. China and the West as global partners and one is reminded of the last scene in George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' when the pigs and their former enemies meet to do business, "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
1 http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/apr/15/bp.sovereignwealthfunds
2 see http://thediplomatabroad.blogspot.com/search?q=morgan+stanley
3 see http://thediplomatabroad.blogspot.com/2008/06/century-of-war.html
4 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/29/business/worldbusiness/29franc.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1225562511-xHPsNNQZhMqf2g6HNJV+Kg
5 Ibid
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