How Bill Clinton and American Financiers Armed China

Thanks to Greg for this link!  Wish I had gotten to it sooner!

via Matt Stoller Blog.

In August of 1994, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Commerce, Ron Brown, flew to China to try and seal two deals for American corporations. The first was to enable Chrysler the ability to build minivans in China, and the second was to get the Chinese to buy 40 MD-90 aircraft ‘Trunkliners” from McDonnell Douglas.

The McConnell Douglas deal was particularly important to the Clinton administration for a number of reasons. The company was dying; it was badly run by financiers who lacked an appreciation for quality production. More importantly, it had lost a key military contract for the F-22 in 1986, so the government felt an obligation to find customers to prop it up. There was also politics, with Bill Clinton trying to honor his unofficial 1992 campaign slogan, “it’s the economy, stupid.” Clinton would indeed hail the deal on the eve of the 1994 midterm election.

The Chinese agreed to buy the planes, but with one caveat. They wanted a side deal; McDonnell Douglas should sell a mysterious company called the China National Aero Technology Import and Export Corporation (CATIC) a set of specialist machine tools that shape and bend aircraft parts stashed in a factory in Columbus, Ohio.

When Chinese representatives went to Columbus, Ohio, workers wouldn’t let them see the tools, because workers realized that they would lose their jobs if the tools were sold to the Chinese. The Chinese then sent a letter to the corporation saying that the deal for the Trunkliners was at a stalemate, but if the machine tools were sold to a mysterious Chinese company, well, that would have a “big influence” on whether McDonnell Douglas could close the deal on the planes.

It wasn’t just the workers who caused problems. The government could have been a hurdle for McDonnell Douglas as well, because these weren’t just any old machine tools. “According to military experts,” reported the New York Times, “the machines would enable the Chinese military to improve significantly the performance abilities -- speed, range and maneuverability -- of their aircraft. And if diverted, they could do the same for missiles and bombers.” Selling the tools wasn’t just a commercial deal, the machining equipment was subject to export controls for sensitive national security technology.

Story here. 

Once you make it past the monetization "ask" and get to the meat of the article the truth that we all know suddenly takes a bit of solidity that makes the skin crawl.

China is the Frankenstein's monster that we (the USA) created.

To old an analogy for ya?  How about this.  I'm sure you know the Terminator movies.  I'm sure you know about how we created "SKYNET" to serve us and it became sentient and then determined that humanity was the threat.

Well we created SKYNET in the form of China and now they're coming to drink our milkshake.