horseshit, dogzilla. as usual.
there are issues here that cut across factions within the oligarchy, that implicate both of the two right wings that jockey for power in this single-party state. this blog entry, by adam minter (who identifies as "an american write in shanghai") is pretty interesting, and provides a glimpse of the kind of interests that are really affected by this release:
Quote:
A brief note on wikileaks and sheltered State Dept employees.
Filed under:Uncategorized — posted by Adam on November 30, 2010 @ 10:57 am
Earlier today the New Yorker’s Evan Osnos blogged disappointment (shared by many, including me) at the lack of juicy wikileaks about China and the Chinese leadership (ala the Qadaffi “voluptuous nurse” cable). And then, as if it were meant to be, wikileaks released the “Shenyang Cable,” complete with a section entitled “Princelings Behaving Badly.” (for those who don’t follow these things – ‘Princeling‘ is the nickname given to the children of high-ranking Chinese officials). The cable is entertaining/interesting for two reasons. First, it describes how the Princelings secure business deals in North Korea. And second, it describes two Chinese companies competing for sole mining rights to North Korea’s largest copper mine. One of those companies, Wanxiang Group, is described as close to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. And then we get this:
Without naming names, XXXXXXXXXX also suggested the strong possibility that someone had made a payment (on the order of USD 10,000) to secure the premier’s support.
That’s right: somebody at the US Consulate in Shenyang reported the “strong possibility” that China’s premier had been bribed for less than the cost of a used Buick in Shanghai. That is to say, somebody at the US Consulate in Shenyang – probably several somebodies – believes that the Premier can be bribed for less than the cost of a used Buick in Shanghai. Now, you don’t need to know anything about graft in China, much less world leaders, or Wen Jiabao, to know that $10,000 not only wouldn’t get the job done, it’d be viewed as an insult and an automatic disqualification from this any other mining contract. So I’m going to go out on a limb here: there’s simply no way that happened. None. Zero. Zilch. Now, is it possible that Wen has a “relationship” with Wanxiang? Sure. But not the one described in the cable.
And this gets to something that I think is going to become increasingly, uncomfortably obvious as more and more of these cables are released: US State Department employees in overseas posts often don’t know very much about the countries in which they’re posted. This is the result of a number of factors, not least of which is that they’re often sheltered – I mean truly isolated – from the countries in which they’re posted, living on upper-middle class wages in secure compounds where they have little to no contact with anyone but officials and employees of major US companies. US Consular employees in Shanghai, for example, live in serviced apartments at the Portman Ritz-Carlton (at US taxpayer expense), and often socialize accordingly. I don’t know the situation in Shenyang, but I feel comfortable suggesting that the person who felt comfortable reporting the alleged $10,000 bribe doesn’t regularly associate with people doing business in Shenyang (expat or otherwise). If s/he did, there’s no way that level of stupidity would have made its way into the cable.
That’s why I’m taking much of what I read in these cables – out of China or elsewhere – with a giant grain of salt (such as yesterday’s ridiculous ‘revelation’ that google’s problems in China are to due to a personal vendetta launched by a Politburo member). In the case of the Shenyang Consulate, at least, there’s now little reason to believe that the employees are equipped with even a budget-grade bullshit detector. If the State Department has anything to be embarrassed about, it’s not that these cables leaked, but that somebody once took them seriously enough to label as secret.
|
Shanghai Scrap A brief note on wikileaks and sheltered State Dept employees.
the main interpretation is that the functionaries who fashion these messages are often embarrassingly-to-dangerously out of touch with the places where they are posted.
they can't distinguish the plausible from obvious horseshit.
that means that the state department---and by extension the united states---is flying more or less blind.
because the people who work the gears aren't always good at what they're doing. in part because of the arrogance and jingoism built into the educational system in the good ole us of a that considers learning languages other than english to be a dilution of the precious bodily fluids of english-speaking. the parochialism that makes american conservatives possible. but i digress.
this is very bad indeed for a hegemon. bad enough that you've got a bellicose empire. it's **really** bad when that empire is stupid because it staffs it's interactive nodes with the naive and under-educated.
this critique is directed at permanent levels of the bureaucracy, so at the system itself, not just at the rotating political talking-heads who act as if they recreate the whole show every 4 years.
so this is the apparatus itself that's being embarrassed here.
whence alot of the screeching and hand-waving and chicken-little stuff.