Hello, thanks for the many sources. It just seems like everyone here hates Bush, and the War. I beleive that if we leave Iraq more bad would happen then good. I beleive that they have social, and political problmes. And yes, you might be right that we just invaded them with no probler documents? But still we are there trying to help get a stable goverment for them, and work out there problems, so they do not invade us. And I do not beleive that everyone is Iraq is bad, but there are still many terrist groups that hate the USA, and yes us invading them most likely just makes them hate us more. But I think that we should be there, and we just all have our own opinions. Thanks.
A letter to the People of America
- Thread starter moghrabi
- Start date
Re: RE: A letter to the People of America
Would you mind telling me which building of yours Iraq destroyed? Which Americans did Iraq kill?
You've got it backwards. The American military killed Iraqis and destroyed their whole entire infrastructure. Iraq did not touch American soil.
MarineSis1010 said:
Would you mind telling me which building of yours Iraq destroyed? Which Americans did Iraq kill?
You've got it backwards. The American military killed Iraqis and destroyed their whole entire infrastructure. Iraq did not touch American soil.
Re: RE: A letter to the People of America
First, I would like to say to you that I hope your brother comes home safely and soon.
Second, Why do people hate Bush? People hate Bush because he is the biggest liar in this world. He is the biggest threat in this world. He is the most dangerous dictator in this world. From what I have read from your post, you really believe that Iraqis destroyed your buildings on 9/11. This tells me that you, as American, believe the lies he gave you before invading Iraq.
The people who hit your towers have nothing to do with Iraq. Yet, he lied to you to have your support to invade a country that is rich in Oil so he can get richer. Another reason for invading Iraq and looking strong when he caught Saddam, is his failure to capture his real enemy, Bin laden.
I really hope you start watching news sources other than FOX news because they are the only media outlet that still believes that Saddam flew planes into the Manhattan towers.
Marines said:
First, I would like to say to you that I hope your brother comes home safely and soon.
Second, Why do people hate Bush? People hate Bush because he is the biggest liar in this world. He is the biggest threat in this world. He is the most dangerous dictator in this world. From what I have read from your post, you really believe that Iraqis destroyed your buildings on 9/11. This tells me that you, as American, believe the lies he gave you before invading Iraq.
The people who hit your towers have nothing to do with Iraq. Yet, he lied to you to have your support to invade a country that is rich in Oil so he can get richer. Another reason for invading Iraq and looking strong when he caught Saddam, is his failure to capture his real enemy, Bin laden.
I really hope you start watching news sources other than FOX news because they are the only media outlet that still believes that Saddam flew planes into the Manhattan towers.
Yep, agreed moghrabi. So far, I have not seen any structural link between Iraq and Saddam Hussein on the one side and Al Qaida on the other side.
Re: RE: A letter to the People of America
Here, let me help. It is not an illegal war. He did not lie about it. Make more sense now?
Matty said:
Here, let me help. It is not an illegal war. He did not lie about it. Make more sense now?
I don't remember the UN giving the thumbs up. Just america going at it all but alone like vietnam. It was an illegal war.
Re: RE: A letter to the People of America
No Paco. It does not make any sense. Where are the WMD Bush talked about? What is the relationship between 9/11 and Iraq? Why is Bush backing off from the Halbaja massacre? Who gave your dictator the right to invade another country? Why Iraq and not Sudan? OIL perhaps?
This whole thing is illegal and your dictator stole the first election from Al Gore. you know, I know it, the whole world know his is a crook, a Maniac, a killer.
Want more?
Paco said:
No Paco. It does not make any sense. Where are the WMD Bush talked about? What is the relationship between 9/11 and Iraq? Why is Bush backing off from the Halbaja massacre? Who gave your dictator the right to invade another country? Why Iraq and not Sudan? OIL perhaps?
This whole thing is illegal and your dictator stole the first election from Al Gore. you know, I know it, the whole world know his is a crook, a Maniac, a killer.
Want more?
MarineSis1010, do Americans ever study history? I mean really study it? How many Americans know, for example, that the US overthrew a democratically elected government in Guatemala so that the United Fruit Company could grow bananas cheaply? Do you guys study that stuff? Or does it all have to be filtered through the patriotism, wave the American flag nonsense?
Yes, I do study history. It was nice getting all of your opinions on things. But I just have different thought and I'm not changing mine, and you guys are not changing yours. Nice talking to you all. Thanks. And if your saying waving the American Flag is nonsense, I beleive its a symbol of Freedom. Thanks Again.
Re: RE: A letter to the People of America
Not sure why I have to keep explaining this…
WMD were not found does not equal a lie. World statesmen and intelligence agencies from across the globe accepted as fact Saddams ownership of WMD. Have you ever been wrong, mog? Should you be called a liar every time you act on information that is inaccurate? Information that most people believe?
You must have cranked up your way-back machine and saw the following:
Bush and his cabinet are sitting around one day. Bush says, “Hey fellas, I’ve decided to attack Iraq. Now, I know y’all think there are WMD in Iraq, but I’m her to tell ya it ain’t so. Dem Iraqis got all that oil over there and I mean to have some of it.”
A shocked hush falls on the room. Rumsfeld and Powell are astounded!
Condi says, “But Mr. President, what will we say to the world when we attack and find no WMD? What will your legacy be?”
“Damn the legacy, girl!” responds Bush. “It won’t matter one wit in fifty years from now when American teenagers are learning in their history classes how there were no WMD in Iraq. Yeah, I’ll look like a damn fool, but so what?”
Come on, mog. Bush lied? He knew there were no WMD and he attacked anyway knowing the world would discover he was wrong? So on one hand he is one of the smartest MF in the world because only he and Saddam knew there were no WMD. Then he suddenly got stupid and decided to show the whole world that Saddam didn’t have WMD, but only after he put his reputation on the line in front of the entire world by saying, “Yup, that ole Saddam, he gots lotsa WMD and we’s gotta take it away aforn he hurts someone.”
Yeah. Right. Keep believing that shit.
moghrabi said:
Not sure why I have to keep explaining this…
WMD were not found does not equal a lie. World statesmen and intelligence agencies from across the globe accepted as fact Saddams ownership of WMD. Have you ever been wrong, mog? Should you be called a liar every time you act on information that is inaccurate? Information that most people believe?
You must have cranked up your way-back machine and saw the following:
Bush and his cabinet are sitting around one day. Bush says, “Hey fellas, I’ve decided to attack Iraq. Now, I know y’all think there are WMD in Iraq, but I’m her to tell ya it ain’t so. Dem Iraqis got all that oil over there and I mean to have some of it.”
A shocked hush falls on the room. Rumsfeld and Powell are astounded!
Condi says, “But Mr. President, what will we say to the world when we attack and find no WMD? What will your legacy be?”
“Damn the legacy, girl!” responds Bush. “It won’t matter one wit in fifty years from now when American teenagers are learning in their history classes how there were no WMD in Iraq. Yeah, I’ll look like a damn fool, but so what?”
Come on, mog. Bush lied? He knew there were no WMD and he attacked anyway knowing the world would discover he was wrong? So on one hand he is one of the smartest MF in the world because only he and Saddam knew there were no WMD. Then he suddenly got stupid and decided to show the whole world that Saddam didn’t have WMD, but only after he put his reputation on the line in front of the entire world by saying, “Yup, that ole Saddam, he gots lotsa WMD and we’s gotta take it away aforn he hurts someone.”
Yeah. Right. Keep believing that shit.
Actually that isn't true. UN weapons inspectors said time and again that there were no WMD. Scott Ritter said it, Hans Blix said it and when Joeseph Wilson said it the Bush White House committed an act of treason by outing his wife as a CIA agent.
When Powell went to the UN with cartoon drawings of trucks as the only proof he had of WMD, the entire world made fun of him.
Bush and his gang were sure they'd find something to justify their illegal invasion, but the intelligence wasn't there to back it up (no pun intended) and the world knew it. That's why you couldn't build a real coalition and that's why you couldn't get UN approval.
There's been a lot of documentation of the Bushites wanting to invade Iraq before they even got to power...PNAC documents, the letter that Wolfowitz sent to Bush Sr. when he was president, various stories that have come from insiders.
Bush wanted to go to war Paco. He lied to do it. He thought he could justify it later, but he hasn't been able to. You might be able to pass his mismanagement of the US economy off as a mistake, but Iraq was on purpose.
Bah! No one believed 2 or 3 UN inspectors. Not in the face of intelligence from all nations saying the opposite. Not when he was witnessed by the world to have previously used them. Not in light of the Deufler report that it was Saddam's intent to make the world think he had them.
RE: A letter to the Peopl
Most of the world believed the inspectors, Paco. That's why you ended up with a coalition that everybody laughs at. Your president lied to you and your media helped him. The rest of us tried to tell you, but you wouldn't listen.
Now you've got a mess to deal with and your leaders are talking about making it bigger by going into Syria and you're asking for the world to help you. Too bad. You screwed the world. You broke the laws. You wouldn't listen to reason or fact. Now the US is begging for help even while you deny past mistakes and continue to lie to yourselves and the world.
I don't think you'll be getting a whole lot of help in Iraq, Paco. Not until you start taking responsibility for what you did.
Most of the world believed the inspectors, Paco. That's why you ended up with a coalition that everybody laughs at. Your president lied to you and your media helped him. The rest of us tried to tell you, but you wouldn't listen.
Now you've got a mess to deal with and your leaders are talking about making it bigger by going into Syria and you're asking for the world to help you. Too bad. You screwed the world. You broke the laws. You wouldn't listen to reason or fact. Now the US is begging for help even while you deny past mistakes and continue to lie to yourselves and the world.
I don't think you'll be getting a whole lot of help in Iraq, Paco. Not until you start taking responsibility for what you did.
Every day leading up to the war .... Bush and The Boys kept raising the bar.
Let's not forget the first inspection teams of earlier times. Let's not forget that it was proven that the CIA illegally monitored every action and every meeting these inspection teams had. Remember Scott Ritter and that clown from Australia?
During the lead-up to the war .... the U.S. kept raising the standards which were to be used for inspectors. First it was that the U.S. only wanted to inspect weapons factories and plants.
When Saddam agreed to that .... the U.S. raised the bar. In the end, the U.S. was even asking to search Saddam's home.
What leader of any country would agree to that?
What leader of any country could still hold his head high after allowing the U.S. (CIA) access to all government departments and even the leaders home?
Look into the future ..... China, at this very moment is negotiating with Canada for oil exports. Canada will sell it's oil to the highest bidder. China is outbidding the U.S. for natural resources and in every other sector of Canada's economy.
The U.S. can not compete against China. Impossible! It's just a fact.
The U.S. could of just sat back and let it happen. Bush could of played fair (by world standards) or set out upon an expansion of empire and to do it now before China did.
If I was an American .... and if I had children and was thinking of their futures .... I'd be over there stealing as much oil as I could.
If Bush succeeds ..... make no mistake, he will go down in history as the greatest president of all time.
The rest of the world will resent it .... but Americans will have a "secure" source of oil. The U.S. expects to use 20% more oil in the next 10 years. China expects to use 40% more.
But, I'm not an American. I'm Canadian and I know that the same planners of the Iraq war are setting their eyes upon Canada's water.
This is why I'm so outspoken about Iraq. Americans need our water more than they need Iraqi oil.
Calm
Let's not forget the first inspection teams of earlier times. Let's not forget that it was proven that the CIA illegally monitored every action and every meeting these inspection teams had. Remember Scott Ritter and that clown from Australia?
During the lead-up to the war .... the U.S. kept raising the standards which were to be used for inspectors. First it was that the U.S. only wanted to inspect weapons factories and plants.
When Saddam agreed to that .... the U.S. raised the bar. In the end, the U.S. was even asking to search Saddam's home.
What leader of any country would agree to that?
What leader of any country could still hold his head high after allowing the U.S. (CIA) access to all government departments and even the leaders home?
Look into the future ..... China, at this very moment is negotiating with Canada for oil exports. Canada will sell it's oil to the highest bidder. China is outbidding the U.S. for natural resources and in every other sector of Canada's economy.
The U.S. can not compete against China. Impossible! It's just a fact.
The U.S. could of just sat back and let it happen. Bush could of played fair (by world standards) or set out upon an expansion of empire and to do it now before China did.
If I was an American .... and if I had children and was thinking of their futures .... I'd be over there stealing as much oil as I could.
If Bush succeeds ..... make no mistake, he will go down in history as the greatest president of all time.
The rest of the world will resent it .... but Americans will have a "secure" source of oil. The U.S. expects to use 20% more oil in the next 10 years. China expects to use 40% more.
But, I'm not an American. I'm Canadian and I know that the same planners of the Iraq war are setting their eyes upon Canada's water.
This is why I'm so outspoken about Iraq. Americans need our water more than they need Iraqi oil.
Calm
This is what the U.S. is competing against.
I posted the complete article because it's at the NewYorkTimes and yuh gotta register to read it.
In Roaring China, Sweaters Are West of Socks City
By David Barboza
December 24, 2004
You probably have never heard of this factory town in coastal China, and there is no reason why you should have. But it fills your sock drawer.
Datang produces an astounding nine billion pairs of socks each year - more than one set for every person on the planet. People here fondly call it Socks City, and its annual socks festival attracts 100,000 buyers from around the world.
Southeast from here is Shenzhou, which is the world's necktie capital. To the west is Sweater City and Kid's Clothing City. To the south, in the low-rent district, is Underwear City.
This remarkable specialization, one city for each drawer in your bureau, reflects the economies of scale and intense concentration that have helped turn China into a garment behemoth. On Jan. 1, a new trade regime will end the decades-old system of country-by-country quotas that divide the world's exports among roughly 150 countries. Now, China is banking on its immense size and efficient operators to grab an even larger share of the world's clothing orders.
Neither Adam Smith nor Karl Marx could possibly have imagined that this kind of capitalism would evolve from a communist system in quite this way, with an obscure town in the middle of nowhere becoming the world's socks capital. But these days, buyers from New York to Tokyo want to be able to buy 500,000 pairs of socks all at once, or 300,000 neckties, 100,000 children's jackets, or 50,000 size 36B bras. And increasingly, the places that best accommodate those kinds of orders are China's giant new specialty cities.
The abolition of quotas is expected to accelerate this trend over the next decade or so, particularly under the guidance of China's visible hand. The niche cities reflect China's ability to form "lump" economies, where clusters or networks of businesses feed off each other, building technologies and enjoying the benefits of concentrated support centers - like the button capital nearby, which furnishes most of the buttons on the world's shirts, pants and jackets.
The new era, thus, offers a glimpse into how China's fast-paced economy is developing into more than just a beehive of individual private enterprises. Beyond the entrepreneurial vigor so palpable here, the textile business is a prime example of how the Chinese government's attempt to guide development more indirectly through local planning instead of outright state ownership is starting to pay off in a big way.
China is not just becoming the leader of the pack. In many ways, it hopes to run away with as much of the market as possible.
New import limits by the United States, along with other external and internal forces, are expected to hamper China's progress in apparel and textiles for several years, if not longer. That should allow several other countries to maintain vigorous garment industries as well. But there is little question that China will ultimately be the dominant force in the business, and the growth of its industrial enclaves here highlights just how powerful a force China's industries are becoming in almost every sector they have entered.
In the late 1970's, Datang was little more than a rice farming village with 1,000 people, who gathered in small groups and stitched socks together at home, and then sold them in baskets along the highway.
Back then, government officials branded Datang's sock makers as capitalists and ordered them to stop selling socks. Now, they produce over a third of the world's output, and the government has nothing but praise for such entrepreneurs and their domination of the sock business.
"If the restrictions are dropped, there'll be even more production here," says one government official, Weiming Feng, the town's deputy party secretary and an official at the city's sock market.
Signs of Datang's rise as a socks capital are everywhere. The center of town is filled with a huge government-financed marketplace for socks. The rice paddies have given way to rows of paved streets lined with cookie-cutter factories. Banners promoting socks are draped across buildings. And each year, Datang is decorated with balloons and flags for the annual sock fair.
And rags-to-riches tales abound in Datang. Just ask Dong Ying Hong, who in the 1970's gave up a $9-a-month job as an elementary-school teacher to make socks at home. Now, she is the owner of Zhejiang Socks - and a sock millionaire.
Hai Yun Shi, the 41-year-old founder of Hongyun Socks, has a similar tale.
"I started out making socks by hand when I was 18," he said at the company's headquarters. "In '96 we founded this company. Now, we have a contract with Wal-Mart."
These kinds of gains have sharply eroded America's old sock-making might. American textile companies filed a petition earlier this year asking Washington to place limits on Chinese sock imports. Hoping to ease trade tensions, the Chinese government said in early December that it would voluntarily add tariffs on some of its own textile and apparel exports to reduce their competitive thrust.
That is one reason, among others, why many specialists believe that China's wallop will not come all at once.
"It won't happen overnight," said Bruce Rockowitz, president of Li & Fung, a Hong Kong company that is one of the world's largest apparel distributors. "It's not a big movement to China right now for retailers. There's too much uncertainty."
Smaller countries, like Bangladesh and Cambodia - which feared they could not keep up with China - are breathing easier. At least for now.
Still, China already accounts for about 16 percent of all apparel imports into the United States. And several studies project that in the next few years, once all the limits are lifted, that figure could soar to 50 percent to 70 percent.
"There's no question, at the end of the day, China ends up a much bigger player in the global apparel business," said David Weil, an associate professor of economics at Boston University.
Textile and apparel makers in China have long been preparing for the coming boom. In recent years, they have invested billions of dollars in new factories along the country's eastern seaboard, particularly here in the Yangtze River Delta.
Many of the old government-owned operations are gone. Private enterprises are importing high-end machinery and luring millions of peasants from the countryside.
Since the early 1980's, when China began moving to a market economy, much of its competitive advantage was built on low-cost labor. Companies spend about 92 cents an hour for each worker in China, versus $1.20 in Thailand, $1.70 in Mexico and about $21.80 in the United States, according to a study by Goldman Sachs. Among big exporters, only India, at about 70 cents an hour, is cheaper.
Investors from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea were among the first to come. But in recent years, Chinese entrepreneurs set up their own shops, starting out with small stitching operations and quickly expanding into gigantic factories.
For instance, Shengzhou, now popularly known in Chinese as International Necktie City, developed after a Hong Kong investor moved his necktie operations there in 1985 and brought modern tie-making techniques to the city. That was only a few years after China opened itself to capitalism when Deng Xiaoping in 1978 declared, "To get rich is glorious."
Later, some of the company's managers broke away to start their own tie companies. And within a decade, Shengzhou was awash in tie makers and suppliers.
Similar stories can be heard throughout the province of Zhejiang, which is considered one of this country's most enterprising regions.
But textile specialists say China's boom is not simply the product of the newfound entrepreneurialism that is sweeping this country; it is also the nation's ability to form what are called lump economies, focused on one product.
Savvy entrepreneurs started out by luring suppliers, like fabric, dye or tool makers, to their cities, and as these clusters grew, they attracted more local investors who competed by trying to further specialize in socks or jeans production.
"The clusters are getting more and more specialized," says Qingliang Gu, a professor of textile economics at Donghua University in Shanghai. "It's a little like Italy, where you have the city of Como making silk fabric, Vicenza with fine wool and Veneto for knitting."
The Chinese government has also played a crucial role, opening huge swaths of land for development, forming giant industrial parks, doling out tax benefits and developing the infrastructure and transportation networks needed to move products quickly to market.
"The textile cities started initially from the spontaneous development of private companies," said Chunyi Xie, an economist at the Shanghai Garment Trade Association. "But when it reached certain dimensions it drew attention from the government."
Private companies, with the support of the government, now build huge textile factory complexes, complete with dormitories, hospitals and even curfews to replace the state role in providing food, shelter and health care, along with close supervision. Many textile companies in the province of Jiangsu house and feed thousands of migrant workers who are bused in from the countryside, often for three- or four-year factory stints.
The campus of the Huafang Group, one of China's largest textile companies, has over 100 factory buildings, 30,000 employees and round-the-clock operations.
On any day, it teems with more than 20,000 workers, who live free of charge in Huafang's dormitories. Conditions are hardly heavenly, but they are often a step up for these workers, who are mostly young women from poorer inland provinces like Anhui or Henan. Many of them come here after high school, intending to stay for a few years before returning home to be married.
Then, after those women return home, another 10,000 or so are bused in from the countryside, beginning yet another cycle in the pool of migrant labor that perpetually feeds China's bustling mills.
"When we need new workers," said Wei Xin Shi, a Huafang Group executive, "we just announce it and people here call home and tell their friends to come to work at our factories."
Yun Liu, 23, is one of those workers. She left a small town in northern Jiangsu four years ago. Now, she makes $130 a month in Huafang's cotton spinning mill, where she spins raw cotton into fine threads eight hours a day.
"I really like being here," she said one afternoon outside the factory. "It's a stable job, and I like the environment."
Few places on earth can match the sheer scale and variety of textile and apparel companies clustering in this region.
"In terms of vertical supply chain, China has no competition," says Ruizhe Sun, president of the China Textile Information Center, a government-sponsored agency in Beijing. "We have button makers, fabric makers, thread makers, zipper makers, you name it."
That situation is luring investors and competitors from other parts of the world.
"A few years ago, when I came here there were no Italians," said Ellen Zhou, a Chinese citizen now working for a textile company based in Thiene, Italy. "Now they're everywhere, in the hotels, at the cafes."
Chinese textile executives, however, are well aware of the risks of overexpansion. And there are other problems looming as well. The market for labor has tightened in the past year, pushing up wages.
Companies and even government officials have long ferried migrant workers into Zhangjiagang from the nearby province of Anhui, many of whom were willing to work for $4 a day. But recently some factories have been struggling to find workers, and many executives say they expect wages to rise.
"We feel labor costs are going up," Jianhong Gu, vice general manager of Pukun Textile, a Zhangjiagang suit maker whose factories operate 24 hours a day. "There's tremendous competition."
Moreover, foreign designers and retailers are keen to keep a network of business ties with other countries with relatively modern factories, like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Fred Abernathy, a researcher at the Center for Textile and Apparel Research at Harvard, says retailers in the United States will continue to buy quantities of textiles and apparel close to home, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean, because of the need for "just in time" delivery for some items.
He also expects specialty clothing and textiles operations to continue to survive in New York, North Carolina, France and Italy. But, he concedes, "China will gain over the long run."
Jinfei Wang, the chairman of the Jiangsu Diao Garment factory in Tongzhou, just outside Nantong, says there's no doubt about that.
"I've been to factories all over the world," he said in a recent interview while walking his own bustling factory floor, observing women's suits destined for J. C. Penney stores. "And we can compete with any of them. Without restrictions, certainly China is going to be No. 1."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/24/business/worldbusiness/24china.html
I posted the complete article because it's at the NewYorkTimes and yuh gotta register to read it.
In Roaring China, Sweaters Are West of Socks City
By David Barboza
December 24, 2004
You probably have never heard of this factory town in coastal China, and there is no reason why you should have. But it fills your sock drawer.
Datang produces an astounding nine billion pairs of socks each year - more than one set for every person on the planet. People here fondly call it Socks City, and its annual socks festival attracts 100,000 buyers from around the world.
Southeast from here is Shenzhou, which is the world's necktie capital. To the west is Sweater City and Kid's Clothing City. To the south, in the low-rent district, is Underwear City.
This remarkable specialization, one city for each drawer in your bureau, reflects the economies of scale and intense concentration that have helped turn China into a garment behemoth. On Jan. 1, a new trade regime will end the decades-old system of country-by-country quotas that divide the world's exports among roughly 150 countries. Now, China is banking on its immense size and efficient operators to grab an even larger share of the world's clothing orders.
Neither Adam Smith nor Karl Marx could possibly have imagined that this kind of capitalism would evolve from a communist system in quite this way, with an obscure town in the middle of nowhere becoming the world's socks capital. But these days, buyers from New York to Tokyo want to be able to buy 500,000 pairs of socks all at once, or 300,000 neckties, 100,000 children's jackets, or 50,000 size 36B bras. And increasingly, the places that best accommodate those kinds of orders are China's giant new specialty cities.
The abolition of quotas is expected to accelerate this trend over the next decade or so, particularly under the guidance of China's visible hand. The niche cities reflect China's ability to form "lump" economies, where clusters or networks of businesses feed off each other, building technologies and enjoying the benefits of concentrated support centers - like the button capital nearby, which furnishes most of the buttons on the world's shirts, pants and jackets.
The new era, thus, offers a glimpse into how China's fast-paced economy is developing into more than just a beehive of individual private enterprises. Beyond the entrepreneurial vigor so palpable here, the textile business is a prime example of how the Chinese government's attempt to guide development more indirectly through local planning instead of outright state ownership is starting to pay off in a big way.
China is not just becoming the leader of the pack. In many ways, it hopes to run away with as much of the market as possible.
New import limits by the United States, along with other external and internal forces, are expected to hamper China's progress in apparel and textiles for several years, if not longer. That should allow several other countries to maintain vigorous garment industries as well. But there is little question that China will ultimately be the dominant force in the business, and the growth of its industrial enclaves here highlights just how powerful a force China's industries are becoming in almost every sector they have entered.
In the late 1970's, Datang was little more than a rice farming village with 1,000 people, who gathered in small groups and stitched socks together at home, and then sold them in baskets along the highway.
Back then, government officials branded Datang's sock makers as capitalists and ordered them to stop selling socks. Now, they produce over a third of the world's output, and the government has nothing but praise for such entrepreneurs and their domination of the sock business.
"If the restrictions are dropped, there'll be even more production here," says one government official, Weiming Feng, the town's deputy party secretary and an official at the city's sock market.
Signs of Datang's rise as a socks capital are everywhere. The center of town is filled with a huge government-financed marketplace for socks. The rice paddies have given way to rows of paved streets lined with cookie-cutter factories. Banners promoting socks are draped across buildings. And each year, Datang is decorated with balloons and flags for the annual sock fair.
And rags-to-riches tales abound in Datang. Just ask Dong Ying Hong, who in the 1970's gave up a $9-a-month job as an elementary-school teacher to make socks at home. Now, she is the owner of Zhejiang Socks - and a sock millionaire.
Hai Yun Shi, the 41-year-old founder of Hongyun Socks, has a similar tale.
"I started out making socks by hand when I was 18," he said at the company's headquarters. "In '96 we founded this company. Now, we have a contract with Wal-Mart."
These kinds of gains have sharply eroded America's old sock-making might. American textile companies filed a petition earlier this year asking Washington to place limits on Chinese sock imports. Hoping to ease trade tensions, the Chinese government said in early December that it would voluntarily add tariffs on some of its own textile and apparel exports to reduce their competitive thrust.
That is one reason, among others, why many specialists believe that China's wallop will not come all at once.
"It won't happen overnight," said Bruce Rockowitz, president of Li & Fung, a Hong Kong company that is one of the world's largest apparel distributors. "It's not a big movement to China right now for retailers. There's too much uncertainty."
Smaller countries, like Bangladesh and Cambodia - which feared they could not keep up with China - are breathing easier. At least for now.
Still, China already accounts for about 16 percent of all apparel imports into the United States. And several studies project that in the next few years, once all the limits are lifted, that figure could soar to 50 percent to 70 percent.
"There's no question, at the end of the day, China ends up a much bigger player in the global apparel business," said David Weil, an associate professor of economics at Boston University.
Textile and apparel makers in China have long been preparing for the coming boom. In recent years, they have invested billions of dollars in new factories along the country's eastern seaboard, particularly here in the Yangtze River Delta.
Many of the old government-owned operations are gone. Private enterprises are importing high-end machinery and luring millions of peasants from the countryside.
Since the early 1980's, when China began moving to a market economy, much of its competitive advantage was built on low-cost labor. Companies spend about 92 cents an hour for each worker in China, versus $1.20 in Thailand, $1.70 in Mexico and about $21.80 in the United States, according to a study by Goldman Sachs. Among big exporters, only India, at about 70 cents an hour, is cheaper.
Investors from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea were among the first to come. But in recent years, Chinese entrepreneurs set up their own shops, starting out with small stitching operations and quickly expanding into gigantic factories.
For instance, Shengzhou, now popularly known in Chinese as International Necktie City, developed after a Hong Kong investor moved his necktie operations there in 1985 and brought modern tie-making techniques to the city. That was only a few years after China opened itself to capitalism when Deng Xiaoping in 1978 declared, "To get rich is glorious."
Later, some of the company's managers broke away to start their own tie companies. And within a decade, Shengzhou was awash in tie makers and suppliers.
Similar stories can be heard throughout the province of Zhejiang, which is considered one of this country's most enterprising regions.
But textile specialists say China's boom is not simply the product of the newfound entrepreneurialism that is sweeping this country; it is also the nation's ability to form what are called lump economies, focused on one product.
Savvy entrepreneurs started out by luring suppliers, like fabric, dye or tool makers, to their cities, and as these clusters grew, they attracted more local investors who competed by trying to further specialize in socks or jeans production.
"The clusters are getting more and more specialized," says Qingliang Gu, a professor of textile economics at Donghua University in Shanghai. "It's a little like Italy, where you have the city of Como making silk fabric, Vicenza with fine wool and Veneto for knitting."
The Chinese government has also played a crucial role, opening huge swaths of land for development, forming giant industrial parks, doling out tax benefits and developing the infrastructure and transportation networks needed to move products quickly to market.
"The textile cities started initially from the spontaneous development of private companies," said Chunyi Xie, an economist at the Shanghai Garment Trade Association. "But when it reached certain dimensions it drew attention from the government."
Private companies, with the support of the government, now build huge textile factory complexes, complete with dormitories, hospitals and even curfews to replace the state role in providing food, shelter and health care, along with close supervision. Many textile companies in the province of Jiangsu house and feed thousands of migrant workers who are bused in from the countryside, often for three- or four-year factory stints.
The campus of the Huafang Group, one of China's largest textile companies, has over 100 factory buildings, 30,000 employees and round-the-clock operations.
On any day, it teems with more than 20,000 workers, who live free of charge in Huafang's dormitories. Conditions are hardly heavenly, but they are often a step up for these workers, who are mostly young women from poorer inland provinces like Anhui or Henan. Many of them come here after high school, intending to stay for a few years before returning home to be married.
Then, after those women return home, another 10,000 or so are bused in from the countryside, beginning yet another cycle in the pool of migrant labor that perpetually feeds China's bustling mills.
"When we need new workers," said Wei Xin Shi, a Huafang Group executive, "we just announce it and people here call home and tell their friends to come to work at our factories."
Yun Liu, 23, is one of those workers. She left a small town in northern Jiangsu four years ago. Now, she makes $130 a month in Huafang's cotton spinning mill, where she spins raw cotton into fine threads eight hours a day.
"I really like being here," she said one afternoon outside the factory. "It's a stable job, and I like the environment."
Few places on earth can match the sheer scale and variety of textile and apparel companies clustering in this region.
"In terms of vertical supply chain, China has no competition," says Ruizhe Sun, president of the China Textile Information Center, a government-sponsored agency in Beijing. "We have button makers, fabric makers, thread makers, zipper makers, you name it."
That situation is luring investors and competitors from other parts of the world.
"A few years ago, when I came here there were no Italians," said Ellen Zhou, a Chinese citizen now working for a textile company based in Thiene, Italy. "Now they're everywhere, in the hotels, at the cafes."
Chinese textile executives, however, are well aware of the risks of overexpansion. And there are other problems looming as well. The market for labor has tightened in the past year, pushing up wages.
Companies and even government officials have long ferried migrant workers into Zhangjiagang from the nearby province of Anhui, many of whom were willing to work for $4 a day. But recently some factories have been struggling to find workers, and many executives say they expect wages to rise.
"We feel labor costs are going up," Jianhong Gu, vice general manager of Pukun Textile, a Zhangjiagang suit maker whose factories operate 24 hours a day. "There's tremendous competition."
Moreover, foreign designers and retailers are keen to keep a network of business ties with other countries with relatively modern factories, like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Fred Abernathy, a researcher at the Center for Textile and Apparel Research at Harvard, says retailers in the United States will continue to buy quantities of textiles and apparel close to home, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean, because of the need for "just in time" delivery for some items.
He also expects specialty clothing and textiles operations to continue to survive in New York, North Carolina, France and Italy. But, he concedes, "China will gain over the long run."
Jinfei Wang, the chairman of the Jiangsu Diao Garment factory in Tongzhou, just outside Nantong, says there's no doubt about that.
"I've been to factories all over the world," he said in a recent interview while walking his own bustling factory floor, observing women's suits destined for J. C. Penney stores. "And we can compete with any of them. Without restrictions, certainly China is going to be No. 1."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/24/business/worldbusiness/24china.html
This explains my point about the U.S. having to compete against China for oil.
China Emerging as U.S. Rival for Canada's Oil
By Simon Romero
December 23, 2004
China's thirst for oil has brought it to the doorstep of the United States.
Chinese energy companies are on the verge of striking ambitious deals in Canada in efforts to win access to some of the most prized oil reserves in North America.
The deals may create unease for the first time since the 1970's in the traditionally smooth energy relationship between the United States and Canada.
Canada, the largest source of imported oil for the United States, has historically sent almost all its exports of oil south by pipeline to help quench America's thirst for energy. But that arrangement may be about to change as China, which has surpassed Japan as the second-largest market for oil, flexes its muscle in attempts to secure oil, even in places like the cold boreal forests of northern Alberta, where the oil has to be sucked out of the sticky, sandy soil.
"The China outlet would change our dynamic," said Murray Smith, a former Alberta energy minister who was appointed this month to be the province's representative in Washington, a new position. Mr. Smith said he estimated that Canada could eventually export as many as one million barrels a day to China out of potential exports of more than three million barrels a day.
"Our main link would still be with the U.S. but this would give us multiple markets and competition for a prized resource," Mr. Smith said. Delegations of senior executives from China's largest oil companies have been making frequent appearances in recent weeks here in Calgary, Canada's bustling energy capital, for talks on ventures that would send oil extracted from the oil sands in the northern reaches of the energy-rich province of Alberta to new ports in western Canada and onward by tanker to China.
Chinese companies are also said to be considering direct investments in the oil sands, by buying into existing producers or acquiring companies with leases to produce oil in the region. In all, there are nearly half a dozen deals in consideration, initially valued at $2 billion and potentially much more, according to senior executives at energy companies here.
One preliminary agreement could be signed in early January. A spokesman for the Department of Energy in Washington said officials were monitoring the talks but declined to comment further.
China's appetite for Canadian oil derives from its own insatiable domestic energy demand, which has sent oil imports soaring 40 percent in the first half of this year over the period a year ago. China's attempts to diversify its sources of oil have already led to several foreign exploration projects in places considered on the periphery of the global oil industry like Sudan, Peru and Syria.
In Calgary, however, the negotiations with China have focused on the oil sands, an unconventional but increasingly important source of energy for the United States. Higher oil prices have recently made oil sands projects profitable, justifying the expense of the untraditional methods of producing oil from the sands. Large-scale mining and drilling operations are required to suck a viscous substance called bitumen out of the soil.
"China's gone after the low-hanging fruit so far," said Gal Luft, a Washington-based authority on energy security issues who is writing a book on China's search for oil supplies around the world. "Now they're entering another level of ambition, in places such as Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Canada that are well within the American sphere."
Canada's oil production from the sands surpassed one million barrels a day this year and was expected to reach three million barrels within a decade. The bulk of output is exported to the Midwestern United States. That flow pushed Canada ahead of Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Venezuela this year as the largest supplier of foreign oil to the United States, with average exports of 1.6 million barrels a day.
Even so, there is the perception among many in Alberta's oil patch that Canada's rapidly growing energy industry remains an afterthought for most Americans. That might change, industry analysts say, if Canada were to start exporting oil elsewhere.
"A China agreement might serve as a wake-up call for the U.S.," said Bob Dunbar, an independent energy consultant here who until recently followed oil issues at the Canadian Energy Research Institute.
Executives at energy companies and investment banks in Calgary say an agreement with the Chinese could materialize as early as next month. Ian La Couvee, a spokesman for Enbridge, a Canadian pipeline company, said it was in talks to offer a Chinese company a 49 percent stake in a 720-mile pipeline planned between northern Alberta and the northwest coast of British Columbia.
The pipeline project, which is expected to cost at least $2 billion, would send as much as 80 percent of its capacity of 400,000 barrels a day to China with the remainder going to California refineries. Sinopec, one of China's largest oil companies, was said by executives briefed on the talks to be the likeliest Chinese company in the project.
A rival Canadian pipeline company, Terasen, meanwhile, has held its own talks with Sinopec and the China National Petroleum Corporation about joining forces to increase the capacity of an existing pipeline to Vancouver. Richard Ballantyne, president of Terasen, said it had supplied almost a dozen tankers this year to help Chinese refineries determine their ability to process the Alberta crude oil blends.
"There's been significant interest so far, but the way I understand it, their refineries are still better suited to handling Middle Eastern crude than ours," Mr. Ballantyne said. "That has to change if they're intent on diversifying their sources of oil."
Separately, Marcel Coutu, the chief executive of the Canadian Oil Sands Trust, a company that owns part of one of the largest oil sands ventures in the tundralike region around the city of Fort McMurray in northern Alberta, said he had recently met with officials from PetroChina, one of China's several state-controlled energy concerns, and had agreed to send it trial shipments of oil.
In an interview, Mr. Coutu described PetroChina's interest in a deal as very serious, but he declined to say when one might materialize. "China can become one of our capital sources, enabling us to go a bit further afield than the New York market for our financing," Mr. Coutu said.
Additionally, Chinese companies are also said to be considering investments in smaller Calgary-based companies, like UTS Energy, that have approved leasing permits for parts of the oil sands. Officials from the Chinese companies said to be negotiating in Calgary - PetroChina, Sinopec and CNPC - did not respond to requests for comment.
Wilfred Gobert, vice chairman of Peters & Company, a Calgary investment bank, said Canada's main attractions for the Chinese are the stability of its political system and its sizable reserves. Canada ranks behind only Saudi Arabia in established petroleum reserves, now that its oil sands are included in international estimates of Canadian oil resources.
Before prices rose and the United States expanded its calculation for estimates of reserves, oil sands were often scoffed at as an uneconomical way to produce oil. They still involve risks not normally associated with conventional oil exploration.
Large amounts of capital are necessary to produce oil from the sands, with companies having to acquire large shovels, trucks, specialized drilling equipment or supplies of natural gas to make steam before producing one barrel of oil. So, the price of oil needs to remain elevated, at a level of $30 a barrel or so, for ventures to remain profitable.
[Oil prices for February delivery slumped 3.3 percent, to $44.24 a barrel, in New York on Wednesday, the biggest slide in two weeks.]
An entry into Canada would assure the Chinese of a steady flow of oil, even if the profit margins from the activities were to pale in comparison to what the international oil companies expect from their investments, said Kang Wu, a fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu who follows China's energy industry. "For China it is foremost about securing supply and secondly about profits," he said. "That explains the incentive in going so far abroad."
China's growing demand for oil is responsible for much of the increase in worldwide prices in the last year. Mr. Kang of the East-West Center estimates that demand in China could grow from 6 million barrels a day to as much as 11.5 million barrels within a decade. China's domestic production is expected to remain nearly stagnant, Mr. Kang said, resulting in aggressive efforts to import more oil from sources like Canada.
"China needs oil resources and has a big market," Qiu Xianghua, a vice president at Sinopec, said in a speech in Toronto this month. "Canada needs markets."
Alberta, a province of 3.1 million people, is keenly aware of the potential for Chinese involvement even as American companies like Exxon Mobil, Burlington Resources and Devon Energy remain prominent in its energy industry. Ralph Klein, the premier of Alberta, traveled to Beijing in June to drum up investment in the tar sands.
And yet officials and authorities on Canadian energy supplies are cautious not to suggest that Canada will ever turn off the spigot to the United States. At a time of a highly competitive market for global oil, in fact, some analysts see greater interest in Alberta's oil reserves as a healthy avenue for China to explore, even if it were to push the United States to seek an even greater diversity for its own energy needs.
"The pipeline system that connects Alberta to the U.S. isn't going to be lifted out of the ground and put into the Pacific," said Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. "The flows to the U.S. will continue, but it should be expected and welcomed for China to meet the challenge of its growing dependence on imported oil."
Still, the prospect of dealing with China has many here pondering relations with the United States. The last time any significant oil-related friction arose between the nations was in the 1970's, when Ottawa became concerned over what it perceived as too much American control over Canadian oil, leading to greater federal involvement in the oil industry.
"Watch the Americans have a hissy fit if a Chinese incursion materializes," Claudia Cattaneo, a Calgary-based energy columnist for The National Post, recently wrote. "So far, the Americans have taken Canada's energy for granted."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/23/business/worldbusiness/23canada.html
China Emerging as U.S. Rival for Canada's Oil
By Simon Romero
December 23, 2004
China's thirst for oil has brought it to the doorstep of the United States.
Chinese energy companies are on the verge of striking ambitious deals in Canada in efforts to win access to some of the most prized oil reserves in North America.
The deals may create unease for the first time since the 1970's in the traditionally smooth energy relationship between the United States and Canada.
Canada, the largest source of imported oil for the United States, has historically sent almost all its exports of oil south by pipeline to help quench America's thirst for energy. But that arrangement may be about to change as China, which has surpassed Japan as the second-largest market for oil, flexes its muscle in attempts to secure oil, even in places like the cold boreal forests of northern Alberta, where the oil has to be sucked out of the sticky, sandy soil.
"The China outlet would change our dynamic," said Murray Smith, a former Alberta energy minister who was appointed this month to be the province's representative in Washington, a new position. Mr. Smith said he estimated that Canada could eventually export as many as one million barrels a day to China out of potential exports of more than three million barrels a day.
"Our main link would still be with the U.S. but this would give us multiple markets and competition for a prized resource," Mr. Smith said. Delegations of senior executives from China's largest oil companies have been making frequent appearances in recent weeks here in Calgary, Canada's bustling energy capital, for talks on ventures that would send oil extracted from the oil sands in the northern reaches of the energy-rich province of Alberta to new ports in western Canada and onward by tanker to China.
Chinese companies are also said to be considering direct investments in the oil sands, by buying into existing producers or acquiring companies with leases to produce oil in the region. In all, there are nearly half a dozen deals in consideration, initially valued at $2 billion and potentially much more, according to senior executives at energy companies here.
One preliminary agreement could be signed in early January. A spokesman for the Department of Energy in Washington said officials were monitoring the talks but declined to comment further.
China's appetite for Canadian oil derives from its own insatiable domestic energy demand, which has sent oil imports soaring 40 percent in the first half of this year over the period a year ago. China's attempts to diversify its sources of oil have already led to several foreign exploration projects in places considered on the periphery of the global oil industry like Sudan, Peru and Syria.
In Calgary, however, the negotiations with China have focused on the oil sands, an unconventional but increasingly important source of energy for the United States. Higher oil prices have recently made oil sands projects profitable, justifying the expense of the untraditional methods of producing oil from the sands. Large-scale mining and drilling operations are required to suck a viscous substance called bitumen out of the soil.
"China's gone after the low-hanging fruit so far," said Gal Luft, a Washington-based authority on energy security issues who is writing a book on China's search for oil supplies around the world. "Now they're entering another level of ambition, in places such as Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Canada that are well within the American sphere."
Canada's oil production from the sands surpassed one million barrels a day this year and was expected to reach three million barrels within a decade. The bulk of output is exported to the Midwestern United States. That flow pushed Canada ahead of Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Venezuela this year as the largest supplier of foreign oil to the United States, with average exports of 1.6 million barrels a day.
Even so, there is the perception among many in Alberta's oil patch that Canada's rapidly growing energy industry remains an afterthought for most Americans. That might change, industry analysts say, if Canada were to start exporting oil elsewhere.
"A China agreement might serve as a wake-up call for the U.S.," said Bob Dunbar, an independent energy consultant here who until recently followed oil issues at the Canadian Energy Research Institute.
Executives at energy companies and investment banks in Calgary say an agreement with the Chinese could materialize as early as next month. Ian La Couvee, a spokesman for Enbridge, a Canadian pipeline company, said it was in talks to offer a Chinese company a 49 percent stake in a 720-mile pipeline planned between northern Alberta and the northwest coast of British Columbia.
The pipeline project, which is expected to cost at least $2 billion, would send as much as 80 percent of its capacity of 400,000 barrels a day to China with the remainder going to California refineries. Sinopec, one of China's largest oil companies, was said by executives briefed on the talks to be the likeliest Chinese company in the project.
A rival Canadian pipeline company, Terasen, meanwhile, has held its own talks with Sinopec and the China National Petroleum Corporation about joining forces to increase the capacity of an existing pipeline to Vancouver. Richard Ballantyne, president of Terasen, said it had supplied almost a dozen tankers this year to help Chinese refineries determine their ability to process the Alberta crude oil blends.
"There's been significant interest so far, but the way I understand it, their refineries are still better suited to handling Middle Eastern crude than ours," Mr. Ballantyne said. "That has to change if they're intent on diversifying their sources of oil."
Separately, Marcel Coutu, the chief executive of the Canadian Oil Sands Trust, a company that owns part of one of the largest oil sands ventures in the tundralike region around the city of Fort McMurray in northern Alberta, said he had recently met with officials from PetroChina, one of China's several state-controlled energy concerns, and had agreed to send it trial shipments of oil.
In an interview, Mr. Coutu described PetroChina's interest in a deal as very serious, but he declined to say when one might materialize. "China can become one of our capital sources, enabling us to go a bit further afield than the New York market for our financing," Mr. Coutu said.
Additionally, Chinese companies are also said to be considering investments in smaller Calgary-based companies, like UTS Energy, that have approved leasing permits for parts of the oil sands. Officials from the Chinese companies said to be negotiating in Calgary - PetroChina, Sinopec and CNPC - did not respond to requests for comment.
Wilfred Gobert, vice chairman of Peters & Company, a Calgary investment bank, said Canada's main attractions for the Chinese are the stability of its political system and its sizable reserves. Canada ranks behind only Saudi Arabia in established petroleum reserves, now that its oil sands are included in international estimates of Canadian oil resources.
Before prices rose and the United States expanded its calculation for estimates of reserves, oil sands were often scoffed at as an uneconomical way to produce oil. They still involve risks not normally associated with conventional oil exploration.
Large amounts of capital are necessary to produce oil from the sands, with companies having to acquire large shovels, trucks, specialized drilling equipment or supplies of natural gas to make steam before producing one barrel of oil. So, the price of oil needs to remain elevated, at a level of $30 a barrel or so, for ventures to remain profitable.
[Oil prices for February delivery slumped 3.3 percent, to $44.24 a barrel, in New York on Wednesday, the biggest slide in two weeks.]
An entry into Canada would assure the Chinese of a steady flow of oil, even if the profit margins from the activities were to pale in comparison to what the international oil companies expect from their investments, said Kang Wu, a fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu who follows China's energy industry. "For China it is foremost about securing supply and secondly about profits," he said. "That explains the incentive in going so far abroad."
China's growing demand for oil is responsible for much of the increase in worldwide prices in the last year. Mr. Kang of the East-West Center estimates that demand in China could grow from 6 million barrels a day to as much as 11.5 million barrels within a decade. China's domestic production is expected to remain nearly stagnant, Mr. Kang said, resulting in aggressive efforts to import more oil from sources like Canada.
"China needs oil resources and has a big market," Qiu Xianghua, a vice president at Sinopec, said in a speech in Toronto this month. "Canada needs markets."
Alberta, a province of 3.1 million people, is keenly aware of the potential for Chinese involvement even as American companies like Exxon Mobil, Burlington Resources and Devon Energy remain prominent in its energy industry. Ralph Klein, the premier of Alberta, traveled to Beijing in June to drum up investment in the tar sands.
And yet officials and authorities on Canadian energy supplies are cautious not to suggest that Canada will ever turn off the spigot to the United States. At a time of a highly competitive market for global oil, in fact, some analysts see greater interest in Alberta's oil reserves as a healthy avenue for China to explore, even if it were to push the United States to seek an even greater diversity for its own energy needs.
"The pipeline system that connects Alberta to the U.S. isn't going to be lifted out of the ground and put into the Pacific," said Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. "The flows to the U.S. will continue, but it should be expected and welcomed for China to meet the challenge of its growing dependence on imported oil."
Still, the prospect of dealing with China has many here pondering relations with the United States. The last time any significant oil-related friction arose between the nations was in the 1970's, when Ottawa became concerned over what it perceived as too much American control over Canadian oil, leading to greater federal involvement in the oil industry.
"Watch the Americans have a hissy fit if a Chinese incursion materializes," Claudia Cattaneo, a Calgary-based energy columnist for The National Post, recently wrote. "So far, the Americans have taken Canada's energy for granted."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/23/business/worldbusiness/23canada.html