China is moving forward with its plan to build a vertical monopoly covering every stage of the Asia-to-U.S. export business.
As WND has reported, a Chinese state-run conglomerate, Cosco Shipping Holdings Company, is on track to buy out a competitor, Orient Overseas International. The $6.3 billion deal would make Cosco the world's largest carrier of goods imported into the U.S.
It would also give it control of the Long Beach California port terminal, one of the most modern facilities in the country, capable of handling the largest container ships. Nearly half of the port's traffic comes from China.
That deal has hit a bump as Washington becomes more wary of threats to national security from China's supposedly "commercial" investments.
The truth is, China's state-owned companies are not strictly "commercial," and their decision-making is not profit-driven.
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"They are not doing it for the capitalistic reason of making a profit. The Chinese government will be involved, and they are doing it for geopolitical reasons," says Robert Grantham, a former manager for Cosco.
China's Communist bosses masquerade as capitalists. But they are more like pickpockets, with a knack for private enterprise and no respect for private property, as seen by their theft of trade secrets.
And they use a number of other subterfuges to get what they want.
Beijing has taken on the role of venture capitalist, purchasing stakes in Silicon Valley start-ups to gain access to the technology it covets in order to leap-frog past the U.S.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers is sounding the alarm on Huawei Technologies, one of China's national champion telecommunications companies, which "has formed a series of research partnerships with over 50 universities in the United States that threaten national security."
Huawei's "funding opportunities" for universities buys the Chinese Communist Party a first look at advanced technology spawned by universities funded with American taxpayer dollars.
The Trump administration's National Security Strategy has made stopping China's appropriation of U.S. private-sector technology and technical knowledge a priority.
The shipping merger, of which China's takeover of the Long Beach port is a part, is scheduled to be completed this month.
But it must first be approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., CFIUS, the multi-agency federal panel that reviews national security threats posed by foreign purchases of American assets.
The Wall Street Journal reports Beijing is desperate to get approval for the merger by the end of the month. "Cosco executives met with CFIUS officials last week in Washington and proposed to place the Long Beach terminal in a third-party trust under U.S. management for up to a year, until it is sold," a source directly involved in the deal told the Journal.
A "third-party trust under U.S. management for up to a year"?
That's a loophole big enough to berth a container ship loaded with cheap Chinese knockoffs.
And it's an arrangement the Chinese would never allow if the shoe were on the other foot.
Beijing's rulers force American companies into shotgun marriages with Chinese partners before they can do business in that country.
In the spirit of reciprocity, Washington should require the Chinese to sell the Long Beach port operations to an American company and do it right now, before the rest of the deal can go forward.
China's state-owned enterprises respond regularly to government diktats from Beijing, so Cosco can't cry about the U.S. government pushing it into a forced sale.
They have 10 days to find an American buyer.
The bidding starts now at $1.98.