Is a potential Chinese acquisition of UNOCAL a national security threat?

[Goldmund]

Poll question: Is a potential Chinese acquisition of UNOCAL a national security threat?

And why?

I haven't throught this through much, but my first reaction is that this cannot legitimately be considered a "threat" any more than Ghandi was a legitimate "threat" to Great Britain. If US national security depends on neocolonialism represented by imperial corporatist entities such as UNOCAL, then chickens will come home to roost sooner or later; the real threat isn't China but US neoimperialism.

[napi21]

1. If you believe the US is the biggest user of oil, then letting control

of a large chunck of the bidding on the crude is going to hurt the US. DO I conder it a national security risk? Hmmm, I don't know about security, but I can sure say its a big risk to the financial survival of the US!

[Goldmund]

2. True, in the short term

But you cannot at the same time argue against the posturing of the US as an imperial global power, and call this a "threat". It's only a threat in the context of that posture. China is not forcibly annexing UNOCAL, but buying it at fair market price. To me, this underscores the need to get away from this neoimperial posture, not a hostility of China.

[napi21]

8. Oh I don't dispute that the US is at least trying to be an imperial power!

And I HATE the concept! I'm just not sure that letting China buy Unicol is in the best interest of the US right now.

I son't wnat Imperialism to succeed in the US, but I don't want to loose everything of financial value to the US either.

I'm really sick about the top 1/4th% getting 5 times more of their income than they did 10 years ago, and the other 99+% are getting less!!!!!

If you want to slam me for playing class wargere, know yourself out. It's the damn truth!

[Goldmund]

9. LOL I ain't gonna slam you

I just think that this is an interesting discussion. On the one hand, there is an obvious immediate detriment to the US economy; on the other, the global influence represented by UNOCAL is a manifestation of imperialism and neocolonialism. Ultimately, we're not losing anything that is rightfully ours.

[mattclearing]

3. I can see that.

When one considers how many of our puppet officials come from Unocal (wasn't Hamid Karzai one?), you have to factor in that this company is heavily involved in government here, or vice versa.

China openly bidding for a company so closely associated with the U.S.'s economic agenda is kinda ballsy, but as Paul Krugman said today, our debt makes it really hard to turn them down.

Essentially China is saying, "What are you going to do about it?"

And the answer is, "nothing."

[Goldmund]

4. Yes, Karzai was one --

-- and UNOCAL also is the development manager for Central Asia Gas, for the pipeline project in the Caspian region (read Afghanistan).

[democracyindanger]

6. Is that still valid?

I thought Unocal pulled out of the CentGas consortium long ago. Not that I don't think they're a greedy, amoral company--I just understood that they haven't been involved with CentGas for a while.

[Goldmund]

7. I'm not sure...

Anybody know?

[pgh_dem]

16. Would China rename the SS Condaleeza Rice?

Isn't that UNOCAL that has the tanker named after Condi?

[BrotherBuzz]

17. Chevron ownes the Condoleeza Rice but renamed her...

Interesting enough, Chevron is bidding against China for Unocal.

[pgh_dem]

18. Thanks for correction...thought Condi had some link to Unocal tho...

Do you have a link to the circumstances of Chevron renaming? Was it apparent conflict of interest, or do they just have honorary names for ships for a couple years?

[BrotherBuzz]

19. Name changed to eliminate unnecessary attention

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2001/05/05/MN223743.DTL

Remember, the the infamous Exxon Valdez was renamed, too.

<snip>

But critics said the ship served as a giant floating symbol of the Bush administration's cozy ties to the oil industry.

"It does underscore that there's never been an administration in power in this country that has been so close to a single industry -- in this instance, the oil-and-gas industry," Chuck Lewis of the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity said last month when the watchdog organization first raised the issue.

The tanker's name also raised more serious questions of possible conflict of interest for Rice because Chevron does business on six continents and 25 countries and has been sued for alleged human rights abuses in Nigeria.

<more>

[johnnypneumatic]

5. that's so true, the whole attack on afganistan was about

building a pipeline, for unocal, and the taliban wouldn't play along so they had to be eliminated. Yet the US kinda botched the whole thing, leaving afganistan back where it was with a returned heroin industry and local war lords, with Karzai's power extending barely farther than the walls of his bunker. Now that the US has shot its wad and exhausted itself, China is there to pick up the winnings, just like Beloch takes the golden head from Indiana Jones.

[kodi]

10. yes because chinese owned companies don't sell majority owership to others

get real. if a foreign company enters china to purchase a chinese company the foreign company does not gain majority ownership and any part of the deal is that the foreign company allows the chinese partner to obtain access to the foreign developed technologies.

to understand the dis-advantage foreign companies face trying to purchase or joint-venture with in china/chinese owned companies, it is comparable to unocal insisting that as part of the deal of a joint-onwership (not majority purchase, since it not allowed in china) that the chinese company buying unocal divulge to the US company (and thus US government) whatever the chinese have developed.

the chinses do not play fair. it has nothing to do with racism, but just that they insist that one set of rules apply with foreign investors buying chinese companies, yet they demand that the same set of rules do not apply to them in the rest of the world.

[Goldmund]

11. I actually didn't know that

And accusing you of racism would be the last thing I'd do.

Let me ask you this -- and it's an honest question, since I don't know much about the topic: how do the Chinese "demand" that one set of rules apply to them and another to the rest of the world, in this context?

[ChipperbackDemocrat]

13. Its just a changing of the "massas"

Big Chinese company buys Big American companies. To me its just changing a white plantation owner with a yellow-skinned one.

Its still corporate rule, just a different person being called "massa"

[Spider Jerusalem]

12. Their insistence that different rules apply to them than anyone else...

makes them not too different from the US, then, eh? US doesn't play fair, and there's a strong belief here in AMERICAN exceptionalism. Sauce for the goose, and all that. (I'm not sure you even realise the irony in what you said...)

[Goldmund]

14. That's kinda where I was going with my question.

The US does what it can get away with, and so does China. Now it seems like China has gotten to the point where it can get away with more than we've been used to, and woe is us. And underneath it all, there's the question of "how come a fair market acqusition of a US company can mean so much to US national security"?

[Spider Jerusalem]

15. The question has a simple answer...

petroleum is an essential strategic resource, necessary to maintain the vaunted "American way of life" and to fuel the US war machine; sale of Unocal would mean sale of any oil fields, drilling equipment, & etc., and would mean the US market was no longer first priority for any Unocal oil...which, given the massive petroleum demand in the US (20 million barrels a day), might before too much might cause a noticeable shortfall in supply (all that would take would be for demand not to be met, by as little as a few million or even hundred thousand barrels, and there's not any oil-producing country that can make up the slack). Couple that with the Carter Doctrine, which states that the US won't hesitate to use military force to ensure access to petroleum resources, and the repercussions of a deal like this could be very ugly indeed, though not necessarily immediately apparent.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

20. I love the irony. The "free market" biting the capitalists in the ass.

We "destroyed communism" and now are threatened by capitalism. Too funny.

[Goldmund]

21. Exactly.

Very true.

[Kraklen]

22. I haven't got a problem with it.

All seems like Sinophobia to me.

If they beat us at our own game I say more power to them.

[bpilgrim]

23. it's way better than going to WAR for your OIL like we do...

but i am SURE we will consider it a threat.

peace

[sweetheart]

24. It is not

Unocal's alleged assets are oil and gas supplies in asia around china
(most of them) in fact. Why should china not have ownership rights
around its own borders with energy supplies?

Is funny, but by "national security threat", you can mean 2 things.
Either its a national security threat to the United States people who
are not the least bit represetned by the bush kleptocracy.. (and in
this case, the answer is "no").

Or it is the corporate petrol economic illusion perpetrated as "amurika"
by the bush petrolheads... and in this case, any threat to the american
theft of foreign oil assets is a threat.

So who are *we*, and your question is answered.