Editor’s Note: The following is an edited excerpt from a transcript of Fareed Zakaria answering viewer questions online. Read more from Fareed Zakaria at TIME: China’s New Parochialism

cnn
By Fareed Zakaria, CNN

We’re clearly moving to a Post-American world. This is a world that is not dominated by the United States but not dominated by anyone else yet either.

The 21st Century is up for grabs and how the United States does depends on how well it can marshal the key ingredients of economic and societal success.

In the 20th Century, the key ingredients were labor and capital.

In the 21st Century, the key ingredients will be ideas and energy.

Ideas will be critical because manufacturing has been commoditized. That means that anyone can make anything. The only thing that distinguishes someone today is if that person or organization has new ideas and innovations. We need to create a better mousetrap every week. We need to do something different and unique.

Energy will be critical simply because everybody is growing quickly and everyone needs a supply of energy. Countries that have figured out the energy puzzle are going to do better and better.

So who’s better suited for this new world?    [FULL  STORY]

Reuters
Jun 8, 2011
By Emily Kaiser

(Reuters) – Republican lawmakers are “playing with fire” by contemplating even a brief debt default as a means to force deeper government spending cuts, an adviser to China’s central bank said on Wednesday.

The idea of a technical default — essentially delaying interest payments for a few days — has gained backing from a growing number of mainstream Republicans who see it as a price worth paying if it forces the White House to slash spending, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

But any form of default could destabilize the global economy and sour already tense relations with big U.S. creditors such as China, government officials and investors warn.

Li Daokui, an adviser to the People’s Bank of China, said a default could undermine the U.S. dollar, and Beijing needed to dissuade Washington from pursuing this course of action.

“I think there is a risk that the U.S. debt default may happen,” Li told reporters on the sidelines of a forum in Beijing. “The result will be very serious and I really hope that they would stop playing with fire.”    [FULL  STORY]

Reuters
Jun 2, 2011

(Reuters) – Suspicion that some individual or entity in China was behind a recent cyber attack on Lockheed Martin is growing among experts and agencies looking into the incident.

“It’s unclear at this point precisely who conducted the attacks, but given past history with these sorts of things, there’s a strong tendency to look east. The Far East, in fact, and a country that not so long ago hosted the Olympics,” said one U.S. official who asked for anonymity, but was reluctant to point the finger at China by name.

Official and private U.S. cyber-security told Reuters that forensic tracing of attacks like the one that caused Lockheed temporarily to instruct employees to curb remote access to company networks was notoriously difficult, and that clever hackers usually lay elaborate false trails to cover their tracks.

But a U.S. official familiar with progress on the investigation said there was increasing suspicion the Lockheed hack originated with “someone in China.”    [FULL  STORY]

BBC News
19 September 2010

An adviser to China’s central bank has rebuffed criticism from the US over Beijing’s exchange rate policy.  In a speech in Beijing, Li Daokui said China “will not appreciate the yuan solely because of external pressure”.  His comments follow strong criticism in America that the yuan is significantly undervalued, damaging US exports.

Last week US the Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, said he was considering ways to press China to let the yuan appreciate.  In June, after months of pressure from the US, China pledged to relax its grip on its currency.  But on Thursday Mr Geithner renewed the criticism, saying that the yuan’s value was “essentially” unchanged because of “very substantial” intervention by authorities.

China denies keeping its currency artificially cheap, and has warned against foreign pressure over what Beijing regards as an internal matter.  Mr Li said: “China as it stands now is not Japan in 1985, it is not a country that completely relies on external demand.”  That was a reference to a 1985 accord where Japan agreed to let its yen currency appreciate against the dollar.    [FULL  STORY]

Asia Times
Jul 15, 2010
By Francesco Sisci
SINOGRAPH

BEIJING – There is no international political engagement more important than Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to the United States at the end of November.

The trip should give new impetus to relations between today’s two major powers: China and America, or if you prefer a moniker for this exclusive group – AmeriChina, or even the Group of 2.

Between now and November, diplomats from both sides hope the two countries can overcome a series of complex problems to

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make the meeting a success. Bilateral relations nowadays are held hostage to several twisted military and strategic issues that are central – much more so than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – to global politics and future economics.

The bilateral military dialogue so far has stalled because Washington wants to talk without changing much of the present situation, while Beijing wants America to first resolve the issues of arms sales to Taiwan and US surveillance/spying missions around China.

America providing weapons to Taiwan has long been a thorn in Beijing’s side. Relations between Beijing and Taipei have improved markedly in recent years. The two parties established direct channels of communications
and transport (rather than going through Hong Kong) and signed a free-trade agreement in early July that effectively integrates the island’s economy with that of the continent. Reunification is a now only a political question, and a path that neither party is eager to hasten along.

The only potential stumbling block comes from Taiwan’s theoretical military strength (the island is independent de facto but not de jure), which can repel a theoretical attack from the mainland.

While the possibility of an attack is all very theoretical, it has very practical consequences: if Taipei has an army capable of defending the island, not only can Taiwan always resist the mainland’s siren song, it can also decide to suddenly declare formal independence.

This is the ideal platform for the Democratic Progressive Party, the opposition party in Taiwan, and it also provides significant political leverage against Beijing.

If Taiwan – like China, with a majority of ethnic Han – became formally independent, why should Xinjiang or Tibet remain part of China, since these regions have local populations that aren’t even Han? If Xinjiang and Tibet became independent, Beijing would lose about half its national territory.

In other words, the sale of American weapons to Taiwan supports the forces that want to dismantle parts of China.

On the other hand, America is obliged to sell those arms because of a law passed by the US Congress. And anyway, if America were to stop selling weapons to Taiwan, the American public might see this as if a timid US were handing over the Taiwan lamb to the China wolf.

In the past, the issue was on the backburner, but now it has become more urgent because Beijing is making a lot of progress with Taiwan and wants to close the arms issue to ensure the momentum is not put into reverse.

Furthermore, there is America’s surveillance on China. US ships and aircraft conduct about a thousand missions a year around China, including surveying the seabed (ie, preparing for possible attacks by submarines) and detecting the capacity of Chinese military technology
.

There have been incidents, such as last year and in 2001, and these could have turned into more significant clashes.     more …

com
July 8, 2010
By MARK THOMPSON / WASHINGTON Mark Thompson / Washington
China’s satellites and spies were working properly, there was a flood of unsettling intelligence flowing into the Beijing headquarters of the Chinese Navy last week. A new class of U.S. super weapon had suddenly surfaced nearby. It was an Ohio-class submarine, which for decades carried only nuclear missiles targeted against the Soviet Union, and then Russia. But this one was different: for nearly three years, the U.S. Navy has been dispatching modified “boomers” to who knows where (they do travel underwater, after all). Four of the 18 ballistic-missile subs no longer carry nuclear-tipped Trident missiles. Instead, they now hold up to 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles, capable of hitting anything within 1,000 miles with non-nuclear warheads.

Their capability makes watching these particular submarines especially interesting. The 14 Trident-carrying subs are useful in the unlikely event of a nuclear Armageddon, and Russia remains their prime target. But the Tomahawk-outfitted quartet carries a weapon that the U.S. military has used repeatedly against targets in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq and Sudan. (See pictures of the U.S. military in the Pacific.)

That’s why alarm bells would have sounded in Beijing June 28 when the Tomahawk-laden 560-foot USS Ohio popped up in the Philippines’ Subic Bay. More alarms likely were sounded when the USS Michigan arrived in Pusan, South Korea, the same day. And the klaxons would have maxed out as the USS Florida surfaced the same day at the joint U.S.-British naval base at Diego Garcia, a flyspeck of an island in the Indian Ocean. The Chinese military awoke to find as many as 462 additional Tomahawks deployed by the U.S. in its neighborhood. “There’s been a decision to bolster our forces in the Pacific,” says Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “There is no doubt that China will stand up and take notice.”     more …