China to Obama: “Shut Up and Mind Your Own Business”

By Marin Katusa: First Russia, and now China.
US politicians aren’t doing themselves any favors getting involved in foreign disputes, especially with their track record of failed foreign policy.

“Hong Kong affairs fall entirely within China’s internal affairs,” Chinese Embassy spokesman Geng Shuang states. “We hope that some countries and people can be prudent in their words and deeds, refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of Hong Kong in any way, do not support the illegal activities such as the ‘Occupy Central,’ and do not send any wrong signals.”

Don’t make any mistake about this official statement: this was China’s way of telling the US politicians to zip it and mind their own business.
How did all this start?
With US Senator Menendez.
New Jersey Democrat Bob Menendez sent a letter to Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying asking that he respect the rights of his people (Hong Kong citizens), and condemning the Hong Kong government’s “excessive” use of tear gas under his watch.
Tomorrow, US Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. With China already having passed along its “butt out” message to the US, it will be interesting to see if Kerry tries to push his country’s misguided agenda, and if the lame-stream media pick up on any of it.

But what does this all mean? It means the US is being firmly put in its place by the emerging superpowers in the world. First it was President Putin standing up to Obama over Syria in 2013. Then again in early 2014, Putin stood up to the US sanctions. Now China has sent a sharp official message to the US, warning it to stop meddling.

It’s hardly a new US tactic to foment dissent in a foreign state. We saw it in the support of anti-Assad rebels in Syria. We saw it again in Ukraine, where the US financed the February coup. With China, Washington will have to resort to words rather than guns, but it would love to see the people rise up against communism.
Last Monday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest made that clear when he stated, “The United States supports universal suffrage in Hong Kong in accordance with the Basic Law and we support the aspirations of the Hong Kong people. We have consistently made our position known to Beijing and will continue to do so.” Earnest is just the messenger, of course. That message comes directly from Obama’s Oval Office.
China is no backwater nation. It’s a global economic giant. It will stand up to the US on this issue, and not just because of how much it resents outside agitators.
The more important reason is that the last thing the government of China needs is a wave of democratic protests across the nation. Remember, China has more than 160 cities with a population over 1 million. Vancouver, BC, Canada, the epicenter of the junior resource sector, doesn’t even have 1 million people (the greater Vancouver region does, but the city core doesn’t even have 750,000 inhabitants).
For further perspective, consider that all of Europe only has 35 cities with 1 million people or more. China now has over 160 such cities, and it’s projected that by 2025—just 11 years away—that number will jump almost 40%, to 220! If a wave of protests were to spread across any large percentage of those 160 cities, that would be a disaster for the Chinese economy. And the worse the economy got in China, the worse the protests would become. Things could spiral out of control very quickly, and the government and military would have some serious problems on their hands.
Given the dangers, it’s easy to understand why the Chinese government would go to great lengths to suppress any widespread protests. The last thing the government wants is another incident like Tiananmen Square, where hundreds of students were massacred by the authorities in June of 1989.
We must bear in mind that what goes on in China may seem mysterious to an outsider who’s been raised on the notion that all the world’s people crave democracy. But for the majority of the Chinese, what they’ve grown up with is completely normal to them. What the governmental authorities feel they need to do to keep order may be repellent to Americans, but that’s their normal.
So… how does what happens in China affect you? If you’re an investor, work in the resource sector, and/or have a job that’s involved in international finance, pay attention.
All resource investors must realize that whatever happens in China will affect commodities around the world, for good or ill.
Napoleon was quoted as saying, “China is a sleeping giant. Let her sleep, for when she wakes she will move the world.”
He was right. China is awake, and it has more than shaken the world.
There isn’t a better quote to summarize the importance of China today in the resource markets. Whether you’re talking coal, oil, iron ore, or copper, China matters.
Take oil, for instance.
In the month of September 2014, the US imported an average of 7.47 million barrels of oil a day. Ten years ago, the US imported an average of 9.73 million barrels a day in the month of September. These are data from the US’s Energy Information Administration website. (By the way, we’ve seen many reports from misinformed reporters claiming that the US imports only 5 million barrels of crude oil a day now. That is incorrect information, as the government data show.)
How much oil does China import? A little over 6 million barrels of crude per day.
China is the world’s second-largest oil importer after the US, which it is expected to pass in 2015.
China also has the second-largest refining capacity of nearly 14 million barrels of oil a day, trailing only the US’s total of just under 18 million barrels. Again, China is projected to forge ahead in 2015.
This is just one of the many ways in which China matters.
So how do we profit from the information we have?
History shows that energy stocks move in cycles. We’ve now completed a major analysis of the best oil producers in North America; we believe they’re on the cusp of a tremendous boom. The only way to position your portfolio for a major upswing in the oil sector is to buy before the boom is in full swing—and that is now in my opinion.

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