Oil price lower after 4-day rise

NEW YORK (AP) — A four-day rise in oil prices stalled Wednesday following a weak report on Chinese manufacturing and lingering concerns about Greece's bailout.
The price of West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark for oils produced in the U.S., fell 46 cents to $105.79 a barrel.
WTI had climbed 5 percent over the last four trading days as tensions escalated between the West and Iran, the world's third-biggest oil exporter. The West is worried that Iran is using its nuclear program to build a weapon, a claim that Iran denies. Traders fear that any military action to stop the program could disrupt oil shipments. That helped push prices up in recent days.
But oil's rise paused as traders focused on a report that China's manufacturing isn't expanding. HSBC's China manufacturing index rose in February, but the reading of 49.7 suggested that factory activity isn't growing. China's economy is expected to drive world oil demand to new heights this year, and investors took the weak reading as a sign that demand may not increase as much as expected.
Traders also worried that the latest Greek bailout isn't enough to revive that nation's economy. Analysts said a $172 billion rescue package may not be enough to save the country from defaulting on a mountain of debt. Massive budget cuts could keep the country stuck in recession, and the Greek bailout doesn't address debt problems in neighboring countries.
U.S., retail gasoline prices rose nearly a penny to a national average of $3.58 per gallon, according to AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service. Gasoline is at the highest price ever for this time of year, and analysts say the national average could hit $4.25 per gallon by late April.
In other energy trading, heating oil rose a penny to $3.25 per gallon. Gasoline futures also rose by 1 cent to $3.0603 per gallon. Natural gas futures fell by 4 cents to $2.59 per 1,000 cubic feet.
Brent crude, an international benchmark used to price oil imported by U.S. refineries, rose $1 to $122.66 per barrel.

Yani Tseng hopes to bag first HSBC Women's Champions

Taipei, Feb. 22 (CNA) Taiwan's Yani Tseng will be out to win her first HSBC Women's Champions tournament in Singapore when the event opens at the Tanah Merah Country Club on Thursday.

The top female golfer in the world, fresh from her successful defense of her title at the Honda LPGA Thailand tournament Sunday, has not won the Singapore tournament since it was launched in 2008.

Tseng, who needed a birdie on the final hole to defeat Japan's Ai Miyazato in Thailand, admitted after her victory that the pressure of living up to her spectacular year in 2011, when she won 12 events worldwide, was getting to her.

"I feel much more pressure coming into this year. Last year when I started, I was nothing. I was just in the top-five in the world but I don't have 12 wins or World No. 1 title," she said.

"After last year, I have World No. 1 and I had 12 wins and that pressure keeps going on and on."

Tseng may feel less stress at the US$1.4 million HSBC Women's Champions this week because she does not have to defend a title, but she will still hope to do well against an extremely strong field, which is expected to feature the top 30 players on the LPGA's moneylist last year.

Jeremy Lin a hot topic in Ma's meeting with U.S. congressmen

Taipei, Feb. 21 (CNA) President Ma Ying-jeou got a bit of a surprise when he brought up rising NBA star Jeremy Lin in a meeting with a visiting United States congressional delegation Tuesday.

Ma said Taiwan and the U.S. shared views on democracy and peace and many values and in addition "we both appreciate Jeremy Lin."

After a good laugh, the leader of the group, Representative Eni Faleomavaega from American Samoa, the ranking member on the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, had a comeback.

"I want to say that I'm sorry to tell you that Jeremy Lin is an American, a blue-blooded born American," Faleomavaega said, drawing hearty laughter from the president, and then added "who happens to be of Taiwanese ancestry, and we're proud to have him."

On a more serious note, Ma talked about his China policy and said it was designed to "replace conflicts with reconciliation, and use coordination and negotiations to solve problems."

He said that such an approach has made Taiwan's relations with China and the international community follow a "positive cycle" instead of the "vicious cycle" of the past.

He also said that "use of reconciliation to ease conflicts and negotiation to replace confrontation" will still be his policy in his second term.

The 10-member U.S. congressional delegation arrived in Taiwan Feb.18for a visit through Feb. 25.

Is Obama Getting Serious about China Trade?

“I will not stand by when our competitors don’t play by the rules,” said President Obama in his State of the Union message on Tuesday. And to make sure other nations comply with their obligations, he announced the creation of the “Trade Enforcement Unit.” According to the Wall Street Journal, the new grouping will be a task force combining officials from the Treasury, Commerce, and Energy Departments as well as the US Trade Representative’s office. Despite the generic name, the target of the Trade Enforcement Unit is China.

China may have racked up as much as a $300 billion trade surplus against America last year; if it failed to achieve that record-smashing mark, it was only billion or two short. In any event, it will surely surpass its 2010 surplus against the US of $273.1 billion. The 2010 deficit with China is the largest single-country one in the history of the United States.

If there were any time for the White House to get serious about Beijing’s predatory trade policies, this is it. Clearly, China’s surpluses are not sustainable, especially in a period of deteriorating economic conditions. Last Wednesday, the World Bank downgraded its global growth estimate by a full percentage point to 2.5 percent.

The president is right to highlight the China issue, and perhaps his organizational approach will result in more effective policies. Ted Alden of the Council on Foreign Relations, in comments carried in the January 12th Nelson Report, correctly called the task force proposal “the most comprehensive effort by any administration to rethink approaches to trade enforcement since the creation of the WTO.”

Yet that is not saying much. The Clinton administration made a strategic mistake by agreeing to China’s admission into the global trade organization before it was ready to abide by international standards, and the Bush team inexplicably allowed Beijing to continually game the system after the country’s accession in 2001. The common element of the policies of the two presidents is the belief that Washington must work cooperatively with the Chinese.

President Obama, despite the trade actions he has launched against China, still shares this view. For instance, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner apparently discussed the task force proposal with Chinese officials during his visit there this month.

Yet the effort to maintain this dialogue appears misguided, as this patient “engagement” approach is what contributed to our problems in the first place, by giving the Chinese more time to engage in delaying tactics while racking up trade surpluses. As Alan Tonelson of the US Business & Industry Council wrote this month, “Ever since he endorsed the 2008 version of the Senate currency bill early in his first White House run, President Obama has had all the evidence of Chinese economic transgressions he could possibly want to justify strong retaliatory actions.” And, as Tonelson also points out, the president already has the legal tools to enforce China’s trade obligations.

One does not need to believe that Obama’s task force is a ploy—“Will anyone be fooled?” Tonelson asked—to understand that the US will not make progress until Washington realizes it must move beyond “dialogue.” After decades of broken Chinese trade promises, we should realize that the only thing that will work going forward is the full use of our economic leverage.

And what would that leverage be? With the collapse of European orders for Chinese goods last year, America has become an even more important market for China. President Obama has the bargaining power. The question now is, does he have the will to use it? 

lenevo thinkpad laptop

The ultimate business tool Engineered for a great user experience Engineered for value Laptop computers designed for businesses, schools and power users everywhere. ThinkPad® notebooks are exceptionally engineered to boost productivity, enhance mobility and reduce your total cost of ownership. Perfect for home/home office, with distinctive designs and features for entertainment and multimedia. Laptops to suit any budget. The Lenovo Essential offers well-equipped, smartly designed notebooks for your business, home or home office. Get everything you need for reliable, secure mobile computing - at the right price.

• Business-class technology
• Full-sized TrackPoint® keyboards
• Extra-long battery life
• Ultraportables and high-performance laptops
• Tablets and touch screens
• Advanced mobile workstations
• Clean, green and energy efficient
• ThinkVantage™ Technologies built-in solutions

McCain to Beijing: Revolution is Coming

“The Arab Spring is coming to China,” John McCain told Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Zhijun at the just-concluded Munich Security Conference, sometimes called the “Davos of Defense.”

Zhang, according to People’s Daily, shot back that the senator’s comment was “no more than fantasy.” The Chinese government has support of more than 70 percent of the people, the Beijing diplomat noted, citing a survey conducted by a Western organization he did not identify.

People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, said in its Chinese-language edition that the confrontation was “full of gunpowder smell.” Chinese leaders have traditionally used gunpowder references as code for insidious foreign attempts to undermine China’s socialist system.

Why should Beijing care so much about the Arizona senator? China’s one-party system looks increasingly fragile, as protests grow in number and become more violent. So when People’s Daily went after McCain for mirroring America’s “anxiety and lack of confidence,” the counterattack betrayed Beijing’s own fears. As Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post noted, the party newspaper rarely reports specific criticisms by foreigners in public settings.

Yet the response to McCain, most revealingly, extended far beyond issues of social stability to matters the Arizona Republican could not be held responsible for. In an English-language article about his Arab Spring comment, People’s Daily rhetorically  asked why China was not “freaking out” when faced with the new American “reset” policy of the Obama administration, the so-called “pivot” of American strategic focus to East Asia. “The answer is simple: China understands the danger of confronting the current global order, it should cautiously and rationally deal with various challenges to pave the way for development,” the paper noted. “China, as the implicit target of the strategy, is responding with reserve.”

If Beijing has reacted with restraint to the White House’s renewed focus on China, it is only because it has yet to figure out what to do. It could take months more for Chinese officials to craft their response, yet in the broad-based attack on John McCain we can see that, in their mind, they are developing the notion that unrelated events are in fact linking to create a web—a global conspiracy—to entrap them and destroy their system. In fact, one of the many Chinese-language commentaries in People’s Daily said that McCain was actually hoping for turmoil in China.

McCain is not a co-conspirator plotting the next Chinese revolution. Moreover, he has nothing to do with Obama’s much-discussed “pivot.” The fact that Beijing can’t stop talking about it suggests the White House has, with its new policy, struck a nerve.

And so has Senator McCain

Power Struggle in China

The attempted defection of Wang Lijun, recently the top cop in the western city of Chongqing, suggests that China’s ongoing leadership transition will be especially turbulent. 

On the 6th of this month, Wang entered the American consulate in Chengdu, the capital of neighboring Sichuan Province, seeking asylum. He spent a day there. Incredibly, his old boss, Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai, essentially invaded Sichuan by sending hundreds of his armed security troops to surround the Chengdu consulate in an unsuccessful bid to apprehend Wang. 

It’s no surprise that Bo wanted to grab hold of his onetime trusted assistant. Wang evidently was willing to turn over sensitive documents about Bo or his wife, and that looked like it would mean the end of his career. The charismatic Bo has not hidden his desire for a seat on the Communist Party’s Politburo Standing Committee, the apex of political power in China. According to the State Department, Wang left the consulate grounds “of his own volition.” He is now believed to be in the custody of state security officials in Beijing after Washington evidently turned down his asylum request.

Why did Wang try to defect? The rumor mills in China are working overtime, but it’s a fact that Wang is famous for arresting about 6,000 triad gangsters, corrupt officials, and others at the behest of Bo. Wang’s tough law enforcement, along with Bo’s political maneuverings, threatened, among others, senior Beijing leaders. Some are even whispering that Hu Jintao, China’s current top leader, engineered the extraordinary events of last week. If that is true, then Xi Jinping, supposedly China’s next supremo, may be vulnerable, as he is believed to be more closely aligned to Bo than to Hu.

In the fall, China’s political transition formally begins at the 18th Communist Party Congress, when the Fourth Generation leaders, led by Hu, are slated to give way to the Fifth. A week ago, every China watcher would have told you that Xi would definitely head the new generation and that the transition would be “smooth.” Now, the handover might well be marked by uncertainty and turbulence instead.

In fact, the Wang incident indicates that factionalism, evident in recent years, is worse than most observers thought. As the Communist Party tries to downplay ideology, its members are drifting into coalitions and finding something new to fight about. Bo is member of the “Princelings,” a group comprising offspring of party leaders, and Hu Jintao a part of the Communist Youth League group. Xi is considered a member of the former grouping but has ties across several factions, including the Shanghai Gang. Last week’s unexpected events, when factional infighting became visible in public, indicate that these groups have yet to agree on the Fifth Generation leadership lineup.

We should not be surprised at the internal squabbling as this is the first handover of power in the history of the People’s Republic not masterminded by Deng Xiaoping. Deng, after making quick work of Mao’s designated successor, picked Jiang Zemin to succeed himself and Hu to follow Jiang. Now, there is factional discord in large part because there are no elders of the stature of Deng to settle matters among the overly ambitious corp of contenders for power.

After Wang Lijun was whisked away to Beijing, it appeared to most observers that Bo’s career would end soon. Yet he is refusing to give up and is reportedly seeking the help of certain generals. This may be a winning tactic. After all, the military looks like it has become the most influential bloc in the Communist Party, in part because it has remained relatively cohesive while civilian leaders have fought among themselves.  
The rise of the military—really, the partial remilitariziation of politics and policy—and factional splintering is resulting in a change in the nature of the regime. As this process of change continues, we can only wonder what happens next.