China is one of America's major bankers, so it would have a lot more influence and power than most people think. Even with the high level of
collusion amongst the nations PTB, I imagine there are players who have stepped ahead in the game, and are rewriting agreements to suit their
interests. So whatever the plan was, its been rewritten, and China is the wildcard here.
But I'm not sure theres a lack of coalition here. Here's an interesting article from Rolling Stone, China's All-Seeing Eye: With the help of U.S.
defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.
This is how this Golden Shield will work: Chinese citizens will be watched around the clock through networked CCTV cameras and remote monitoring of
computers. They will be listened to on their phone calls, monitored by digital voice-recognition technologies. Their Internet access will be
aggressively limited through the country's notorious system of online controls known as the "Great Firewall." Their movements will be tracked
through national ID cards with scannable computer chips and photos that are instantly uploaded to police databases and linked to their holder's
personal data. This is the most important element of all: linking all these tools together in a massive, searchable database of names, photos,
residency information, work history and biometric data. When Golden Shield is finished, there will be a photo in those databases for every person in
China: 1.3 billion faces....
With its militant protests and mobile population, China confronts a fundamental challenge. How can it maintain a system based on two dramatically
unequal categories of people: the winners, who get the condos and cars, and the losers, who do the heavy labor and are denied those benefits? More
urgently, how can it do this when information technology threatens to link the losers together into a movement so large it could easily overwhelm the
country's elites?
The answer is Golden Shield. ...
In other words, this controversial U.S. "crime control" technology has already found its way into the hands of the Chinese police. Moreover, Yao's
goal, stated to me several times, is to use the software to land lucrative contracts with police agencies to integrate facial recognition into the
newly built system of omnipresent surveillance cameras and high-tech national ID cards. As part of any contract he gets, Yao says, he will "pay L-1 a
certain percentage of our sales."...
Human-rights activists are quick to point out that while the tools are the same, the political contexts are radically different. China has a
government that uses its high-tech web to imprison and torture peaceful protesters, Tibetan monks and independent-minded journalists. Yet even here,
the lines are getting awfully blurry. The U.S. currently has more people behind bars than China, despite a population less than a quarter of its size.
...
"I can guarantee you that there are people in the Bush administration who are studying the use of surveillance technologies being developed here and
have at least skeletal plans to implement them at home," he says. "We can already see it in New York with CCTV cameras. Once you have the cameras in
place, you have the infrastructure for a powerful tracking system. I'm worried about what this will mean if the U.S. government goes totalitarian and
starts employing these technologies more than they are already. I'm worried about the threat this poses to American democracy."
Herrington pauses. "George W. Bush," he adds, "would do what they are doing here in a heartbeat if he could."...
When I leave China, I feel a powerful relief: I have escaped. I am home safe. But the feeling starts to fade as soon as I get to the customs line at
JFK, watching hundreds of visitors line up to have their pictures taken and fingers scanned. In the terminal, someone hands me a brochure for "Fly
Clear." All I need to do is have my fingerprints and irises scanned, and I can get a Clear card with a biometric chip that will let me sail through
security. Later, I look it up: The company providing the technology is L-1."
www.rollingstone.com...
I'm seeing more collusion than anything despite the public show.