| Monday
October 11, 1999 Well, I missed the 10/10 birthday party of
the Republic of China (anniversary of Sun Yat Sen's declaration of the Republic). I
usually go. Of course years ago it ceased to be a formal diplomatic party in that the
United States has some odd notions about how we recognize the Republic of China (Taiwan).
I don't pretend to understand Chinese politics and the relationship of the
Republic of China and the People's Republic. I do know that ROC Taiwan is a major trading
partner, while our trade with PROC Peking is comparable to that with Belgium. Possony once
said that we will never understand the situation: one day the US and ROC will be on one
side of a table, with the PROC shouting at both of us, and the next day both will be on
the other side of the table shouting at us, and we will have no clue as to what happened.
Given that Possony argued ROC cases before the World Court and was considered one of ROC's
best friends (and a former founder of Senator Thomas Dodd's Committee of One Million), and
he professed inability to understand, I suppose I don't have to feel too bad about it.
Did a good bit of cleaning up after the column. There will be a lot of
mail about the ghost in the machine (see last week's view).
I'm still digging out from the mess here. Mr. Dobbins was kind enough to come over to help
with installation of the NetWinder office server from Rebel.com (www.rebel.com), but I was exhausted, and we ended up using
his time deciding that one of my machines needed a brain scrub; which I did later after a
nap. More on that another time.
Now for fiction.
Apparently I have fallen behind on my trade statistics:
Dear Jerry,
The following link:
http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/top/dst/current/balance.html points to a page showing
YTD trade with China totalling $50B and that with Taiwan adding up to $30B; Belgium isn't
listed in the top 10.
Regards, Mark
Which changes things I suppose although how much I
am not sure. Thanks.
I suspect it has more to do with falling behind on geopolitical
changes. Don't forget that what used to be Hong Kong is now part of the PRC and presumably
in their statistics.
Scott Kitterman
Kitterma@erols.com
Trade
Statistics
From
http://sys1.tpusa.com/dir03/mrktinfo/usglobal/appch.html
For the year
1993:
(B$)
|
PRC
|
Hong
Kong |
ROC
|
Imports
from USA |
10.7
|
10.3
|
16.7
|
Exports
to USA |
17.0
|
31.2
|
23.6
|
Total
Trade |
27.7
|
41.5
|
40.4
|
Of course much
of what came from Hong Kong was actually from the PRC.
The People's Republic may be the bigger trading partner now, but only because of
diplomacy.
Scott Kitterman
Kitterma@erols.com
Ah. Of course. Thanks, that makes a bit of sense.
I am in dire need of a cable: this
connects the Compaq 56K PC Card Modem to the phone lines. The modem is fine, but the cable
connector has been irretrievably damaged. COMPAQ doesn't seem to have one. Surely someone
does? If not I will have to get another PC Card Modem, but I'd rather not...
AAARGGHH! In the column I have a sentence. It was as if there were no CPU in that machine.
WORD 2000 is showing me a wavy green line under were: bad grammar. It suggests
"was" and says that subjects much agree with verbs, FrontPage 2000 checks
spelling but not grammar, so I don't get that here. But it also means that Microsoft is
unaware of the subjunctive mood. One wonders what else it doesn't know...
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