Does anyone wonder how China’s navy has been able to move rapidly from a third-world rust bucket to a large and growing world class navy in just 20-years? Bill Clinton is the answer
Most of us who have been around just a bit understand from many sources Chinese government paid for Bill Clinton’s first election as POTUS (42).
The Chinese provided hundreds of millions of dollars using direct infusions of cash, millions funneled through straw donors, tinsel town notables, political consultants, PACs, lobbyists, and more – enough to fund the election with change left over.
During World War II, Kaiser Steel built the largest steel plant on the West Coast and provided quality steel to the ship building industry for decades until California started killing it’s Golden Goose industries. After Kaiser Steel declared bankruptcy in the 1980s, much of the plant was torn down and the land redeveloped.
China wanted the strategic portions of that plant. When the Chinese came calling, Bill Clinton was quick to clear all of the hurdles to enable this sale and the export of those strategic parts of this facility. Those modern portions of the plant were sold to the Chinese government in the 1990’s.
Using a Chinese crew of engineers and technicians, the facilities were disassembled piece by piece with each washer, screw, nut, rivet, column, beam, etc. cataloged as they reverse engineered everything. This took a fewf years.
The materials were reassembled in China less than 20-years ago as a fine modern state-of-the-art steel producing plant, one of the finest in the world. The plant formed the backbone for China’s modernized steel industry. Several more identical plants have since been built using those blueprints.
These Clinton authorized plants provided China with a great leap forward enabling China to produce quantities of consistently high quality industrial and military grade steel. These were needed to build China’s modern military (and sky scrapers, enormous bridges, dams, and more), and especially its world-class navy that the world now has to deal with in the South China Sea.
Will the Chinese commemorate Willy Clinton’s contributions to China’s military might with a statue at one of those plants?
James E. Horn is a retired American Diplomat
He can be reached at james@portervillepost.com
