Tim Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in recognition of The Reverend Monsignor Peter M. Polando, who celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of his ordination this year. Monsignor Polando was born in Youngstown, Ohio in 1954, and was ordained in 1980 at Youngstown's Cathedral of St. Columba. He has led a distinguished life, marked by numerous degrees of higher education, an array of honors and awards, and a variety of career positions that have impacted many throughout Ohio. His impressive educational background includes a Bachelor of Arts degree from St. Gregory Seminary, Masters of Arts degrees from Mount St. Mary Seminary of the West, Notre Dame University, and Ursuline College, and a licentiate in Cannon Law from Catholic University of America. Monsignor Polando is a Chaplain of His Holiness, a high honor that was bestowed upon him by Pope John Paul II in 1997. Bishop Tobin, former head of the Youngstown Diocese, appointed him to the position of Adjutant Judicial Vicar of the Diocese of Youngstown in 2003. Monsignor Polando has served as Supreme Chaplain, Vice President and National Chaplain for the First Catholic Slovak Union of the United States and Canada, and as a Chaplain and Pastor for various churches, parishes, and organizations throughout Ohio. He has worked as an instructor at Walsh University, Ursuline College, and Cardinal Mooney High School, where he also served as principal and a cross country and track coach. Monsignor Polando is also an active member of many organizations and societies including alumni associations, Knights of Columbus, Youngstown Council of Catholic Nurses and several Catholic Slovak organizations, including Slovak Catholic Sokol Wreaths 54 and 108, First Catholic Slovak Ladies Association Branch 169, and Ladies Pennsylvania Slovak Catholic Union. Monsignor Polando has touched the lives of many with his dedication and faith, and I would like to honor and congratulate him on his twenty-fifth anniversary of his ordination.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. It is a typical shell game in Washington. All of a sudden we have a new proposal. It is all different. The end result is the same thing. There is money not going into a trust fund that is being diverted into a private account. Here is the kicker. There is going to be a tremendous increase in administrative costs for people to have to handle this money, and there is going to be a reduction in the benefits that people get. That is why we are here every week talking about the same issue over and over because we are not going to allow any privatization scheme to come through this body that is going to reduce the benefits. In the first proposal from the paycheck to the private account, the rest goes in Social Security. The second proposal, here is the paycheck, and everything goes to Social Security and then Social Security will then divert it to a private account with your name on it. It is just a shell game to try to sell the new proposal. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Or that they just want to win, Mr. Speaker. If the gentleman will continue to yield, this sometimes is not even about policy. It is about winning the argument, and they are losing; so they are trying to find a new way to win it, and it is just not working out.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Right. And if the gentleman from Florida will continue to yield, the new system, the new plan that they have where they give the money to Social Security and they put it in side accounts, they are going to invest it in T bills just like Social Security is. So there is no real advantage. The argument in the first proposal was that we are going to put it in a private account and they are going to be able to gain all this extra interest. Now the new proposal is saying they are going to take it and put it in a private account and they are only going to be able to invest it in T bills just like Social Security is now. So it is just getting more and more ridiculous. It is like a comedy of errors. Every single new proposal is worse than the last proposal. And I think they need to just work with us, work with our side, let us get a solution, make it more solvent, move forward, and start addressing poverty and health care and all the other issues here.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the gentlewoman just said in a State like Florida that the President won in the last election is not getting the kind of support. Here is an interesting statistic, group of statistics, asking rural voters: ``Are Bush's proposed changes to Social Security mainly consistent with the values of the people in your community or out of step?'' And here is the pie chart. All rural voters, consistent with rural voters' values, 27 percent; out of step with our values, 61 percent. And Bush cleaned Senator Kerry's clock in rural areas, and 61 percent of rural America believe that the President's proposed changes to Social Security are out of step with their values. And when we look at white fundamentalists, 55 percent; conservatives, 47 percent; white women, 65 percent; Bush voters, 44 percent; and Southerners, 58 percent. Why are we having this debate? Why are we having this argument when we have all these other issues that need to be addressed in Congress and the President keeps running against the wall, hitting his head, bouncing back, and thinking if he keeps running and keeps hitting his head that somehow it is going to change. And when this President in particular, who has done so well in rural areas, is losing support on this issue, it is mindboggling to me.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, 70 percent of those currently in Iraq and Afghanistan are under 30, so they are going to need to access this system because they are going to have a lot of years in it. Mr. Speaker, we are wrapping up here; I think we just have a few minutes left. If you have any e-mails you want to send to us, the address is as follows: 30something.dems@mail.house.gov. Again, the address is 30something.dems@mail.house.gov. I received a letter today from a local veteran in Ohio. Korean War veteran Bob Brothers wrote and sent me a copy of a letter to the editor that he was sending. He wrote this after the flag burning amendment that we voted on last week. He calls it, ``Conundrum: Congress of the United States is voting on a flag desecration amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. The riddle is, this allows Congressmen to stand under the American flag and declare, I am patriotic. The pun is these same Congressmen vote against mandatory funding for the Veterans Affairs Department. This demonstrates to me the true hypocrisy of Congressmen and women who vote against mandatory funding for the Veterans Affairs Department. Why are these two items not attached so that courage, honor, and valor become necessary when they enter the Chamber to vote? ``A veteran is a veteran is a veteran. When as a young kid I hit the beach in Korea, I did not see any Congressmen or Congresswomen, and I was not asked my income before going ashore. I will not vote for anyone who tries to show they are patriotic by voting for the flag desecration amendment and voting against mandatory funding for the Veteran Affairs Department. Iraqi Freedom veterans take note: as soon as you are discharged, you will begin a lifelong battle with your government. A vote for the flag desecration amendment coupled with a vote against mandatory funding for the Veterans Affairs Department brings shame on the very symbol of liberty and freedom that my comrades gave life and limb and more since it all began over 200 years ago. Not giving the care veterans earned and deserved is burning the flag.'' That was from Bob Brothers, a Korean War veteran from my district who is at every Memorial Day, at every Veterans' Day event that there is. They are committed to the community. So I just wanted to share that. We have a long way to go here, and I think the point tonight is, the argument nationally is about Social Security and how we are going to fix a problem that does not exist for 40 years, or are we going to address the veterans issues that we face today.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I think it is important as we start tonight and get things rolling here we talk a little bit about what the new proposal is. The 30-Something Working Group has taken a step in another direction as far as our billboards. We are going to go with hand-drawn charts. It is like we are in the locker room during half- time of the football game. I think it is important to know where we end up after the second proposal that is circulating around Congress. Democrats have not seen one plan yet, but the important thing for the American people to understand is the second proposal that is now circulating around Congress ends up at the same exact place that the first proposal put us. So here we have on our little chart here everything broken down. The original Bush proposal is on the right, and the new proposal that is circulating in Congress is on the left. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek) may remember that the first proposal was out of the 12-plus percent, 12.4 percent you pay into Social Security, half by the employer and half by the employee, the Bush proposal was saying that the employee could take up to 4 percent of that and put it in this side private account. Right out of your paycheck, you could give 4 percent and put it into a private account. The rest of yours, the 2.2 left from yours and I think the 2.2 left from the employer, would go into the Social Security trust fund. The employer was actually getting a break. They would not have to match. So the Wal-Marts of the world would not have to match their employees' 4 percent that they put in the private account. So the diversion into the side account is what led to the whole shortfall. In the second proposal that is now being circulated around Congress, it is just a shell game. All they do, instead of allowing someone to divert the money right away from their paycheck, you send the whole thing to Social Security and then Social Security takes a portion of it and puts it into a private account with your name on it. So it is just a typical Potomac two-step.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that. But on and on and on this goes, and we are sitting here having a debate, a curious intellectual debate, about whether the new Social Security plan is going to work or not. It diverts $600 billion from the surplus. This is not working. The President's plan is not working. We really do not have a crisis for another 40 years, and meanwhile we are getting our clocks cleaned by the Chinese while they are taking the money and they are buying military equipment from the Russians. We are sitting here thinking who can come up with the next great Social Security plan. I know the gentleman goes back to his district every weekend, and I do too, and I know that people are not interested in our having intellectual debates about a problem that really does not even exist. That is left for the ivory towers. We are here to get the job done.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Look at Wal-Mart. They have gamed the system. They pay their employees just enough for them to qualify for Medicaid, so they do not pay them any more. They do not give them health care benefits and they qualify for Medicaid. That is corporate welfare. Everyone is worried about cutting welfare checks for poor people. How about the rich people that get at the public trough and pig out? We are subsidizing Wal-Mart while they are forcing their suppliers to go to China.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will further yield, that is a beautiful point. It is a beautiful point. The Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House. So obviously some agenda is getting implemented. Their agenda is getting implemented because they control all three Chambers. And when we look at what it is, it is obviously not an agenda that is helping Middle America, small businesses, addressing the health care issue, education issue, and all of the things we have talked about. The gentleman mentioned earlier business not being able to cover health care and all this, and forced to go to these other countries. And I even think the Democrats in many ways, Mr. Speaker, have not addressed this issue in the proper way. Small businesses and big businesses, they are not out to screw their employees. And sometimes many workers may feel that way, but they are not out to hurt people. If they could provide health care and they had the resources to do it, they would, especially the small businesses. Especially the small businesses. So the question is, What have we done here? We cannot blame a big company for not providing health care to their workers if they are trying to compete with people coming and shipping goods in from China with low cost, with low overhead, because of all the situations that we have talked about here. The finger should be pointed at this Chamber. The finger should be pointed at the U.S. Senate and at the White House. We are the ones not addressing the health care issue in the country. We have not done anything. I cannot tell the Members how many small business people I meet on a daily basis when I go back home that talk to me about health care, and they run a business of 100 to 200 people. They care about their workers. When someone in a worker's family gets sick, they know about it. When a worker gets sick, they know about it. They know the name of everybody on the floor in the machine shop. And to say that somehow they do not care, I think is wrong. I think it misrepresents what is going on. And my point here, as scattered as it may be, is that the finger should be pointed to us. We swear an oath to the Constitution, and part of that means helping people, coming together in a democratic fashion to move society forward. And we are not doing it. We are leaving people behind left and right, whether it is health care or whether it is education or anything else. So I know we are wrapping up here and we are running out of time, but I wanted to make that final point and let the gentleman make a point, and we will get our little chart up here and wrap things up.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, it is good to be back. I am sorry I am late, but I agree wholeheartedly with the portion I heard that the gentleman was saying. I think the focus that the 30-Something Group has zoned in on is the issue of this borrowing, this raiding the trust fund, this taking away from investments that can be made in the next generation. The President came out with a plan that said $5 trillion would have to be borrowed over the next 20 years, 1.5 to $2 trillion over the next 10 years. So imagine $5 trillion being borrowed, taken out of the economy, borrowing it from the Japanese and Chinese in order to fund this scheme that the President was pushing. Now, all of a sudden, we have a new privatization plan that is a little bit different, and we will get into the details in a minute. I think the principle is the same: We are taking money out of the trust fund. I think any time we do that, we are putting ourselves in a very, very difficult position. The key principle for the Democrats is to make sure that we maintain the benefit we have now, make sure that we maintain the guaranteed benefit that our parents and grandparents have, and then make the system more solvent. There are very few details. Unless there is new information, there are very few details to this plan.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me, and I think he is exactly right. We have got to step up and pose the vision, an alternative to what is going on here. Give us an e-mail: 30somethingdems@mail.house.gov. Send us an e-mail and we will possibly read it here. We have brought in a lot of e-mail the last few weeks. We have been swamped with e-mail the last few weeks. So I thank the gentleman for yielding, and we will be back again next week.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. This is so eerily familiar to what has been going on with all these other different programs. I do not know if you got a chance to talk at all about this, but remember the Medicare program? Remember how they had this great program that was going to move the country forward and, God almighty, it was only $400 billion.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. $350 billion, it started, at the very beginning. Then it became $400 billion. Then you and I sat in this Chamber until 3 in the morning and watched the arms get twisted, the eyes start to bulge, the chicken wings were coming in, they had the arms behind people's backs. A $400 billion Medicare prescription drug bill passed this Chamber by just a few votes, with a lot of arm twisting. Then we find out a couple of months later that the $400 billion prescription drug bill that was $350 billion became $700 billion. And then we found out that the $700 billion prescription drug bill that was a $400 billion prescription drug bill that was actually a $350 billion prescription drug bill became over $1 trillion when you start factoring in some of the out-years with absolutely no cost containment through reimportation or giving the Secretary the power to negotiate down the drug prices. So now all of a sudden we go with the Social Security program, and let us not even talk about the war and all the nonsense that was given to us prior to the war and what ended up playing out, we will keep it on domestic programs, now we are in the Social Security and now they are telling us that, well, we had these private accounts and they were going to not cost too much and they were going to save us money in the long run; and we started the crunching the numbers, and we got to the fact that it was going to be $2 trillion over 10 years, $5 trillion over 20 years. Our national debt now is $7.8 trillion, and we are going to add an additional 5 over the next 20 years. But now that did not work so now we are going to go back to the drawing board, and we are going to start playing a shell game with the Treasury bonds, but the bottom line in this is that they are still taking surplus money that is being used right now going into domestic programs, going to reduce the amount of the debt. They are going to put this in some kind of private account somewhere that nobody really seems to know what it is and have no way of balancing the budget or making investments for the American people.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Say it one more time.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. This is not the Kendrick Meek-Tim Ryan quote.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. That is a great point. Because here we are today, we are passing an amendment to the Constitution today that has not gone anywhere for 12 years, never goes anywhere. At the same time we are cutting benefits for our veterans, and here we go. All of a sudden we have got another Social Security plan. Let us fight about this one for 6 months. Let us have the 30-something Working Group come here and fight about this one and pick this one apart for 6 months. When is this administration and this Congress going to start addressing the real problems in the country? That is the real issue. You go back to your district and you are in south Florida. No one is worried about their Social Security check coming to their mailbox. Look at this thing. We are good until 2047, 100 percent of your benefits, if we do not do a stinking thing here. Then for the next 20 years, you still get 80 percent of the benefits if we do not do a thing in this Chamber. And we consistently have this debate on this plan and that plan, and we do not have a problem. We have got a challenge, but we do not have a big problem with the Social Security plan. I go back home and young kids have lead poisoning, thousands of kids in thousands of school districts around this country have lead poisoning. Kids do not have enough money to eat. Eighty-five percent of students in some of these school districts qualify for free and reduced lunch, and we are talking about 2047. We are running a $600 billion-plus deficit that is offset by the Social Security surplus. It is irresponsible to sit here and try to pretend that 2047 is somehow a crisis in the country. It is irresponsible that we are going to consistently come up with new plans that we are going to argue over. Where is the new plan to make sure young kids have enough food? Where is the new plan to make sure we build new schools? Where is the new plan to make sure everybody in the country has health care? This is a farce. This whole debate has become a farce and we are ignoring the real problems of the people in the country. All you have to do is check one of the polls that come out. This body here has a 30 percent approval rating in the whole United States of America. What are we doing? It is obvious that we are not addressing the needs of the problems. This is my third year, this is your third year, this is the President's fifth year, sixth year. The Congress has been in control of one party since 1994. Come on. We have not addressed the health care issue in the country. Forty-some million Americans do not have health care. I get calls from General Motors, Goodyear, small mom-and-pop businesses, food chains. No one can afford health care for their workers anymore.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Absolutely.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Florida is saying there is a lot of support against the President's Social Security plan.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield back.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, to send us an e-mail, tell us what the challenges in your life are, 30somethingdems@mail.house.gov. Drop us an e-mail, and we will possibly read it here on the floor.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to share with you an article written by Scott Lilly, the former Democratic Staff Director to my distinguished colleague and Ranking Member of the Committee on Appropriations, David Obey. Scott, a longtime friend and valued resource to Members and staff on both sides of the aisle, left Capitol Hill last year after 32 years of distinguished service. His departure was and continues to be deeply felt by many of us, but as the article below reveals, Scott remains a tremendous resource for this institution as we work to deal with serious policy issues that impact our constituents, our communities and our nation. In this article, How Much to Feed a Dragon, Mr. Lilly discusses the extremely important issue of the threat of China to the United States as an economic and world power. As Scott articulates so well, the time to act against China and its currency undervaluation is now I urge my colleagues in the House to heed the warnings detailed in this article and to stop the rhetoric. We must act immediately and decisively to address the serious risk China poses to the American way of life--our nation's future depends on it. How Much To Feed a Dragon A few weeks ago the Bush administration took action to cap the growth of Chinese textile imports to no more than 7.5 percent a year, professing grave concern for what is left of America's textile industry. The controversy generated by that move largely obscured a far more profound decision by the administration only a week earlier. In a formal report to Congress, Treasury Secretary John Snow refused to designate China as a currency manipulator despite massive evidence of China's continuous intervention in global currency markets- keeping the yuan at levels far below what most economists believe is its true value. Snow stated that Chinese officials ``have repeatedly vowed'' to move toward ``a more flexible'' currency. When they will move or how far they will move is an issue that Snow will apparently continue to leave to the discretion of China's central planners. While this issue sounds arcane, it may also rate as one of the most important economic issues of this generation. The intense manipulation of the Chinese yuan impacts greatly on numerous problems facing American households, ranging from high gas prices to weak job growth and stagnant wages. It has materially contributed to the problem of our growing foreign debt, the weakness of the dollar and a potential worldwide currency crisis that could lead to global depression. In addition, it has serious implications for the balance of global power in the decades ahead. How has China impacted U.S. gasoline prices? World demand for energy grew by more than 3.4 percent last year-the largest yearly increase since the gas lines of the 1970s and more than twice the average yearly growth over the past two decades. Furthermore, it is clear that the big players in world energy markets see this spike in demand as anything but temporary. They are not only buying up oil futures and the shares of companies that own and sell oil but companies that explore and drill for oil as well. The reason for this rapid growth in oil demand is attributable to one single fact: Oil consumption in China is growing at astronomical rates. During 2004 Chinese consumption of oil averaged more than one million barrels a day above the previous year, an increase of 19.3 percent, or eight times faster than the growth of energy consumption in the rest of the world. Without China, the global growth in oil consumption during 2004 would have been just 2.2 percent--a rate that the normal expansion of world oil exploration and production can accommodate without significant upward pressure on oil prices. Even in per capita terms, China's oil consumption is growing three times faster than the rest of the world. Why is China guzzling so much petroleum? China's skyrocketing demand for energy is largely a function of the nation's skyrocketing rate of economic growth. For several years China has been growing at a rate of more than 9 percent per annum even after accounting for inflation. Some experts expect growth in the 8 to 10 percent range for the indefinite future. This rate of growth drove China last year to consume 40 percent of the globe's increased demand for crude oil in 2004--more than the rest of the developing world combined. How can China maintain such a rapid pace of growth? The answer to that is also relatively simple. According to a report released in Beijing last month by the State Information Center, foreign trade is the major driving force of China's economy. In particular, China's net exports, or trade surplus with the rest of the world, are credited with bringing strong growth to the nation. The report discloses that Chinese exports totaled $156 billion in the first quarter of 2005 while imports totaled only $143 billion. More than 60 percent of Chinese surplus came at the expense of the United States. Last year, the U.S; bilateral trade deficit with China exceeded $162 billion, while the rest of the world actually ran a trade surplus with China. As a result, it is almost entirely the Chinese trade surplus with the United States that is providing the country with this extraordinary pace of expansion. What makes China so competitive with U.S. and other foreign producers? It is important to remember that China is not a market economy. Prices in a particular sector can easily be manipulated by central economic planners. This goes for all inputs: labor, land, capital and energy. If China wants to compete and be the low price producer for a particular product, no other producers functioning in a market economy with fixed prices can match the price at which China will be able to sell. But even more important has been China's manipulation of its currency, the yuan. The central government has gone to extraordinary lengths to cap the value of the yuan to no more than 8.3 to the dollar. As Secretary Snow points out, leaders in Beijing have talked at great lengths about future plans to allow the yuan to trade more freely on world currency markets. But they have taken no such action and the rapid export-led growth of the Chinese economy would drop back to more normal levels if they did. Since rapid growth is seen by the leadership in Beijing as central to the nation's economic, political and geopolitical goals, it is hard to imagine that significant change will occur without strong external pressure. Since the United States alone represents nearly all of China's net trade surplus, the lever to force revaluation of the yuan is almost entirely in the hands of the United States. Isn't China's growth good for the world? It depends on what part of the world you are talking about. Oil producing countries are having a bonanza. Saudi Arabia, a country in danger of not being able to make payments on its foreign debts just a few years ago, is now raking in revenues at a rate that dwarfs even the oil price boom of the 1970s. Oil executives in this country are also prospering. The 3 million shares of Exxon Mobil held by Board Chairman and CEO Lee R. Raymond are now worth about $170 million, up more than $62 million or about 59 percent from the level such shares would have sold for only 18 months ago. Raymond is only one of thousands of oil company executives enjoying the new prosperity that China's demand for petroleum has created for the industry. There are also other domestic winners in the unbalanced trade relationship between the U.S. and China--at least over the short term. Companies ranging from Mattel to Boeing have increasingly moved production operations from the U.S. to China in recent years. They reap two benefits in such transactions. First, the lower wages paid in the Chinese factories provide savings that go largely to the bottom line on corporate balance sheets. Chinese workers make about one- twentieth of what U.S. workers make. But secondly, the mere threat of moving more production to China keeps downward pressure on wages paid to U.S. workers. Since 2001, the hourly output of U.S. workers has increased by more than 16 percent, but the average wage production and non-supervisory worker wage remained virtually flat after adjusting for inflation. Corporate profits, on the other hand, have jumped by about 58 percent since the beginning of 2001 despite slower than normal economic growth. Not since the 1920s have workers' wages fallen so far behind their increases in productivity and at no time in the post-World War II era have corporate profits accounted for such a large portion of the growth in national output. So while American corporations have at least thus far been winners in U.S. acceptance of China's trade and currency policies, U.S. workers have been major losers. Not only have wages been stagnant, but so have the number of jobs. The number of Americans with manufacturing jobs has dropped by 2.8 million, or 16 percent, since January of 2001. At the same time, the U.S. population has continued to grow. About 12 million more individuals are now being supported with paychecks that are no bigger in either size or number. Whether or not U.S. corporations--outside the oil patch-- will be long-term winners in this arrangement is a matter of increasing concern on Wall Street. Many on the street are expressing concerns that U.S. corporate profits cannot grow over the long term if American families have less and less income with which to make purchases. Since production and non-supervisory workers make up about 80 percent of the total workforce, the long-term health of the U.S. consumer is inextricably linked to the earning power of the U.S. worker. There are also losers in other countries around the world. Underdeveloped countries with large pools of low-wage and underutilized labor are among those who suffer the most. Their dreams of development have been stymied by China's export gluttony and they have not only lost out in the struggle to attract industry and earn hard currency, but they now live in a world where the winner has driven the cost of energy they need for their own development to prices they can no longer afford. But there are implications to our unbalanced trading relationship with China that may be grimmer than the impact it is having on the U.S. and world economy. Those implications involve China's geopolitical ambitions, which are clearly less benign than proponents of unbridled U.S.- Chinese trade would want us to believe. While the CIA may have overestimated Iraq's military capabilities, it has consistently underestimated (at least until recently) the pace of Chinese military modernization. China has taken the politically painful steps of slimming down its uniform forces to levels compatible with high-tech, modern, Western military doctrine. It has invested heavily in the development of highly capable fighter planes, air-to-air missiles, radars, landing craft and other military resources needed to confront U.S. forces in the Formosa Straits and eventually in other parts of Asia. China now has hundreds of nuclear weapons which are both strategic and tactical in type. It maintains at least twenty intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting targets in the western United States and is believed to have recently recommissioned a submarine capable of launching nuclear missiles from waters off U.S. coasts. China is working on the DR-41 missile, believed to have greater range, accuracy and a shorter launch time than existing Chinese ICBMs. They are believed to be working on between four to six new submarines capable of launching nuclear armed missiles. As Thomas Kane wrote last year in Parameters, a publication of the U.S. Army War College, ``Nuclear weapons allow the People's Republic of China to take diplomatic and military positions with a much greater level of confidence.'' China's booming economy also has geopolitical implications beyond the mere contribution it makes to military modernization. If China's economy continues to experience real growth in the 9 percent range, it could surpass the United States as the world's largest economy within a single decade, even if GDP growth in the United States remains relaively strong. As the magnitude of China's economy grows, so will its geopolitical will. One does not need to go to Asia to find examples. Brazil has become a major source for Chinese raw materials and in turn China is discussing financing the construction of a long sought after road from the Amazon basin across the Andes to ports on the Pacific. Korea is becoming something of a ``Silicon Valley'' for Chinese industry, and even old adversaries such as India and Japan have to rethink how to accommodate the new reality that a rapidly growing China presents. Some of these changes are inevitable. China needs to grow and will grow almost regardless of U.S. policy. But does China have the political maturity to absorb such a rapid increase in economic, political and military power and use it wisely? Its record on human rights, democratic reform and the treatment of its own citizens should raise serious doubts. We should want a growing economy and rising prosperity for the world's most populous nation, but we should question whether the current torrential rate of growth--growth driven almost entirely by huge net export surpluses with the United States--is a positive for the economic well-being of our own citizens or the prospects for world peace over the coming decades.