PLAYING THREE SIDES ROMP DOWN MEMORY LANE ITALY JAPAN CHINA AND YOU

Let's just talk for a moment about "made In Italy" and look at my recent posts, re large populations of Chinese nationals now living for several decades in Prato, Milan, and elsewhere, making things to be, falsely, marketed globally as made in Italy (by Italians!). 

That is no doubt a huge reason Italy had such a huge outbreak of COVID 19.

I used to casually refer to how Japan had been playing three sides, long ago, secret back door China trade, claiming to us that it was all made in Japan. There was an anti communist ban on China trade back then.

Some few old Japan hands of course knew the truth back then, but winked at the trade for all reasons.

It is not at all clear, as best I recall, that Nixon even knew about all this, that had long been going on behind our backs before, when China then made its opening, that became, and came to be erroneously credited to Nixon as, the Nixon Shock, as Pillsbury recounts.

One major point is missed in this account, of course. It was not merely that the opening with China was a "shock" to Japan.

It was, at that time, given their long surreptitious trade relations against American policy, a betrayal of Japan by China, which of course could not be openly discussed in those terms at all.

Part of the reason for it was worsening relations between China and Russia at that time, but that did not lessen its implications as a betrayal, even though Japan was not in a position to step in in a big way with military assistance, as the US was, ostensibly quid pro quo. Still, a betrayal of Japan.