TPP – The Poverty Pact

The Beggar’s Sect was a very big social gang in the fables and legends of the Chinese pugilistic literature. It was a big gang of beggars that boasted of great martial arts exponents to protect their turfs and areas of operation. They set up their own rules, collect protection fees from their members and would beat up challengers to their territories and their controlled businesses.

The thing is that the Beggar’s Sect was mainly for beggars, and the rich would keep themselves away from the Sect. The Sect continued their existence with members from the begging community.

There seems to be a revival of the Beggar’s Sect in the Pacific region, led by the Americans, the country that is deep in debt. It is roping in more indebted countries as members in a pact called the TPP, standing for the Trans Pacific Partnership, or is it The Poverty Pact? And it is beating all the drums to make it attractive and teasing China to join the pact. The thing is whether China, with all the money in its treasury, and being the biggest creditor of the US, would want to join the poor countries that could only shout but with nothing left in its treasury?

Would China be deceived into joining the TPP or The Poverty Pact? Anyway, with Asean as an established regional grouping of countries and linking up with the big economic countries of the world, is there a need for a new pact to be led by a poor country from the eastern Pacific coast that is many thousands of miles away? Why should these Asian and Southeast Asian countries be led by a country in America? Are they that helpless, and lack of leaders to need to be led by someone else who simply walked in and say I am your leader?

And there is also an APEC. So why dance to a new pact because the Americans say so? APEC and Asean are all redundant and there is a need for another new animal to get things done?