Dear China, you might not have heard, but you’re up for sainthood. Yeah, yeah, we all know you have the first couple miracles down: the miraculously long-sustained double-digit GDP growth and the lifting of hundreds of millions out of poverty surely qualify. But that third miracle is always the tricky one. For most, it usually requires getting stoned to death. Giant asteroids aside, CER isn’t quite sure how that would be possible, but there does seem to be another route. (And no, releasing imprisoned inventors doesn’t count as a miracle.)
It all starts with solar. Europeans, it turns out, are sick of being dumped on when it comes to cheap Chinese solar components, no matter how much China denies it’s happening. They’re so fed up, the EU is throwing the book at China in the form of sanctions. Only it turned out to be a limp-wristed European throw, with the initial sanctions being less than one-quarter of what was originally expected. The EU will get there though, they just need a couple months to ease into full-fledged sanctions. If the way they’ve handled the eurozone debt crisis is any indication, they’ll have a deal with China on solar in about a decade.
China was obviously pretty peeved about it. The best and brightest minds were convened to determine how to strike back. They weren’t left with many options for what Europe subsidizes, quickly nixing the subsidies on cheese, hairy armpits and fat French actors. That leaves one thing that will hurt Europeans the most: Wine. China will be investigating Europe’s dumping of wine in the Chinese market, starting by confiscating and trying every bottle of Chateau Lafite.
Now set that to the side. (No one said miracles were simple!) The US has waived sanctions on China for doing business with Iran for six more months, saying it’s satisfied with its reductions in purchases from the Middle Eastern state. Now Iran can’t be happy about it, and China likely doesn’t want to start any more spats considering it’s already on with the US, Europe and much of Asia. The solution is simple: Make up for the oil imports by importing the equivalent amount of Iranian wine. Before you say that there’s no way they make wine in Iran, just look at President Ahmadinajad shirtless. It takes alcohol to put hair on a chest like that.
So China solves all of its problems in one fell swoop, turning oil into wine, a miracle to be sure. Now that China is going to be canonized it can finally ascend to nation heaven, where thank God, there are fewer rules than the WTO.
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