The ChiComs Love Their SUVs

RUSH: Let’s talk about China and the ChiComs and the Olympics. Let’s try to put some things here in order. As you know the Olympics start August the 8th. The Olympics start on August the 8th and many of the venues in which the Olympic games will be contested will be in the polluted city of Beijing. You have no doubt — well, maybe you haven’t — the Drive-Bys are running pictures of a polluted, smoggy Beijing that makes Los Angeles on its worst day look like the Cayman Islands. So the ChiComs have said, doesn’t matter, we’re going to make it rain if we have to to get the smog away, then we’re going to not make it rain, we’re gonna stop the rain for the opening ceremonies and the games. But they haven’t been able to stop the smog, and they have shut down a considerable percentage of their factories and industrial production. They have told drivers of automobiles in Beijing to park their cars more days a week than not, they have done everything they can to stop the smog based on what they think is the cause of it, i.e., Chinese human beings, and it hasn’t reduced it. Shutting down the factories hasn’t gotten rid of the smog, and making people drive less hasn’t gotten rid of the smog.

So people are looking, and they’re saying, ‘Why don’t they take some Draconian measures and really fix it.’ I mean, this is the Olympics. They’ve got a big PR show they’re trying to put on here. They’re trying to make a big impression on the rest of the world. Folks, I’m not sure they shut down these factories. I think of that is just BS. Here’s a dirty little secret about the ChiComs. They cannot afford a revolution. They cannot have a bunch of people, unemployed, not working, not productive, with very little income, not in their cities — it’s okay if that’s out in the countryside, but even that’s getting to be risky. But in their cities, they can’t afford it. They will lose control of their population. So as far as the Hu Jintao and the ChiCom leadership is concerned, they will pollute this planet as much as they have to to make sure that they don’t have a revolution launched against them. And that’s why they’re never going to go along with any kind of Kyoto protocol or any other worldwide program to reduce carbon emissions ’cause they know that reducing carbon emissions is going to slow down their economy, and they can’t afford that because they can’t afford people from the countryside coming into the city wanting work, when they’re cutting back jobs in the city because of all these environmental concerns they must take.

So they’re basically saying to the rest of the world — (blowing a raspberry) — on these environmental concerns because they care about themselves, they care about their country, their economy, and their leadership roles. And they obviously don’t think what they’re doing is that damaging anyway. It’s just part and parcel of large groups of people living together. Now, here in the United States, for a whole host of reasons, chief among them the high price of gasoline — But I also think there’s a herd mentality in this, too. People apparently, supposedly, according to Drive-By Media reports, for the last two months, three months, have been showing up at automobile dealerships and trying to trade in their SUVs and other automobiles that are, quote, unquote, gas hogs, ’cause they can’t afford ’em anymore with the tipping point price of gasoline now reaching four bucks per gallon. So we here in America, the most prosperous, the most advanced, the freest, greatest potential, the most amazing collection of human beings in the history of collections of human beings, we are getting rid of our SUVs and pickup trucks, and we are in the process of downsizing to driving bubbles with wheels, lawn mowers with wheels, battery powered cars and so for forth, what are they doing in China?

What are the ChiComs doing — while we move ourselves back to the Stone Age — well, at least in that direction. China’s most popular car is an SUV. SUV sales in China are exploding. ‘Nodding his head to the disco music blaring out of his car’s nine speakers, Zhang Linsen swings the shiny, black Hummer H2 out of his company’s gates and on to the spacious four-lane road. ‘In China, size matters,’ says Zhang, the 44-year-old founder of a media and graphic design company. ‘People want to have a car that shows off their status in society. No one wants to buy small.’ Zhang grasps the wheels of his Hummer, also called a fierce horse in Chinese, and hits the accelerator. Car ownership in China is exploding, and it’s not only cars but also sport-utility vehicles, pickup trucks and other gas-guzzling rides.’

Do you remember when Nixon went to China? When Mao Tse-Tung was still running the show over there, barely, Madam Mao had tried to off him a couple times, she was in jail. But the guy really running the show was Zhou Enlai. Zhou Enlai ran around with this giant big Buick. The ChiCom leadership was running around in giant big Buicks while the population was in rickshaws. They’ve always had this fascination with huge, large cars because the little ChiComs had the ChiCom leaders driving these things around and now they’ve got the chance to buy these SUVs, these Hummers. Folks, I don’t know what the price of gasoline is in China and I don’t know to what extent, if any, it is subsidized — okay, it is subsidized. See, the ChiComs need their economy growing. They need people driving around, moving around. They need people to be able to afford fuel, so they’re subsidizing fuel. They’re not bailing people out of stupid home mortgage messes. They’re buying their gasoline for them, because they need an economy. Know what energy means to this, the whole subject of economic growth. So meanwhile, the ChiComs, a country certainly growing, certainly on the rise, but it ain’t the United States of America. How does it make you feel that Zhang Linsen has a big Hummer with nine speakers blaring as he pulls out into a four-lane road with so much smog he basically can’t see the car in front of him, and you are trading in all of your cars and trying to go out and find basically a lawn mower.