The Geopolitics Of China [复制链接]

THE GEOPOLITICS OF CHINA: A Great Power Enclosed ContemporaryChina is an island. Although it is not surrounded by water (whichborders only its eastern flank), China is bordered by terrain that isdifficult to traverse in virtually any direction. There are some areasthat can be traversed, but to understand China we must begin byvisualizing the mountains, jungles and wastelands that enclose it. Thisouter shell both contains and protects China. Internally, China must be divided into two parts: The Chinese heartlandand the non-Chinese buffer regions surrounding it. There is a line inChina called the 15-inch isohyet. On the east side of this line morethan 15 inches of rain fall each year. On the west side annual rainfallis less than that. The bulk of the Chinese population lives east andsouth of this line. This is Han China, the Chinese heartland. It iswhere the vast majority of Chinese live and the home of the ethnic Han,what the world regards as the Chinese. It is important to understandthat over a billion people live in an area about half the size of theUnited States. The Chinese heartland is divided into twoparts, northern and southern, which in turn is represented by two maindialects, Mandarin in the north and Cantonese in the south. Thesedialects share a writing system but are almost mutuallyincomprehensible when spoken. The Chinese heartland is defined by twomajor rivers -- the Yellow River in the north and the Yangtze in theSouth, along with a third lesser river in the south, the Pearl. Theheartland is China's agricultural region. However -- and this is thesingle most important fact about China -- it has about one-third thearable land per person as the rest of the world. This pressure hasdefined modern Chinese history -- both in terms of living with it andtrying to move beyond it. A ring of non-Han regions surroundthis heartland -- Tibet, Xinjiang province (home of the MuslimUighurs), Inner Mongolia and Manchuria. These are the buffer regionsthat historically have been under Chinese rule when China was strongand have broken away when China was weak. Today, there is a great dealof Han settlement in these regions, a cause of friction, but today HanChina is strong. These are also the regions where the historical threat to Chinaoriginated. Han China is a region full of rivers and rain. It istherefore a land of farmers and merchants. The surrounding areas arethe land of nomads and horsemen. In the 13th century, the Mongols under Ghenghis Khan invaded and occupied parts of Han China until the 15thcentury, when the Han reasserted their authority. Following thisperiod, Chinese strategy remained constant: the slow and systematicassertion of control over these outer regions in order to protect theHan from incursions by nomadic cavalry. This imperative drove Chineseforeign policy. In spite of the imbalance of population, or perhapsbecause of it, China saw itself as extremely vulnerable to militaryforces moving from the north and west. Defending a massed population offarmers against these forces was difficult. The easiest solution, theone the Chinese chose, was to reverse the order and impose themselveson their potential conquerors. There was another reason. Asidefrom providing buffers, these possessions provided defensible borders.With borderlands under their control, China was strongly anchored.Let's consider the nature of China's border sequentially, starting inthe east along the southern border with Vietnam and Myanmar. The borderwith Vietnam is the only border readily traversable by large armies ormass commerce. In fact, as recently as 1975, China and Vietnam fought ashort border war, and there have been points in history when China hasdominated Vietnam. However, the rest of the southern border whereYunnan province meets Laos and Myanmar is hilly jungle, difficult totraverse, with almost no major roads. Significant movement across thisborder is almost impossible. During World War II, the United Statesstruggled to build the Burma Road to reach Yunnan and supply ChiangKai-shek's forces. The effort was so difficult it became legendary.China is secure in this region. Hkakabo Razi, almost 19,000 feet high, marks the border between China,Myanmar and India. At this point, China's southwestern frontier begins,anchored in the Himalayas. More precisely, it is where Tibet,controlled by China, borders India and the two Himalayan states, Nepaland Bhutan. This border runs in a long ark past Pakistan, Tajikistanand Kirgizstan, ending at Pik Pobedy, a 25,000-foot mountain markingthe border with China, Kirgyzstan and Kazakhstan. It is possible topass through this border region with difficulty; historically, parts ofit have been accessible as a merchant route. On the whole, however, theHimalayas are a barrier to substantial trade and certainly to militaryforces. India and China -- and China and much of Central Asia -- aresealed off from each other. The one exception is the nextsection of the border, with Kazakhstan. This area is passable but hasrelatively little transport. As the transport expands, this will be themain route between China and the rest of Eurasia. It is the one landbridge from the Chinese island that can be used. The problem isdistance. The border with Kazakhstan is almost a thousand miles fromthe first tier of Han Chinese provinces, and the route passes throughsparsely populated Muslim territory, a region that has posedsignificant challenges to China. Importantly, the Silk Road from Chinaran through Xinjiang and Kazakhstan on its way west. It was the onlyway to go. There is, finally, the long northern border first with Mongolia andthen with Russia, running to the Pacific. This border is certainlypassable. Indeed, the only successful invasion of China took place whenMongol horseman attacked from Mongolia, occupying a good deal of HanChina. China's buffers -- Inner Mongolia and Manchuria -- haveprotected Han China from other attacks. The Chinese have not attackednorthward for two reasons. First, there has historically not been muchthere worth taking. Second, north-south access is difficult. Russia hastwo rail lines running from the west to the Pacific -- the famousTrans-Siberian Railroad (TSR) and the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM), whichconnects those two cities and ties into the TSR. Aside from that, thereis no east-west ground transportation linking Russia. There is also nonorth-south transportation. What appears accessible really is not. Thearea in Russia that is most accessible from China is the regionbordering the Pacific, the area from Russia's Vladivostok toBlagoveschensk. This region has reasonable transport, population andadvantages for both sides. If there were ever a conflict between Chinaand Russia, this is the area that would be at the center of it. It isalso the area, as you move southward and away from the Pacific, thatborders on the Korean Peninsula, the area of China's last majormilitary conflict. Then there is the Pacific coast, which hasnumerous harbors and has historically had substantial coastal trade. Itis interesting to note that, apart from the attempt by the Mongols toinvade Japan, and a single major maritime thrust by China into theIndian Ocean -- primarily for trade and abandoned fairly quickly --China has never been a maritime power. Prior to the 19thcentury, it had not faced enemies capable of posing a naval threat and,as a result, it had little interest in spending large sums of money onbuilding a navy. China, when it controls Tibet, Xinjiang,Inner Mongolia and Manchuria, is an insulated state. Han China has onlyone point of potential friction, in the southeast with Vietnam. Otherthan that it is surrounded by non-Han buffer regions that it haspolitically integrated into China. There is a second friction point ineastern Manchuria, touching on Siberia and Korea. There is, finally, asingle opening into the rest of Eurasia on the Xinjiang-Kazakh border. China's most vulnerable point, since the arrival of Europeans in the western Pacific in the mid-19thcentury, has been its coast. Apart from European encroachments in whichcommercial interests were backed up by limited force, China sufferedits most significant military encounter -- and long and miserable war-- after the Japanese invaded and occupied large parts of eastern Chinaalong with Manchuria in the 1930s. Despite the mismatch in militarypower and more than a dozen years of war, Japan still could not forcethe Chinese government to capitulate. The simple fact was that HanChina, given its size and population density, could not be subdued. Nomatter how many victories the Japanese won, they could not decisivelydefeat the Chinese. China is hard to invade; given its sizeand population, it is even harder to occupy. This also makes it hardfor the Chinese to invade others -- not utterly impossible, but quitedifficult. Containing a fifth of the world's population, China can wallitself off from the world, as it did prior to the United Kingdom'sforced entry in the 19th century and as it did under MaoZedong. All of this means China is a great power, but one that has tobehave very differently than other great powers.

China's Geopolitical Imperatives China has three overriding geopolitical imperatives:

• Maintain internal unity in the Han Chinese regions.  
• Maintain control of the buffer regions.  
• Protect the coast from foreign encroachment.

Maintaining Internal Unity China is more enclosed than anyother great power. The size of its population coupled with its securefrontiers and relative abundance of resources, allows it to developwith minimal intercourse with the rest of the world, if it chooses.During the Maoist period, for example, China became an insular nation,driven primarily by internal interests and considerations, indifferentor hostile to the rest of the world. It was secure and, except for itsinvolvement in the Korean War and its efforts to pacify restless bufferregions, was relatively peaceful. Internally, however, China underwentperiodic, self-generated chaos. The weakness of insularity for China is poverty. Given the ratio ofarable land to population, a self-enclosed China is a poor China. Itspopulation is so poor that economic development driven by domesticdemand, no matter how limited it might be, is impossible. However, anisolated China is easier to manage by a central government. The greatdanger in China is a rupture within the Han Chinese nation. If thathappens, if the central government weakens, the peripheral regions willspin off, and China will then be vulnerable to foreigners takingadvantage of Chinese weakness. For China to prosper, it has toengage in trade, exporting silk, silver and industrial products.Historically, land trade has not posed a problem for China. The SilkRoad allowed foreign influences to come into China and the resultingwealth created a degree of instability. On the whole, however, it couldbe managed. The dynamic of industrialism changed both the geography of Chinese trade and its consequences. In the mid-19thcentury, when Europe -- led by the British --compelled the Chinesegovernment to give trading concessions to the British, it opened a newchapter in Chinese history. For the first time, the Pacific coast wasthe interface with the world, not Central Asia. This in turn, massivelydestabilized China. As trade between China and the worldintensified, the Chinese who were engaged in trading increased theirwealth dramatically. Those in the coastal provinces of China, theregion most deeply involved in trading, became relatively wealthy whilethe Chinese in the interior (not the buffer regions, which were alwayspoor, but the non-coastal provinces of Han China) remained poor,subsistence farmers. The central government was balancedbetween the divergent interests of coastal China and the interior. Thecoastal region, particularly its newly enriched leadership, had aninterest in maintaining and intensifying relations with European powersand with the United States and Japan. The more intense the trade, thewealthier the coastal leadership and the greater the disparity betweenthe regions. In due course, foreigners allied with Chinese coastalmerchants and politicians became more powerful in the coastal regionsthan the central government. The worst geopolitical nightmare of Chinacame true. China fragmented, breaking into regions, some increasinglyunder the control of foreigners, particularly foreign commercialinterests. Beijing lost control over the country. It should be notedthat this was the context in which Japan invaded China, which madeJapan's failure to defeat China all the more extraordinary. Mao'sgoal was three-fold, Marxism aside. First, he wanted to recentralizeChina -- re-establishing Beijing as China's capital and politicalcenter. Second, he wanted to end the massive inequality between thecoastal region and the rest of China. Third, he wanted to expel theforeigners from China. In short, he wanted to recreate a united HanChina. Mao first attempted to trigger an uprising in thecities in 1927 but failed because the coalition of Chinese interestsand foreign powers was impossible to break. Instead he took the longmarch to the interior of China, where he raised a massive peasant armythat was both nationalist and egalitarian and, in 1948, returned to thecoastal region and expelled the foreigners. Mao re-enclosed China,recentralized it, and accepted the inevitable result. China becameequal but extraordinarily poor. China's primary geopoliticalissue is this: For it to develop it must engage in international trade.If it does that, it must use its coastal cities as an interface withthe world. When that happens, the coastal cities and the surroundingregion become increasingly wealthy. The influence of foreigners overthis region increases and the interests of foreigners and the coastalChinese converge and begin competing with the interests of the centralgovernment. China is constantly challenged by the problem of how toavoid this outcome while engaging in international trade.

Controlling the Buffer Regions Prior to Mao's rise, withthe central government weakened and Han China engaged simultaneously inwar with Japan, civil war and regionalism, the center was not holding.While Manchuria was under Chinese control, Outer Mongolia was underSoviet control and extending its influence (Soviet power more thanMarxist ideology) into Inner Mongolia, and Tibet and Xinjiang weredrifting away. At the same time that Mao was fighting thecivil war, he was also laying the groundwork for taking control of thebuffer regions. Interestingly, his first moves were designed to blockSoviet interests in these regions. Mao moved to consolidate Chinesecommunist control over Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, effectivelyleveraging the Soviets out. Xinjiang had been under the control of aregional war lord, Yang Zengxin. Shortly after the end of the civilwar, Mao moved to force him out and take over Xinjiang. Finally, in1950 Mao moved against Tibet, which he secured in 1951. Therapid-fire consolidation of the buffer regions gave Mao what allChinese emperors sought, a China secure from invasion. ControllingTibet meant that India could not move across the Himalayas andestablish a secure base of operations on the Tibetan Plateau. Therecould be skirmishes in the Himalayas, but no one could push amulti-divisional force across those mountains and keep it supplied. Solong as Tibet was in Chinese hands, the Indians could live on the otherside of the moon. Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Manchuria buffered Chinafrom the Soviet Union. Mao was more of a geopolitician than anideologue. He did not trust the Soviets. With the buffer states inhand, they would not invade China. The distances, the poortransportation and the lack of resources meant that any Soviet invasionwould run into massive logistical problems well before it reached HanChina's populated regions, and become bogged down -- just as theJapanese had. China had geopolitical issues with Vietnam,Pakistan and Afghanistan, neighboring states with which it shared aborder, but the real problem for China would come in Manchuria or, moreprecisely, Korea. The Soviets, more than the Chinese, had encouraged aNorth Korean invasion of South Korea. It is difficult to speculate onJoseph Stalin's thinking, but it worked out superbly for him. TheUnited States intervened, defeated the North Korean Army and drove tothe Yalu, the river border with China. The Chinese, seeing thewell-armed and well-trained American force surge to its borders,decided that it had to block its advance and attacked south. Whatresulted was three years of brutal warfare in which the Chinese lostabout a million men. From the Soviet point of view, fighting betweenChina and the United States was the best thing imaginable. But fromStratfor's point of view, what it demonstrated was the sensitivity ofthe Chinese to any encroachment on their borderlands, their buffers,which represent the foundation of their national security.

Protecting the Coast With the buffer regions undercontrol, the coast is China's most vulnerable point, but itsvulnerability is not to invasion. Given the Japanese example, no onehas the interest or forces to try to invade mainland China, supply anarmy there and hope to win. Invasion is not a meaningful threat. Thecoastal threat to China is economic, and most would not call it athreat. As we saw, the British intrusion into China culminated in thedestabilization of the country, the virtual collapse of the centralgovernment and civil war. It was all caused by prosperity. Mao hadsolved the problem by sealing the coast of China off to any realdevelopment and liquidating the class that had collaborated withforeign business. For Mao, xenophobia was integral to natural policy.He saw foreign presence as undermining the stability of China. Hepreferred impoverished unity to chaos. He also understood that, givenChina's population and geography, it could defend itself againstpotential attackers without an advanced military-industrial complex. His successor, Deng Xiaoping,was heir to a powerful state in control of China and the bufferregions. He also felt under tremendous pressure politically to improveliving standards, and he undoubtedly understood that technological gapswould eventually threaten Chinese national security. He took a historicgamble. He knew that China's economy could not develop on its own.China's internal demand for goods was too weak because the Chinese weretoo poor. Deng gambled that he could open China to foreigninvestment and reorient the Chinese economy away from agriculture andheavy industry and toward export-oriented industries. By doing so hewould increase living standards, import technology and train China'sworkforce. He was betting that the effort this time would notdestabilize China, create massive tensions between the prosperouscoastal provinces and the interior, foster regionalism or put thecoastal regions under foreign control. Deng believed he could avoid allthat by maintaining a strong central government, based on a loyal armyand communist party apparatus. His successors have struggled tomaintain that loyalty to the state and not to foreign investors, whocan make individuals wealthy. That is the bet that is currently beingplayed out.

From apolitical and military standpoint, China has achieved its strategicgoals. The buffer regions are intact and China faces no threat inEurasia. It sees a Western attempt to force China out of Tibet as anattempt to undermine Chinese national security. For China, however,Tibet is a minor irritant; China has no possible intention of leavingTibet, the Tibetans cannot rise up and win, and no one is about toinvade the region. Similarly, the Uighur Muslims represent an irritantin Xinjiang and not a direct threat. The Russians have no interest inor capability of invading China, and the Korean peninsula does notrepresent a direct threat to the Chinese, certainly not one they couldnot handle. The greatest military threat to China comes from theUnited States Navy. The Chinese have become highly dependent onseaborne trade and the United States Navy is in a position to blockadeChina's ports if it wished. Should the United States do that, it wouldcripple China. Therefore, China's primary military interest is to makesuch a blockade impossible. It would take several generationsfor China to build a surface navy able to compete with the UnitedStates Navy. Simply training naval aviators to conduct carrier-basedoperations effectively would take decades -- at least until thesetrainees became admirals and captains. And this does not take intoaccount the time it would take to build an aircraft carrier andcarrier-capable aircraft and master the intricacies of carrieroperations. For China, the primary mission is to raise the priceof a blockade so high that the Americans would not attempt it. Themeans for that would be land- and submarine-based-anti-ship missiles.The strategic solution is for China to construct a missile forcesufficiently dispersed that it cannot be suppressed by the UnitedStates and with sufficient range to engage the United States atsubstantial distance, as far as the central Pacific. In orderfor this missile force to be effective, it would have to be able toidentify and track potential targets. Therefore, if the Chinese are topursue this strategy, they must also develop a space-based maritimereconnaissance system. These are the technologies that the Chinese arefocusing on. Anti-ship missiles and space-based systems, includinganti-satellite systems designed to blind the Americans, representChina's military counter to its only significant military threat. Chinacould also use those missiles to blockade Taiwan by interdicting shipsgoing to and from the island. But the Chinese do not have the navalability to land a sufficient amphibious force and sustain it in groundcombat. Nor do they have the ability to establish air superiority overthe Taiwan Strait. China might be able to harass Taiwan but it will notinvade it. Missiles, satellites and submarines constitute China's navalstrategy. For China, the primary problem posed by Taiwan isnaval. Taiwan is positioned in such a way that it can readily serve asan air and naval base that could isolate maritime movement between theSouth China Sea and the East China Sea, effectively leaving thenorthern Chinese coast and Shanghai isolated. When you consider theRyukyu Islands that stretch from Taiwan to Japan and add them to thismix, a non-naval power could blockade the northern Chinese coast if itheld Taiwan. Taiwan would not be important to China unless itbecame actively hostile or allied with or occupied by a hostile powersuch as the United States. If that happened, its geographical positionwould pose an extremely serious problem for China. Taiwan is also animportant symbolic issue to China and a way to rally nationalism.Although Taiwan presents no immediate threat, it does pose potentialdangers that China cannot ignore. There is one area in whichChina is being modestly expansionist -- Central Asia and particularlyKazakhstan. Traditionally a route for trading silk, Kazakhstan is nowan area that can produce energy, badly needed by China's industry. TheChinese have been active in developing commercial relations withKazakhstan and in developing roads into Kazakhstan. These roads areopening a trading route that allows oil to flow in one direction andindustrial goods in another. In doing this, the Chinese arechallenging Russia's sphere of influence in the former Soviet Union.The Russians have been prepared to tolerate increased Chinese economicactivity in the region while being wary of China's turning into apolitical power. Kazakhstan has been European Russia's historicalbuffer state against Chinese expansion and it has been under Russiandomination. This region must be watched carefully. If Russia begins tofeel that China is becoming too assertive in this region, it couldrespond militarily to Chinese economic power. Chinese-Russianrelations have historically been complex. Before World War II, theSoviets attempt to manipulate Chinese politics. After World War II,relations between the Soviet Union and China were never as good as somethought, and sometimes these relations became directly hostile, as in1968, when Russian and Chinese troops fought a battle along the UssuriRiver. The Russians have historically feared a Chinese move into theirPacific maritime provinces. The Chinese have feared a Russian move intoManchuria and beyond. Neither of these things happened becausethe logistical challenges involved were enormous and neither had anappetite for the risk of fighting the other. We would think that thiscaution will prevail under current circumstances. However, growingChinese influence in Kazakhstan is not a minor matter for the Russians,who may choose to contest China there. If they do, and it becomes aserious matter, the secondary pressure point for both sides would be inthe Pacific region, complicated by proximity to Korea. But theseare only theoretical possibilities. The threat of an American blockadeon China's coast, of using Taiwan to isolate northern China, ofconflict over Kazakhstan -- all are possibilities that the Chinese musttake into account as they plan for the worst. In fact, the UnitedStates does not have an interest in blockading China and the Chineseand Soviets are not going to escalate competition over Kazakhstan. Chinadoes not have a military-based geopolitical problem. It is in itstraditional strong position, physically secure as it holds its bufferregions. It has achieved it three strategic imperatives. What is mostvulnerable at this point is its first imperative: the unity of HanChina. That is not threatened militarily. Rather, the threat to that iseconomic.

The problem ofChina, rooted in geopolitics, is economic and it presents itself in twoways. The first is simple. China has an export-oriented economy. It isin a position of dependency. No matter how large its currency reservesor how advanced its technology or how cheap its labor force, Chinadepends on the willingness and ability of other countries to import itsgoods -- as well as the ability to physically ship them. Any disruptionof this flow has a direct effect on the Chinese economy. Theprimary reason other countries buy Chinese goods is price. They arecheaper because of wage differentials. Should China lose that advantageto other nations or for other reasons, its ability to export woulddecline. Today, for example, as energy prices rise, the cost ofproduction rises and the relative importance of the wage differentialdecreases. At a certain point, as China's trading partners see it, thevalue of Chinese imports relative to the political cost of closing downtheir factories will shift. And all of this is outside ofChina's control. China cannot control the world price of oil. It cancut into its cash reserves to subsidize those prices for manufacturersbut that would essentially be transferring money back to consumingnations. It can control rising wages by imposing price controls, butthat would cause internal instability. The center of gravity of Chinais that it has become the industrial workshop of the world and, assuch, it is totally dependent on the world to keep buying its goodsrather than someone else's goods. There are other issues forChina, ranging from a dysfunctional financial system to farm land beingtaken out of production for factories. These are all significant andadd to the story. But in geopolitics we look for the center of gravity,and for China the center of gravity is that the more effective itbecomes at exporting, the more of a hostage it becomes to itscustomers. Some observers have warned that China might take its moneyout of American banks. Unlikely, but assume it did. What would China dowithout the United States as a customer? China has placed itselfin a position where it has to keep its customers happy. It strugglesagainst this reality daily, but the fact is that the rest of the worldis far less dependent on China's exports than China is dependent on therest of the world. Which brings us to the second, even moreserious part of China's economic problem. The first geopoliticalimperative of China is to ensure the unity of Han China. The third isto protect the coast. Deng's bet was that he could open the coastwithout disrupting the unity of Han China. As in the 19thcentury, the coastal region has become wealthy. The interior hasremained extraordinarily poor. The coastal region is deeply enmeshed inthe global economy. The interior is not. Beijing is once againbalancing between the coast and the interior. The interests ofthe coastal region and the interests of importers and investors areclosely tied to each other. Beijing's interest is in maintaininginternal stability. As pressures grow, it will seek to increase itscontrol of the political and economic life of the coast. The interestof the interior is to have money transferred to it from the coast. Theinterest of the coast is to hold on to its money. Beijing will try tosatisfy both, without letting China break apart and without resortingto Mao's draconian measures. But the worse the international economicsituation becomes the less demand there will be for Chinese productsand the less room there will be for China to maneuver. Thesecond part of the problem derives from the first. Assuming that theglobal economy does not decline now, it will at some point. When itdoes, and Chinese exports fall dramatically, Beijing will have tobalance between an interior hungry for money and a coastal region thatis hurting badly. It is important to remember that something like 900million Chinese live in the interior while only about 400 million livein the coastal region. When it comes to balancing power, the interioris the physical threat to the regime while the coast destabilizes thedistribution of wealth. The interior has mass on its side. The coasthas the international trading system on its. Emperors have stumbledover less.

Geopolitics is based on geography and politics.Politics is built on two foundations: military and economic. The twointeract and support each other but are ultimately distinct. For China,securing its buffer regions generally eliminates military problems.What problems are left for China are long-term issues concerningnortheastern Manchuria and the balance of power in the Pacific. China'sgeopolitical problem is economic. Its first geopolitical imperative,maintain the unity of Han China, and its third, protect the coast, areboth more deeply affected by economic considerations than militaryones. Its internal and external political problems flow from economics.The dramatic economic development of the last generation has beenruthlessly geographic. This development has benefited the coast andleft the interior -- the vast majority of Chinese -- behind. It hasalso left China vulnerable to global economic forces that it cannotcontrol and cannot accommodate. This is not new in Chinese history, butits usual resolution is in regionalism and the weakening of the centralgovernment. Deng's gamble is being played out by his successors. Hedealt the hand. They have to play it. The question on thetable is whether the economic basis of China is a foundation or abalancing act. If the former, it can last a long time. If the latter,everyone falls down eventually. There appears to be little evidencethat it is a foundation. It excludes most of the Chinese from the game,people who are making less than $100 a month. That is a balancing actand it threatens the first geopolitical imperative of China: protectingthe unity of the Han Chinese.

JohnMauldin is president of Millennium Wave Advisors, LLC, a registeredinvestment advisor. All material presented herein is believed to bereliable but we cannot attest to its accuracy. Investmentrecommendations may change and readers are urged to check with theirinvestment counselors before making any investment decisions. Opinions expressed in these reports may change without prior notice.John Mauldin and/or the staffs at Millennium Wave Advisors, LLC andInvestorsInsight Publishing, Inc. (InvestorsInsight) may or may nothave investments in any funds, programs or companies cited above. PAST RESULTS ARE NOT INDICATIVE OF FUTURE RESULTS. THERE IS RISK OFLOSS AS WELL AS THE OPPORTUNITY FOR GAIN WHEN INVESTING IN MANAGEDFUNDS. WHEN CONSIDERING ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENTS, INCLUDING HEDGE FUNDS,YOU SHOULD CONSIDER VARIOUS RISKS INCLUDING THE FACT THAT SOMEPRODUCTS: OFTEN ENGAGE IN LEVERAGING AND OTHER SPECULATIVE INVESTMENTPRACTICES THAT MAY INCREASE THE RISK OF INVESTMENT LOSS, CAN BEILLIQUID, ARE NOT REQUIRED TO PROVIDE PERIODIC PRICING OR VALUATIONINFORMATION TO INVESTORS, MAY INVOLVE COMPLEX TAX STRUCTURES AND DELAYSIN DISTRIBUTING IMPORTANT TAX INFORMATION, ARE NOT SUBJECT TO THE SAMEREGULATORY REQUIREMENTS AS MUTUAL FUNDS, OFTEN CHARGE HIGH FEES, AND INMANY CASES THE UNDERLYING INVESTMENTS ARE NOT TRANSPARENT AND ARE KNOWNONLY TO THE INVESTMENT MANAGER. Communications from InvestorsInsight are intended solely forinformational purposes. Statements made by various authors,advertisers, sponsors and other contributors do not necessarily reflectthe opinions of InvestorsInsight, and should not be construed as anendorsement by InvestorsInsight, either expressed or implied.InvestorsInsight is not responsible for typographic errors or otherinaccuracies in the content. We believe the information containedherein to be accurate and reliable. However, errors may occasionallyoccur. Therefore, all information and materials are provided "AS IS"without any warranty of any kind. Past results are not indicative offuture results.