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Fucking enuch Wang Yi is on a desperate mission to jio kakis to Winnie's side from Europe : https://www.zaobao.com.sg/realtime/china/story20200824-1079393
Serious US Senators Want CCP to Repay 120 years old $1.6 Trillion Debt.
- Thread starter kryonlight
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$1.6T in century-old Chinese bonds offer Trump unique leverage against Beijing
American Bondholder Foundation President Jonna Bianco discusses evening out bond debt with China.
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As the Trump administration seeks ways to penalize China for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, it need look no further than Tennessee.
The Lewisburg, Tennessee-based American Bondholder Foundation holds $1.6 trillion of century-old Chinese debt, including interest, dating to before the founding of the communist People’s Republic of China, that it wants the administration's help in redeeming. There is an estimated $6 trillion or more of the debt outstanding worldwide.
The bonds were issued by the Republic of China -- which ousted the imperial government in a coup -- as far back as 1912 and backed by gold; they were defaulted on in 1938. The ROC government fled to Taiwan, where it remains the official ruling body, after Mao Zedong’s communist party took over following the 1949 end of the revolution.
Beijing maintains Taiwan is part of China, and under international law, successor governments are responsible for the debts of their predecessors.
President Trump is a “'promises made, promises kept' president, and he said to my face that he was going to do this transaction, do this deal, and hold China accountable,” Jonna Bianco, president and chairwoman of the American Bondholder Foundation, told FOX Business.
Bianco, who has power of attorney for 95 percent of the thousands of U.S. bondholders, said making China repay its debt would “not be punishment,” but rather a basic fundamental of international finance.
There's international precedent for such a move: Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher ordered Beijing in 1987 to make good on the bonds owned by Brits or lose access to the British capital markets. Then-Chinese President Li Xiannian’s government obliged, reaching a settlement of 23.5 million British pounds.
By paying some bondholders and not others, Beijing is technically in selective default, according to the ratings of bond-risk firms Moody’s, Standard & Poors and Fitch. Until China pays, it cannot sell debt on the international market, Bianco said.
President Trump on U.S.-China relations following the country’s management of the coronavirus.
The U.S. and China normalized relations in 1979, but cables dating as far back as May 1973 viewed by FOX Business show the State Department told Beijing that while the debt didn’t have to be paid at that time, it would not be forgiven.
There have been attempts to litigate pre-Communist party bonds in the past.
A class-action lawsuit brought by Hukung railway bondholders was thrown out in 1979 under the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act, which establishes limits on lawsuits against foreign governments.
Since then, developments in a few cases have suggested sovereign immunity might not be as strong with regard to certain types of debt, but those cases could be tied to specific language within the bond contracts themselves.
“It's a difficult suit to bring just because at this point, it's really very old,” Odette Lienau, associate dean and professor of law at Cornell University, told FOX Business. “Technically, these don't necessarily expire, but in practice, doing something like this is going to be difficult. You have to be legally creative with how you would do it.”
Bianco spent a year researching the issue and working with the White House, State Department, Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Trade Commission, former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, former Congressman Bart Gordon and former Congressman Walter Jones when the American Bondholder Foundation was founded in August 2001.
While not widely accepted in international law, the doctrine of odious debt, which is akin to China’s argument, states national debt incurred by an illegitimate regime is not enforceable.
The U.S. made a similar argument when faced with the burden of Confederate obligations following the end of the Civil War. Congress in 1868 passed the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says “neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States.”
While there’s a “plausible legal argument” for redeeming the bonds, Lienau said, it’s “politically difficult.” Bianco, who met with Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin about the matter in 2018 while the U.S. and China were negotiating a phase one trade deal, said the U.S. Treasury could take the bonds in and use them to offset the nation’s debt with China.
The U.S. might then say it considers the bonds paid, but China could still dispute that, bringing the two sides back to square one.
“Ultimately, this is going to have to be some kind of negotiated settlement if it gets taken up,” Lienau said. “If not, the U.S. just continues making the payments on the national debt.”
"Ultimately, this is going to have to be some kind of negotiated settlement if it gets taken up."
- Odette Lienau, associate dean and professor of law at Cornell University
A spokesperson for the Treasury Department did not respond to FOX Business’ request for comment.
The Foreign Bondholders Protective Council, established under former President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, helps U.S. citizens collect on defaulted bonds from foreign governments and has settled 47 cases. If the group were to successfully resolve this case, it would be the 48th.
Bianco’s clients would be willing to take “pennies on the dollar,” she said, letting the rest go toward helping repay a national debt that has swelled to more than $25 trillion as policymakers have taken unprecedented action to shield the economy from fallout related to COVID-19.
The government has extended trillions of dollars of aid to combat record job losses and the sharpest contraction of the post-World War II era, caused by a virtual shutdown of the U.S. economy through stay-at-home orders intended to limit the virus' spread.
Both the Trump administration and some members of Congress have in recent weeks been looking at ways to punish Beijing for what they call an insufficient initial response to COVID-19, first identified in Wuhan, China, at the end of last year.
FOX Business learned on Monday that the administration is forging ahead with plans to divest $4 billion of worth of equity stakes in Chinese companies held by the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board. But other options are limited.
“There is almost no clean-cut tool that you can use to put pressure on China without hurting ourselves,” Xiaobo Lu, political science professor at Barnard College of Columbia University, told FOX Business.
Earlier this month, Sens. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn. and Steve Daines, R-Mont., introduced the Stop China-Originated Viral Infectious Disease Act, which, if passed, would give Americans the right to sue China for the damage COVID-19 has caused to the economy and human life.
Another group of senators, led by Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., have introduced the COVID-19 Accountability Act, which would give Trump the authority to impose sanctions and travel bans, restrict loans to Chinese businesses by U.S. firms and ban Chinese companies from listing on U.S. stock exchanges.
Lu pushed back on the feasibility of those options, however, noting that the U.S. has “already done quite a bit” in terms of sanctions and that Chinese companies can list their shares in other international markets.
Fighting to collect payment on the aging Republic of China notes would have none of those drawbacks, though it might prove as arduous a struggle as negotiating a trade deal. Still, Bianco says, the U.S. would have the weight of common law and moral responsibility on its side.
“Americans pay their debts,” Bianco said. “China needs to do the same.”
American Bondholder Foundation President Jonna Bianco discusses evening out bond debt with China.
Get all the latest news on coronavirus and more delivered daily to your inbox. Sign up here.
Continue Reading Below
As the Trump administration seeks ways to penalize China for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, it need look no further than Tennessee.
The Lewisburg, Tennessee-based American Bondholder Foundation holds $1.6 trillion of century-old Chinese debt, including interest, dating to before the founding of the communist People’s Republic of China, that it wants the administration's help in redeeming. There is an estimated $6 trillion or more of the debt outstanding worldwide.
The bonds were issued by the Republic of China -- which ousted the imperial government in a coup -- as far back as 1912 and backed by gold; they were defaulted on in 1938. The ROC government fled to Taiwan, where it remains the official ruling body, after Mao Zedong’s communist party took over following the 1949 end of the revolution.
Beijing maintains Taiwan is part of China, and under international law, successor governments are responsible for the debts of their predecessors.
President Trump is a “'promises made, promises kept' president, and he said to my face that he was going to do this transaction, do this deal, and hold China accountable,” Jonna Bianco, president and chairwoman of the American Bondholder Foundation, told FOX Business.
Bianco, who has power of attorney for 95 percent of the thousands of U.S. bondholders, said making China repay its debt would “not be punishment,” but rather a basic fundamental of international finance.
There's international precedent for such a move: Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher ordered Beijing in 1987 to make good on the bonds owned by Brits or lose access to the British capital markets. Then-Chinese President Li Xiannian’s government obliged, reaching a settlement of 23.5 million British pounds.
By paying some bondholders and not others, Beijing is technically in selective default, according to the ratings of bond-risk firms Moody’s, Standard & Poors and Fitch. Until China pays, it cannot sell debt on the international market, Bianco said.
President Trump on U.S.-China relations following the country’s management of the coronavirus.
The U.S. and China normalized relations in 1979, but cables dating as far back as May 1973 viewed by FOX Business show the State Department told Beijing that while the debt didn’t have to be paid at that time, it would not be forgiven.
There have been attempts to litigate pre-Communist party bonds in the past.
A class-action lawsuit brought by Hukung railway bondholders was thrown out in 1979 under the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act, which establishes limits on lawsuits against foreign governments.
Since then, developments in a few cases have suggested sovereign immunity might not be as strong with regard to certain types of debt, but those cases could be tied to specific language within the bond contracts themselves.
“It's a difficult suit to bring just because at this point, it's really very old,” Odette Lienau, associate dean and professor of law at Cornell University, told FOX Business. “Technically, these don't necessarily expire, but in practice, doing something like this is going to be difficult. You have to be legally creative with how you would do it.”
Bianco spent a year researching the issue and working with the White House, State Department, Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Trade Commission, former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, former Congressman Bart Gordon and former Congressman Walter Jones when the American Bondholder Foundation was founded in August 2001.
While not widely accepted in international law, the doctrine of odious debt, which is akin to China’s argument, states national debt incurred by an illegitimate regime is not enforceable.
The U.S. made a similar argument when faced with the burden of Confederate obligations following the end of the Civil War. Congress in 1868 passed the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says “neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States.”
While there’s a “plausible legal argument” for redeeming the bonds, Lienau said, it’s “politically difficult.” Bianco, who met with Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin about the matter in 2018 while the U.S. and China were negotiating a phase one trade deal, said the U.S. Treasury could take the bonds in and use them to offset the nation’s debt with China.
The U.S. might then say it considers the bonds paid, but China could still dispute that, bringing the two sides back to square one.
“Ultimately, this is going to have to be some kind of negotiated settlement if it gets taken up,” Lienau said. “If not, the U.S. just continues making the payments on the national debt.”
"Ultimately, this is going to have to be some kind of negotiated settlement if it gets taken up."
- Odette Lienau, associate dean and professor of law at Cornell University
A spokesperson for the Treasury Department did not respond to FOX Business’ request for comment.
The Foreign Bondholders Protective Council, established under former President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, helps U.S. citizens collect on defaulted bonds from foreign governments and has settled 47 cases. If the group were to successfully resolve this case, it would be the 48th.
Bianco’s clients would be willing to take “pennies on the dollar,” she said, letting the rest go toward helping repay a national debt that has swelled to more than $25 trillion as policymakers have taken unprecedented action to shield the economy from fallout related to COVID-19.
The government has extended trillions of dollars of aid to combat record job losses and the sharpest contraction of the post-World War II era, caused by a virtual shutdown of the U.S. economy through stay-at-home orders intended to limit the virus' spread.
Both the Trump administration and some members of Congress have in recent weeks been looking at ways to punish Beijing for what they call an insufficient initial response to COVID-19, first identified in Wuhan, China, at the end of last year.
FOX Business learned on Monday that the administration is forging ahead with plans to divest $4 billion of worth of equity stakes in Chinese companies held by the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board. But other options are limited.
“There is almost no clean-cut tool that you can use to put pressure on China without hurting ourselves,” Xiaobo Lu, political science professor at Barnard College of Columbia University, told FOX Business.
Earlier this month, Sens. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn. and Steve Daines, R-Mont., introduced the Stop China-Originated Viral Infectious Disease Act, which, if passed, would give Americans the right to sue China for the damage COVID-19 has caused to the economy and human life.
Another group of senators, led by Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., have introduced the COVID-19 Accountability Act, which would give Trump the authority to impose sanctions and travel bans, restrict loans to Chinese businesses by U.S. firms and ban Chinese companies from listing on U.S. stock exchanges.
Lu pushed back on the feasibility of those options, however, noting that the U.S. has “already done quite a bit” in terms of sanctions and that Chinese companies can list their shares in other international markets.
Fighting to collect payment on the aging Republic of China notes would have none of those drawbacks, though it might prove as arduous a struggle as negotiating a trade deal. Still, Bianco says, the U.S. would have the weight of common law and moral responsibility on its side.
“Americans pay their debts,” Bianco said. “China needs to do the same.”
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this fucker is very arrogant
but numbers dont add up leh, early 1900s world money supply when got in trillions? seems a bit exaggerated
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It includes interest compounded etc
Taiwan says it won’t pay century-old debt to US
Does Beijing or Taipei owe the United States up to one trillion dollars? The Trump administration is reportedly mulling actions to get back the money loaned to the government of Imperial China more than 100 years ago.
Offsprings and representatives of the original holders in the US of the “antique China debt” – issued by the Qing dynasty government (1644-1911) to fund China’s railway construction less than a year before the last monarchy was toppled in the 1911 Revolution led by Sun Yat-sen – insist that it is incumbent upon Beijing to pay back the money long overdue under the principle of the succession of states, Bloomberg reported at the end of August.
The total size of the defaulted bonds to be repaid in line with their conditions, factoring in inflation and interest, is estimated to hit the one trillion dollar mark, roughly the equivalent to Beijing’s US treasuries holdings.
The money was raised 108 years ago to fund the construction of the Hukuang Railway, as part of north-south and east-west arteries linking the central province of Hunan to the southern trading hub of Canton, now Guangzhou.
It has been reported that Trump, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross – both leading negotiators in the drawn-out talks to resolve the fraught trade war with China – met with some bondholders and their representatives earlier this year. The bondholders urged the president not to let Beijing absolve itself of the obligation.
Tourists tour the Forbidden City in Beijing. The Qing dynasty was overthrown in the 1911 Revolution, the year the Republic of China was founded. Photo: Weibo
In response, Chinese state media, including Sina and Global Times, said that when the Communist republic was founded in October 1949, Mao Zedong ripped up all unfair treaties and bond and loan contracts from the Qing dynasty and subsequently the Republic of China (ROC) and that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had no liability to pay back any debts in arrears when Chiang Kai-shek absconded to Taiwan with a bundle of loans that year.
Creditors seeking redress, said the newspapers, should look for repayment from the ROC government, implying that the government in Taipei should be the debtor.
But the American Bondholders Foundation, set up in 2001 to represent holders of pre-communist Chinese debts, said in a statement that the PRC dismissing its defaulted sovereign obligations as pre-1949 Qing or ROC debts contradicts Beijing’s own line, that it is the sole successor to the ROC’s sovereign right and status and the only legal government representing China.
A certificate of the Qing dynasty sovereign bond issued in 1911. Photo: Handout
Taiwan has also stressed that its law governing cross-strait relations stipulates that it will not honor any claim of any debts or bonds owed by the mainland or issued there prior to 1949, until after “the unification of both sides,” admitting that repaying the US$1 trillion debt could deplete the island’s coffers.
Some of the island’s lawmakers said that many of the old bonds were issued by the Qing dynasty and subsequently the Kuomintang party-controlled ROC government before its retreat to Taiwan in 1949, so why should the ruling Democratic Progressive Party be responsible for them, especially when the railway projects financed by these loans are all on the mainland?
They say Beijing which took over all these projects from the ROC after the mainland fell to Mao’s Red Army should therefore pay back the bonds, even though the bonds predate the founding of the PRC.
A similar case in recent history went in Beijing’s favor. In 1979 there was a class action suit brought by some of these bondholders that actually brought Beijing to a US court, but the case was thrown out on the basis that the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which would allow US courts to hear cases against foreign governments for commercial claims, could not be retroactively applied to bonds issued at the turn of the 20th century.
Asia Times Financial is now live. Linking accurate news, insightful analysis and local knowledge with the ATF China Bond 50 Index, the world's first benchmark cross sector Chinese Bond Indices. Read ATF now.
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Gotta take inflation and accrued interests into account.
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At the very least it means there is a debt. Enforceable or not, non-payment of debt is a separate issue. Ball is in China's court
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seize tiong asset worldwide until they pay up debt to USA
That is more like Justice Pao.
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Don't worry, their sons will become serfs and their daughters will become prostitutes. That will generate quite a bit of money. If they can't fully repay the money, the grandchildren, great-grandchildren will continue with the reparations.
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