The Legend of the three Kingdoms
Episode 4
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

The salty and wet story teller

Prelude
Some two thousand years ago, we had the famous three kingdoms in central China. Many heroic and romantic stories have been written and handed down through the generations. In recent time we may also have the situation of "The Three
Kingdoms" again, and they are Hong Kong, Taiwan and China....

While the people in the Kingdom of H are busy making money, the leaders in Kingdom C having been threatening the people in the Kingdom of T to heel. The fearless leaders told the kids in the Kingdom of T not to dip their hands in the cookie jar, or their wrists will be slapped or, perhaps, even slashed. Well, kids never listen to anyone, and least of all to threats.

These leaders never learned. A few years ago, the leaders told the kids not to take the biggest cookie by pounding on the table where the cookie jar was located. Initially the kids were not going to take the BIG COOKIE, since the fearless leaders warned them not to, the kids told the leaders to go to hell and took the Big One. Life went on, nevertheless.

The fearless leaders had not learned Physics well. They did not remember one of the laws of Newton ---Action leads to reaction of equal magnitude. Every lighter knew this from the teachings of Big Mouth Wong. These leaders apparently did not go to our beloved school.

Now that the kids in the Kingdom of T have done it again. What are the fearless leaders going to do? They now must act to slap the wrist, or face the "paper tiger" accusation even from its own people.

Let us say the leaders decide to act, what have they got to lose? Since the Kingdom of T does not have any known oil fields, the leaders may reckon that Big Brother in the West would not organize a "work" force to counteract. However, this is an election year in the little village of the Big Brother, no one can afford to appear weak, not the current village chief, not the hopefuls either.

While the Kingdom does not have oils fields, it has plenty of DRAM manufacturing lines, the stuff that enables you to read this piece of junk on our website. The Kingdom of T now ranks in the top 5 of semiconductor device producers in the world. A little earth shake episode over there a few months ago caused a big bang in PC costs worldwide. The Kingdom T has consistently fared much better in semiconductor manufacturing in recent years than the barbaric U Kingdom, far far away across the sea.

With a few firecrackers exploding over these DRAM lines, your next PC could cost a lot more, and with much less software-applications power. Not to mention you can't track dot.com stocks fast enough on the net.

Let me ask you---are you going to tolerate that? Is the rest of the world going to take that? is big brother going to stand around and just bark? Well, maybe, but and then, maybe not.
The fearless leaders are now faced with the unpleasant predicament of " damned if you do, damned if you don't".

And so, dear lighters, Rumbling the mighty Long River flows east Washing all heroic deeds into the sea.....