Hi neighbors. It seems we have another giant on the move. In case you haven't been watching world headlines, China is flexing its growing muscles. Perhaps even salivating as it raises it's head up to peep over the Great Wall and see what might be available beyond.

With motives always a mystery, China has grown both strong and assertive due in no small part, to the massive input of American dollars supporting its economy. Just like steroids to an athlete, the burgeoning economy was given a big shot in the arm under Clinton's trade agreements.

Everyone likes to see a country get more self-reliant and its citizens have a better lifestyle. But maybe what works between democracies won't work the same with Communist China.

Remember the USSR? Remember the Cold War? Remember "in your face" Communism? I best remember it from the school drills that in my childhood days included what to do during a nuclear attack.

While we spent the '60s fearing nuclear attack, the '70s denying the threat and the '80s and '90s celebrating the fall of communism and a new world order, people forgot some things.

Some time during all that, people decided a nuclear attack wouldn't really do much anyway. The thought of a world wide holocaust seemed silly. No one would be crazy enough to do that! We told ourselves that no one could hate us that much. No one could be narrow minded enough to think setting off nuclear bombs in several places wouldn't affect their homes as well.

I think we've all come to realize there really are people who irrationally hate us. There really are people willing to kill innocents to prove some tortured ideology.

There actually are governments who are willing to sell atomic bombs to madmen.

Do we have to worry about China? Aren't they "the good guys?" They are a government representing civilized people after all, not a terrorist cell.

A couple of decades ago the Chinese government made the statement that of all countries in the world, they would suffer the least from a global nuclear war.

A couple of weeks ago a headline in the New York Times quoted a top-ranking Chinese general who said the United States had best keep out of their plans to reclaim Taiwan. He commented that China knew it couldn't win against the US military using conventional warfare, so their only chance to "defeat the United States" would be a nuclear attack. He added that China had no qualms about a first strike. He insisted that the Chinese military had the capacity to drop nuclear bombs on "at least 100 US cities." Gee, doesn't sound very neighborly to me. Of course the Chinese government played down the whole thing and said the politicians didn't agree with that particular military leader.

That certainly made me feel safer.

Then I read the next headline, I swear directly under the first one I mentioned, about a Chinese company trying to buy out the United States' biggest oil importing company.

Hummmm...isn't that curious? Now why would they want to do that?

Possibly it's simply a capitalistic step to monopolize the market and jack up prices on a commodity they know the world (and the United States) can't function without.

My "Cold War Left-over Paranoia" suggests maybe a more far reaching plan. Like divert the oil to a very oil-thirsty China? Or simply to withhold the oil if a war did break out? You might want to just sit down and ask yourself what do you actually know about China? Its economy? Its government? Its people? Did the break up of the USSR bring an end to what we knew as aggressive, expansive Communism?

Or did it simply move it over? Once the big dragon gets its belly full, will it go back to sleep? Will it wake up hungry? How safe is Taiwan? Will Japan go to war to keep China out of its backyard?

Or does Japan fear China coming into its living room? I honestly don't know. But you can bet I'm going to watch the news and find out.

We have been buying Chinese goods as fast as they can export them to us. Maybe it's time we stopped buying Chinese imports because they're cheap. They may not be as cheap as they look.

Until the next time friends, think it over. Should we boycott Chines goods? Do what you like.

As for this "raised in the shadow of the bomb" gal, every time I see a label with "made in China" on it -- I think of a wild-eyed, hate-filled man beating his shoe on a table and yelling, "We will bury you!"