China’s condition to bail out the US: Taiwan?

China’s President Hu Jintao has now explicitly linked his country’s readiness to show good cooperation in resolving the US financial crisis to the question of Taiwan.
Beijing’s official Xinhua news agency reported today that Hu and Pres. Bush conferred thusly about the crisis yesterday evening (Washington time):

Bush briefed Hu on the latest development of the U.S. financial market, saying his government was well aware of the scope of the problem, and had taken and would continue to take necessary measures to stabilize the domestic and world financial markets.
Hu [said he] hoped the measures would soon take effect and lead to a gradual recovery of the financial market, which he said not only serves the interests of the United States, but also those of China, and benefits the stability of the world financial market and the sound development of the world economy.
… He said China is ready to work with the U.S. side to intensify dialogue, exchanges and cooperation, and properly handle issues concerning mutual interests and of major concern, particularly the Taiwan question, in a bid to push forward the sustained and steady development of the Sino-U.S. constructive and cooperative ties.

A big, Renaissance-style flourish of the chapeau to Bernhard of MoA for picking up this very significant news item. Bernhard, not unreasonably, compared the prospect of a this deal-in-the-possible-making to the 1803 Louisiana Purchase (and thereby also, perhaps less plausibly, Bush to Napoleon. But oh yes, Napoleon did launch that mad, very destructive military adventure into Russia, didn’t he.)
I see no mention of this crucial phone call at the White House’s website. I wonder why not? All the WH has on the financial crisis today is this extremely contentless little statement.
On Saturday, I noted that China’s current investment in/exposure to the US markets includes around $900 billion held in T-bills and Fannie and Freddie stock. They also have substantial holdings in privately owned US financial entities.
Over at Bernhard’s blog, I commented that:

Along with Taiwan [the Chinese] will probably over time request and may end up with the whole of the US military’s obligations on the Asian side of the Pacific Rim, along with the big naval platforms used to service those… Japan-China relations will become very important. What will Japan and S. Korea do? Go along with their big continental trading partner, I expect.
But these things will not happen overnight. After the UK’s big end-of-empire overstretch (Suez, 1956) was “called” by Eisenhower the Brits, French and Israelis withdrew from Sinai fairly rapidly but it took a further 14 years for Britain to wind down its permanent naval presence “East of Suez.” This time, it might happen somewhat faster, but the inter-great-power readjustment of security forces and obligations in East Asia will probably still take the best part of a decade?

When I read Bernhard’s post, I was just sitting down to start composing a post on the dangers of the US public getting whipped up into a very unhelpful form of economic nationalism. I still believe that’s a real and present danger.
I can understand, certainly, the very reasonable fears and concerns of US citizens worried about losing “control” of big portions of the country’s economy to non-Americans who are not accountable to them in any way.
On the other hand, for decades now, the making of US national economic policy has been in the hands of shady and irresponsible financial institutions and the many legislators they’ve kept handily on their payroll, who have abandoned many or most of their obligations to remain accountable to the citizenry. So the change wouldn’t be as big as it might seem, anyway?
But as the bailout proposals get discussed in Congress this week, we need to see an outpouring of concern from Americans for the interests of the most vulnerable people who will be affected by the continuing economic downturn, both at home and abroad. As I wrote here recently, we really do have a chance to “Re-imagine America” at this time. But none of that will happen if our legislators aren’t kept strictly to the path of putting the people’s interests first, well before those of the Wall Street speculators who got the American (and world) financial systems into this mess in the first place.