Chinese Military,Political and Social Superthread

[Zipper]

Either way, to combine advance technology (and be able to use it properly) with China's sheer superiority in numbers would be a very frightening thing for US and other western powers. Aegis or not that is...

 

[Britney Spears]

China's sheer superiority in number

Sheer numbers of World War 2 vintage U-boats and destroyers?

I am very skeptical of this idea that large numbers of antique ships, with larger numbers of Mig-19 and Mig-21 derivatives, are going to be much good against a modern western navy and air force. Air force and Navy types please fell free to correct me.

I looked further into the Chinese AEGIS rumour. There are some photos on the internet of a new "Project 170" destroyer with some kind of phased array radar and vertically launched  Russian SAMs.  I'm still dubious.

I'll contribute some more tidbits on the history of the Chinese air force and navy. The history is really more my area of interest. I can barely tell the difference between an Su-27 and Su-30, and I don't know shit about modern naval warfare, so I'll shut up about that.

China actually had a pretty good (for a third world country) air force and Navy up until the late 60. In 1971, One of Mao's leading generals, one of his "Ten Great Marshalls", Lin Biao, who was his designated succesor, tried to stage a coup against Mao. The coup failed and Lin was forced to flee to the USSR, but he died when the plane he was flying crashed in Mongolia. Lin's supporters were purged from the party as one would expect.

Problem is that Lin, and many of his supporters were Soviet trained, and were the leaders of China's Air Force and Navy, which obviously demanded leaders with a more technical background, as opposed to the leadership of the army, which was lead by old loyalists of Mao. For the next 20 years the Air Force and Navy became the red headed stepchildren and got no funding, while the army got bigger and bigger. So today the Chinese air force and navy are still waaay behind in terms of technology, more so that one would think for a country of that size and wealth.


For our air force collegues on the board, here's a pic of a Chinese S-70 Blackhawk which they purchased from the US  before the 1989 weapons embargo. They are now flying again, as spare parts can now be procurred from Hong Kong.

 

[a_majoor]

As Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevskii was wont to claim; "quantity has a quality of its own".

Certainly any allied air force or navy will achieve lop sided victory ratios against the current PLA, but after a while the allies will start running low on missiles, planes and ships have to be withdrawn for maintainence, pilots and crews need rest...but yet another wave of PLA attackers is on the way. Using Asymetrical tactics (from mass missile attacks, old SSKs laying mine fields, "non attributed" cyber attacks against enemy infrastructure) to decatitate the enemy and cut down the number of modern assets, then leading off the initial attack with the "best" systems, following up with waves or secondary systems drawn from the reserve pool and the Chinese will have the potential to beat down the opposition. It will take a while for more American carrier task forces to arrive , so a window then exists to consolodate any gains made during the initial push.

This analysis is rather one sided, of course. The Taiwanese will resist ferociously with whatever they have left, and the Allied forces will be preparing some unexpected moves of their own. In any event, this would be a messy scenario. Robert Kaplan's article is pretty clear on the consensus view of high ranking menbers of US PACCOM; "Getting into a war with China is easy. You can see many scenarios, not just Taiwan. But the dilemma is, how do you end a war with China?".

 

[tomahawk6]

Here is a very good web site that tracks Chinese defense trends/news.

http://www.sinodefence.com/

 

[Cdn Blackshirt]

To Brittany,

Just an fyi....there was a great article I read in the last three weeks on the social transformation taking place in Taiwan.  One of the most noteworhty changes was that a new Taiwanese idenity was forming and whereas the Chinese-affiliation percentages you stated were probably accurate 10 years ago, when given the choice between identifying themselves as "Chinese" or "Taiwanese" the numbers are now much closer to 30%:70% (Chinese:Taiwanese).

I'll see if I can't find it over the weekend but my recollection was it was either in the PINR, Council on Foreign Relations or the Asia Times.

Bottom Line:  It's only one source, but it is directly contradictory to the generalization that your making and in my opinion if accurate should give the Taiwanese people the right to self-determination.

Cheers,



Matthew. 

 

[Britney Spears]

Just an fyi....there was a great article I read in the last three weeks on the social transformation taking place in Taiwan.  One of the most noteworhty changes was that a new Taiwanese idenity was forming and whereas the Chinese-affiliation percentages you stated were probably accurate 10 years ago, when given the choice between identifying themselves as "Chinese" or "Taiwanese" the numbers are now much closer to 30%:70% (Chinese:Taiwanese).

I'll see if I can't find it over the weekend but my recollection was it was either in the PINR, Council on Foreign Relations or the Asia Times.

I don't doubt you. These opinion polls do tend to fluctuate with events like Chinese missile testing off the coast, etc. Taiwan is still a relatively new parlimentary democracy and things  tend to be more dramatic. I'm sure you've seen the TV coverage of Taiwanese MPs getting down to fistfights on live TV. That's the way democracies should work IMO.

I think Taiwan's internal politics are a little too murky even for me to delve into.....

 

[a_majoor]

I'm sure you've seen the TV coverage of Taiwanese MPs getting down to fistfights on live TV. That's the way democracies should work IMO.

Harper's young and fit; this could be a good place for him to shine 

 

[a_majoor]

Mark Styen on China. If he is even half way right, then China is dangerously unstable, and could tip out (attempting to deflect internal problems through external agression), or implode. Either way will be very ugly indeed:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/06/12/do1203.xml

Who can stop the rise and rise of China? The communists, of course

By Mark Steyn
(Filed: 12/06/2005)

Seventy years ago, in the days of Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan, when the inscrutable Oriental had a powerful grip on Occidental culture, Erle Stanley Gardner wrote en passant in the course of a short story: "The Chinese of wealth always builds his house with a cunning simulation of external poverty. In the Orient one may look in vain for mansions, unless one has the entrée to private homes. The street entrances always give the impression of congestion and poverty, and the lines of architecture are carefully carried out so that no glimpse of the mansion itself is visible over the forbidding false front of what appears to be a squalid hovel."

Well, the mansion's pretty much out in the open now. Confucius say: If you got it, flaunt it, baby. China is the preferred vacation destination for middle-class Britons; western businessmen return cooing with admiration over the quality of the WiFi in the lobby Starbucks of their Guangzhou hotels; glittering skylines ascend ever higher from the coastal cities as fleets of BMWs cruise the upscale boutiques in the streets below.

The assumption that this will be the "Asian century" is so universal that Jacques Chirac (borrowing from Harold Macmillan vis-à-vis JFK) now promotes himself as Greece to Beijing's Rome, and the marginally less deranged of The Guardian's many Euro-fantasists excuse the EU's sclerosis on the grounds that no one could possibly compete with the unstoppable rise of a Chinese behemoth that by mid-century will have squashed America like the cockroach she is.

Even in the US, the cry is heard: Go east, young man! "If I were a young journalist today, figuring out where I should go to make my career, I would go to China," said Philip Bennett, the Washington Post's managing editor, in a fawning interview with the People's Daily in Beijing a few weeks back. "I think China is the best place in the world to be an American journalist right now."

Really? Tell it to Zhao Yan of the New York Times' Beijing bureau, who was arrested last September and has been held without trial ever since.

What we're seeing is an inversion of what Erle Stanley Gardner observed: a cunning simulation of external wealth and power that is, in fact, a forbidding false front for a state that remains a squalid hovel. Zhao of the Times is not alone in his fate: China jails more journalists than any other country in the world. Ching Cheong, a correspondent for the Straits Times of Singapore, disappeared in April while seeking copies of unpublished interviews with Zhao Ziyang, the Communist Party general secretary, who fell from favour after declining to support the Tiananmen Square massacre. And, if that's how the regime treats representatives of leading global publications, you can imagine what "the best place in the world" to be a journalist is like for the local boys.

China is (to borrow the formulation they used when they swallowed Hong Kong) "One Country, Two Systems". On the one hand, there's the China the world gushes over - the economic powerhouse that makes just about everything in your house. On the other, there's the largely unreconstructed official China - a regime that, while no longer as zealously ideological as it once was, nevertheless clings to the old techniques beloved of paranoid totalitarianism: lie and bluster in public, arrest and torture in private. China is the Security Council member most actively promoting inaction on Darfur, where (in the most significant long-range military deployment in five centuries), it has 4,000 troops protecting its oil interests. Kim Jong-Il of North Korea is an international threat only because Beijing licenses him as a provocateur with which to torment Washington and Tokyo, in the way that a mob boss will send round a mentally unstable heavy. This is not the behaviour of a psychologically healthy state.

How long can these two systems co-exist in one country and what will happen when they collide? If the People's Republic is now the workshop of the world, the Communist Party is the bull in its own China shop. It's unclear, for example, whether they have the discipline to be able to resist moving against Taiwan in the next couple of years. Unlike the demoralised late-period Soviet nomenklatura, Beijing's leadership does not accept that the cause is lost: unlike most outside analysts, they do not assume that the world's first economically viable form of Communism is merely an interim phase en route to a free - or even free-ish - society.

Mao, though he gets a better press than Hitler and Stalin, was the biggest mass murderer of all time, with a body count ten times' higher than the Nazis (as Jung Chang's new biography reminds us). The standard line of Sinologists is that, while still perfunct-orily genuflecting to his embalmed corpse in Tiananmen Square, his successors have moved on - just as, in Austin Powers, while Dr Evil is in suspended animation, his Number Two diversifies the consortium's core business away from evildoing and reorients it toward a portfolio of investments including a chain of premium coffee stores. But Maoists with stock options are still Maoists - especially when they owe their robust portfolios to a privileged position within the state apparatus.

The internal contradictions of Commie-capitalism will, in the end, scupper the present arrangements in Beijing. China manufactures the products for some of the biggest brands in the world, but it's also the biggest thief of copyrights and patents of those same brands. It makes almost all Disney's official merchandising, yet it's also the country that defrauds Disney and pirates its movies. The new China's contempt for the concept of intellectual property arises from the old China's contempt for the concept of all private property: because most big Chinese businesses are (in one form or another) government-controlled, they've failed to understand the link between property rights and economic development.

China hasn't invented or discovered anything of significance in half a millennium, but the careless assumption that intellectual property is something to be stolen rather than protected shows why. If you're a resource-poor nation (as China is), long-term prosperity comes from liberating the creative energies of your people - and Beijing still has no interest in that. If a blogger attempts to use the words "freedom" or "democracy" or "Taiwan independence" on Microsoft's new Chinese internet portal, he gets the message: "This item contains forbidden speech. Please delete the forbidden speech." How pathetic is that? Not just for the Microsoft-spined Corporation, which should be ashamed of itself, but for the Chinese government, which pretends to be a world power but is terrified of words.

Does "Commie wimps" count as forbidden speech, too? And what is the likelihood of China advancing to a functioning modern stand-alone business culture if it's unable to discuss anything except within its feudal political straitjackets? Its speech code is a sign not of control but of weakness; its internet protective blocks are not the armour but the, er, chink.

India, by contrast, with much less ballyhoo, is advancing faster than China toward a fully-developed economy - one that creates its own ideas. Small example: there are low-fare airlines that sell £40 one-way cross-country air tickets from computer screens at Indian petrol stations. No one would develop such a system for China, where internal travel is still tightly controlled by the state. But, because they respect their own people as a market, Indian businesses are already proving nimbler at serving other markets. The return on investment capital is already much better in India than in China.

I said a while back that China was a better bet for the future than Russia or the European Union. Which is damning with faint praise: trapped in a demographic death spiral, Russia and Europe have no future at all. But that doesn't mean China will bestride the scene as a geopolitical colossus. When European analysts coo about a "Chinese century", all they mean is "Oh, God, please, anything other than a second American century". But wishing won't make it so.

China won't advance to the First World with its present borders intact. In a billion-strong state with an 80 per cent rural population cut off from the coastal boom and prevented from participating in it, "One country, two systems" will lead to two or three countries, three or four systems. The 21st century will be an Anglosphere century, with America, India and Australia leading the way. Anti-Americans betting on Beijing will find the China shop is in the end mostly a lot of bull.

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.

 

[Britney Spears]

<a href=http://armscontrolwonk.com/>Some comments on the previous Bill gertz article.</a> I wonder if our collegue TCBF is still following this thread....

it has 4,000 troops protecting its oil interests.

Well, this guy apparently gets his news from the National Enquirer.

4,000 foreign troops, with all their equipment and facilities, and no one is the wiser? Man those Chinese are good at hiding.

<a href=http://www.cephasministry.com/news_china_sudan.html> Here's a previous article from the same source, with even more hilarious claims</a>

TENS of thousands of Chinese troops and prisoners forced to work as security guards have been moved into Sudan.

;D

I won't bother pointing out all the factual errors in the above articles. His points may not be complete hogwash, and hey, I'm just as prescient as he is, but his grasp of the facts does not inspire much confidence.

 

[squealiox]

steyn's usual factual errors aside, he's pretty incoherent too. china has major structural problems that get glossed over in the business press, but even so, its sheer size almost guarantees its economy will eventually become larger than that of the US, even if it is operating at a fraction of its full potential. do the math, you'll see.

i'm not sure what his solution is (steyn, being a 2nd-rate comedian rather than a serious commentator, rarely seems to have any), but if there is any hope for democracy coming to china, it lies almost entirely in encouraging further trade with them, and letting a middle class develop. that's how countries in the "anglosphere" became democracies. (after all, the UK wasn't really one until 1918, when people without land finally got the vote).

and as for intellectual property, the concept barely existed during the industrial revolution in the West, when ripping off other countries' textile and other production technology was the order of the day. but you can bet a richer china will have more incentive to safeguard its own IP if and when its economy develops to the extent it is more dependent on higher value-added goods and services.

if history is any guide (and it sometimes is), our biggest problems with china are short-term -- ie, taiwan.

 

[mainerjohnthomas]

.

if history is any guide (and it sometimes is), our biggest problems with china are short-term -- ie, taiwan.

    Of course, if history is any guide, our biggest problems with Germany were short term--ie, France, Poland, Holland, Belgium, etc.

 

[Cdn Blackshirt]

Once again Brittany, I'm confused by the fact that you focus your attention on undermining an attack on the PRC's record and do so by picking one of the very smallest and least relevant sections of the article.

Disregarding all the other information (which in large measure is accurate) and just focusing on Sudan, I'd like you to comment on what you believe to be the veracity of the following statements:
1)  PRC state-owned companies have the biggest foreign share of Sudanese oil interests of any nation in the world (Russia is number two)
2)  Due to this, the PRC has been by far the single biggest roadblock to any real action in the UN due its public commitment to use its veto should the remainder of the UN try to pass sanctions.
3)  Finally, the PRC has been the primary arms supplier to the Sudanese Arab government which in turn have transferred many of those weapons to the Janjaweed who have used them murder, rape and ethnically cleanse an entire population.

Bottom Line:  I'd like you for the record state your position on the PRC because to date the only thing I've seen is support which I find deeply troubling.....

Thanks in advance,


Matthew. 

 

[Britney Spears]

picking one of the very smallest and least relevant sections of the article.

1) The article was not about the Sudan, it mentions Sudan exactly once. So in this context, I suppose you could say that it isn't very relevent.But then, Sudan as a whole isn't very relevent in this day and age, to anyone,  is it?

2) The completely ludicrous claim of 4,000 Chinese soldiers on the ground undermines whatever position the author was trying to establish, betraying the fact that he knows very little about either China or Sudan. That Iraqi information minister guy was probably right about a lot of things too, but why don't we believe him? Heck, For starters I for one would like to see some cite to back up his quote on a quote about the Chinese not liking outwardly opulent displays of wealth. It's the first time I've ever heard of such a phenomenon.

Disregarding all the other information (which in large measure is accurate)

Uh, no it isn't, but OK.....

1)  PRC state-owned companies have the biggest foreign share of Sudanese oil interests of any nation in the world (Russia is number two)
2)  Due to this, the PRC has been by far the single biggest roadblock to any real action in the UN due its public commitment to use its veto should the remainder of the UN try to pass sanctions.
3)  Finally, the PRC has been the primary arms supplier to the Sudanese Arab government which in turn have transferred many of those weapons to the Janjaweed who have used them murder, rape and ethnically cleanse an entire population.

The article we are discussing, ridiculous as it is, makes NONE of those claims. How about you come back with some proof, and then we'll have something to discuss?

Bottom Line:  I'd like you for the record state your position on the PRC because to date the only thing I've seen is support which I find deeply troubling.....

What "Position" are you talking about? Do I support genocide in Sudan? No, I don't, but what does this have to do with anything? Chinese companies *may* (since you've already thoroughly researched your position, it won't trouble you at all to provide some sources) have the biggest stake in Sudanese oil projects, but I highly doubt they are the only ones, or the majority. Remember when Talisman sold their stake in Sudan to an Indian oil company? Do I approve of foreign oil companies investing in troubled spots around the world? It depends, would you like to explain to the Chinese why Chinese oil companies should stop doing something that Western oil companies have been doing for close to 100 years? For bonus points try doing that without mentioning Iraq and how the US protects it's oil interests. 

Don't you think it's a litle silly that one could have a single "position" on an entire nation and 1/4 of humanity? Almost sounds like something George W. Bush would come up with....

Upon reading some of your attitudes on Walmart and labour outsourcing, I'm afraid we may just have to agree to disagree.

 

[Infanteer]

Hey, I like Walmart, I just got Sopranos Season 5 for a good price from there....

 

[Dare]

Hey, I like Walmart, I just got Sopranos Season 5 for a good price from there....

I just bought a cheap Wall.

I apologize for that terrible terrible joke.  :dontpanic:
;D

 

[Cdn Blackshirt]

First, that's quite a chip you have on your shoulder....  ;D 

The article we are discussing, ridiculous as it is, makes NONE of those claims. How about you come back with some proof, and then we'll have something to discuss?

Obviously you and I read different material....I don't keep links to everything I read but here are a couple of quick ones.

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/sudan1103/26.htm
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/GC02Ad07.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/sudan.html

The short version is the PRC is tied in to just about every single tyrant on the planet in their effort to secure resources around the world.

Venezuela - the PRC is there.
Sudan - the PRC is there.
Zimbabwe - the PRC is there.
Iran - the PRC is there.

And before you think about arguing the point do some of the research yourself.

Use google.

China - Iran:  Guarantee by the PRC to buy $70 billion USD of petroleum products
China - Venezuela:  New support for Chavez government.  Large investment into Venezuelan oil/NGL project.
China - Zimbabwe:  Primarily securing mineral resources for cash and military equipment.
Etc.
Etc.

....and my generalizing friend, my "single" position is not on 1/4 of the population of the world.  It is on the PRC government body and strategically-managed state-owned corporations and their documented record.  Research it yourself.

One final note.... I'm not against outsourcing.  I'm against outsourcing to the PRC.  I would be more than happy to open markets to true allies who are undertaking democratic and rule-of-law reform.  My problem with the PRC is they are taking the profits from their trade balance with the western democracies and using those funds to bully a democratic government in Taiwan, to support Kim Il Jong and his nuclear program as well as the other nations I mentioned above.

By the way, nice reach with the GWB analogy.  Congratulations.  Your discourse has now reached the level of whiney protestor.  Seriously, that was really, really bad....

Cheers Brittany.

Have a good night, and once you've done your research I'll be interested to hear if your opinions have changed at all.

Best wishes,


Matthew. 

 

[Britney Spears]

Obviously you and I read different material....I don't keep links to everything I read but here are a couple of quick ones.

And before you think about arguing the point do some of the research yourself.

What the devil.....  ??? ???

Look, I don't *think* you're being actively malicious here, but we are plainly not on the same page. I commented on an article predicting China's imminent demise, pointing out some of it's more obvious factual errors. Previously I had been commenting on the balance of military power between China and Taiwan, and I am of the opinion that the Chinese armed forces are still too far behind in technology and training to pose much of a threat to Taiwan.  You then come hijacking in with a litany of allegations, with no proof or source and completely irrelevent to the topic at hand (unless you are claiming that there are, in fact, 4000 or 700,000 Chinese troops on the ground in Sudan), demand that I give you my "position" on you allegations and now you want me to "do my own research"? Of course I haven't read any of the stuff you posted JUST NOW, am I suppose to read your mind or something?

If you're just trolling for a fight, I'm afraid I've no time for you.


As to the rest of your splurge, I'm sure most of it is probably factually accurate. So what? Are you saying that the Chinese tend to act just as any rational state actor would, and just as most Western nations acted during their transition to capitalism and industrialized economies, and most Western nations are still doing today? If so, then we are in agreement.

 

 

[Cdn Blackshirt]

What the devil.....   ??? ???

Look, I don't *think* you're being actively malicious here, but we are plainly not on the same page. I commented on an article predicting China's imminent demise, pointing out some of it's more obvious factual errors. Previously I had been commenting on the balance of military power between China and Taiwan, and I am of the opinion that the Chinese armed forces are still too far behind in technology and training to pose much of a threat to Taiwan.   You then come hijacking in with a litany of allegations, with no proof or source and completely irrelevent to the topic at hand (unless you are claiming that there are, in fact, 4000 or 700,000 Chinese troops on the ground in Sudan), demand that I give you my "position" on you allegations and now you want me to "do my own research"? Of course I haven't read any of the stuff you posted JUST NOW, am I suppose to read your mind or something?

If you're just trolling for a fight, I'm afraid I've no time for you.


As to the rest of your splurge, I'm sure most of it is probably factually accurate. So what? Are you saying that the Chinese tend to act just as any rational state actor would, and just as most Western nations acted during their transition to capitalism and industrialized economies, and most Western nations are still doing today? If so, then we are in agreement.

No, you took an op-piece containing large amounts of factual information and did your best to undermine it by pointing to one section about 4,000 troops (which frankly I have never seen mentioned although the number of PRC reps most associated with China National Petroleum Company has been estimated at over 10,000).

I then made a series of specific claims about what the PRC's currently involvement with the world's tyrants and questioned what the fundamental basis is for your position that "China can do no wrong."  (I have yet to see you post a single statement admonishin the PRC's for its record).

You then called BS on the claims I had made arguing I had not presented valid back-up information (eluding to the fact you must live under a rock because if you read any foreign policy documentation or even world economics information, the PRC's drive to secure world resource assets is one of the prime topics of discussion).

I then provided some quick back-up information verifiying the fact the claims I made are in fact accurate (which you've failed to admit to this point) and questioned what it was that you were using as your reference material if you were ignorant of all of the above things.

Your final post is the most classic in which you misrepresent the argument, call me a troll, claim you shouldn't be responsible for information not previously posted on the board and in general make excuses for the fact you cannot back up your position which appears to be "the PRC isn't that bad....let's blame Bush instead."

The only rationale I can come up with is you are very young and very inexperienced and have bought into a bunch of crap you've never done the research for yourself.

In the end, you can respond, you can ignore me, you have the right to do anything you like, but please don't go through life forming your world opinion based on headlines or protest plackards when there are infinite resources for you to dig deeper because it shouldn't be the responsibility of the culture to educate you, you must take proactive steps to educate yourself.

Regardless of what you do....good luck.



Matthew.   

 

[a_majoor]

VDH with a somewhat more insightful look at China's place in the world. (Steyn is good for hitting you in the head and arousing argument, Hanson's arguments are compelling but more muted):

The Global Shift
The world will soon better appreciate the United States
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online

Radical global power shifts have been common throughout history. For almost a millennium (800-100 BC) the Greek East, with its proximity to wealthy Asia and African markets and a dynamic Hellenism, was the nexus of Western civilization - before giving way to Rome and the western Mediterranean.

Yet by A.D. 300 the Greek-speaking half of the empire, more distant from northern European tribal attacks, proved the more resolute. It would endure for over 1,000 years while the fragmented West fell into chaos.

And then yet again the pendulum shifted back. The Renaissance was the product of Florence, Venice, and Rome as the Byzantine East was worn out by its elemental struggles with Islam and straitjacketed by an increasingly rigid Orthodoxy and top-heavy imperial regime.

But by 1600 the galley states of the Western Mediterranean were to lose their restored primacy for good, as to the north the ocean-going galleons of the Atlantic port nations - England, France, Holland, Portugal, and Spain - usurped commerce and monopolized the new trans-oceanic trade routes to Asia and the New World.

By the time of the industrial revolution, another radical shift had occurred in influence and power. The northern European states of England, France, and Germany, products of the Enlightenment, with sizable Protestant populations, outpaced both the old classical powers of the Mediterranean and the Spanish empire. And in early 20th century, the United States, benefiting from the Anglo tradition of transparency and the rule of law - combined with a unique constitution, exploding population, and vast resources - displaced the old European colonial empires and stood down the supposed new future of Soviet totalitarianism.

Globalization and technology, of course, can speed up these shifts and accomplish in a few years what used to transpire over centuries. We are told that a third of the planet, the two billion in China and India, is now moving at a breakneck pace with market reforms to remake the world. The old idea of a "population bombâ ? of too many people and too few resources has been turned upside down: The key is not how many people reside in a country but rather what those people do. A billion under a Marxist regime leads to terrible human waste and starvation; a billion in a market economy is actually advantageous - as seemingly endlessly active minds and arms flood the world with cheap consumer goods and rebuild a decaying infrastructure from the ground up.

Europe - high unemployment, layers of bureaucracy slow growth, unsustainable entitlements, ethnic and religious tensions, shrinking populations, unresponsive central governments - is often juxtaposed with Asia, as if its sun is setting just as the East's is once again rising.

So far the European Union's decision not to spend on defense; its inherited infrastructure and protocols; and its commitment to the rule of law keep the continent seemingly prosperous. It has some breathing space to decide whether it will reemerge as a rising power or be relegated to a curious museum for cash-laden tourists from Asia and America.

Somewhere between these poles is the United States. Pessimists point out that we increasingly don't create the cars we drive, the phones we used, or mirabile dictu, soon the food we eat. High budget deficits, trade imbalances, enormous national debt, and growing military expenditures will supposedly take their toll at last, as pampered Americans consume what by the new global rules they don't quite earn.

Optimists counter with their own set of statistics and point out that immigration and religion have ensured a steady if not rising population. Unemployment, interest rates, and inflation are low, and alone in the world America has an amazing resiliency and flexibility to fashion citizens and a single culture out of diverse races and religions. It also, of course, enjoys a unique constitution and laws that provide freedom without license.

We seem to enjoy the best of both worlds, symbolized by our two coasts that look on both east and west. Our European traditions ensure the rule of law and the vibrancy of Western civilization. Yet decades ago, unlike the EU, we understood the Asian challenge and kept our markets open and our economy free, often requiring great dislocation and painful adjustment. The result is that for all our bickering, we continue to remain competitive and flexible in a way Europe does not.

If we have avoided the state socialism of Europe that stymies growth, we have also already passed through all the contradictions of a breakneck capitalist transition - the dislocation of rural people, industrial pollution, unionization, suburban blues, ubiquitous graft, and petty bribery - that will increasingly plague both India and China as they leave the 18th century and enter the 21st.

But the real question is how both China and India, nuclear and arming, will translate their newfound economic clout and cash into a geopolitical role. If internal politics and protocols are any barometer of foreign policy, it should be an interesting show. We mostly welcome the new India - nuclear, law-abiding, and English-speaking - onto the world stage. It deserves a permanent seat on the Security Council and a close alliance with the United States.
China, however, is a very different story - a soon-to-be grasping Soviet Union-like superpower without any pretense of Marxist egalitarianism. Despite massive cash reserves and ongoing trade surpluses, it violates almost every international commercial protocol from copyright law to patents. It won't discuss Tibet, and it uses staged domestic unrest to send warnings to Taiwan and Japan that their regional options will increasingly be limited by Beijing.

China could rein in Kim Jong Il tomorrow. But it derives psychological satisfaction from watching Pyongyang's nuclear roguery stymie Japan and the United States. China's foreign policy in the Middle East, Central and South America, and Southeast Asia is governed by realpolitik of the 19th-century American stripe, without much concern for the type of government or the very means necessary to supply its insatiable hunger for resources. The government that killed 50 million of its own has not really been repudiated and its present successor follows the same old practice of jailing dissidents and stamping out freedom. When and how its hyper-capitalist economy will mandate the end of a Communist directorate is not known.

The world has been recently flooded with media accounts that U.S. soldiers may have dropped or at least gotten wet a few Korans. Abu Ghraib, we are told, is like the Soviet gulag - the death camp of millions. Americans are routinely pilloried abroad because they liberated Iraq, poured billions into the reconstruction, and jumpstarted democracy there - but were unable to do so without force and the loss of civilian life.

This hysteria that the world's hyper-power must be perfect or it is no good is in dire contrast to the treatment given to China. Yet Pavlovian anti-Americanism may soon begin to die down as the Chinese increasingly flex their muscles on the global stage and the world learns better their methods of operation.

So far they have been given a pass on three grounds: the old Third World romance accorded to Mao's Marxist legacy; the Chinese role as a counterweight to the envied power of the United States; and the silent admission that the Chinese, unlike the Americans, are a little crazy and thus unpredictable in their response to moral lecturing. Americans apologize and scurry about when an EU or U.N. official remonstrates; in contrast, a Chinese functionary is apt to talk about sending off a missile or two if they don't shut up.

The Patriot Act to a European is proof of American illiberality in a way that China's swallowing Tibet or jailing and executing dissidents is not. America's support for Saudi Arabia is proof of our hypocrisy in not severing ties with an undemocratic government, while few care that a country with leaders who traverse the globe in Mao suits cuts any deal possible with fascists and autocrats for oil, iron ore, and food.

Yes, we are witnessing one of the great transfers of power and influence that have traditionally changed civilization itself, as money, influence, and military power are gradually inching away from Europe. And this time the shake-up is not regional but global. While scholars and economists concentrate on its economic and political dimensions, few have noticed how a new China and an increasingly vulnerable Europe will markedly change the image of the United States.

As nations come to know the Chinese, and as a ripe Europe increasingly cannot or will not defend itself, the old maligned United States will begin to look pretty good again. More important, America will not be the world's easily caricatured sole power, but more likely the sole democratic superpower that factors in morality in addition to national interest in its treatment of others.

China is strong without morality; Europe is impotent in its ethical smugness. The buffer United States, in contrast, believes morality is not mere good intentions but the willingness and ability to translate easy idealism into hard and messy practice.

Most critics will find such sentiments laughable or naïve; but just watch China in the years to come. Those who now malign the imperfections of the United States may well in shock whimper back, asking for our friendship. Then the boutique practice of anti-Americanism among the global elite will come to an end.

©2005 Victor Davis Hanson
 

   

 

[Britney Spears]

Cdn Blackshirt:

Please provide proof for the following allegations:

your position that "China can do no wrong." 

or

your position which appears to be "the PRC isn't that bad....let's blame Bush instead."

or

the claims I made are in fact accurate (which you've failed to admit to this point)

or

you were ignorant of all of the above things.

I think will be very difficult, since I've not made any such statements, and have not disputed the accuracy of any of your sources (not because I trust you implicitly, but because I really can't be bothered anymore as they are irrelevent to our discussion. Do you really want me to try?). Apparently you're the only one who can see them.....

Until then, I really don't know what you're trying to get at, other than the fact that you hate China. Why don't you go back and read the stuff I actually posted, as oppose to the stuff you *think* I did, which in fact you pulled out of thin air, and see if you can find any factual errors? If you find any I'll be glad to retract my comments and apologize.

Obviously one of us here has a bit of a chip on the shoulder, but it sure ain't me.

BTW:

The only rationale I can come up with is you are very young and very inexperienced and have bought into a bunch of crap you've never done the research for yourself.

Ad hominem attacks don't really impress me as it does some of the others on the board, and do not help your credibility.