Sino-American Relations cont’d
Written by Jack O'Reilly on May 8th, 2005Here’s a recent article from the Washington Times: Who wants a strong China?
The author objects to the massive US transfer of wealth to China, not so much because of Ms. Cox Gurdon’s human rights concerns but rather the war-posturing toward Taiwan and Japan.
Boost in military spending is a function of being “prosperous,” and the massive American trade deficit with China gives Beijing the hard currency to finance “foreign weapon acquisitions” — mostly Russian systems designed to attack American targets. As for “transforming,” it seems Beijing is moving from a moribund Marxism to an energetic fascism. Is it really so difficult to connect the dots?
I’d appreciate the thoughts of the SaveTheGOPers who have first hand experience in China. That is, if you haven’t been turned into Manchurian Candidates yet
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Well, my knowledge of China is mostly linguistic (not very good) and literary (a little better). My real area of “expertise” is on environmental NGOs in Northwest China, but since you asked here are some random utterances….
China is now a military junta. I don’t know if they still think they believe in Marxism, they would tell you they do. The elite still worships Mao, and even if you try and corner them with logic they’ll just call him “complicated”. Like most East Asian countries they are totally cowed by authority as represented by a strong, paternalistic state. The most important industries and fastest growing companies are all owned by the People’s Liberation Army, the less important industries are all owned by hack Chi-Com members of the People’s Congress. Occassionally they let Americans and other foreigners get a taste of the entrails. The entrails means billions of dollars, and cheap crap at the dollar store, so a lot of people are happy.
Like this article indicates, our addiction to Chinese goods has repurcussions. I believe it was the Financial Times that studied government spending patterns in the PRC and found that spending on the military has outclipped China’s already fantastic economic growth. I believe they claimed military spending outpaced growth by five times, but I can’t remember. Whatever it is, they are able to deploy significantly more advanced military equipment. This is scary because they have threatened publically to nuke California if we defend Taiwan.
There’s no really good answer. Poverty is the norm in China, much of it abject and cruel. On the one hand, some of our trade with China has helped alleviate that, and as a Christian I can’t begrudge it. On the other hand, China is still a marxist/fascist state that has continued to deny even the most basic rights to many of its citizens despite continued trade with the West. Maybe Michael is more optimistic that freedom is closer, maybe right around the corner, but I remain guarded.
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John:
I assume you are referring to me as the “Manchurian Candidate”. I do not now, nor will I ever, love any country other than the United States of America.
Now, I hate to do this, but I am going to have to ask you once again for more time. I just don’t have time (because of work) right now to really answer your questions and get into a debate here. I think maybe tomorrow or the next day I will have an hour to spare and I can really layout a nice explanation as well as parse the article you linked to above. Thanks for entertaining this topic and I am sorry I cannot accommodate you at this time.
Andrew: I will of course respond to your comments as well, you made some nice points above and you said some things that I would ask you to clarify.
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Mike, I was referring to both you and Andrew as potential Manchurian candidates. Tongue in cheek of course.
Good luck with work. I’ve got 3 finals in 3 days.
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