Chinese Military,Political and Social Superthread

[CougarKing]

Wow. Very unfortunate.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080512/ts_afp/chinaquake_...oVrEOb5pVn70Xgn9xg8F

BEIJING (AFP) - A massive earthquake stunned southwest China on Monday, killing more than 8,000 people and flattening schools, factories and homes in a powerful tremor that was felt across a swathe of southeast Asia.

The quake, with a magnitude of 7.8, struck close to densely-populated areas of Sichuan province in what Premier Wen Jiabao called a "major disaster."
China's state-run Xinhua news agency reported 8,533 confirmed dead in that province alone, but there were fears the toll will rise far higher with others killed in neighbouring regions and reports of hundreds buried under debris.

Buildings swayed in Beijing and Shanghai, while the quake was also felt in Hong Kong, Hanoi and Taipei and in the Thai capital Bangkok, 1,800 kilometres (1,200 miles) from the epicentre.

"Facing disaster, the most important thing is calm, confidence, courage and strong leadership," Wen told China's CCTV television on a flight to the heart of the quake-hit zone.

China's state-run Xinhua news agency cited local disaster relief officials saying 3,000 to 5,000 people were estimated to have died in just one district of Sichuan, Beichuan County.

A further 10,000 people were injured in the county, where officials said 80 percent of buildings had collapsed.

"I heard the vents ruffling and then started to feel the building shake and a couple of bits of the ceiling fell," Richard Morgan-Sanjurjo, a 30-year-old business consultant who lives in Chengdu, told AFP.

"I ran so fast. I thought the building was going to come down on my head," he said.

US President George W. Bush expressed his condolences and said the United States "stands ready to help," and Japan said it was ready to provide as much relief aid as possible.

The quake damaged two chemical plants in Shifeng, about 50 kilometres from the epicentre, burying hundreds of people and forcing more than 6,000 others living nearby to be evacuated, Xinhua said.

It earlier reported up to 900 students buried when a high school collapsed in Dujiangyan, northwest of the provincial capital Chengdu. At least 50 bodies were recovered as frantic parents looked on.

A local official in the city said "rows of houses" had crumbled, while two primary schools were demolished in the sprawling metropolis of Chongqing.

President Hu Jintao urged an "all-out" effort to rescue victims. Military troops were ordered to help with the disaster relief work.

All trains to and from Chengdu were ordered to stop, the city's airport was shut down and planes diverted for engineers to assess the runways, and mobile phone and Internet communications were disrupted.

An Olympic spokesman said none of the 31 venues for the Beijing Olympics in the capital and other host cities had been damaged.

"They are earthquake proof to a high degree and no damage was done," said Sun Weide, deputy director of the Olympic media and communications office.

The quake struck 93 kilometres from Chengdu, a city of more than 12 million people, and some 260 kilometres from Chongqing and its 30 million.

The State Seismological Bureau located its epicentre in Wenchuan County, a mountainous region home to the Wolong Nature Reserve, China's leading research and breeding base for endangered giant pandas.

Both the Chinese seismological bureau and the US Geological Survey, which use different scales, measured the quake at 7.8.

It struck shortly before 2.30 pm (0630 GMT) at a shallow depth of just 10 kilometres, the USGS said.

Xinhua quoted an official saying the landmark Three Gorges Dam in Sichuan province had not been affected.

However, buildings shook in Beijing and Shanghai, residents reported, with many people evacuating tower blocks and rushing onto the street.

The quake was felt in the Taiwanese capital Taipei, where buildings swayed for half a minute, and in the southern Chinese territory of Hong Kong.

In Hanoi, residents said some high buildings shook for around five minutes but there were no reports of damage.

One of the biggest quakes ever recorded was in China in 1976, which killed 242,000 people.

That quake, centred in the northern city of Tangshan, lasted for 15 seconds and flattened 90 percent of buildings. The death toll, out of a population of one million, made it one of the world's deadliest in the 20th century.

 

[tomahawk6]

Very tragic with over 10,000 dead and thousands homeless.The government is deploying 50,000 troops to the region to assist recovery efforts.A major earthquake in the US midwest would be similarly devestating.

 

[chanman]

Seems like the aid that the Junta was slow in accepting might find a new place to go

 

[CougarKing]

Adm. Keating talks about how the new sub base reveals the PRC's intention to possibly project power beyond the Taiwan Strait, as the article states. I think that ex-CINCPAC James Lyons' suggestion that the US reinforce its old military ties with the Philippines, even if it becomes official policy, will still find resistance from factions within the Philippine government since the current Arroyo administration and its previous Estrada administration were criticized, IIRC, for allowing US troops back into the country (since the withdrawals from Subic and Clark AFB) under the VFA Treaty and allowing the annual "Balikatan" Exercises between US and Filipino forces.

http://www.defencetalk.com/news/publish/na...ns120015775.php

China's new naval base triggers US concerns
Agence France-Presse | May 13, 2008

WASHINGTON: China's new underground nuclear submarine base close to vital sea lanes in Southeast Asia has raised US concerns, with experts calling for a shoring up of alliances in the region to check Beijing's growing military clout.

The base's existence on the southern tip of Hainan Island was confirmed for the first time by high resolution satellite images, according to Jane's Intelligence Review, a respected defence periodical, this month.

It could hold up to 20 submarines, including a new type of nuclear ballistic missile submarine, and future Chinese aircraft carrier battle groups, posing a challenge to longstanding US military dominance in Asia.

China should not pursue such "high-end military options," warned Admiral Timothy Keating, the top commander of US forces in Asia, in an interview with the Voice of America last week.

He underlined America's "firm intention" not to abandon its dominating military role in the Pacific and told Beijing it would face "sure defeat" if it took on the United States militarily.

Worried mostly about Taiwan's security, Washington has often questioned China's military expansion on the back of rapid economic growth.

But American military experts attending a forum on China's naval expansion in Washington Monday said the nuclear submarine base underscored Beijing's interest in projecting power beyond the Taiwan Strait.

"The most important thing about the Hainan development is that if you look at the map, there is really nowhere China could go except south," said Arthur Waldron, an expert at the University of Pennsylvania, referring to the South China Sea and critical sea lanes, including the Strait of Malacca straddling Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.

"This Hainan facility is going to raise questions in the minds of all of the neighbours because this is a fixed facility and cannot be removed," Waldron said. "My own sense is that it is going to make ripples and waves."

He said Washington should "tighten" its alliances in Asia to check China's growing military might and develop "interoperability" capabilities among allies such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and Singapore, as well as Indonesia and Malaysia.

James Lyons, an ex-commander of the US Pacific Fleet, said the United States needed to reestablish high-level military ties with the Philippines as part of efforts to enhance US deterrence in the wake of China's naval expansion.

He said "operational tactics" used against the former Soviet Union during the Cold War should be applied against China.

He suggested US leasing a squadron of F-16 fighter jets and navy vessels to the Philippines, where Washington once had naval and air bases, as part of the deterrence strategy.

"We don't need a permanent base but we need access," Lyons said, suggesting also that Japan play a more "meaningful" role in protecting critical sea lanes in the region.

"Again the Soviets, we raised that deterrence equation and we won the war without firing a shot basically ... there is no cheap way out and we have to improve our posture in the Western Pacific along with our allies," he said.

Richard Fisher, an expert of China military affairs at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, a US think tank, expected US confrontation with China as Beijing modernized its nuclear ballistic missile submarines, referred to in military jargon as SSBNs.

"Absent a higher military diplomatic relationship with the Chinese, I foresee a period of growing confrontation in the South China Sea," he said.

"If they are going to be maintaining SSBN patrols within guarded areas of the South China Sea, the US has no choice but to maintain contacts or to monitor these SSBNs so as to be able to take them out in the event they come to threaten the US -- just as we did against Soviet SSBNs during the Cold War," he said.

The Hainan facility, he said, was a timely replacement for Beijing's first nuclear ballistic missile submarine base at the Bohai Gulf north of the country, which he added was too shallow to support nuclear deterrent patrols.

The Chinese would not allow the American navy to enter the air space and waters around the Hainan base uncontested, Fisher said.

"There is a very strong likelihood that there would be incidents at sea and that ships and aircraft and their crew members could be lost," he said.

 

[CougarKing]

Never mind about what I said earlier about retired Adm. James Lyons in a previous edit of this post. Still, here is another, though older article that some of you will find interesting, if it has not already been posted before:

http://www.heritage.org/Research/AsiaandthePacific/wm1001.cfm

China's Submarine Challenge
by John J. Tkacik, Jr.
WebMemo #1001
Sea-power trends in the Pacific Ocean are ominous. By 2025, China’s navy could rule the waves of the Pacific. By some estimates, Chinese attack submarines will outnumber U.S. submarines in the Pacific by five to one and Chinese nuclear ballistic missile submarines will prowl America’s Western littoral, each closely tailed by two U.S. attack submarines that have better things to do. The United States, meanwhile, will likely struggle to build enough submarines to meet this challenge.

A misplaced diplomacy leaves some U.S. Navy commanders reluctant to admit publicly that China’s rapidly expanding submarine force in the Pacific is a threat, but if the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and the latest Pentagon “Report on the Military Power of the People’s Republic of China” (MPPRC Report) are any indication, they are undoubtedly thinking it. In a speech sponsored by the Asia Society in Washington earlier this month, for example, Admiral Gary Roughead, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, commented,

I’m always asked about the Chinese threat and I say, ‘It’s not a threat,’ because you have to have two things to have a threat, and that’s capability and intent. There is no question that the PLA navy is modernizing and building its capability and is moving very quickly, but what is the intent?

The Pentagon has already begun to answer this question, but it has yet to do so in a way that shows it takes this threat seriously.

China’s Intent

The QDR addresses the question of China’s intent:

Chinese military modernization has accelerated since the mid-to-late 1990s in response to central leadership demands to develop military options against Taiwan scenarios. The pace and scope of China’s military build-up already puts regional military balances at risk. China is likely to continue making large investments in high-end, asymmetric military capabilities, emphasizing electronic and cyber-warfare; counter-space operations; ballistic and cruise missiles; advanced integrated air defense systems; next generation torpedoes; advanced submarines; strategic nuclear strike from modern, sophisticated land and sea-based systems; and theater unmanned aerial vehicles…

According to the MPPRC Report’s executive summary, China’s specific intent is to “build counters to third-party, including potential U.S., intervention in [Taiwan] Strait crises.” The report continues, “Deterring, defeating, or delaying foreign intervention ahead of Taiwan’s capitulation is integral to Beijing’s strategy.” To this end, China is expanding its “force of ballistic missiles (long-range and short-range), cruise missiles, submarines, advanced aircraft, and other modern systems.”

China’s Sea-Power Goals

If they are curious about China’s intent, Pentagon planners might look to comments by General Wen Zongren, Political Commissar of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s elite Academy of Military Science. The MPPRC Report quotes General Wen as asserting that China must “break” the “blockade [by] international forces against China’s maritime security… Only when we break this blockade shall we be able to talk about China’s rise… [T]o rise suddenly, China must pass through oceans and go out of the oceans in its future development.” In fact, it is the explicit goal of the Chinese Communist Party to “increase the comprehensive strength of the nation.”

The Chinese navy—and its submarine fleet, in particular—is a key tool in achieving that goal. The September 2004 promotion of Admiral Zhang Dingfa, a career submariner, to Chief of Staff of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and a full seat on the Central Military Commission was a clear signal of the primacy of submarine warfare in China’s strategy for the Asia-Pacific region.

Growing Submarine Force

Admiral Zhang led PLAN’s submarine modernization program and oversaw the acquisition of four modern Russian-built KILO subs, including the stealthy Type-636. Orders for eight more are on the books, with the first new boats to be delivered this month. That three Russian shipyards are at work to fill China’s orders for new submarines betrays this build-up’s urgency.

Admiral Zhang isn’t relying solely on the Russians. He has also increased production—to 2.5 boats per year—of China’s new, formidable Song-class diesel-electric submarine. China is also testing a new diesel-electric that the defense intelligence community has designated the “Yuan.” The Yuan is heavily inspired by Russian designs, including anechoic tile coatings and a super-quiet seven-blade screw. The addition of “air-independent propulsion,” which permits a submarine to operate underwater for up to 30 days on battery power, will make the Song and Yuan submarines virtually inaudible to existing U.S. surveillance networks—and even to U.S. subs.

These new submarines will be more lethal when armed with Russian SKVAL (“Squall”) torpedoes, which can reach 200 knots. There are reports that the SKVAL is already operational on some Chinese subs. As well, Russia has also transferred the Novator 3M-54E three-stage anti-ship cruise missile to China’s submarine fleet for use against aircraft carriers. Each Chinese KILO is armed with four of these missiles.

America’s Endangered Submarine Supremacy

In February 2005, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld commented that the size of the Chinese fleet could surpass the United States Navy’s within a decade. “It is an issue that the department thinks about and is concerned about and is attentive to.” Indeed, the U.S. Navy will hold a series of major naval exercises in the Pacific this summer that will involve four aircraft carrier battle groups, including a carrier normally based on the U.S. East Coast. This will be the first time the Navy has deployed an Atlantic Fleet carrier to a Pacific exercise since the Vietnam War.

However, there is little indication that the Pentagon is taking the Chinese submarine challenge seriously. If it were, the QDR issued earlier this month would have recommended that the erosion of the U.S. submarine fleet come to an end.

But the QDR envisions a “return to a steady-state production rate of two attack submarines per year not later than 2012 while achieving an average per-hull procurement cost objective of $2.0 billion.” This means that the U.S. sub fleet will continue to decline for another six years, during which time America’s industrial base for constructing subs will further diminish and the per-unit cost of submarines will jump past $2 billion, impelling further cuts in the fleet.

Of the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s 35 submarines (including three nuclear attack submarines based in Guam during 2006), about a dozen are underway at sea on operational duties at any one time. Under the QDR’s most optimistic estimates, Pacific Command’s sub fleet will diminish to about 30 by 2025.

Electric Boat (EB), the nation’s preeminent submarine contractor, has announced plans to lay off 900 of its 1,700 designers and marine draftsmen engineers over the next three years. This is a crisis. It will mark the first time in 50 years that the U.S. has not had a new submarine design on the drawing board. EB laid off nearly 200 submarine engineers and machinists in early February—and EB is the only shipbuilder in the nation that maintains submarine designers. As the build-rate for subs collapsed, EB used maintenance and repair work to pay designers’ salaries and maintain its staff of highly-skilled steelworkers. But without new orders, EB will lay off almost half of its workforce of over 5,000 over the next three years

U.S. Navy combatant commanders already require 150 percent of the attack submarine days currently available, and these requirements will only increase as the submarine force dwindles. If the United States allows production to dwindle further, expertise will be lost and costs will skyrocket for any new classes of submarines contemplated for the post-2012 period.

Meanwhile, China’s fleet of modern attack submarines is growing: China already has ten Song/Yuan/Kilo submarines in the Pacific today, over 50 older Ming-class and Romeo boats, five Han class nuclear attack submarines, and one Xia-class ballistic missile submarine. In addition, China has 25 new boats under contract now; 16 are under construction today, including a new class of nuclear attack submarine designated the Type-093 and a new nuclear ballistic missile sub, the Type-094.

The U.S. has three submarines under construction today. Although the Navy’s new 30-year shipbuilding plan calls for 48 nuclear attack submarines in the fleet by 2035, the Navy’s top submarine commander, Vice Admiral Charles L. Munns, has testified before Congress that the Navy needs at least 54 boats to fulfill current critical missions. This number will rise as China’s navy expands.

If the Navy does not start launching new subs at the rate of two per year until several years after 2012, the force would dip to a low of 40 in 2028, or 17 percent below the Navy’s stated needs. And that rate will not even permit the Navy to reach its sub-minimal target of 48 attack submarines until 2034. All of this assumes that the Navy does not decommission ships faster than expected due to expanded operations in coming years.

Recommendations for the Administration and Congress

The United States must return to building at least two, and preferably two-and-a-half, new attack submarines per year beginning in FY 2009. The U.S. must begin procurement for long lead-time components, such as nuclear reactors, in FY 2007 and 2008. These steps are necessary just to hold U.S. subsurface strength steady.

The Administration should also work with key strategic partners in Asia to bolster their fleets. Japan and India are potential submarine warfare partners. Japan must also be encouraged to upgrade its anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and surveillance systems.

Congress should hold hearings into reports on the editorial pages of DefenseNews (February 13, 2006) and Jane’s Defence Weekly (February 15, 2006) that the U.S. Navy has sabotaged Taiwan’s efforts to procure modern diesel-electric boats from U.S. shipyards by hyper-inflating prices in order to keep U.S. yards from building anything but nuclear boats. A robust Taiwanese fleet would be a welcome relief as the U.S. Navy attempts to counter increasing Chinese sub-surface fleet pressures in Asian littoral waters. The United States and Japan also need an enhanced partnership with Taiwan in airborne and subsurface ASW reconnaissance and surveillance in waters under Taiwanese administration.

John J. Tkacik, Jr., is Senior Research Fellow in China Policy in the Asian Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation.

 

[tomahawk6]

Missile Base revealed.

http://www.timesnow.tv/Newsdtls.aspx?NewsID=8418
Images from Google earth reveals missile deployment equipment at a large facility in downtown Delingha

In what could cause concerns for India, Commercial satellite imagery revealed an extensive nuclear missile site in central China with nearly sixty launch pads for medium-range missiles capable of striking Russia as well.

The images from Google Earth show different types of launch pads, command and control facilities, and missile deployment equipment at a large facility in downtown Delingha, said Hans Kristensen, a researcher with the Federation of American Scientists.

"The US government often highlights China's deployment of new mobile missiles as a concern but keeps the details secret, so the discovery of the deployment area provides the first opportunity for the public to better understand how China operates its mobile ballistic missiles," he wrote.

The find comes only two weeks after the discovery of a secret Chinese nuclear submarine base on Hainan Island in South China Sea, also using commercial satellite imagery and published by Jane's Intelligence Review.

The latest images were posted along with Kristensen's analysis on the website of the Federation of American Scientists. Kristensen said the imagery revealed missile launch sites along a 275-kilometer (170 miles) stretch of highway leading from the city of Delingha through Da Qaidam to Mahai in the northern part of Qinghai province.

Thirty-six launch pads were arrayed in three strings extending north of the highway and west of Delingha. Another 22 launch pads were detected in an area running west of Da Qaidam to Mahai, according to Kristensen's analysis.

"From these launch pads DF-21 missiles would be within range of southern Russia and northern India (including New Delhi), but not Japan, Taiwan or Guam," he wrote. DF-21s are medium range solid fuel missiles that have been replacing China's older DF-3 and DF-4 liquid fuel missiles.

Kristensen said the imagery shows what appear to be a buried command and control bunker marked by antenas at each of the deployment area. In downtown Delingha, images show what appear to be the headquarters of a missile brigade base with tentlike structures of identical size and design as structures previously detected on DF-21 launch pads.

An open area near the base contained what appeared to be camouflaged nets over unidentified vehicles, he said.
     

 

[Kirkhill]

That missile base would seem to confirm Chinese interests in securing its back door.  While New Delhi might be a target at the limits of range of an IRBM in Delingha it seems to be more useful to note that the base casts an umbrella over the Tibetan Plateau and the Altai, two water sheds, as well as a traditional invasion route into China travelled by Scythians, Huns and Mongols.

I still believe that China's greatest strategic weakness is access to water and that that is why it is so desparate to hold on Tibet, which by any definition, is NOT and never has been Han territory.

 

[CougarKing]

some pics from the zone..

And yes, that's a PLA Blackhawk; they do have some from the batch they bought in the 1980s, though I'm surprised at least one is still flying considering that the US does not provide any military equipment or spare parts to the PRC anymore, IIRC. (This source confirms it: http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2008/ea_china0088_04_25.asp)

This Sept. 14, 2007 picture released by GeoEye Satellite Image shows the Zipingpu Dam, upriver from the town of Dujiangyan, Sichuan, China. On Wednesday, May 14, 2008, thousands of Chinese troops rushed to plug cracks in the dam in earthquake-hit Sichuan province, but experts later said it was safe.

The Zipingpu Dam buildings are seen at left near a bridge [below] where the middle section is fallen after Monday's earthquake near Dujiangyan, southwestern China's Sichuan province, Thursday, May 15, 2008

Disaster relief personnel work at a staging area where earthquake victims are being ferried to by boat from areas at the epicenter of Monday's earthquake that are inaccessible by road, at the Zipingpu Dam near Dujiangyan, southwestern China's Sichuan province, Thursday, May 15, 2008.

 

[Yrys]

Amazing pictures...


Peace and placards greet Dalai Lama

 

[CougarKing]

Strong aftershocks hit China, adding to the already horrendous toll on human lives!

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/05/25/china.earthquake/index.html

70,000 homes 'damaged' in new China quake
Story Highlights
China's water ministry says 69 dams near collapse after quake
Paraplegic rescued 11 days after May 12 earthquake, state-run TV reports

Death toll surpasses 60,000, officials say

CHENGDU, China (CNN) -- A powerful 5.8 magnitude aftershock hit China's Sichuan province Sunday, reportedly damaging more than 70,000 homes in the region where at least 60,000 people were killed by a powerful earthquake on May 12.

State media said at least two people died and 400 were hurt as a result of the latest seismic jolt, which came as Chinese officials warned that 69 dams in the province damaged in the original quake were in danger of bursting their banks.

The province has experienced dozens of aftershocks since a devastating 7.9-magnitude earthquake on May 12.

But Sunday's aftershock, coming 13 days after the earthquake, was the strongest since another 5.8-magnitude shook the region a day after the initial quake.

More than 70,000 homes in the area were damaged by the aftershock, according to local television reports.

The aftershock was felt in Chengdu, one of the largest cities in the Sichuan province and about 150 miles from the epicenter of the aftershock. A CNN employee, on the 24th floor of a highrise hotel, reported that the building swayed.

On Saturday, when China's Premier Wen Jiabao gave United Nation Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon a dramatic look at the damage, a strong aftershock shook the town they were in. Watch Ban Ki-Moon's tour of damage »

Meanwhile, the death toll from this month's earthquake in China reached 62,664, a government official said Sunday. Another 23,775 are still missing.

At the Sunday news conference, a civil affairs ministry official said rescue workers have pulled alive 6,537 people from the rubble of the May 12 earthquake.

The earthquake has left more than 5,000 children without their parents and more than 4,000 elderly without caregivers, China's state-run news agency said Sunday.

A Water Ministry official said at the same conference that 69 dams are in danger of bursting in Sichuan province.

Since the quake struck, workers have made several dramatic rescues. But the numbers have dwindled in recent days as time has passed. And continued rain in the coming days threatened to make relief efforts more difficult.

On Friday, rescue workers pulled an 80-year-old paraplegic man from the rubble of his home on Friday, 11 days after the quake, state media reported Sunday.

The man, Xiao Zhihu, had been trapped for nearly 266 hours.

The beam of Xiao's house in Mianzhu City in the Sichuan province collapsed during the quake, trapping him, China's state-run television CCTV said.

The station said Xiao's wife could not go and call for help. She brought him food, until he was found and freed by rescue crews Friday.

The government estimates that 45 million people, mostly in the Sichuan province, were affected by the earthquake and that five million were left homeless.

As the rescue and recovery efforts continue, the fact that so many buildings- including state-run schools- collapsed so quickly is making so many of those survivors suddenly start calling for something rarely heard in CCP-controlled China: government accountability.

If any of you recall a CBC report last week from the earthquake site in a certain town called Dongxi, in Sichuan province, IIRC, there was one man in the crowd of survivors seen in the report who was distraught over the fact that he wanted answers about why the government was not properly prepared for such a disaster; the CBC reporter was initially blocked from interviewing him by a local official, who chastised the reporter's translator, saying, "Why do you bring foreigners here?...Don't trust what they say...they'll never tell the truth the way it really is here."  : However, the young man insisted on voicing his opinion to the reporter, saying that "People elsewhere should know what happened here.", and IIRC, he briefly got to talk with the reporter.

Another woman survivor who was interviewed said that the school buildings collapsed because officials failed to reinforce the buildings even when they began to show their age; the local authorities simply paid lip service to the fact that work was needed and only made cosmetic changes such as repainting the walls. While it is easy to conclude that the PRC government granted foreign media unprecedented access to the disaster-hit areas to show the world the professionalism and the readiness with which the local emergency services and the PLA responded, I think that this unprecedented access was also a double-edged sword since it gave those with substantial grievances of corruption an alternate conduit with which to express those grievances against the CCP.

Regardless, while I recall that the CBC report showed footage of what used to be the CCP local HQ in Dongxi now reduced to rubble, I doubt that many locals would grieve for those CCP members who lost their lives during the quake(s).

Still, will the cancer of corruption be the first of many nails to seal the coffin of China's current ruling dynasty- the CCP? This next article below certainly provides some food for thought:



http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2008/05/23/china_s_lethal_mix_of_earthquakes_corrup

China’s Lethal Mix of Earthquakes, Corruption, and Greed

Peter Navarro

Imagine that your government forced you to have only one child – under penalty of sterilization, beatings, and/or stiff fines. Imagine further that your one child is crushed to death during an earthquake because that same government allowed your child’s school to be built with shoddy building materials and in violation of numerous building codes.

For many grieving mothers and fathers in China, this stark imagining has become the harshest of realities. In fact, the real tragedy of the recent China earthquake is that a significant number of the deaths and injuries were not the result of a merciless Mother Nature but rather a lethal combination of government corruption and entrepreneurial greed.

The quake in question hit Sichuan province on May 12th and registered a highly destructive 7.9 on the Richter scale. While the official death toll has already risen to more than 20,000, when all of the bodies are eventually counted, that toll will likely exceed 50,000. The grim reality is that many of the dead and injured perished in poorly constructed schools and homes and other buildings that had no absolutely chance of withstanding the earthquake’s deadly force.

The problem of shoddy building materials is endemic in China, and it is a particularly severe problem with cement and steel. It’s not that the Chinese don’t know how to properly make these materials. Rather, inferior cement and steel creep into the construction process because as a common characteristic of the Chinese business culture and lax regulatory environment, entrepreneurs regularly skimp on product quality as a way of boosting profits.

A similar problem exists with ultra-lax building code enforcement. At least on paper, China has a set of building codes almost as tough as those of the United States or Japan. In practice, however, the central government’s codes are rarely enforced at the local level – particularly outside the confines of major cities like Beijing and Shanghai and particularly in poorer provinces such as Sichuan.

This problem of local autonomy goes far back into China’s history and its imperial times and is reflected in the ancient Chinese proverb “the mountains are high and the emperor is far away.” It is a problem that plagues China on everything from environmental protection and worker health and safety to the construction process.

On top of this, China’s extremely weak legal system makes it virtually impossible for victims to seek any proper redress. Not only are the laws unclear, but the judiciary is often pro-developer. Moreover, as a by-product of the repressive nature of the Chinese regime, would-be claimants are subject to beatings. The result is precisely the kind of shoddy construction that has claimed so many lives in the recent quake.

Given China’s incredibly dark earthquake history, there is absolutely no excuse for the government to allow any of this. In fact, in 1976, China suffered an earthquake that resulted in the highest number of quake-related casualties in the last four centuries. This earthquake occurred in the Tangshen area of China and damage reached as far as Beijing. While official statistics place the number of dead at 255,000, the actual number is more likely to be well above 600,000.

The only close competitor in modern times is the deadly Sumatra earthquake of 2004 which killed 228,000 – but many of those died not from the quake but the ensuing tsunami. And it must be noted that the only other quake topping 200,000 in casualites was also in China – the deadly 1920 Gansu earthquake. That’s why there is absolutely no excuse for government officials to condone the type of fly-by-night development process that exists.

There are important lessons in these frank observations for both a repressive Chinese government in desperate need of reform and a world increasingly reliant on Chinese manufacturers who are far too willing to cut corners on safety. Chinese government officials must come to understand that the brutal suppression of free speech and the lack of legal protection for Chinese citizens provide the ideal breeding ground for corruption and greed. At the same time, consumers in the West have yet another data point to illustrate the deadly hazards of relying on Chinese manufacturers to provide us with everything from car parts, food, and toys to pharmaceuticals and, yes, building materials.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Part 1 of 2

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail are two articles framed in he print edition,  as a bit of a debate on the Commentary page between Frank Ching and Jack Granatstein:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080526.wcoching26/BNStory/specialComment/home

Actually, it's time to imagine a new world order

FRANK CHING

From Saturday's Globe and Mail
May 26, 2008 at 7:30 AM EDT

'When many Western observers look at China," former Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani writes in his latest book, The New Asian Hemisphere, "they cannot see beyond the lack of a democratic political system. They miss the massive democratization of the human spirit that is taking place in China."

At a time when the Chinese people have mobilized themselves to cope with the May 12 earthquake, with untold numbers volunteering to give blood, donate money and travel to devastated towns and villages to help the afflicted, it is easy to see the country's vibrancy.

There is a new spirit, different from that before Deng Xiaoping launched the country on the road to reform and openness 30 years ago.

This book is full of insights - and contradictions. Mr. Mahbubani praises the West for Asia's development. Asian countries progressed, he says, because they implemented seven pillars of Western wisdom: free-market economics, meritocracy, pragmatism, a culture of peace, the rule of law, an emphasis on education and a willingness to pursue advances in science and technology.

But while he says the United States has done more good for the world than any other country, he also calls it an international outlaw that refuses to be bound by "the constraints of international law."

What makes his book controversial is his assertion that "the era of Western domination has run its course," although so far, "the West has refused either to admit its domination of the world or to contemplate sharing power in a new world order. This is a prescription for eventual disaster."

The thesis of the book is in its subtitle: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East. Mr. Mahbubani says Asia is returning to the position it occupied for most of the past 2,000 years, before the industrial revolution catapulted the West forward.

"In the period from 1 CE to 1820, as British historian Angus Madison has recorded, the two largest economies of the world were China and India," he notes.

"The past two centuries of Western domination of world history are the exception, not the rule, during two thousand years of global history."

Citing Goldman Sachs, Mr. Mahbubani says that by 2050, three of the world's four largest economies will be Asian - China, India and Japan, along with the United States. And that, he seems to say, is the way it ought to be. But that raises the question: Why did China and the rest of Asia fall behind the West in the first place?

He offers a partial explanation: "We have not fully understood why the West leaped ahead. But we know some of the reasons why Asia slipped behind: a religious mindset that spurned the material world, a lack of belief in the idea of human 'progress,' a natural deference to authority, and a lack of critical questioning."

He left out one crucial factor, which was identified by Mr. Deng in diagnosing China's backwardness: self-imposed isolation after the 15th century, during the Ming dynasty.

"A closed-door policy prevents any country from developing," the Chinese leader said in a speech in 1984. "We suffered from isolation, and so did our forefathers. ... As a consequence, the country declined into poverty and ignorance."

Since Mr. Mahbubani says he doesn't know what it was that made the West advance, it is possible to question his conclusion that the West must decline. No one doubts that Asia will rise, but that does not necessarily imply a Western decline, other than in a relative sense.

It may be true that certain things will change, such as the current cozy arrangement whereby the World Bank is always headed by an American and the International Monetary Fund by a European, with Asians excluded.

The rise of Asia means change, but it doesn't necessarily mean that all global power will pass from West to East. A sharing of power - and responsibilities - is a more likely and more acceptable outcome.

Whether one agrees with Mr. Mahbubani or not, his book is well worth reading. It is crammed with interesting information and provides an Asian perspective frequently missing in Western discourse on issues of global importance.

In 2006, China produced a 12-part documentary series called The Rise of the Great Powers, clearly an attempt on its part to understand the West. It is now incumbent on the West to try to understand Asia.

And

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080526.wcogranat26/BNStory/specialComment/home

Yes, but Canada's future is still American
Those who hope to see the new Asian giants rival the U.S. do not realize such a change would be an unmitigated disaster for us

J. L. GRANATSTEIN

From Monday's Globe and Mail
May 26, 2008 at 7:34 AM EDT

Canadians don't like the United States these days. A BBC World Service opinion poll in 34 countries published in April found that, while the view of the United States was improving in most, in Lebanon, Egypt, and Canada it was worsening. Only 27 per cent of Canadians had a positive view of the U.S., while 62 per cent held dark thoughts, up six percentage points from last year. Moreover, according to an Environics poll for the "Canada's World" project, published at the beginning of this year, more than half of Canadians described the United States as a "negative force" in the world. In second place? Iran, with only 21 per cent calling the oil-rich theocracy a negative force. These are stunning figures.

Their force is compounded by a Globe and Mail self-selected opinion poll that ran online on March 29 and 30. Fifteen thousand readers registered opinions; 54 per cent said that America's "current decline" will continue. In other words, more than half of Globe and Mail readers, supposedly an elite group, believe the U.S. is likely to slip into irreversible strategic or economic decline tomorrow. There are few signs of unhappiness about this. Indeed, such is the force of anti-Americanism in Canada that there sometimes seems to be a barely restrained glee.

This schadenfreude is simply foolish. The U.S. is Canada's greatest market, the sole democratic superpower, the defender of last resort for every democracy in the world, not least Canada. If it falls, if it is replaced by new superpowers such as China or India, there will be consequences.

Canadians who hope to see the new Asian giants rival the U.S. in a few decades as the great global engine and Canada's new big market simply do not realize that such a change would be an unmitigated disaster for us. China is a brutal one-party dictatorship, a mixture of totalitarianism and unbridled capitalism that is as tough on its restive provinces as it is on foreign suppliers and markets. India is a strife-ridden giant that might follow a path to peaceful economic expansion, but it is a relatively new democracy. However both of these rising powers develop in the next few decades, one thing seems certain: Neither has interest in Canada as anything other than a source of raw materials, oil, and food, and as a market for their goods produced by cheap labour. Canadians historically have always feared being hewers of wood: China and India want only timber from us.

Canada has many disputes with the U.S. on trade, but we both play by the same rules (most of the time), and our present disputes are as nothing to the probable situation if China, say, had more than three-quarters of our trade, the way the U.S. has today. Could any sensible Canadian want that? Will a future China be benign or aggressive? No one can answer with real confidence today but, in either case, no one should believe that Chinese domination of our export and import economy could serve our national interests. We should pray this will not happen and that the American decline foreseen by so many Canadians doesn't materialize.

If it does, we are in trouble. The rise of China and India, and of Brazil, Russia and the European Union will not pull Canada out of the American orbit. Far more likely is that it will force Canada to draw closer to the United States - in our own national interests. Strategic forecasters do not see India, Brazil, or the EU as likely security threats to North America in the next 20 years, but most have concerns about China and Russia, both great land powers that are developing their navies rapidly. So should we all.

Of course, Canada should seek to expand its trade with all these rising powers, but we must recognize that North American security interests will have an impact on us in a world that may soon have more than one superpower and many more unstable nations and organized terrorist groupings. There are now and will be more potential threats.

In decline or not, the United States will remain a military superpower well into this century. Future Canadian and U.S. governments will be even more concerned about air, space, and sea threats, and the U.S. in particular will need to ensure that the area to its north is secure. That means Canada. And just as in the U.S., where security trumps trade, Canada's geography trumps everything else. No matter what Canadians think about the United States, Canada is not about to become an island. For good or ill, the Canadian future is American.

First: while I have a brand new copy of Manbubani’s book on my desk I have yet to open it.  Is in the queue so we (I, anyway) will have to take Mr. Ching’s word for what he (Manbubani) says; and

Second: Jack Granatstein has fallen into the BRIC trap. While I do not take serious issue with the theory behind the 2003 Goldman Sachs thesis it hasn’t turned out that way and, I suspect will not turn out that way. I believe that Brazil and Russia will find new ways to fail – as they have, fairly consistently, in the past centuries. I think China and India have both the basics (as do Brazil and Russia (although Russia faces a demographic nightmare)) and the socio-cultural infrastructure to translate the basic into long term success.

Thus, I accept the basis of Ching’s presentation of Manbubani’s thesis: China and India are, indeed, implementing (not “have implemented”) the ”seven pillars of Western wisdom: free-market economics, meritocracy, pragmatism, a culture of peace, the rule of law, an emphasis on education and a willingness to pursue advances in science and technology.” I contend that Brazil and Russia have not.

I agree with Granatstein that the demise of the USA will be a disaster for Canada – IF we do not adapt to the reality that America will be sharing power and global leadership in the next half century or so.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Part 2 of 2

That leads me to a third Globe and Mail article, also reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080523.wcoessay0524/BNStory/specialComment

Dealing with China

PETER HARDER

From Saturday's Globe and Mail
May 24, 2008 at 12:01 AM EDT

China's catastrophic earthquake last week in Sichuan province has prompted words of condolence from Canada's government, in a written press release. But there is no sign of any personal exchange with the senior leadership in Beijing. Nor has Ottawa sought to mobilize support through the Chinese-Canadian community — in contrast to our active responses to the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

This is a striking symptom of something missing in the Harper government's policy toward China on other fronts, too. In our business relationship with China, public policy matters.

This is not a new idea to Canadians. Over the past several administrations, prime ministers, senior ministers and other officials, premiers and business leaders have led trade missions to China. These public expressions of support and confidence are vital. When China's presidents and premiers and Canada's prime ministers take part in these contacts, that demonstrates to Chinese business that the Canada-China relationship is important to their political leaders and that there will be political support for trade and investments. The message is clear and unequivocal.

The opposite can be just as convincing.

Members of the Canada China Business Council are often asked whether the currently cooler political relationship between Ottawa and Beijing is costing Canadian businesses. Until very recently, the answer was, "Not yet."

That is no longer true. Canadian business leaders are reporting that contracts are definitely being lost as a direct result of the chill between our most senior political leaders. Meanwhile, the presidents of the United States, France and Russia, the Chancellor of Germany and other heads of state and government in Europe, Africa, Latin America and Australia all understand that personal attention, face-to-face meetings with China's presidents and premiers, and advocacy for their global companies, are part of their job descriptions. Dmitry Medvedev, the new Russian President, this week took his first foreign trip, heading almost straight for China, with a day's stopover in Kazakhstan on Thursday; Germany will have to wait till next month.

The significance of these presidents' and prime ministers' commitment is not lost on China's leaders, its business community or its people. It leads directly to agreements signed and business opportunities concluded. At any given moment, dozens of trade missions from Canada's competitors are crisscrossing China, working at every level to cement their places on the China trade horizon.

Canada's premiers are now considering a trade mission of their own to China, as if to fill a gap, but our companies need to have confidence in Ottawa's approach, too. We cannot yet put a dollar value on the Chinese business and opportunities we have lost or let slip. The bill will arrive in due course.

DON'T MISS THE BOAT

Canada has had a privileged position with China. Every Chinese student learns about Dr. Norman Bethune. China's leaders have not forgotten that, when the rest of the world refused to do so, we sold wheat to China during the famine of 1959 and 1960, and that Canada was one of the first Western nations to recognize the People's Republic, in 1970.

We need to build on that precious heritage, but with a clear-eyed realism and a sense of self-interest.

Trade and investment between Canada and China is still growing. Our exports to China in 2007 were worth $9.2-billion and our imports thence were worth $38.2-billion. However, our market share in China is falling proportionately to those of other nations. Trade with China is barely more than 6 per cent of Canada's total global merchandise trade, compared to 80 per cent for our trade with the U.S. Though higher commodity prices and inflationary creep have increased the total value of Canadian-U.S. trade, the proportion of our trade going to the U.S. is falling, down from 87 per cent in 2002.

Meanwhile, the Americans themselves are positioning themselves economically to cultivate relations with China, while we — or our political leaders — are not.

In the 20th century, we benefited from our close connection with the United States, the superpower of that era. In the 21st, we should do likewise with the emerging new superpower, rather than taking a proverbial slow boat to China.

At first, our trade with China was mainly in agricultural products. Today, Canadians are doing business there in energy, education, the environment, information and communication technologies and financial services. China is a huge market for technology, business services and quality-of-life consumerism, as the size of the middle class rapidly expands.

For example, a Canadian company that first entered China in a joint venture to publish educational books has launched a new project in co-operation with the Chinese education ministry to offer online interactive English-language lessons to millions of university students, at no cost to the students.

Such successes prove that, when politics do not impede their efforts, our companies, large or small, can compete with the best in the world and win in the Chinese marketplace.

In spite of the current controversies about China, its government has a mostly commendable record of responsible international behaviour. Membership in the World Trade Organization means that China adheres to international commercial values and standards, and to the rule of law. Joining the WTO has significantly advanced Chinese transparency and accountability.

China's participation in the G8 outreach and in the United Nations Security Council are important commitments to abiding by the rule of international law and to membership in the global community. Its role in the six-nation talks on North Korea is an example of its efforts to take on responsibilities in world affairs. Clearly, there are some blemishes in its behaviour. In Sudan and some other parts of Africa, Chinese diplomacy has not always supported the best way forward. Yet China understands and is committed to global stability and to the importance of openness to the world.

WORLD CITIZEN

By undertaking to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, China made a big commitment to openness. Though Beijing did not serve itself well by hiding behind rhetoric and restricting media during the Olympic-torch relay and the demonstrations in Tibet, we should remember that opening its doors to the world for the Olympics is a courageous act for a nation that is in the midst of taking a crash course on capitalism and public relations.

Still, Canada and the rest of the world should insist that China honour its international commitments, including those made in the Olympic bid: for example, unrestricted media access to all Olympic-related events, including those leading up to the opening ceremonies and during the Games themselves.

Re-engagement does not mean avoiding the difficult issues that divide us.

Over the years, Canadian prime ministers, cabinet ministers and their officials, myself included, have not shied away from discussing with Chinese leaders the importance that Canadians place on the respect for human rights in China and around the world. In face-to-face meetings with China's most senior leaders, Canada has helped influence Chinese thinking on issues of accountability, the rule of law, transparency and good government. Western leaders such as Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany show how it is quite feasible to engage with China while, for example, meeting with the Dalai Lama — an act at which Beijing takes offence when there is no surrounding context of friendly diplomacy.

A successful, peaceful evolution will not mean that China becomes another Western-style democracy. It is finding its own path, a way that works with its mammoth population and diverse history and geography.

The United Nations Development Program tells us that 200 million people in China have been lifted above the UN poverty line. That is two-thirds of the number of people in the entire world who have crossed over that line since 1978. If we have any hope of meeting the millennium goals, it is because of China and India and the progress they have made.

China has stated its priorities as economic growth that is environmentally sustainable, political stability and regional development. These are front-and-centre in the new five-year plan.

China is not a monolith. There are many competing factions within its political structures, and these have different views on their country's place in the world. The promotions in March of Xi Jinping and Li Kechiang, in particular, show that the internationalists are prevailing. Both men are determined to increase China's participation in the global economic and political system, and they appear to be on the fast track to China's highest political positions.

If we do not re-engage China at the most senior political level, we will be disengaging ourselves from any role in the integration of China into global economic and geopolitical institutions. China's unprecedented candour and openness to foreign assistance in response to last week's earthquake are evidence of how much Premier Wen Jiabao and his ministers have learned from their clumsy media management of Tibet and how resolved they are that China be looked upon as a "normal" member of the international community. A positive consequence of this horrific tragedy is that Canadians have seen the people of China and their government manage this crisis in the shared experiences of grief, empathy, urgent response and determination to carry on. These events and their aftermath are an opportunity for Canadians to recover some of what we have lost in the past two years.

Peter Harder is senior policy adviser with the law firm Fraser Milner Casgrain and is a director of the Canada China Business Council. He is a former deputy minister of foreign affairs.

Peter Harder is, essentially, lobbying the government, through the pages of he Good Grey Globe (to which he has easy access thanks to his previous career) on behalf of his client The Canada China Business Council, but that doesn’t mean that he’s wrong!

 

[Edward Campbell]

Part 1 of 3

I’m leaving this in the China thread because even though the author deals with Asia, broadly, China is the key.

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act, from the current (May/June 2008) issue of Foreign Affairs, is an article entitled “The Case Against the West” by Kishore Mahbubani which is based on the book to which Frank Ching referred in the article I posted earlier today:

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080501faessay87308/kishore-mahbubani/the-case-against-the-west.html

The Case Against the West


By Kishore Mahbubani
From Foreign Affairs , May/June 2008

Summary: The West is not welcoming Asia's progress, and its short-term interests in preserving its privileged position in various global institutions are trumping its long-term interests in creating a more just and stable world order. The West has gone from being the world's problem solver to being its single biggest liability.

KISHORE MAHBUBANI is Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. This essay is adapted from his latest book, The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East (Public Affairs, 2008).

There is a fundamental flaw in the West's strategic thinking. In all its analyses of global challenges, the West assumes that it is the source of the solutions to the world's key problems. In fact, however, the West is also a major source of these problems. Unless key Western policymakers learn to understand and deal with this reality, the world is headed for an even more troubled phase.

The West is understandably reluctant to accept that the era of its domination is ending and that the Asian century has come. No civilization cedes power easily, and the West's resistance to giving up control of key global institutions and processes is natural. Yet the West is engaging in an extraordinary act of self-deception by believing that it is open to change. In fact, the West has become the most powerful force preventing the emergence of a new wave of history, clinging to its privileged position in key global forums, such as the UN Security Council, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the G-8 (the group of highly industrialized states), and refusing to contemplate how the West will have to adjust to the Asian century.

Partly as a result of its growing insecurity, the West has also become increasingly incompetent in its handling of key global problems. Many Western commentators can readily identify specific failures, such as the Bush administration's botched invasion and occupation of Iraq. But few can see that this reflects a deeper structural problem: the West's inability to see that the world has entered a new era.

Apart from representing a specific failure of policy execution, the war in Iraq has also highlighted the gap between the reality and what the West had expected would happen after the invasion. Arguably, the United States and the United Kingdom intended only to free the Iraqi people from a despotic ruler and to rid the world of a dangerous man, Saddam Hussein. Even if George W. Bush and Tony Blair had no malevolent intentions, however, their approaches were trapped in the Western mindset of believing that their interventions could lead only to good, not harm or disaster. This led them to believe that the invading U.S. troops would be welcomed with roses thrown at their feet by happy Iraqis. But the twentieth century showed that no country welcomes foreign invaders. The notion that any Islamic nation would approve of Western military boots on its soil was ridiculous. Even in the early twentieth century, the British invasion and occupation of Iraq was met with armed resistance. In 1920, Winston Churchill, then British secretary for war and air, quelled the rebellion of Kurds and Arabs in British-occupied Iraq by authorizing his troops to use chemical weapons. "I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes," Churchill said. The world has moved on from this era, but many Western officials have not abandoned the old assumption that an army of Christian soldiers can successfully invade, occupy, and transform an Islamic society.

Many Western leaders often begin their speeches by remarking on how perilous the world is becoming. Speaking after the August 2006 discovery of a plot to blow up transatlantic flights originating from London, President Bush said, "The American people need to know we live in a dangerous world." But even as Western leaders speak of such threats, they seem incapable of conceding that the West itself could be the fundamental source of these dangers. After all, the West includes the best-managed states in the world, the most economically developed, those with the strongest democratic institutions. But one cannot assume that a government that rules competently at home will be equally good at addressing challenges abroad. In fact, the converse is more likely to be true. Although the Western mind is obsessed with the Islamist terrorist threat, the West is mishandling the two immediate and pressing challenges of Afghanistan and Iraq. And despite the grave threat of nuclear terrorism, the Western custodians of the nonproliferation regime have allowed that regime to weaken significantly. The challenge posed by Iran's efforts to enrich uranium has been aggravated by the incompetence of the United States and the European Union. On the economic front, for the first time since World War II, the demise of a round of global trade negotiations, the Doha Round, seems imminent. Finally, the danger of global warming, too, is being mismanaged.

Yet Westerners seldom look inward to understand the deeper reasons these global problems are being mismanaged. Are there domestic structural reasons that explain this? Have Western democracies been hijacked by competitive populism and structural short-termism, preventing them from addressing long-term challenges from a broader global perspective?

Fortunately, some Asian states may now be capable of taking on more responsibilities, as they have been strengthened by implementing Western principles. In September 2005, Robert Zoellick, then U.S. deputy secretary of state, called on China to become a "responsible stakeholder" in the international system. China has responded positively, as have other Asian states. In recent decades, Asians have been among the greatest beneficiaries of the open multilateral order created by the United States and the other victors of World War II, and few today want to destabilize it. The number of Asians seeking a comfortable middle-class existence has never been higher. For centuries, the Chinese and the Indians could only dream of such an accomplishment; now it is within the reach of around half a billion people in China and India. Their ideal is to achieve what the United States and Europe did. They want to replicate, not dominate, the West. The universalization of the Western dream represents a moment of triumph for the West. And so the West should welcome the fact that the Asian states are becoming competent at handling regional and global challenges.

THE MIDDLE EAST MESS

Western policies have been most harmful in the Middle East. The Middle East is also the most dangerous region in the world. Trouble there affects not just seven million Israelis, around four million Palestinians, and 200 million Arabs; it also affects more than a billion Muslims worldwide. Every time there is a major flare-up in the Middle East, such as the U.S. invasion of Iraq or the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, Islamic communities around the world become concerned, distressed, and angered. And few of them doubt the problem's origin: the West.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq, for example, was a multidimensional error. The theory and practice of international law legitimizes the use of force only when it is an act of self-defense or is authorized by the UN Security Council. The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq could not be justified on either count. The United States and the United Kingdom sought the Security Council's authorization to invade Iraq, but the council denied it. It was therefore clear to the international community that the subsequent war was illegal and that it would do huge damage to international law.

This has created an enormous problem, partly because until this point both the United States and the United Kingdom had been among the primary custodians of international law. American and British minds, such as James Brierly, Philip Jessup, Hersch Lauterpacht, and Hans Morgenthau, developed the conceptual infrastructure underlying international law, and American and British leaders provided the political will to have it accepted in practice. But neither the United States nor the United Kingdom will admit that the invasion and the occupation of Iraq were illegal or give up their historical roles as the chief caretakers of international law. Since 2003, both nations have frequently called for Iran and North Korea to implement UN Security Council resolutions. But how can the violators of UN principles also be their enforcers?

One rare benefit of the Iraq war may be that it has awakened a new fear of Iran among the Sunni Arab states. Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, among others, do not want to deal with two adversaries and so are inclined to make peace with Israel. Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah used the opportunity of the special Arab League summit meeting in March 2007 to relaunch his long-standing proposal for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unfortunately, the Bush administration did not seize the opportunity -- or revive the Taba accords that President Bill Clinton had worked out in January 2001, even though they could provide a basis for a lasting settlement and the Saudis were prepared to back them. In its early days, the Bush administration appeared ready to support a two-state solution. It was the first U.S. administration to vote in favor of a UN Security Council resolution calling for the creation of a Palestinian state, and it announced in March 2002 that it would try to achieve such a result by 2005. But here it is 2008, and little progress has been made.

The United States has made the already complicated Israeli-Palestinian conflict even more of a mess. Many extremist voices in Tel Aviv and Washington believe that time will always be on Israel's side. The pro-Israel lobby's stranglehold on the U.S. Congress, the political cowardice of U.S. politicians when it comes to creating a Palestinian state, and the sustained track record of U.S. aid to Israel support this view. But no great power forever sacrifices its larger national interests in favor of the interests of a small state. If Israel fails to accept the Taba accords, it will inevitably come to grief. If and when it does, Western incompetence will be seen as a major cause.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Part 2 of 3

The Case Against the West (con’t)

NEVER SAY NEVER

Nuclear nonproliferation is another area in which the West, especially the United States, has made matters worse. The West has long been obsessed with the danger of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons. It pushed successfully for the near-universal ratification of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).

But the West has squandered many of those gains. Today, the NPT is legally alive but spiritually dead. The NPT was inherently problematic since it divided the world into nuclear haves (the states that had tested a nuclear device by 1967) and nuclear have-nots (those that had not). But for two decades it was reasonably effective in preventing horizontal proliferation (the spread of nuclear weapons to other states). Unfortunately, the NPT has done nothing to prevent vertical proliferation, namely, the increase in the numbers and sophistication of nuclear weapons among the existing nuclear weapons states. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to work together to limit proliferation. The governments of several countries that could have developed nuclear weapons, such as Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Japan, and South Korea, restrained themselves because they believed the NPT reflected a fair bargain between China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States (the five official nuclear weapons states and five permanent members of the UN Security Council) and the rest of the world. Both sides agreed that the world would be safer if the five nuclear states took steps to reduce their arsenals and worked toward the eventual goal of universal disarmament and the other states refrained from acquiring nuclear weapons at all.

So what went wrong? The first problem was that the NPT's principal progenitor, the United States, decided to walk away from the postwar rule-based order it had created, thus eroding the infrastructure on which the NPT's enforcement depends. During the time I was Singapore's ambassador to the UN, between 1984 and 1989, Jeane Kirkpatrick, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, treated the organization with contempt. She infamously said, "What takes place in the Security Council more closely resembles a mugging than either a political debate or an effort at problem-solving." She saw the postwar order as a set of constraints, not as a set of rules that the world should follow and the United States should help preserve. This undermined the NPT, because with no teeth of its own, no self-regulating or sanctioning mechanisms, and a clause allowing signatories to ignore obligations in the name of "supreme national interest," the treaty could only really be enforced by the UN Security Council. And once the United States began tearing holes in the fabric of the overall system, it created openings for violations of the NPT and its principles. Finally, by going to war with Iraq without UN authorization, the United States lost its moral authority to ask, for example, Iran to abide by Security Council resolutions.

Another problem has been the United States' -- and other nuclear weapons states' -- direct assault on the treaty. The NPT is fundamentally a social contract between the five nuclear weapons states and the rest of the world, based partly on the understanding that the nuclear powers will eventually give up their weapons. Instead, during the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union increased both the quantity and the sophistication of their nuclear weapons: the United States' nuclear stockpile peaked in 1966 at 31,700 warheads, and the Soviet Union's peaked in 1986 at 40,723. In fact, the United States and the Soviet Union developed their nuclear stockpiles so much that they actually ran out of militarily or economically significant targets. The numbers have declined dramatically since then, but even the current number of nuclear weapons held by the United States and Russia can wreak enormous damage on human civilization.

The nuclear states' decision to ignore Israel's nuclear weapons program was especially damaging to their authority. No nuclear weapons state has ever publicly acknowledged Israel's possession of nuclear weapons. Their silence has created a loophole in the NPT and delegitimized it in the eyes of Muslim nations. The consequences have been profound. When the West sermonizes that the world will become a more dangerous place when Iran acquires nuclear weapons, the Muslim world now shrugs.

India and Pakistan were already shrugging by 1998, when they tested their first nuclear weapons. When the international community responded by condemning the tests and applying sanctions on India, virtually all Indians saw through the hypocrisy and double standards of their critics. By not respecting their own obligations under the NPT, the five nuclear states had robbed their condemnations of any moral legitimacy; criticisms from Australia and Canada, which have also remained silent about Israel's bomb, similarly had no moral authority. The near-unanimous rejection of the NPT by the Indian establishment, which is otherwise very conscious of international opinion, showed how dead the treaty already was.

From time to time, common sense has entered discussions on nuclear weapons. President Ronald Reagan said more categorically than any U.S. president that the world would be better off without nuclear weapons. Last year, with the NPT in its death throes and the growing threat of loose nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists forefront in everyone's mind, former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Defense Secretary William Perry, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and former Senator Sam Nunn warned in The Wall Street Journal that the world was "now on the precipice of a new and dangerous nuclear era." They argued,"Unless urgent new actions are taken, the U.S. soon will be compelled to enter a new nuclear era that will be more precarious, psychologically disorienting, and economically even more costly than was Cold War deterrence." But these calls may have come too late. The world has lost its trust in the five nuclear weapons states and now sees them as the NPT's primary violators rather than its custodians. Those states' private cynicism about their obligations to the NPT has become public knowledge.

Contrary to what the West wants the rest of the world to believe, the nuclear weapons states, especially the United States and Russia, which continue to maintain thousands of nuclear weapons, are the biggest source of nuclear proliferation. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned in The Economist in 2003, "The very existence of nuclear weapons gives rise to the pursuit of them. They are seen as a source of global influence, and are valued for their perceived deterrent effect. And as long as some countries possess them (or are protected by them in alliances) and others do not, this asymmetry breeds chronic global insecurity." Despite the Cold War, the second half of the twentieth century seemed to be moving the world toward a more civilized order. As the twenty-first century unfurls, the world seems to be sliding backward.

IRRESPONSIBLE STAKEHOLDERS

After leading the world toward a period of spectacular economic growth in the second half of the twentieth century by promoting global free trade, the West has recently been faltering in its global economic leadership. Believing that low trade barriers and increasing trade interdependence would result in higher standards of living for all, European and U.S. economists and policymakers pushed for global economic liberalization. As a result, global trade grew from seven percent of the world's GDP in 1940 to 30 percent in 2005.

But a seismic shift has taken place in Western attitudes since the end of the Cold War. Suddenly, the United States and Europe no longer have a vested interest in the success of the East Asian economies, which they see less as allies and more as competitors. That change in Western interests was reflected in the fact that the West provided little real help to East Asia during the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. The entry of China into the global marketplace, especially after its admission to the World Trade Organization, has made a huge difference in both economic and psychological terms. Many Europeans have lost confidence in their ability to compete with the Asians. And many Americans have lost confidence in the virtues of competition.

There are some knotty issues that need to be resolved in the current global trade talks, but fundamentally the negotiations are stalled because the conviction of the Western "champions" of free trade that free trade is good has begun to waver. When Americans and Europeans start to perceive themselves as losers in international trade, they also lose their drive to push for further trade liberalization. Unfortunately, on this front at least, neither China nor India (nor Brazil nor South Africa nor any other major developing country) is ready to take over the West's mantle. China, for example, is afraid that any effort to seek leadership in this area will stoke U.S. fears that it is striving for global hegemony. Hence, China is lying low. So, too, are the United States and Europe. Hence, the trade talks are stalled. The end of the West's promotion of global trade liberalization could well mean the end of the most spectacular economic growth the world has ever seen. Few in the West seem to be reflecting on the consequences of walking away from one of the West's most successful policies, which is what it will be doing if it allows the Doha Round to fail.

At the same time that the Western governments are relinquishing their stewardship of the global economy, they are also failing to take the lead on battling global warming. The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, a longtime environmentalist, and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirms there is international consensus that global warning is a real threat. The most assertive advocates for tackling this problem come from the U.S. and European scientific communities, but the greatest resistance to any effective action is coming from the U.S. government. This has left the rest of the world confused and puzzled. Most people believe that the greenhouse effect is caused mostly by the flow of current emissions. Current emissions do aggravate the problem, but the fundamental cause is the stock of emissions that has accumulated since the Industrial Revolution. Finding a just and equitable solution to the problem of greenhouse gas emissions must begin with assigning responsibility both for the current flow and for the stock of greenhouse gases already accumulated. And on both counts the Western nations should bear a greater burden.

When it comes to addressing any problem pertaining to the global commons, such as the environment, it seems only fair that the wealthier members of the international community should shoulder more responsibility. This is a natural principle of justice. It is also fair in this particular case given the developed countries' primary role in releasing harmful gases into the atmosphere. R. K. Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, argued last year, "China and India are certainly increasing their share, but they are not increasing their per capita emissions anywhere close to the levels that you have in the developed world." Since 1850, China has contributed less than 8 percent of the world's total emissions of carbon dioxide, whereas the United States is responsible for 29 percent and western Europe is responsible for 27 percent. Today, India's per capita greenhouse gas emissions are equivalent to only 4 percent of those of the United States and 12 percent of those of the European Union. Still, the Western governments are not clearly acknowledging their responsibilities and are allowing many of their citizens to believe that China and India are the fundamental obstacles to any solution to global warming.

Washington might become more responsible on this front if a Democratic president replaces Bush in 2009. But people in the West will have to make some real concessions if they are to reduce significantly their per capita share of global emissions. A cap-and-trade program may do the trick. Western countries will probably have to make economic sacrifices. One option might be, as the journalist Thomas Friedman has suggested, to impose a dollar-per-gallon tax on Americans' gasoline consumption. Gore has proposed a carbon tax. So far, however, few U.S. politicians have dared to make such suggestions publicly.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Part 3 of 3

The Case Against the West (con’t)

TEMPTATIONS OF THE EAST

The Middle East, nuclear proliferation, stalled trade liberalization, and global warming are all challenges that the West is essentially failing to address. And this failure suggests that a systemic problem is emerging in the West's stewardship of the international order -- one that Western minds are reluctant to analyze or confront openly. After having enjoyed centuries of global domination, the West has to learn to share power and responsibility for the management of global issues with the rest of the world. It has to forgo outdated organizations, such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and outdated processes, such as the G-8, and deal with organizations and processes with a broader scope and broader representation. It was always unnatural for the 12 percent of the world population that lived in the West to enjoy so much global power. Understandably, the other 88 percent of the world population increasingly wants also to drive the bus of world history.

First and foremost, the West needs to acknowledge that sharing the power it has accumulated in global forums would serve its interests. Restructuring international institutions to reflect the current world order will be complicated by the absence of natural leaders to do the job. The West has become part of the problem, and the Asian countries are not yet ready to step in. On the other hand, the world does not need to invent any new principles to improve global governance; the concepts of domestic good governance can and should be applied to the international community. The Western principles of democracy, the rule of law, and social justice are among the world's best bets. The ancient virtues of partnership and pragmatism can complement them.

Democracy, the foundation of government in the West, is based on the premise that each human being in a society is an equal stakeholder in the domestic order. Thus, governments are selected on the basis of "one person, one vote." This has produced long-term stability and order in Western societies. In order to produce long-term stability and order worldwide, democracy should be the cornerstone of global society, and the planet's 6.6 billion inhabitants should become equal stakeholders. To inject the spirit of democracy into global governance and global decision-making, one must turn to institutions with universal representation, especially the UN. UN institutions such as the World Health Organization and the World Meteorological Organization enjoy widespread legitimacy because of their universal membership, which means their decisions are generally accepted by all the countries of the world.

The problem today is that although many Western actors are willing to work with specialized UN agencies, they are reluctant to strengthen the UN's core institution, the UN General Assembly, from which all these specialized agencies come. The UN General Assembly is the most representative body on the planet, and yet many Western countries are deeply skeptical of it. They are right to point out its imperfections. But they overlook the fact that this imperfect assembly enjoys legitimacy in the eyes of the people of this imperfect world. Moreover, the General Assembly has at times shown more common sense and prudence than some of the most sophisticated Western democracies. Of course, it takes time to persuade all of the UN's members to march in the same direction, but consensus building is precisely what gives legitimacy to the result. Most countries in the world respect and abide by most UN decisions because they believe in the authority of the UN. Used well, the body can be a powerful vehicle for making critical decisions on global governance.

The world today is run not through the General Assembly but through the Security Council, which is effectively run by the five permanent member states. If this model were adopted in the United States, the U.S. Congress would be replaced by a selective council comprised of only the representatives from the country's five most powerful states. Would the populations of the other 45 states not deem any such proposal absurd? The West must cease its efforts to prolong its undemocratic management of the global order and find ways to effectively engage the majority of the world's population in global decision-making.

Another fundamental principle that should underpin the global order is the rule of law. This hallowed Western principle insists that no person, regardless of his or her status, is above the law. Ironically, while being exemplary in implementing the rule of law at home, the United States is a leading international outlaw in its refusal to recognize the constraints of international law. Many Americans live comfortably with this contradiction while expecting other countries to abide by widely accepted treaties. Americans react with horror when Iran tries to walk away from the NPT. Yet they are surprised that the world is equally shocked when Washington abandons a universally accepted treaty such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

The Bush administration's decision to exempt the United States from the provisions of international law on human rights is even more damaging. For over half a century, since Eleanor Roosevelt led the fight for the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United States was the global champion of human rights. This was the result of a strong ideological conviction that it was the United States' God-given duty to create a more civilized world. It also made for a good ideological weapon during the Cold War: the free United States was fighting the unfree Soviet Union. But the Bush administration has stunned the world by walking away from universally accepted human rights conventions, especially those on torture. And much as the U.S. electorate could not be expected to tolerate an attorney general who broke his own laws from time to time, how can the global body politic be expected to respect a custodian of international law that violates these very rules?

Finally, on social justice, Westerns nations have slackened. Social justice is the cornerstone of order and stability in modern Western societies and the rest of the world. People accept inequality as long as some kind of social safety net exists to help the dispossessed. Most western European governments took this principle to heart after World War II and introduced welfare provisions as a way to ward off Marxist revolutions seeking to create socialist societies. Today, many Westerners believe that they are spreading social justice globally with their massive foreign aid to the developing world. Indeed, each year, the members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, according to the organization's own estimates, give approximately $104 billion to the developing world. But the story of Western aid to the developing world is essentially a myth. Western countries have put significant amounts of money into their overseas development assistance budgets, but these funds' primary purpose is to serve the immediate and short-term security and national interests of the donors rather than the long-term interests of the recipients.

The experience of Asia shows that where Western aid has failed to do the job, domestic good governance can succeed. This is likely to be Asia's greatest contribution to world history. The success of Asia will inspire other societies on different continents to emulate it. In addition, Asia's march to modernity can help produce a more stable world order. Some Asian countries are now ready to join the West in becoming responsible custodians of the global order; as the biggest beneficiaries of the current system, they have powerful incentives to do so. The West is not welcoming Asia's progress, and its short-term interests in preserving its privileged position in various global institutions are trumping its long-term interests in creating a more just and stable world order. Unfortunately, the West has gone from being the world's primary problem solver to being its single biggest liability.

It is not going too far, I think to compare Mahbubani’s thesis with Gibbon’s Decline and Fall – he says that we, the Anglo-American led (for 400 years) West, have abandoned our strong principles and let our principled strength wither. We are bound, therefore, to fall to the energetic people of the East.

I’ll leave you to make up your own minds about the rest.

 

[GAP]

We certainly have increased our appeasement output....for good or bad, I can't tell, but it sure seems that way....

 

[Kirkhill]

I see a parallel with the Clinton-Obama debate.  With the issue in the balance one party demands the other quit as it may turn out messily.  Clinton could as easily demand that Obama stop trying.....

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

His bit about social justice being the cornerstone of the West reveals some biases.  Calling the USA an outlaw and trying to relate the Rule of Law to nation-states is another indicator.  Seeming to advocate global democracy is another funny one for me.  Nation-states are not people and the world is not a nation-state.  I am all for democracy within a nation-state that has an underlying consensus on how to do things.  Extending that to the world is not, in my view, an option.

 

[a_majoor]

A more ominous interpretation of China's actions:

http://feer.com/essays/2008/may/beijing-embraces-classical-fascism?searched=ledeen&highlight=ajaxSearch_highlight+ajaxSearch_highlight1

Beijing Embraces Classical Fascism
by Michael Ledeen

In 2002, I speculated that China may be something we have never seen before: a mature fascist state. Recent events there, especially the mass rage in response to Western criticism, seem to confirm that theory. More significantly, over the intervening six years China’s leaders have consolidated their hold on the organs of control—political, economic and cultural. Instead of gradually embracing pluralism as many expected, China’s corporatist elite has become even more entrenched.

Even though they still call themselves communists, and the Communist Party rules the country, classical fascism should be the starting point for our efforts to understand the People’s Republic. Imagine Italy 50 years after the fascist revolution. Mussolini would be dead and buried, the corporate state would be largely intact, the party would be firmly in control, and Italy would be governed by professional politicians, part of a corrupt elite, rather than the true believers who had marched on Rome. It would no longer be a system based on charisma, but would instead rest almost entirely on political repression, the leaders would be businesslike and cynical, not idealistic, and they would constantly invoke formulaic appeals to the grandeur of the “great Italian people,” “endlessly summoned to emulate the greatness of its ancestors.”

Substitute in the “great Chinese people” and it all sounds familiar. We are certainly not dealing with a Communist regime, either politically or economically, nor do Chinese leaders, even those who followed the radical reformer Deng Xiaoping, seem to be at all interested in treading the dangerous and uneven path from Stalinism to democracy. They know that Mikhail Gorbachev fell when he tried to control the economy while giving political freedom. They are attempting the opposite, keeping a firm grip on political power while permitting relatively free areas of economic enterprise. Their political methods are quite like those used by the European fascists 80 years ago.

Unlike traditional communist dictators—Mao, for example—who extirpated traditional culture and replaced it with a sterile Marxism-Leninism, the Chinese now enthusiastically, even compulsively, embrace the glories of China’s long history. Their passionate reassertion of the greatness of past dynasties has both entranced and baffled Western observers, because it does not fit the model of an “evolving communist system.”

Yet the fascist leaders of the 1920s and 1930s used exactly the same device. Mussolini rebuilt Rome to provide a dramatic visual reminder of ancient glories, and he used ancient history to justify the conquest of Libya and Ethiopia. Hitler’s favorite architect built neoclassical buildings throughout the Third Reich, and his favorite operatic composer organized festivals to celebrate the country’s mythic past.

Like their European predecessors, the Chinese claim a major role in the world because of their history and culture, not just on the basis of their current power, or scientific or cultural accomplishments. China even toys with some of the more bizarre notions of the earlier fascisms, such as the program to make the country self-sufficient in wheat production—the same quest for autarky that obsessed both Hitler and Mussolini.

To be sure, the world is much changed since the first half of the last century. It’s much harder (and sometimes impossible) to go it alone. Passions for total independence from the outside world are tempered by the realities of today’s global economy, and China’s appetite for oil and other raw materials is properly legendary. But the Chinese, like the European fascists, are intensely xenophobic, and obviously worry that their people may turn against them if they learn too much about the rest of the world. They consequently work very hard to dominate the flow of information. Just ask Google, forced to cooperate with the censors in order to work in China.

Some scholars of contemporary China see the Beijing regime as very nervous, and perhaps even unstable, and they are encouraged in this belief when they see recent events such as the eruption of popular sentiment against the Tibetan monks’ modest protests. That view is further reinforced by similar outcries against most any criticism of Chinese performance, from human rights to air pollution, and from preparations for the Olympic Games to the failure of Chinese quality control in food production and children’s toys. The recent treatment of French retailer Carrefour at the hands of Chinese nationalists is a case in point. It has been publicly excoriated and shunned because France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy dared to consider the possibility of boycotting the Olympics.

In all these cases, it is tempting to conclude that the regime is worried about its own survival, and, in order to rally nationalist passions, feels compelled to portray the country as a global victim. Perhaps they are right. The strongest evidence to support the theory of insecurity at the highest levels of Chinese society is the practice of the “princelings” (wealthy children of the ruling elites) to buy homes in places such as the United States, Canada and Australia. These are not luxury homes of the sort favored by wealthy businessman and officials from the oil-rich countries of the Middle East. Rather they are typically “normal” homes of the sort a potential émigré might want to have in reserve in case things went bad back home.

Moreover, there are reasons to believe that eruptions of nationalist passion do indeed worry the regime, and Chinese leaders have certainly tamped down such episodes in the past. In recent days, the regime has even reached out to the Dalai Lama himself in an apparent effort to calm the situation, after previously enouncing the “Dalai clique” as a dangerous form of separatism and even treason.

On the other hand, the cult of victimhood was always part of fascist culture. Just like Germany and Italy in the interwar period, China feels betrayed and humiliated, and seeks to avenge her many historic wounds. This is not necessarily a true sign of anxiety; it’s an integral part of the sort of hypernationalism that has always been at the heart of all fascist movements and regimes. We cannot look into the souls of the Chinese tyrants, but I doubt that China is an intensely unstable system, riven by the democratic impulses of capitalism on the one hand, and the repressive practices of the regime on the other. This is a mature fascism, not a frenzied mass movement, and the current regime is not composed of revolutionary fanatics. Today’s Chinese leaders are the heirs of two very different revolutions, Mao’s and Deng’s. The first was a failed communist experiment; the second is a fascist transformation whose future is up for grabs.

If the fascist model is correct, we should not be at all surprised by the recent rhetoric or mass demonstrations. Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy were every bit as sensitive to any sign of foreign criticism as the Chinese today, both because victimhood is always part of the definition of such states, and because it’s an essential technique of mass control. The violent denunciations of Westerners who criticize Chinese repression may not be a sign of internal anxiety or weakness. They may instead be a sign of strength, a demonstration of the regime’s popularity. Remember that European fascism did not fall as the result of internal crisis—it took a bloody world war to bring it down. Fascism was so alarmingly popular neither Italians not Germans produced more than token resistance until the war began to be lost. It may well be that the mass condemnation of Western calls for greater political tolerance is in fact a sign of political success.

Since classical fascism had such a brief life span, it is hard to know whether or not a stable, durable fascist state is possible. Economically, the corporate state, of which the current Chinese system is a textbook example, may prove more flexible and adaptable than the rigid central planning that doomed communism in the Soviet Empire and elsewhere (although the travails of Japan, which also tried to combine capitalist enterprise with government guidance, show the kinds of problems China will likely face). Our brief experience with fascism makes it difficult to evaluate the possibilities of political evolution, and the People’s Republic is full of secrets. But prudent strategists would do well to assume that the regime will be around for a while longer—perhaps a lot longer.

If it is a popular, fascist regime, should the world prepare for some difficult and dangerous confrontations with the People’s Republic? Twentieth-century fascist states were very aggressive; Nazi Germany and fascist Italy were both expansionist nations. Is it not likely that China will similarly seek to enlarge its domain?

I believe the answer is “yes, but.”  Many Chinese leaders might like to see their sway extend throughout the region, and beyond. China’s military is not so subtly preparing the capability to defeat U.S. forces in Asia in order to prevent intervention in any conflict on its periphery. No serious student of China doubts the enormous ambitions of both the leadership and the masses. But, unlike Hitler and Mussolini, the Chinese tyrants do not urgently need quick geographical expansion to demonstrate the glory of their country and the truth of their vision. For the moment, at least, success at home and global recognition of Chinese accomplishments seem to be enough. Since Chinese fascism is less ideological than its European predecessors, Chinese leaders are far more flexible than Hitler and Mussolini.
Nonetheless, the short history of classical fascism suggests that it is only a matter of time before China will pursue confrontation with the West. That is built into the dna of all such regimes. Sooner or later, Chinese leaders will feel compelled to demonstrate the superiority of their system, and even the most impressive per capita GDP will not do. Superiority means others have to bend their knees, and cater to the wishes of the dominant nation. Just as Mussolini saw the colonization of Africa and the invasion of Greece and the Balkans as necessary steps in the establishment of a new fascist empire, so the Chinese are likely to demand tribute from their neighbors—above all, the Chinese on the island nation of Taiwan, in order to add the recovery of lost territory to the regime’s list of accomplishments. Even today, at a time when the regime is seeking praise, not tribute, in the run-up to the Olympic Games, there are bellicose overtones to official rhetoric.

How, then, should the democracies deal with China? The first step is to disabuse ourselves of the notion that wealth is the surest guarantor of peace. The West traded with the Soviet Union, and gave them credits as well, but it did not prevent the Kremlin from expanding into the Horn of Africa, or sponsoring terrorist groups in Europe and the Middle East. A wealthy China will not automatically be less inclined to go to war over Taiwan, or, for that matter, to wage or threaten war with Japan.

Indeed, the opposite may be true—the richer and stronger China becomes, the more they build up their military might, the more likely such wars may be. It follows that the West must prepare for war with China, hoping thereby to deter it. A great Roman once said that if you want peace, prepare for war. This is sound advice with regard to a fascist Chinese state that wants to play a global role.

Meanwhile, we should do what we can to convince the people of China that their long-term interests are best served by greater political freedom, no matter how annoying and chaotic that may sometimes be. I think we can trust the Chinese leaders on this one. Any regime as palpably concerned about the free flow of information, knows well that ideas about freedom might be very popular. Let’s test that hypothesis, by talking directly to “the billion.” In today’s world, we can surely find ways to reach them.

If we do not take such steps, our risk will surely increase, and explosions of rage, manipulated or spontaneous, will recur. Eventually they will take the form of real actions.

Mr. Ledeen is an expert on U.S. foreign policy at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. He served as a commissioner on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission from 2001-03.

If (very big if here) the author is correct, we do have powerful economic levers to use against the regime. Reducing our imports of cheap Chinese goods is one; much of it is pretty dodgy anyway (in terms of quality or even your health) so there will only be limited personal pain to do so. Shop around.

The second is more drastic, and it was the cause of the Pacific phase of the Second World War (Imperial Japan vs USA and colonial empires), which is to throttle the flow of resources to China. We in Canada have a vast market in the United States already, so once again, selling our oil, coal, lumber, wheat etc to the Americans rather than the Chinese isn't going to cause a great deal of personal or overall economic pain.

So long as China does not embrace the Rule of Law, they are a potential threat to us and our interests. I personally don't see them as a direct military threat, but do expect to see Canada and the West becoming engaged in political competition with the Chinese to influence events and nations in ways favorable to them as opposed to ways favorable to us. And therein lies the danger........

 

[RickDevlieger]

Considering that Chinese companies own the Panama Canal access and they are investing heavily in Central and South America, Perhaps we may be a little late with trying to limit their access to natural resources or markets. The Pacific rim has quietly become the worlds largest economic block while we in Canada continue to ignore the fact we are dependant on that trade. 51 cents of every dollar of our GNP is dependant on shipping on the Pacific ocean. The Port of Vancouver moves more tons of freight than the rest of  the Canadian ports combined. We contine to look eastward at our peril.