Pro-China bias?

[HiThere]

Hi SeekinTruth,
Thank you for the article.

Interesting, thank you for the links SeekinTruth!

 

[SeekinTruth]

You're both welcome.

Another interesting view on China from someone who's visited often and has family there:
http://thesaker.is/voices-from-the-middle-kingdom/

Hi SeekinTruth,

Thank you for the article. I read it and I'm in basic agreement with it.

Those NGO's are really a nasty bunch. I think both China and Russia have taken firm stands--tossing them out. A cancer really, but always wielding pretty and fancy words. Soros is the worst. Guys like Maurice Strong too. Rothschild agent underneath.

You can say that again. A real bunch of sleazebags pretending to be concerned about "democracy", human rights, environmental issues, blah, blah, blah....

 

[Niall]

On the Tibet issue, Niall describes this as "One absorbed its related neighbor". This terminology to me seems overly lenient towards China, perhaps because I have a greater subjective interest in the particular smallish subject of Tibet. I wonder though if Niall would use the same terms to describe e.g. the British-Irish wars over the last 1,000 years?

For argument's sake, let's say China did unto Tibet what Britain did to Ireland (resulting in a more or less permanent state of - often brutal - occupation). Having established equivalence between the two 'aggressor nations', pretend that China and Britain are two small clusters placed separately inside a petri dish (which represents Earth). You observe that one spreads much further than the other - as far as the antipodes, including Argentina, South Africa, and New Zealand - and can only conclude that one of the clusters is clearly more virulent than the other.

So the British occupation of Ireland is not really an approximate comparison. The Chinese never invaded Ireland, but Britain(/'the West') invaded and occupied China, including Tibet. Ireland had the misfortune of being 'absorbed' by what was then, I think, the most toxic concentration of psychopathy to coagulate on the planet in the post-Roman era. My understanding of earlier Irish history is that the initial waves of invasion weren't so bad; the invaders were themselves absorbed into Irish culture (ie, the underlying natural tendency towards integration overcame the 'forced' - and ultimately unsustainable - psychopathic logic of divide-and-conquer).

The nature of the invasions in Ireland dramatically worsened when what had previously been the densest concentration of psychopathy in Western Europe (in the Benelux, across the Channel) was aggregated with the cluster in England via the 'Glorious Revolution', which resulted in the modern era's first truly 'super-cluster' breed of 'internationalist financiers', giving us Cromwellian tyranny, entrenched oligarchy disguised as 'progressive liberal democracy', and England as 'center of global capital'.

 

[Niall]

As an example of current possible Chinese propaganda, I think there may be some truth to the reports by Western liberals that China is using the increase in anti-terrorism hysteria after 9/11 to unite the three concepts of separatism, extremism, and fundamentalism. (e.g. if you are advocating any form of separatism, you are also and extremist and a fundamentalist, and you need to be "quashed" in order to preserve the nice-sounding "harmonious" goals spoken of in party manifestoes.

They have no choice but to engage with the problem after the fact. The part those liberals leave out is that the terrorists are creatures of Western intelligence.

As far as 'independence/sovereignty' goes, there is no such thing at the level of geopolitics. You're either under the influence/control of one large center of power/civilization or another. Japan and Poland, for instance, are artificially under US/Western control, whereas they would naturally take their place as satellites of their respective geographic power centers/civilizations (China and Russia, respectively).

On the Uyghur issue, this is a substantial population that lives across China's borders (e.g. like the Kurds live across the borders of Iraq and Turkey). Within the present generation, Uyghur's living within China have according to some sources become a minority in their homelands due to internal migrations of Han Chinese. So I don't think Uyghur unrest, whether expressed in violent or non-violent forms of activism, should be principally thought of as US creation, though it might be in the US interest to "stoke the flames".

Doesn't that make it all the more pernicious though? A national government is trying to actually solve problems and the US government takes the opportunity to make it harder for it to solve its problems? Can you imagine if China was discovered to be in any way associated with stirring up trouble in US ghettos or near the Mexican border?

Even if the US-UK et al stuck to strictly political non-violent means, interfering in other people's affairs in any way, without their consent, is so wrong as to be in contravention of the most elementary behaviour normal humans expect from other humans. The Western elite, far from 'lording it over' the masses, are actually on the very first rung of basic human development. Actually, no, they're on an entirely different ladder. Anyway, my point is, there are very few countries whose representatives behave in this way, and China isn't one of them.

As for "internal migrations", have you ever wondered why white people are always 'expats' and non-whites are 'migrants'?

 

[Joe]

Even Noam Chomsky takes some time out from pointing out America's many egregious faults to mention that China has a poor human rights record and poor workers' conditions.

I don't think anyone has disputed that, if such a point has been made. The problem here concerns the claim that there is a pro-China bias on Sott and the use of Sott's broad take on the global geopolitical situation as 'evidence' for that claim. It's a straw man argument. In fact, the first post in this thread by you was based largely on faulty assumption.

 

[Siberia]

This thread has been interesting, not so much for the information it has imparted about China, but for what it has revealed about "black and white" thinking and someone being caught in the grip of an "idee fixe". It has also provided a good example of a straw man argument.

The original thesis was an alleged "pro China bias" on Sott where Sott either actively or passively supports all policies of the Chinese government. I hope now that that thesis has been exposed as bogus.

As mentioned already on this thread, Sott.net primarily offers a look at the world and the forces that govern it from a broad, macrocosmic perspective. From that perspective, we hold that the Chinese government, in its recent alliance with Russia and other BRICS nations, is a positive development, and our articles and analysis generally promote that idea. It is from this POV that Sott has a "pro China bias".

Some people have been consistently unable to understand that point, and repeatedly attempted to drag us down into single issues about life within China and imply, in a straw man argument way, that Sott's broad support for China is also an endorsement of all Chinese policies. This is disingenuous. Sott is simply not going to openly take a side on any single issue within any country that is not directly linked to or indicative of the broad geopolitical or social movement of the nation itself and in its relationship to the rest of the word. To do so would take too much time and be a waste of precious resources.

So for the benefit of some who haven't been able to grasp this concept, I'll make it clear. Sott does not publicly discuss the "forced abortions in China" topic and therefore has no official position on it. Anyone is entitled to infer from that what they like. They can ascribe beliefs or intentions to us till the cows come home, but it makes no difference, because such musings are so much hot air.

I think that perfectly sums it up. So this piece of information from Wikipedia is only for the info, and not to continue any arguments on the subject. I'm not going to comment it in order not to provoke any further debates, just quote it as it is with some bolding so that we all finally knew how it really works in China:

The one-child policy was originally designed to be a one-generation policy. It is enforced at the provincial level and enforcement varies; some provinces have relaxed the restrictions.

After Henan loosened the requirement, the majority of provinces and cities permit two parents who were 'only children' themselves to have two children.

In 2013, this rule was relaxed even further: couples in which one parent is an only child are allowed to have a second child.

In rural areas, families are allowed two children without incurring penalties.

The one-child limit has mostly been enforced in densely populated urban areas, and implementation varies from location to location.

Beginning in 1987, official policy granted local officials the flexibility to make exceptions and allow second children in the case of "practical difficulties" (such as cases in which the father is a disabled serviceman) or when both parents are single children, and some provinces had other exemptions worked into their policies as well.

In most areas, families are allowed to apply to have a second child if their first-born is a daughter.

Furthermore, families with children with disability in China have different policies and families whose first child suffers from physical disability, mental illness, or intellectual disability are allowed to have more children.

Second children may be subject to birth spacing (usually 3 or 4 years).

Children born in overseas countries are not counted under the policy if they do not obtain Chinese citizenship. Chinese citizens returning from abroad are allowed to have a second child.

Sichuan province has allowed exemptions for couples of certain backgrounds. By one estimate there are now at least 22 ways in which parents can qualify for exceptions to the law.

As of 2007, only 35.9% of the population were subject to a strict one-child limit. 52.9% were permitted to have a second child if their first was a daughter; 9.6% of Chinese couples were permitted two children regardless of their gender; and 1.6%—mainly Tibetans—had no limit at all.

Following the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, a new exception to the regulations was announced in Sichuan province for parents who had lost children in the earthquake.

Similar exceptions have previously been made for parents of severely disabled or deceased children. People have also tried to evade the policy by giving birth to a second child in Hong Kong, but at least for Guangdong residents, the one-child policy is also enforced if the birth was given in Hong Kong or abroad.

In accordance with China's affirmative action policies towards ethnic minorities, all non-Han ethnic groups are subjected to different laws and are usually allowed to have two children in urban areas, and three or four in rural areas.

Han Chinese living in rural towns are also permitted to have two children. Because of couples such as these, as well as urban couples who simply pay a fine (or "social maintenance fee") to have more children, the overall fertility rate of mainland China is close to 1.4 children per woman.

The Family Planning Policy is enforced through a financial penalty in the form of the "social child-raising fee", sometimes called a "family planning fine" in the West, which is collected as a fraction of either the annual disposable income of city dwellers or of the annual cash income of peasants, in the year of the child's birth. E.g. in Guangdong, the fee is between 3 and 6 annual incomes for incomes below the per capita income of the district, plus 1 to 2 times the annual income exceeding the average. Both members of the couple need to pay the fine.

And from another Wikipedia article:

Forced abortions associated with administration of the one-child policy have occurred in the People's Republic of China; they are a violation of Chinese law and are not official policy. They result from government pressure on local officials who, in turn, employ strong-arm tactics on pregnant mothers.

 

[Mal7]

As for "internal migrations", have you ever wondered why white people are always 'expats' and non-whites are 'migrants'?

I don't think there is anything wrong with my use of the term "internal migrations", though I would agree when the term "expat" is used is it does have a kind of colonial swagger about it.

The NZ Government's Statistics department does for example use the term "migrants" to refer to NZ citizens in general, without specifying whether they are white or non-white, e.g. in an April 2015 summary of Permanent and Long-Term Migration figures:

PLT [Permanent and Long-Term]migration by country of residence
The increase in migrant arrivals between the April 2014 and April 2015 years was led by India, Australia, China, the Philippines, and France. The increase in arrivals from Australia was both New Zealand citizens and non-New Zealand citizens.
The fall in migrant departures was mainly due to fewer departures of New Zealand citizens to Australia. Departures of New Zealand citizens to Australia have more than halved in the last two years from 45,700 in the April 2013 year to 22,300 in the April 2015 year.

- http://www.stats.govt.nz/~/media/Statistics/Browse%20for%20stats/IntTravelAndMigration/HOTPApr15/IntTravelAndMigrationApr15HOTP.pdf

 

[hlat]

There's nothing wrong with using wikipedia as a starting point when learning about a topic. However, in this particular case, I've already provided direct sources from official Chinese news which supercedes any conflicting information from wikipedia. A close analysis of the Chinese news shows that forced non-late-term abortions are official policy and that official punishment for forced late-term abortions are minimal.

And from another Wikipedia article:

Forced abortions associated with administration of the one-child policy have occurred in the People's Republic of China; they are a violation of Chinese law and are not official policy. They result from government pressure on local officials who, in turn, employ strong-arm tactics on pregnant mothers.

Purely for the sake of making a point, assuming what you quoted is true, this is like saying US police killing innocent people is illegal and unconstitutional; it would not change the fact that the practice is ongoing with minimal consequences to the police.

 

[Siberia]

Just thought that maybe this piece of information could be worth sharing here too:

President Xi has only one child, a daughter. President Putin has two children, also daughters. And they both seem to be happy about it. :)

 

[Niall]

As for "internal migrations", have you ever wondered why white people are always 'expats' and non-whites are 'migrants'?

I don't think there is anything wrong with my use of the term "internal migrations", though I would agree when the term "expat" is used is it does have a kind of colonial swagger about it.

The NZ Government's Statistics department does for example use the term "migrants" to refer to NZ citizens in general, without specifying whether they are white or non-white, e.g. in an April 2015 summary of Permanent and Long-Term Migration figures:

PLT [Permanent and Long-Term]migration by country of residence
The increase in migrant arrivals between the April 2014 and April 2015 years was led by India, Australia, China, the Philippines, and France. The increase in arrivals from Australia was both New Zealand citizens and non-New Zealand citizens.
The fall in migrant departures was mainly due to fewer departures of New Zealand citizens to Australia. Departures of New Zealand citizens to Australia have more than halved in the last two years from 45,700 in the April 2013 year to 22,300 in the April 2015 year.

- http://www.stats.govt.nz/~/media/Statistics/Browse%20for%20stats/IntTravelAndMigration/HOTPApr15/IntTravelAndMigrationApr15HOTP.pdf

Ok, what I'm getting at though is that you will never hear about 'internal migrations' - used in a pejorative sense - within the US or EU. But because it's China, 'we' in the West must know that the same phenomenon over there is a very bad thing; in fact, 'we' have grounds for assuming that the Han Chinese are deliberately increasing their numbers in Western China in order to 'minoritize' people of Uyghur extraction, which would be a bad thing because [...this part is always left out...] so 'we' must constantly raise this issue with the Chinese 'regime'.

The implied suggestion is that some kind of Nazi racialism is practised by the Chinese state, an outlandish notion given that the one child policy doesn't apply to the country's dozens of ethnic minorities.

 

[SeekinTruth]

The implied suggestion is that some kind of Nazi racialism is practised by the Chinese state, an outlandish notion given that the one child policy doesn't apply to the country's dozens of ethnic minorities.

That's the crux of the matter. All the insinuations and accusations about the Han having racist intentions just doesn't add up. China also has many "affirmative action" types of programs favoring the many minority ethnic groups.

 

[Renaissance]

The C's had given a pretty low figure for the percentage of psychopaths in the Chinese population, which had been discussed earlier in the thread. We also know that one of the ways psychopaths flourish is by having as many children as they can. They don't have any notion of responsibility or care for raising a child so they victimize woman after woman. The sexual revolution in the West and particularly in the US was surely a boon to psychopaths. If we compare this to the social ideas of maintaining small families in China, then perhaps they are onto something. Perhaps the Chinese psychopathic population is low precisely because they limit the opportunities for psychopaths to proliferate. This way also places a value on life that is missing in the West. I think many American parents see raising children in a rather narcissistic light. It's seen as an individualistic right and society isn't even part of the equation. Others aren't a factor in most any of the choices we make in US. Sadly even our children, human life itself, are seen in a very narrow and self serving way. Apparently forced abortions in China do happen. But as mentioned earlier, the case posted is touted all around the internet as representing all of China, and I don't see the evidence that it actually does. The Western way denigrates and distorts anything going against the individualistic and psychopathic system, and I think it may be useful to look at this issue in that light.

 

[sitting]

The C's had given a pretty low figure for the percentage of psychopaths in the Chinese population, which had been discussed earlier in the thread.

I would just add the significance of that low percentage has not yet been fully understood by some. Gauging by their comments.
The implication is about as clear as it gets. That low percentage is a very BIG deal.

FWIW.

 

[Beau]

A Critique of the U.S. “Grand Strategy toward China”

"We will have a very strong (military) presence, very strong continued posture throughout the region to back our commitments to our allies, to protect and work with our partners and to continue ensuring peace and stability in the region, as well as back our diplomacy vis-à-vis China on the South China Sea". -David Shear, US Department of Defense's Assistant Secretary for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs.

Indian President Modi "seals $22 billion of deals on China visit . . . China had already promised $20 billion of infrastructure investment during (Chinese President) Xi's visit to India last year". - Financial Times (5/18/165, p. 4)

Introduction

The highly influential Council on Foreign Relations recently published a Special Report entitled, "Revising US Grand Strategy toward China", (Council on Foreign Relations Press: NY 2015), co-authored by two of its Senior Fellows, Robert Blackwill and Ashley Tellis ('B and T'), which proposes a re-orientation of US policy toward China. The Report a policy for buttressing 'US primacy in Asia' and countering what they describe as "the dangers that China's geo-economic and military power pose to US national interests in Asia and globally". The Report concludes by listing seven recommendations that Washington should follow to re-assert regional primacy.

This essay begins by discussing the basic fallacies underpinning the Report, including outdated and dangerous presumptions about US power and presence in Asia today, and the authors' incoherent, contradictory and unrealistic prescriptions.

Mistaken Assumptions about Past and Present US Policies to China

Blackwill and Tellis ('B and T') start out with the preposterous claim that contemporary US policy toward China has been driven by its positive "effort to 'integrate' China into the liberal international order". This is a gross misrepresentation of Washington's past and current efforts to subvert the Chinese Communist government and to undermine its state- directed transition to capitalism.

Ever since the end of the Second World War, and especially since the Chinese Civil War (1945-49), which brought the Chinese Communist Party to power, the US has poured billions of dollars in military aid to the retreating Nationalist regime and to finance the bloody Korean War (1950-53) - with the open goal of overthrowing the Chinese communist government. When US forces briefly reached the Chinese-Korean border, provoking a Chinese response, Washington threatened to unleash nuclear weapons on the Chinese. For the next two decades, the US maintained a naval and air embargo against the world's most populous state, an insane policy which was only reversed by President Nixon's re-establishment of diplomatic and commercial relations in 1973.

When the veteran Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping embarked on a state-managed transition to capitalism, Washington adopted a two-track policy of encouraging China's rulers to 'open their markets' to US multi-national corporations, while financing and backing pro-US liberal activists seeking to overthrow the Communist government (the so-called Tiananmen Square Uprising) as well as the secessionist Tibetan and Uyghur insurgencies in western China.

Far from trying "to integrate China into the liberal international order", Washington attempted to replicate the decade-long chaotic and destructive "transition to capitalism" which took place with the dissolution of the USSR under Mikhail Gorbachev. During the disastrous US-backed regime of Russian President Boris Yeltsin - the 'lost decade' (1990-1999) - living standards for the average citizen plunged 70% and Russia was transformed from an advanced superpower to a ravaged vassal state. Beijing's rulers took careful stock of the grotesque pillage of the former USSR and rejected US plans to replicate their 'Russian success' and integrate China as a vassal state within the international capitalist system.

Washington's sanctions and boycott policy, following the defeat of its Tiananmen Square proxies, was of no avail: Washington failed to stop the massive influx of US multinational corporations into China. Its punitive measures had no impact on China's political stability and unprecedented economic growth.

Washington's policy supporting China's entry into the World Trade Organization encouraged China to open up to US investors, but US policy makers did not understand how the Chinese state's carefully calibrated mix of dependence on foreign capitalist investment and technology with their adoption, assimilation, and autonomous expansion of endogenous Chinese expertise would create a such a massive independent economic superpower.

Washington's 'penetration and conquest strategy', dubbed by B and T as its 'integration into the international order', ultimately failed, despite frequent attempts to undermine the Chinese state regulations and controls on foreign capital. The US' efforts to subordinate ("integrate") China into its burgeoning Asian empire was unsuccessful.

During this period, China expanded into world markets, harnessing Western capital to its national goals. It borrowed and improved on US technology to develop a high growth model, exceeding the US growth rate by 600%!

For over two decades, China grew exponentially, accumulating hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign reserves, while the US economy ran-up monstrous trade deficits with Beijing. The US had embarked on a series of prolonged wars while converting its economy from productive to finance capitalism and needed to borrow vast sums from China in the form of sales of Treasury notes or face a major domestic financial crisis.

In essence (and not noted by 'B and T'), China 'integrated' into the international economic order as a productive, creditor state, at the same time the US was reduced to financial - debtor status and lost its global economic primacy while pursuing its unpopular wars in the Middle East.

It was not the 'failure' of liberal US market policies that propelled China forward to primacy in Asia, as 'B and T' argue in their essay, but Washington's multi-trillion-dollar wars in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa and its wholesale conversion to Wall Street speculation, which caused the US to lose its primacy in Asia. 'B and T's' claim that US 'market liberalism' helped China to emerge as the economic superpower in Asia is a flimsy pretext for ignoring real causes and now promoting an even greater level of US militarism in the region. Unfortunately, their muddle-headed diagnoses and militarist proposals strongly influence the Obama Administrations policy decisions!

Blackwill and Tellis's unwillingness to recognize China's peaceful rise to economic supremacy in Asia leads them to rely on a purely ideological construct to bolster their militaristic argument for intensifying "the US naval and air presence in the South and East China Seas and accelerating the US ballistic-missile defense (sic) posture" in the Pacific. 'B and T's a priori ideological presumptions lead them to declare that "China is a danger to US Asian interests", ignoring elementary Chinese vital national interests in having open and secure access to vital waterways leading to their Asian markets and sources of raw materials. At no point does 'B and T' identify a single move implemented by China, which has threatened the open seaways. Nor do they identify a single overt or covert threat by China toward the US. While 'B and T' fantasize about China's military threats, they suffer a severe case of amnesia with regard to overt US attacks, invasions, and occupations of China's Asian neighbors. Over a dozen such military assaults have been launched by Washington in the region, which 'B and T' conveniently . . . omit.

'B and T's evocation of a "China threat" is a crude ploy to justify further US military encirclement of China, in line with their policy recommendations. The US has recently dispatched B-1 bombers and surveillance planes to Australia and threatens to attack China's base and port construction on its off-shore shoals and island territories. Equally ominous, US officials arrested a visiting Chinese academic attending a conference claiming he was part of a plot stealing 'dual purpose' high tech secrets.

Contradictions and Incoherence of B and T Policy Recommendations

B and T policy recommendations for securing US primacy in Asia are contradictory and incoherent. For example, they recommend that the US "revitalize the economy" and promote "robust growth" as a first priority, but then demand a "substantial increase" in the enormous US military budget. They advocate limits on the sale of civilian technology (so-called "dual" use) and the exclusion of China from US-sponsored Asian trade networks like the 'Trans-Pacific Partnership' (TPP).

Most experts openly acknowledge that the huge US ten-trillion dollar military spending over the past two decades has destroyed any possibility for 'robust growth' of the US economy. 'B and T's recommendations for even more military spending can only make matters worse by diverting public and private capital away from economic growth. This is what undermines the United States strategic future in Asia!

'B and T' advise Washington "to expand Asian trade networks" . . . by excluding China . . . the largest investment site and market for the leading '500' US multi-national corporations! In fact, when Obama, in line with 'B and T' recommendations, loudly refused to participate in the Chinese-sponsored 'Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, all of the US major Asian "partners", except Japan, ignored Washington and joined the AIIB! China is unquestionably the leading economic partner for all Asian countries and none of the bellicose rhetoric that 'B and T' spout is going to erode those essential realities.

In fact 'B and T's proposal to eliminate ongoing trade with China of so-called 'dual purpose' technological exports will further isolate the US from its much-ballyhooed 'Asian partners' who are especially eager to 'add value' to their exports. In sum, 'B and T's recommendations to US policy makers will guarantee an anemic, not a 'robust', growth.

B and T proposals are guided by a strictly military logic, contrary to advancing US trade networks.

B and T (and the Obama regime) propose "to reinforce" what they call the Indo-Pacific partnership via a "build-up (of) the power-political capabilities of its friends and allies on China's periphery". Whatever 'B and T' meant by "power-political capabilities" they certainly did not take into consideration India's drive for economic development and long-term, large-scale investment and trade agreements. In terms of trade and development deals, the meager results on the heels of Obama's recent visit to India demonstrate just how shallow the administration's policy towards the subcontinent really is.

The Indo-Chinese economic and development partnership far surpassed in size and scope any of the vacuous proposals put forth by 'B and T' to the Obama Administration. In mid-May 2015, Indian President Modi signed a $22 billion-dollar business deal with China on top of the massive $20-billion dollar Chinese infrastructure investment agreement in 2014. $42 billion-dollars of Chinese investment and trade deals with India have pulled the rug out from under any Obama regime plans to enlist India into its anti-China campaign and military provocations. The reality of Indian-Chinese economic deals shows just how absurd 'B and T' policy recommendations are.

President Modi put the 'nail' in the coffin of 'B and T's, "US Grand Strategy toward China" in his last speech in China after his most successful visit: "I strongly believe that this century belongs to Asia". Lest it be thought by any other Kissinger protégé, (Blackwill is a Henry Kissinger Senior Fellow), that the deepening Indo-China relation is a mere passing phenomenon, their agreements involve the most advanced sectors of their economies, including telecommunication and energy, as well as the development of a solar photovoltaic industrial park.

As for B and T's proposal to block 'dual use' technology transfers to China, the Indian government has openly rejected that line of unreason by calling on countries to accelerate technology transfers.

'B and T' and the entire crowd of 'armchair war-mongers' at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) have misread the most basic economic developments of our time. US economic growth is becoming increasingly dependent on large-scale, long-term foreign capital inflows from 'emerging economies' - especially China! Developing Asian nations accounted for $440 billion in outward investment, greater than North America or Europe , as the largest source for foreign direct investment. China's $266 billion dollars accounted for most outgoing FDI from Asia.

China's importance as a source of investment can only expand, especially through its newly-founded 'Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank' (AIIB) and its plans to promote the multi-billion Silk Road linking Beijing through Central Asia to European markets. China's financial role is going to be crucial in the new BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) bank - developed to counter the IMF.

Nothing that the Obama regime and its advisers from the Council on Foreign Relations have proposed can possibly 'balance' the rise of China, because their policies include the boycott of large-scale, long-term Chinese economic initiatives which Washington's 'allies' are eager to join. Virtually all have rushed to sign up with the AIIB leaving a sour-faced Obama Administration totally isolated. The Council on Foreign Relations' proposal for Obama to form anti-Chinese 'networks with its allies' is pointless when such hostile 'networks' are clearly not going to undermine their most lucrative economic deals with China.

After running through a laundry list of hostile policies toward China, based on a strategy of escalating military encirclement, 'B and T' conclude their essay with a bizarre call for Washington to "energize high level diplomacy with Beijing" and do "everything it can to avoid a confrontation with China".

This piece of 'expert' idiocy could only have been written by a former lecturer from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Policies designed to surround China with US military installations and naval vessels, threaten China's vital maritime routes. Measures to restrict the sale of 'dual use' (civilian) technology and efforts to build hostile regional networks and military partnerships are hardly conducive to 'energizing high level diplomacy with Beijing. 'B and T's proposals and Obama's policies are designed to confront, provoke and undermine China. That is one very obvious reason why China pursues such favorable economic agreements with its neighbors.

'B and T' policy proposals are doomed to fail because the US has not and cannot match China's robust economic growth. Washington cannot compete with Beijing's open and flexible large-scale economic agreements with all Asian countries (except the US vassal Japan).

Most Asian powers have rejected the ideological message peddled by the Obama Administration that China is a danger. They see China as a partner, a source of capital and easy financing for vital projects without the onerous 'conditions' that the US controlled IMF imposes. They are not interested in big, wasteful spending on costly weapons systems pushed by US war industries and which have no productive value.

An Alternative "Grand Strategy toward China"

If one were to propose a realistic and reasonable 'US Grand Strategy toward China' one would have to start by shedding all the false assumptions and bellicose proposals that have been put forth by the CFR and the authors of the Report under review.

First and foremost, the US would have to give up its self-appointed role as global policeman, reallocate its bloated Pentagon budget to finance vital domestic economic development, while rebalancing the US economy away from Wall Street speculation in the FIRE (finance, insurance real estate) sector, to producing goods, providing quality services and financing long-overdue infrastructure development projects.

Secondly, Washington would have to expand and promote long-term, large-scale exports of its advanced technology to compensate for the loss of low value exports.

Thirdly, it would join with China in its new infrastructure bank, securing contracts via aid packages. Washington would have to look at China's export of capital as an opportunity to improve the US's deteriorating infrastructure. Washington would have to increase and expand its cyber-technical ties with China via joint ventures. Washington would need to replace its military bases surrounding China with industrial parks, commercial ports and regional 'Silicon Valleys' and promote co-operative ventures that allow the US to ride the wave of Chinese dynamism. Since the US cannot (and should not) curtail or compete with China's growth it should join them and share it.

The US should not attempt to block China's growth and expansion; it should assist and share in its ascendancy, especially in the face of great global climate and energy challenges. Washington is much more likely to strengthen its Asian - Pacific partnership and succeed in its diplomacy if it replaced its military posturing with robust economic growth.

 

[Mal7]

On the subject of China and it's large Tibetan minority, I thought this interview with Tsering Shakya for the "New Left Review" was quite interesting. It is a little dated now, being from the time of the 2008 Olympic games, during the presidency of Hu Jintau.

http://newleftreview.org/II/51/tsering-shakya-tibetan-questions

Three short quotes (emphases added):

But the main outside influence on Tibetans is the Tibetan-language broadcasting on Voice of America since 1991, and Radio Free Asia since 1996. Again, it is not a question of clandestine organization; these services simply provide a source of news and ideas in a society where people are starved of alternatives. Because there is no independent news media, and people are automatically very suspicious of what they hear or read in government sources, they tend to turn to Voice of America and Radio Free Asia for their information. The two stations report on all the Dalai Lama’s trips abroad, and on the activities of the exiles in India, giving Tibetans quite international and politicized coverage; the stations are very popular in Tibet, which helps to create a certain climate of opinion there. The Chinese government tries to jam the signal, but people somehow manage to listen to them.

"The Voice of America (VOA) is the official external broadcast institution of the United States federal government." - Wikipedia. Radio Free Asia is a Washington based non-profit organization.

I should also say that there is intense diversity within China—it is not as homogeneous as it might appear. Over three hundred intellectuals signed a petition circulated by Wang Lixiong criticizing the government’s response to the unrest in Tibet and appealing for dialogue. There were similar articles appearing in a range of publications. A group of Chinese lawyers announced that they would go to defend the Tibetan detainees; these people are risking their livelihood—the government is threatening not to renew their licences. This is not what the media highlights, of course. Many of these dissenting voices were not heard amid the patriotic fervour.

If Tibetans could articulate them freely, what would their essential demands be?

One of the biggest grievances is that the Chinese authorities equate any expression of Tibetan identity with separatism. The government seems to think that if it allows any kind of cultural autonomy, it will escalate into demands for secession. This is something the government has to relax. In Tibet, everything from newspapers and magazines to music distribution is kept firmly under control, whereas all over China there are increasing numbers of independent publishing houses. The joke in Tibet is that the Dalai Lama wants ‘one country, two systems’, but what people there [i.e. in Tibet] want is ‘one country, one system’—they want the more liberal policies that prevail in China also to apply in Tibet.