Chinese Military,Political and Social Superthread

[Kirkhill]

On the other hand it is one way to justify maintaining Regiments of AAA and SAMs.  And give them a regular workout.

 

[chanman]

On the other hand it is one way to justify maintaining Regiments of AAA and SAMs.  And give them a regular workout.

Why hire extra folks to do it when you have bored air defence units around? 

Putin apparently tried it too http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article1135006.ece, but it seems like it didn't work too well at the G8 summit though http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/5189048.stm (bottom paragraph)

So who's going to be the first with a 'rain on your parade' crack?

 

[Edward Campbell]

http://www.ctvtoronto.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20080329/chinese_canadians_concert_080329/20080329/?hub=TorontoNewHome

Interesting, I really hope people don't fall for this. I saw a report on this on Global National, while they didn't come outright and say 'this was an organised and controlled Chinese propaganda mission' they did explain how the protest was tightly controlled, with protestors having un-authorised signs taken down and being told not to speak to the media.

The Chinese government's reach extends pretty darn far these days....a little too far IMHO.

If those overseas Chinese are anything like those I know (some very well) then their views (China is being "unfairly portrayed by the media") are quite normal.

I have no doubt that the Chinese government has some hand in organizing and/or supporting this sort of thing, just as I have no doubt that the anti-Chinese protesters get support from someone for their demonstrations and media placements.

 

[tomahawk6]

Chinese security troops with their Tibetan monk robes.

 

[CougarKing]

Those PAP (People's Armed Police) troops are missing their covers/their version of US Army garrison caps!  UNSAT on inspection! UNSAT! UNSAT! ;D

 

[TCBF]

Those PAP (People's Armed Police) troops are missing their covers/their version of US Army garrison caps!  UNSAT on inspection! UNSAT! UNSAT! ;D

- Forage Caps don't travel well.  Once the 'Monk's Robes Tasking' is complete, the Forage Caps will be retrieved.

 

[a_majoor]

The campaign continues with the auxiliary troops:

http://ezralevant.com/2008/03/who-is-posting-antitibet-comme.html

Who is posting anti-Tibet comments on North American blogs?
By Ezra Levant on March 31, 2008 12:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (13) | Trackback

I've received a spate of anti-Tibet, pro-Communist China comments in response to my blog entries about Tibet.They are all signed by folks with English names, but the language has the slightly clunky style of Chinese propaganda. I mean, other than in China's denunciations of Taiwan and Tibet, have you ever heard the word "splittist" used before? I can spot Chinese government spin when I see it, and unless it is properly signed by the Chinese foreign ministry, I'm just not going to go along with the charade by posting the comments.

On what basis -- other than the clunky Maoist rhetoric -- do I make this claim? A year ago, the Western Standard published a story by Kevin Steel about one such Internet soldier for China (quick but free registration required). Here are some excerpts:

He posts his messages everywhere under several different names on Internet blogs and discussion groups. He writes letters to the editor anywhere and sends e-mails to anyone--anyone who might take seriously shocking evidence that the Chinese government "harvests" and sells live organs from political prisoners. His main message is that the Falun Gong--the group which first brought evidence of live organ harvesting to light--and the Epoch Times newspaper that broke that story are spreading propaganda against China's Communist government. And he's not even Chinese. He is Charles Liu, a 40-year-old Taiwanese-born technology consultant who lives in Issaquah, Wash., and does business in China.

:::.

He doesn't really explain, when asked, why he started a blog last year called "The Myth of Tiananmen Square Massacre" under the name of Bobby Fletcher (one of his online aliases, which he also uses to comment on the Western Standard's online blog). On that blog, he pushes the minimal 250 casualty figure that the Chinese government has always maintained died that night in 1989 (more reliable estimates put the figure at at least ten times that).

Liu's actions mirror disinformation campaigns waged by the Chinese government in the past. Typically, these include the deliberate spreading of false or misleading facts to sow confusion or doubt among the conflicting accounts. The classic example is the Tiananmen Square massacre; the Chinese government has maintained that no one died in the square itself, that there was only pushing and shoving on the streets around the square, resulting in a few military casualties. Overseas, the CCP relies on its United Front Work department, part of the Chinese intelligence service, to propagate its message. During the Cold War, the Soviets employed many overseas flunkies through their Disinformation Department.

:::

Winnipeg-based human rights lawyer, and Kilgour's co-author, David Matas, really doesn't know what to make of Liu. "I don't know who he is, but what he does is spend a lot of time replicating nonsense to defend the Chinese government," Matas says.

The only concern Matas has is that Liu seems to know who he and Kilgour met with in the United States to discuss their report. Matas discovered Liu had sent e-mails to politicians--and their staff--prior to the meetings. "The only people who would have that information would potentially be the Chinese government. I can't imagine how Liu would know we were meeting with those people," Matas says. "We're not super-secretive, but you can't find information on the Internet or in any public place about who we're meeting with, where and when." He himself has received at least 10 e-mails from Liu, all of which he's ignored. Maybe Matas is onto something with that approach.

 

[CougarKing]

Very disturbing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...AR2008033101573.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Defense Department analyst pleaded guilty to passing classified information about Taiwan to a Chinese government agent, the Justice Department said on Monday.

The plea came in one of two China espionage cases disclosed last month -- the second involved a former Boeing engineer arrested on suspicion of stealing secrets about aerospace programs including the space shuttle.

Gregg William Bergersen pleaded guilty at federal district court in Alexandria, Virginia, to conspiracy to disclose national defense information to unauthorized persons. Much of the information pertained to U.S. military sales to China's arch rival, Taiwan, and communications security issues, court documents said.

Bergersen faces up to 10 years in prison.

Bergersen, a weapons system policy analyst with a top-secret clearance, was arrested in February, along with Tai Shen Kuo and Yu Xin Kang, both of New Orleans.

Bergersen admitted in court papers that he gave national defense information to Kuo several times and that Kuo had cultivated a friendship with him that included gifts, cash payments and gambling money for Las Vegas trips.

 

[Blackadder1916]

Tibet isn't China's only problem, resentment still simmers among Muslims
http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/080406/w040629A.html

Published: Sunday, April 6, 2008 | 12:27 AM ET
Canadian Press: William Foreman, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

HOTAN, China - The chirpy Chinese coffee shop waitress smiled as she rattled off sites travellers should see in this jade-trading Silk Road town in Xinjiang - a vast western region of China that, like Tibet, has a long history of unrest.

The woman frowned and her brow furrowed with worry Saturday when she mentioned Hotan's main tourist draw: a sprawling bazaar popular among the Muslim minority Uighurs.

"Oh, don't go to the bazaar on the weekend. It gets too crowded and things can get chaotic. A couple weeks ago, there was a protest. Some Muslim separatists caused some trouble.

"It's terrible," said the waitress, who would only give her surname, Zheng, because she was afraid she'd run afoul of officials for discussing the sensitive subject.

The fear and distrust she felt about the Uighurs is common among many Chinese, even though the situation seemed calm in Hotan since the brief March 23 protest.

Animosity against the Chinese runs deep among the Uighurs as well, and the recent trouble was a new reminder that Tibet isn't China's only problem. Resentment still simmers in its traditionally Muslim Central Asian frontier.

Chinese authorities blamed the demonstration on Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami, a radical group that wants to create a worldwide Islamic state, the China News Agency reported late Friday.

The group, which has claimed to disavow violence, has been banned in Russia and Central Asia, where it reportedly has a large following among the predominantly Muslim former Soviet republics.

Xinjiang leaders have accused the group of handing out "reactionary" leaflets and calling for people to demonstrate in Hotan as well as Xinjiang's capital of Urumqi, the state-run China News Agency reported on its Web site.

The protest came at a bad time for China.

The Communist government was already grappling with Tibetan unrest that has spread to neighbouring provinces.

Pictures of police and troops cracking down on the Tibetan protests have turned into a public relations nightmare for the government, which is trying to paint a peaceful and prosperous image of the country ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

But, in Hotan on Saturday, the situation seemed to have cooled off.

Only a small number of uniformed police were patrolling the massive bazaar, where the air was thick with smoke from charcoal ovens and grills cooking sizzling lamb kebabs and wheels of flat bread that looked like large pizza crusts.

Hawkers selling mangos yelled over the din of honking taxis and the clip-clopping of donkey carts hauling mountains of vegetables and eggs from the countryside.

Women wearing spectacularly colourful head scarves watched over stands piled high with walnuts, almonds, dates and raisins for mostly Uighur customers.

Men wove through the crowds on motorcycles with the bloody carcasses of freshly butchered sheep draped over the passenger's seat.

Although things seemed calm, animosity between Muslims and Chinese was almost palpable. People on both sides were quick to criticize each other.

"The Chinese are too bad, really bad," said a Uighur fabric merchant who would only provide his given name, Hama.

"The protesters two weeks ago wanted the Chinese to get out of here. There were a couple hundred. Then the Communists came in and broke it all up. I can't say more or I'll get arrested," he said.

"We aren't free to talk."

China has often used harsh repression to control the Uighurs, who speak a Turkic language and whose customs and religion are distinct from the ethnic majority Han Chinese.

The government has also flooded Xinjiang, which means "New Frontier," with military personnel and migrants who control much of the economy.

The Chinese are also quick to voice their fears, disdain or distrust of the Uighurs.

They often say the Uighurs are ungrateful for all the government investment that has modernized the region - bigger than Alaska and one-sixth of China's territory.

"They have no culture and they don't try to study and improve themselves," said a Chinese delivery driver who would only give his surname, Wang, because he said the government didn't want him to speak ill of the Uighurs.

"Most businesses don't want to hire them. That's why they hire Han Chinese. Their religion, Islam, it's no good. It fills their heads with nonsense."

Often, it seems the two groups are content to live in their own worlds and make little effort to bridge differences.

During the two-hour China Southern Airlines flight from Urumqi to Hotan, none of the young Chinese flight attendants spoke Uighur to the passengers.

Even basic phrases like "Please sit down" or "Fasten your seat belts" were spoken in Mandarin to the Uighurs, who often asked the attendants to repeat themselves.

A Uighur university student who would only give his English name, Steve, said he didn't have to go to class last Friday because it was a national holiday - Ching Ming, a day when Chinese clean their ancestors' graves.

"I don't know what the holiday is called or what it's about," the 20-year-old student said. "It's a Chinese holiday. It has nothing to do with me."

 

[Edward Campbell]

IOC President Jacques Rogge is in Beijing today as anti-Chinese (or ”free Tibet” or whatever) demonstrations intensify.

I’m guessing that Hu  Jiantao’s staff are asking M. Rogge to issue a statement decrying the anti-Chinese demonstrations and asking the Beijing Olympic Committee to help the Olympic movement by rethinking the global torch relay. He might ask the Chinese to stage the relay within China.

I’m guessing, again, that China can live without intensifying protests in Buenos Aires, New Delhi, Canberra, Seoul and points in between. It might be tempting to bring the torch home and stage a public ”love-in” all over China – to be broadcast world-wide because the 24/7 “news” machines need images to fill time.

The relay could be restarted on the Chinese slopes of Mt.Qomolangma (the mountain we call Everest) and pass through Lhasa – with images of adoring crowds, and then make its way throughout China to an increasing crescendo of nationalist fervor.

 

[a_majoor]

Since one of the root threads was about the PLAN (People's Liberation Army Navy), this is appropriate.:

http://westernstandard.blogs.com/shotgun/2008/04/if-mr-nicholls.html

If Mr. Nicholls wants meaningful actions . . .

. . . and he's not willing to consider the propaganda bonanza that the Communists will reap from having the Western powers attend the Games, perhaps this Armed Forces Journal (US) story will get his attention:

    China has launched more than 36 new submarines since 1995 — far outpacing U.S. intelligence estimates from a decade ago. Additionally, supersonic indigenous cruise missiles, rumored development of an anti-ship ballistic missile, dynamic mine warfare and amphibious warfare programs, invigorated aerial maritime strike capabilities, as well as a variety of new, sleek and modern surface combatants, suggest a broad front effort by the People’s Liberation Army Navy.

If Mr. Nicholls is willing to call for an increase in the Canadian Navy to help combat this threat (I've been asking the U.S. Navy to do this for years), then we can agree to disagree about the meaning of an Olympic boycott.

Posted by D.J. McGuire on April 9, 2008 in International Affairs, International Politics, Military | Permalink

 

[CougarKing]

A historic cross-strait relations summit is coming up.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/04/11/taiwan.china.ap/index.html

Taiwan set for historic China summit

Story Highlights
Taiwan's vice president-elect to have historic meeting with China's president

Vincent Siew will meet with Hu Jintao for 20 minutes on Saturday at forum

It will be the highest-level contact ever between officials of the longtime rivals

Ma succeeds Chen, who steps down after eight years in power

SANYA, China (AP) -- Taiwan's vice president-elect is due to meet Chinese President Hu Jintao on Saturday in the highest-level contact ever between officials from the longtime rivals.

The historic talks carry the potential of opening a new era in relations between the two, indicating the direction Taiwan-China relations will move toward under a new Taiwanese administration set to take office in May.

Vincent Siew will meet with Hu for 20 minutes on the sidelines of an economic forum in the southern Chinese resort of Boao, Siew's spokesman, Wang Yu-chi, said Friday. No other details were given.

Heading a delegation of Taiwanese business leaders, Siew arrived Friday afternoon in the island province of Hainan where the forum is held each year.

"We will use the occasion to make more friends and exchange views," said Siew, a former premier who has dedicated his years out of office to expanding economic relations with China. "We will present the new blueprint for Taiwan's economic development."

The meeting could be a watershed in relations between the two neighbors, which have alternated between angry threats and icy scorn for the last eight years under Taiwan's independence-leaning President Chen Shui-bian.

Siew's future boss, President-elect Ma Ying-jeou, was elected on strong hopes he would boost relations with China, which regards Taiwan as a renegade Chinese province.

China and Taiwan split amid civil war in 1949 and Beijing threatens to attack if the Taiwanese try to formalize their de-facto independent status.

Beijing refuses to recognize the island's elected government, and on Thursday Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu referred to Siew only as chairman of the Cross-Strait Common Market Foundation, a private group that seeks to build economic cooperation between China and Taiwan.

Ma and Siew represent the Nationalist Party that ran Taiwan for almost five decades after fleeing the mainland ahead of the communist victory. Despite decades of antagonism, the Nationalists and their former communist foes have opened up a dialogue in recent years, in part out of common opposition to Chen's moves to assert Taiwan's independent identity.

Ma has pledged to liberalize investment rules and launch direct air and maritime links between Taiwan and China. On Friday, Siew had to fly to China via Hong Kong because Taiwan still bans direct flights.

However, the president-elect has been vague on the prospects of improved political ties, saying he hopes to sign a peace agreement but won't discuss unification during his presidency.

On Saturday, Hu and Siew are to attend the opening ceremony of the Boao Forum for Asia, an annual Chinese government-sponsored event attended by leading businesspeople and a smattering of world leaders.

The forum's secretary-general, former Chinese official Long Yongtu, also confirmed Siew's meeting with Hu, according to China's official Xinhua News Agency.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I think we should all pay attention to his story, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080411.wchina0412/BNStory/International/home

China spins protests to buttress support at home

GEOFFREY YORK

From Saturday's Globe and Mail
April 11, 2008 at 10:54 PM EDT

BEIJING — It was a moment so perfect that it could have been scripted by Beijing's propaganda masters. A beautiful young Chinese woman, bravely ignoring her physical handicap, is shielding the Olympic flame with her body to protect it against Western attackers.

The incident, captured on video, has galvanized China's masses and created a new national hero. A star has been born, and she is 27-year-old Jin Jing of Shanghai, an amputee in a wheelchair who was carrying the Olympic torch in Paris this week when she was confronted by protesters who wrestled for the torch.

The one-legged Paralympic fencing champion, whose picture has been splashed across front pages in China, has become an iconic image of everything the Chinese want to believe about the innocence of their country and the dastardliness of the West.

All week she has been mobbed by fans and glorified in the Chinese media, who dubbed her the "smiling angel in a wheelchair" and "saviour of the national honour."

Police officers apprehend an anti-China, pro-Tibet demonstrator, waving a Tibetan flag, right, as he tries to interrupt the Olympic torch parade before an athlete in a wheelchair, left, takes the relay, shortly after its beginning near the Eiffel tower in Paris, April 7. Security officials extinguished the Olympic torch several times amid heavy protests during the torch relay in Paris. The flame was being carried out of a Paris traffic tunnel by an athlete in in a wheelchair when it was stopped because protesters booed and began chanting 'Tibet.' (Thibault Camus/AP)

Her fans describe her as fearless and modest. "She has captured the hearts of millions of Chinese people," the state news agency says. As for Ms. Jin, she smiles sweetly and then says, of the protesters, "I despise them."

China in 2008 has become a story with two dramatically contrasting narratives, each isolated in its own solitude, almost unaware of the other. While the West sees the Chinese government as the violent oppressors of Tibetans and other dissidents, the Chinese see their country as the victim of external attacks, and the "wheelchair angel" is their ultimate symbol.

After initially censoring the televised reports on the torch protests in London and Paris, the Chinese government soon found it better to encourage the reports, which were carefully edited to portray China as the victim.

Last month, the state media gave huge publicity to another iconic image of the Tibet crisis: the five young Chinese saleswomen who were killed in their clothing shop in Lhasa when it was set ablaze by Tibetan protesters. Again, the Chinese saw their women as innocent victims of Western-supported attackers.

With images such as those to mould the national mood, it has been surprisingly easy for China's autocratic rulers to rally their country to support them. And here is the unexpected reality of the Chinese Communist Party in 2008: Its international image might be bruised and battered, but its internal grip on power is stronger than ever.

There is mounting evidence — in Internet chat rooms, on the streets and everywhere else where public opinion can be measured — that the Chinese Communist Party has gained popularity and strength as a result of the violence and chaos of the past month.

It might be facing an Olympic opening ceremony boycott and mounting criticism from abroad, but the government has largely succeeded in mobilizing its 1.3 -billion people into a unified force, giving it the domestic legitimacy it craves for its survival.

"Thanks to the protests, the Chinese Communists may have consolidated support by its citizens for years to come," says Roland Soong, a shrewd observer of Chinese politics who runs a blog analyzing the Chinese media.

"For the Chinese Communists, the responses from Western governments, media and citizens are immaterial," he wrote in his blog. "The paramount goal of the Chinese Communists is to retain control of China, and therefore it is the response from the Chinese citizens that matter."

The legend of Jin Jing has been a huge coup for Beijing in its efforts to exploit the torch protests for its own self-interest, Mr. Soong says. "Faced with the beautiful heroine with one leg, how is any liberal dissidence on behalf of Tibet going to work inside China? This was a bonanza handed to the Chinese Communists by the pro-Tibet protesters."

In many ways, Tibet and the Olympics were the ideal issues for Beijing to face, if it was going to face any crisis in 2008. Western activists may have inadvertently blundered by choosing these two issues as the focus of their strategy this year. Ethnic minorities rarely get much sympathy among China's people. Tibet and the Olympics are relatively simple for Beijing to frame as an "us-against-them" narrative, in almost tribal terms, drawing upon China's painful memories of foreign attacks from the Opium Wars to the Japanese invasions.

"The Chinese government has been able to strengthen its credentials as a defender of Chinese nationalistic pride," said Charles Burton, a former Canadian diplomat in Beijing who is now a political scientist at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont.

"People who were not fully supportive of the Communist Party's rule have now united strongly around the party's political agenda for Tibet. The attacks on the Olympic flame have polarized the differences between China and the West, and the West is much more demonized than before."

This political dynamic has changed drastically in the past two decades. In 1989, there was huge Chinese sympathy for the university students who held hunger strikes at Tiananmen Square to seek freedom and oppose corruption. Most of the Tiananmen protesters were of the same Han Chinese ethnicity as the national majority. As university students, they were the best and brightest, the hope of the nation, and they garnered much sympathy from across the country.

But in 2008, in a growing climate of nationalism after years of "patriotic education" in the schools and media, there is little sympathy, and much hostility, toward the Tibetan protesters who live abroad or in their remote ethnic enclave. The Tibetan "splittists" are widely portrayed as uncivilized, violent, anti-Chinese, ungrateful for the government's help and controlled by foreign agitators. For the Han majority, the Tibetans are often seen as outsiders who even fought wars against China in the past. Their support from the West makes them even more hostile in Chinese eyes.

The Olympics, too, are seen as an "us-against-them" story. Foreign activists and boycott advocates are seen as malicious enemies who want to destroy the moment of China's greatest pride and prestige.

And so, while the Tiananmen Square protests rocked the Chinese leadership in 1989, the Tibet crisis of 2008 has had the opposite effect: It has strengthened the government's hand.

"In a crisis, the nationalist card is one of the most potent that the government can play," said Willy Lam, a long-time China watcher and political analyst based in Hong Kong.

"If you read the Chinese websites, there is a campaign of hatred against the Tibetans," he said. "I think it works. It enables the leadership to divert attention from the mistakes that they have made."

Despite China's toughest crisis in years, its rulers have shown far more resilience than many expected. They have won support from the country's influential middle classes, who have profited from the economic boom of recent years. They have learned how to manipulate events to create public outrage and pro-government feelings.

And they have learned how to benefit from the high-speed communications technology that is now ubiquitous in China. The technological tools that were supposed to democratize China — websites, blogs, video sites and slickly produced television channels — are actually bolstering the Communist government by allowing it to mobilize anger at foreign critics.

Howard Balloch, a former Canadian ambassador to China who now heads an investment bank in Beijing, says the Chinese government is worried about the international reaction to its handling of the Tibet crisis and the torch relay, but not the domestic reaction. "I think they know that the people support them on this," he said in an interview.

"It has buttressed their support across the whole country. I don't think they are worried about it."

External pressure on an authoritarian regime often has the unintended effect of boosting the regime's domestic power. Sanctions and embargos actually helped to strengthen the internal popularity of autocrats and dictators such as Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, Slobodan Milosevic and the mullahs of Iran.

Although some were eventually ousted, the sanctions helped them to extend their rule for years. They were able to portray themselves as the victims of hostile foreign powers, and their populations rallied around them. The foreign protests against China this spring are creating the same rally-round-the-leader phenomenon.

The irresistible saga of Jin Jing, the wheelchair angel who had part of her right leg amputated at the age of 9 because of cancer, has been useful in stoking the emotions of patriotism and victimhood in China — especially since there is a distinct lack of personal charisma among the relatively faceless members of China's Politburo.

The Chinese Internet is buzzing with thousands of homages to Ms. Jin, linking her to the fate of the nation. Many vowed to kill the protesters who had tried to seize the Olympic torch from her.

"Jin Jing, you are pretty, but your heart is even prettier," one person wrote. "We all support you. Long live the motherland!"

A blog by one of her torch-relay companions said: "Let the storm be even stronger! Our heroes are unafraid. Victory will be ours in the end!"

The story is not that the CCP and the Government of China spin the news to their advantage – the ‘news’ is spun here, throughout the West, too – to the advantage of governments, agencies, corporations and individuals like the Dalai Lama.

Nor is the story about Jin Jing.

The real story is summed up by Chinese blogger Roland Soong and Charles Burton, a former Canadian diplomat in Beijing who is now a political scientist at Brock University:

• "For the Chinese Communists, the responses from Western governments, media and citizens are immaterial, Song says. “The paramount goal of the Chinese Communists is to retain control of China, and therefore it is the response from the Chinese citizens that matter."

• "The Chinese government has been able to strengthen its credentials as a defender of Chinese nationalistic pride,” accoding to Burton. “People who were not fully supportive of the Communist Party's rule have now united strongly around the party's political agenda for Tibet. The attacks on the Olympic flame have polarized the differences between China and the West, and the West is much more demonized than before."

The important first ‘battle of the torch’ has been won by China.

The matter of how we, in the West, approach the rest of the Beijing Olympics is important. I will reiterate what I have said before:

• China matters – it is a major power, now, and will be a global superpower during the lifetime of most Army.ca members;

• China is not our enemy. It does not want to be our enemy. We do not ‘need’ China as an enemy. But: we can, by action and inaction, turn China from a ‘competitor’ to an enemy;

• Our vital interests might be summed up as “peace and prosperity” and China (as competitor, not enemy) is part of that equation;

• We need to ”engage” China at every level to make it a better place for us to do business – a better, safer, more secure market for our goods and services;

• We do not “engage” by boycotting anything; a boycott is, by definition, disengagement. Nor do we “engage” by insulting the Chinese people – and that is what a boycott of the Olympics will (not might) do.

China has a whole host of problems, including separatist movements in some provinces. Tibet has a whole host of problems – none of which, in my opinion, can be solved by returning to an inept, corrupt Buddhist theocracy. None of Taiwan, Tibet or Xinjiang are of great import to Canada or even to the West at large - not important enough to make China into an enemy. Taiwan can be, and, I believe, will be absorbed into China under a variation of the “one country, two systems” policy. Tibet and Xinjiang are, like it or not, internal Chinese matters. We can sympathize with the minorities in China but there is not, even remotely, any possible ”Responsibility to Protect” or even to hector.

 

[Kirkhill]

Edward,

While I have great respect for your opinions and share many of them, including the need for realpolitik policies that are guided by national self interest I fear that you progress too far when you state: "None of Taiwan, Tibet or Xinjiang are of great import to Canada or even to the West at large - not important enough to make China into an enemy."  That, I am afraid, sounds awfully like "....a quarrel in a far-away land between peoples of whom we know nothing.....", a Chamberlain reference I am sure you recognize.

You have argued strongly that China is not, and is not likely to become, a liberal democracy.  I concur.  You have also argued that Han Chinese society is both conservative and authoritarian.  Again I concur.  At what point does the realpolitik requirement of maintaining the peace in the interest of commerce and order become appeasement with an authoritarian regime that considers our ways as far too chaotic and disordered?

We don't always get to choose our enemies.  In fact, do we ever?

A secondary point, as you have also referenced before is that China is not a nation.  It is a State and as a State it is an Empire or nations, each claiming aboriginal territory, dominated by the Han Chinese Majority - a Majority that feels put out because the Tibetans, Taiwanese, Uighurs, Manchus etc reacted violently to the Han's kind offer to manage their lives and lands for them. While Jin Jing is doing wonders for the CCP amongst the Han I wonder if the same can be said of all the subject races?

Those internal stressors amongst the races will inevitably lead us back to Chamberlain's conundrum and require us, again to decide if we need a Chamberlain or a Churchill.

 

[Edward Campbell]

But, what's the tipping point?

I cannot believe any sane person wants to go to war with China over either Tibet or Xinjiang.

I think some, indeed many people think Taiwan is worth fighting for - so do many Chinese. I am, personally, confident that the CCP/Gov't of China doesn't want to fight over it - not anytime soon, anyway. I believe the Chinese leadership believes that Taiwan will, eventually, rejoin China without a fight. I'm guessing the Gov't of Taiwan believes the same thing.

Thus, what's the issue now?

None, I suggest.

So let's focus on our own interests that involve engaging China and making it a better market for our goods and investments.

 

[Kirkhill]

What's the tipping point?  Damfino.

That doesn't mean that at some point in the near or distant future we will not reach it.

While I share your assessment of the current government of Taiwan and the current faction that is in control of the CCP neither of those are immutable.  One changes democratically, in the open, and the other changes democratically behind closed doors.  (democracy being defined as the will of "people" not "THE people").  But both change.

I consider myself reasonably sane most of the time and while I don't see a current need, or capability (the West is pretty stretched and split) for war I could posit a casus belli in India and China debating Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan and Kashmir for control of the head waters of the Yellow, Yangtze, Mekong, Irrawady, Brahmaputra and Ganges rivers.

Or from Japan and South Korea feeling threatened if China were to successfully launch an assault on Taiwan.

In the meantime, as a good capitalist, I too will continue to make hay while the sun shines and sell the Chinese the rope with which they intend to hang me, if they can.

 

[tomahawk6]

I dont see China changing into a democracy.What they have done is liberalize some of their economic policies while cementing their political goals.The CCP runs the country and will not tolerate dissent because of the millions of non-Chinese that they control might actually demand independence.They want to merge Taiwan into their empire the only real question is will they do so by force ? The only way Taiwan willingly rejoins China is if there is democracy in full bloom and I dont ever see that happening. If the Generals get tired of waiting they will have to pick their invasion to coincide with a "friendly" administration in Washington. That day might not be far off if Obama gets into the White House.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I dont see China changing into a democracy.What they have done is liberalize some of their economic policies while cementing their political goals.

I agree 100%.

I don’t see many countries becoming democracies – and that includes most of hose, even in Latin America, that are, currently, experimenting with the system.

I know I’m repeating myself, but democracy is a whole helluva lot more than just a few free elections. It is a whole system that rests on a foundation of:

• Government with the consent of the governed – elections being he best but maybe not he only way to determine hat consent;

• A firm respect for the rule of law – in all aspects of life including politics; and

• Equality at law – for governors and the governed alike.

China has no experience with democracy. They have had and have prospered under meritocracies. Their current big problems are “rule of law” and the idea of “equality at law.” Those are problems they share with the other BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries and with about 165 of the UN’s nearly 200 members. Even a few OECD members have had a few problems making democracy work: France 1958-59 and Greece 1967-74, for example.

Democracy is delightful and people do want to decide, for themselves, how they should be governed but, as experience in Algeria, for example, showed, we might not like the results of the peoples’ choices.

 

[CougarKing]

China has no experience with democracy.

Mr. Campbell,

Well this statement would be true only if you count mainland China, proper. However, one cannot overlook Taiwan, which is very much within the greater Pan-Chinese sphere of influence, regardless of whether they become independent later on. Pres. Lee Tung-Hui got elected President in the island's first "free and fair" elections in spite of the 1996 China Missile crisis which saw the mainland taunting Taiwan. This was to be followed by his successor Chen Shui Bian in 2000, IIRC, then to the current President-elect Ma-Ying Jiu; Taiwan/the ROC thus has had a very vibrant and intense multiparty democracy since 1996- when Pres. Lee Tung Hui was just ending his emergency term as President when he took over from the late Pres. Chiang Ching-Kuo, Generalissimo Chiang-Kai Shek's son- which shows that a Han Chinese society living seperately from China- if not the China itself- is ready and compatible with Democracy.

One little thing that I'd like to add: both the waishengren and the benshengren in Taiwan, in spite of their initially diverging and later converging histories, are ethnically Han Chinese; the benshengren, although they speak a bastardized version of Fujianese/Hokien, must not be confused with the local Aboriginal peoples, like the Atayal, IIRC, who in turn are probably closer ethnically and culturally to the Northern tribes in the island of Luzon in the Philippines just to the South.

Also, are we forgetting about Hong Kong just before the 1997 handover, when the local British Colonial government led by Governor Chris Patten allowed the local Chinese to have a real election? Even though it was Tung-Chee Hwa, a local businessman with strong CCP connections (my, my, these sycophants are everywhere  :, even if he did attend the University of Liverpool), who got elected, this is yet another example of Chinese people practicing true universal suffrage.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Touché, CougarDaddy. Taiwan is, indeed, a vibrant democracy – a good demonstration that democracy and conservative values are quite compatible. Ditto, albeit to a lesser degree, for Hong Kong.

There is, I believe some very tentative grass-roots democracy experiments underway at local levels in China, per se. One of the interesting things I have observed is that CCP membership is no longer as highly prized as it once was. I know, personally, of one person who, respectfully but not at all nervously, turned down an offer of Party membership – something that would have been inconceivable 20, perhaps even 10 years ago. She thought that the rewards of Party membership were no sufficient. I think the Party is looking for ways to burnish its reputation and enhance its perceived value by allowing some local ‘democracy.’