peacefan
Gold Member
Where Xi's China is heading | CNN
Imagine, for a moment, what the world looks like to people living in China today — say, to an average couple.
edition.cnn.com
Hi, all.
i saw an article by Fareed Zakaria of CNN-US, about the feared growing dangers posed by Chinese leaders' increasing aggression, arrogance and authoritarianism on the (international) political and diplomatic stages.
since Fareed Zakaria is highly respected among US Democrats, and considering as well that ex-President Trump has also spoken up several times about the same Chinese leadership problem emerging onto the global political stage,
i believe it is now of importance to the western world and most of their allies to take another detailed look at Chinese leadership doctrines, and to formulate a way to collectively counter any actual serious problems that might arise from this new Chinese arrogance.
The Chinese want the rest of the world to believe they're strong and good at the same time, and cultural genocide (Xinjang Muslims in China) is nothing new (the Americans did that with their native Indians for instance, and then decades later allowed that culture to reflourish, and the Australians did the same with the Aboriginals, which also succesfully integrated into Aussie society after a few decades of that treatment, without ever fully losing their own culture), nor is the suppressing of terrorists, uprisings and viral dissidents via methods as harsh as torture and mass imprisonment, all of which can be considered a government's last resort measures to keep the main population of a country safe from a (sometimes-)violent minority.
However, the Chinese are actively expanding their territorial claims. South China Sea, Taiwan, southern islands of Japan, and the covert control measures they put on countries even in Africa and South America via their belt and road initiative and their crime fighting technology that is based primarily on large scale deployment of facial recognition cameras.
Personally, i am of the opinion that the Chinese, Russians, Iranians (who all have limited historical emperial desires), should be allowed a globally accepted place on the world stage, as regional- or super-powers.
If we here in the west, along with our allies like the Japanese and the Aussies allow the Chinese government to control the South China Sea, then yes, they end up with a significant cash advantage from the natural resources (oil & fish primarily) and shipping taxes that can be found there.
And it would not mean that countries like Vietnam, the Phillipines and Indonesia instantly become the lapdogs of the Chinese through pricing extortions based on oil extracted by the Chinese in the South China Sea.
These countries can buy arab oil just as easily.
And fish can be found to the south of the south china sea as well. Only the Vietnamese and the Phillipinos would have to spend just a little more on fuel to get it.
If we choose to enter into any sort of ego competition or economic war with the Chinese, well, that's frankly not up to me.
It's up to our leaders. But i think it's a very serious waste of lives and money.
Even if you manage to draw the Chinese navy and airforce into an ambush in the south china sea and/or Taiwanese strait waters,
you will be left with a post-conflict situation that includes :
- a continuation of a very large civilian cash flow from all over the world into China via the made-in-china doctrine that we've known since the 1970s or so
- a very strong scientific community in China
- a very strong military industrial apparatus in China that can build ships and subs quicker than we can over here in the west
- 1 billion Chinese very strongly pissed off about what you did to their navy.
And you can utterly forget about regime-changing China, their population has been indoctrinated to support their leaders unconditionally for well over a decade now, they have an army at least twice the size of that of the USA, and a population of 1.4 billion spread out over a very huge area.
So if you *do* go down this nasty road of militarily confronting the Chinese leadership, you'll have to isolate them (in terms of moral perception, which yes, can be done via a sustained world wide media campaign) (more than sanction them), and at the same time move the civilian production of goods that's now happening in China to countries like India, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Phillipines, Indonesia, and Thailand.
And even then, the Chinese can probably rebuild their navy and airforce at least 2 or 3 times, each time with more advanced weaponry onboard their crafts.
Hitler (who i'm bringing up here ONLY because he had a migthy military machine at the start of WW2) couldn't be defeated without the destruction of his ability to get oil, and (later) the destruction of his factories and homes for his factory workers, either.
ALL wars against empires (and powerful kingdoms, like the Egyptians at the times of the exodus) are wars of attrition, of first degrading the ability of their armies to fight, then defeating their armies and possibly the civilians that support those armies, and *then* you finally get capitulation and that total victory that you're after. But you best pay close attention to *how* you win, too. Win by using too gruesome methods, and that population will hate you for centuries instead of decades.
So : I recommend we hand over the South China Sea to Chinese leadership, and guide Taiwan[1] back into Chinese leadership hands by shifting from that 'ambiguity' doctrine to an 'advocate of self-determination rights' role (which we can also use for the muslims in Xinjang, the people of Hong Kong, and the Tibetans),
and thus allow a peaceful transfer of power to happen, rather than a violent and chaotic military take-over.
The leaders of the entire Taiwanese high tech industry will have plenty of time that way to relocate themselves and their most important staff, which is important for our computer chip dependency here all over the west.
[1] (whose leaders rose up against their fellow Chinese who rule(d) mainland China and then retreated to the island of Taiwan when they lost that war)