The area in question is just mountainous snowy nothingness. Nobody lives there, there are no resources, nothing.
The whole thing is about military importance. Basically China would be a few less mountains away from India and find it much, much easier to get troops through in event of war, strengthening their military ability over India.
But yes, this is another case of China trying to grab more and more land and being the bully boy.
China doesn't really get culture, it's not that they're immature, it's that culture is just something to be played with and have your photo taken with it. The Chinese don't get why the Tibetans and Uighurs wouldn't want to become richer and have lots of high rise apartment buildings blighting their ancient cities.
If yous see the minorities in China you see that the govt actually promotes them for tourism, that's all the are, another curiosity for the han chinese to take photos with. Like the rest of the world is their zoo.
Every country has mountainous region where no one lives. That is not a valid reason for other countries to invade the mountainous region.
I agree with the rest of your post. I find your take on Chinese approach to culture quite interesting. I want to add my thoughts on that later. For now, I will say this: the area in question is very sensitive to India. There is not a chance that India will allow China to park itself in Bhutan. If China further escalates, there will be war without a doubt.
No, it's not. My point was that this whole episode is just pointless fighting over areas where no one lives and nothing really tangible to say why it's important, other than the military point as I said.
I am certainly not backing up the Chinese on this one or saying they are valid in their assertions.
Trust me, having seen all the disputes China has, and seeing the contradictory nature in which they conduct themselves.
Taiwan is Chinese because it's historically been Chinese for thousands of years.
Tibet is Chinese because we took it in the last 60 years and it's ours. Forget that it was Tibetan historically for thousands of years.
The Diaoyu Islands are even worse. China has never, ever had a claim on the damn things, and then suddenly decides that some treaty says they're Chinese when the treaty clearly does not say that.
I don't know as much about India as I do about China. The Indians might go to war, I don't know how a mountainous war would go with China's military, that right now is developing, it's getting better, but it's not quite there. The rhetoric from the Chinese govt seems quite low key at the moment, they don't seem to be preparing the people for war that much, though I might be wrong. I think China is just playing games and seeing how far it can push and hoping to get a little nationalistic sentiment out of it.
All right. It is time to expand our conversation on Chinese culture and its implication on peace and security of countries that adjoin China. I have always attempted to explain Chinese behavior towards its neighbors through the lens of CPC. I have to admit though that understanding CPC was not enough in explaining blatant Chinese aggression towards its neighbors especially those neighbors that were not in a position to put up a fight against China.
Recently, I have been taking interest in ancient history of China along with evolution of Chinese idioms. There is an ancient Chinese idiom that goes something like this Treasuring a Jade Pendant. The origin of this idiom lies in an ancient folk lore, a tale of a poor peasant who found a Jade pendant. The poor peasant was killed and his precious Jade pendant was taken away from him by a robber. The robber who took the Jade pendant was also killed by someone else for the Jade pendant. This vicious wave continued till the Jade pendant ended up in the hands of someone who was strong enough to wear the Jade pendant openly and defend it. So in the minds of Chinese leaders Tibetans did not deserve to hold on to Tibet because they could not defend it.
Unless Chinese are convinced that India can defend the Jade pendant, Chinese will continue to push the envelope. I think India's latest move of deploying A5 nuclear missiles against China along with massive deployment of men and equipment on Indo-Tibet border is India's way of letting China know that India will defend the Jade pendant.
It's interesting, and possibly this sort of logic is what pushes the Chinese.
Looking to Taiwan, as I said, you have the article I read in Monday's edition of the Global Times, one of these govt hack newspapers. The article is "Timetable needed for unification of Taiwan" written by a Zhou Zhihuai.
"Even if the Taiwanese public wants to maintain the status quo, public opinion in the mainland requires national reunification. As far back as the 1980s, former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping raised the question: Are we going to give up reunification if Taiwan authorities refuse to negotiate with us? Does it mean the central government can no longer pursue unification if Taiwan wants to maintain status quo? Obviously not.
The great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation pushes us to set a timetable for reunification. Today's China is the closest ever to realizing the great rejuvenation."
"Peter Enav, former Taiwan correspondent for the Associated Press, believes that the mainland will use force to unite Taiwan in 2018, and conditions are increasingly mature for the mainland government to forcefully take over Taiwan."
There's a lot packed into these sentences. The first is as you have said, the presence of the Jade and China thinking it alone is strong enough to do whatever it likes.
Another point is "public opinion" which is nonsense. They do care about public opinion, however they are just as aware of manipulating public opinion as they are of caring whether the people get angry or not. The opinion is that of the CCP.
So, I think you are right to look at what the CCP thinks and wants. How they function and the inherent desire of the politicians to do better based on the way of measuring success that they themselves have set up. For example city leaders want their city to grow. You have regional capitals that are getting to 8 million and far more people and growing all the time. Growth is a sign of success. So when you become leader of the country, you carry this mentality on.
For Xi Jingping, what is his mentality?
But the CCP is perfect for China, a country that has followed the strong leader for thousands of years. They say in Russia that Democracy isn't right for them, they don't understand it. I'm not sure if this is the case, but the mentality is there.
In China, for there to be Democracy, you'd need people who can think for themselves, yet the schools are producing robots who don't think. They can do math easily, but doing critical thinking is almost impossible, they don't get it, don't understand it. They're waiting for someone to tell them the answer.
Now, looking back to Japan, why are Japan and China polar opposites? Is Confucianism something to do with this? Or did Confucianism just function differently for people with different mentalities. They do like their quotes and idioms, but often they say them, and ignore them, as if they've done something good, now time to go back to making money.
I do think there is a Chinese mentality that is all about making money first and foremost. They're good business people and will do whatever it takes to be successful, and with business you don't rock the boat. War rocks the boat if you're not strong enough. So the Chinese look to being strong, they don't care if the individual is weaker.
This is, of course, a rambling lot of interconnected things that I haven't quite managed to figure out how it all functions. It's complex.
I would guess as an easier summary, the Chinese people are different, different mentality, such a mentality impacts the CCP and influences the CCP because the leaders come from the general population, but they also need to control the general population. But they are an ambitious people, selfish in a way that means they don't really care so much about others around them, it's all about them first, but within the mentality that strength is good.
