Genuine peace and goodwill for the New Year?
Tim Swanson,
January 01, 2009
While the Obama administration will be shifting troops from Iraq to Afghanistan and continue maintaining more than 700 US military bases throughout the world, another country is using diplomacy to build peaceful relationships — without the use of troops.
This week, China not only signed a land border treaty with Vietnam but has now come out and officially said it wants to peacefully reunite with Taiwan.
They may not be libertarians, but for the past three decades they have arguably practiced a foreign policy of non-aggression, something that the West has seemingly given up on.
See also: The Peaceful Rise of China
Not only are they better capitalists, but better peacemakers too?
Michael Cecil
January 2nd, 2009 at 4:02 am
There can be no Peace without Justice.
There can be no Justice without Truth.
There can be no Truth without Revelation.
There is no Revelation without the Creator.
The Creator is NOT the ‘thinker’.
John Lowell
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:17 am
Yes, I can distinctly remember the Chinese non-aggression in Tibet in 1950 and in India in the mid 1960s. Mao looked so like Ghandi in those days. :-)
Come on, Tim.
Tim Swanson
January 2nd, 2009 at 8:22 am
Touché. I should have demarcated a cut-off date, say since 1980.
Thanks for keeping me in check.
stevieb
January 2nd, 2009 at 8:58 am
Well that would be almost 30 years.
Let’s have a look at what the U.S has been doing for the last 30 years.
Or actually – let’s not bother because we know where that will go….
Andy
January 2nd, 2009 at 10:09 am
The war in Afghanistan is lost. Those 700 U.S. bases are killing the American economy and getting us into no end of mischief in places that mean nothing to our security. I don’t see China poisoning its relations with the Arab world to take one for an ungrateful Israel. I don’t see China antagonizing Russia to benefit Georgia. The Chinese are smart. They do what is right for China. The Chinese put their country first, second, third and last, quite unlike America which does the exact opposite. China is quietly building up its economy while the U.S. squanders its blood and treasure in Iraq and a hunderd other places. If I had to bet, I would say fifty, or a hundred years from now, China will be in much better shape then America. Much better. The Chinese just look out for their own national interests. There is nothing wrong or selfish about this. America’s various ethnic lobbies and degenerate political leaders make a similar policy difficult.
Chris Baker
January 2nd, 2009 at 10:42 am
I’m embarrassed for this web site. China will show that it truly cares about peace when it stops blocking Wikipedia.
Andy
January 2nd, 2009 at 11:10 am
Internal control over your own national territory and invasion of a foreign territory are different things. By the way, Wikipedia is by no means free of bias.
John Lowell
January 2nd, 2009 at 11:33 am
But then you still would have had to explain away the last year’s – or was it the year before’s – active suppression of the Tibetan uprising. A government prepared to crack the skulls of Tibetan monks is prepared to crack the skulls of Americans. With all respect to you personally, I think its time to temper the Chinese enthusiasms.
John Lowell
January 2nd, 2009 at 11:40 am
Or, more fundamentally, when it brings to an end the official murder of newly conceived children of families with more than one offspring. Even the moral monstrosity the United States has become hasn’t stooped quite that low and, believe me, that’s saying something.
Elaine Meinel Supkis
January 2nd, 2009 at 12:12 pm
China has been playing diplomacy for the last 12 years in a classic manner. This is done to expand Chinese INFLUENCE, not military power. They know that if you expand your military power, you get more and more resistance. But China is a CREDITOR nation and they are using this power in diplomacy. Very spectacularly.
Andy
January 2nd, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Not if Americans just minded their own business. I don’t see any desire on the part of China “to crack” Canadian or Mexican skulls do you? But these countries don’t bother China. By the way John, there is a little something, you may have heard about it in your vast and broad experience. It’s called the Pacific ocean. It works great as a helmet.
Andy
January 2nd, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Are you saying you want to fight a war with China over this? What exactly are you trying to say John?
Andy
January 2nd, 2009 at 3:33 pm
And why shouldn’t they? Good for them. You can’t blame them for being smart. I DO blame America for being stupid.
timmy ramone
January 2nd, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Internally, China is a mess. A government without accountability is a government without legitimacy. Sooner or later, the house of cards will collapse.
Externally, however, China’s relations with other nations (post-1980, as mentioned, above) are a model of diplomacy and moderation. Like their electric car that sells for $22k, it’s sad to see aging totalitarians once again “showing up” the supposedly enlightened and democratic West.
Andy
January 2nd, 2009 at 4:41 pm
What “legitimacy” do the necons have? They’ve governed America for the past eight years. All the time Hong Kong was a British colony where was the demand from the Chinese there for democracy? For home rule? They were pretty much content to do business, make money and have peace order and good government. What is it about America that produces all these would-be messianic Woodrow Wilsons’s? The world doesn’t want to be remade in America’s image. The sooner Americans accept this the better.
Andy
January 2nd, 2009 at 8:52 pm
What should China do John? Have more and more people and face the constant threat of famine? Be like sub-saharan Africa? China has more then four times America’s population with substantially less arable land. Isn’t 1.4 billion people enough? In any case China’s internal policies are its concern, not ours. I think most Iraqis would be happier to see a Chinese person then an American, wouldn’t you agree?
Tim Swanson
January 2nd, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Chris, I currently live in central China. Wikipedia is not blocked.
John Lowell
January 2nd, 2009 at 9:43 pm
American imperial interference in various part of the world doesn’t of itself make for the transformation of the Chinese into venerable spiritual beings, Andy. Chinese behavior – like that of this country – is to be judged in its own right and the history makes clear that it leaves more than a little to be desired. In any case, this isn’t a kind of zero sum game, you know, one in which Chinese merit is somehow enhanced by American’s lack of it, a framework you would seem to be advancing. And precisely how it is that you imagine the United States to be “bothering” China at the moment in any way at all let alone one that our Canadians friends wouldn’t endorse completely escapes me. Presumably, we are to lay this lack of specificity at the feet of your more prosribed range of experience, eh? :-)
John Lowell
January 2nd, 2009 at 10:22 pm
“What should China do John? Have more and more people and face the constant threat of famine? Be like sub-saharan Africa?”
Wouldn’t bother me, Andy. What would bother me is if I were to become so insensitive to the intrinsic value of human life that I’d allow myself to subordinate it to considerations of the material circumstances in which it is experienced. Not familiar with yours, my upbringing forbade my choosing murder as a way to improve the conditions of my life, although I’d known all along that Al Capone felt otherwise, naturally.
“In any case China’s internal policies are its concern, not ours. I think most Iraqis would be happier to see a Chinese person then an American, wouldn’t you agree?”
Well, that would be an Iraqi internal matter, and not for my exploration, eh? :-)
Andy
January 3rd, 2009 at 1:07 am
Huh? When did I say that the Chinese are “venerable spiritual beings”? The question is which country has a more dangerous, bellicose or aggressive foreign policy. Which country has a foreign policy more likely to get its citizens killed? Are there 700 Chinese military bases ringing the globe? Does China spend as much money on “defense” as the rest of the world? Did China invade Iraq on false pretences? As for “bothering” China in ways Canadians don’t endorse (I guess Mexicans aren’t your friends) how about maintaining troops for decades in South Korea, Okinawa, etc, near her borders. How about agreeing to defend Taiwan against China, an island of no significance to America. How about bombing North Vietnam? How about bombing the Chinese embassy in Serbia? How about spy planes flying over Hainan island (which killed a Chinese pilot). How about American warships not far off Chinese waters? Would America tolerate any of this in reverse?
Andy
January 3rd, 2009 at 1:14 am
Yes John, IT WOULD BE AN IRAQI INTERNAL MATTER, if Americans WOULD leave Iraq. I’m glad you can dismiss famine and poverty so easily (you’ve probably never experienced either). But China will probably have a much higher living standard 100 years from now then other countries that allow unchecked population growth. In any case what do you want, to fight a war with China over this? It’s not America’s job to decide population growth (or not) in China.
John Lowell
January 3rd, 2009 at 3:28 am
“The question is which country has a more dangerous, bellicose or aggressive foreign policy.”
No, Andy, that wasn’t the question. The question was whether the Chinese in their own right were to be considered pristine and they are not. That was the focus of this thread as I was discussing it with Tim before you chose to intervene with these stupifying irrelevancies about the United States. The whole matter of these comparisons is a private concern of yours, it had never been an interest of mine and I don’t wish to make it one, frankly.
John Lowell
January 3rd, 2009 at 3:59 am
“In any case what do you want, to fight a war with China over this?”
Well one thing couldn’t be more clear, you want to fight a war with me over the question, eh, son? You seem to have a remarkable penchant for irrelevancies tonight, Andy, either that or you’re tipsy. As a quick re-reading will establish, Chris Baker introduced this thread with a concern about the authenticity of China’s interest in peace owing to its unwillingness to end the blocking of Wikipedia. I added one of my own with an objection to their forced abortion policies. Then, suddenly, there you were like a drunken scold on a subway at 2:30 AM demanding to know whether I was thumping the tub for war with China over the question. Get some sleep, son, the New Year’s celebration ended two days ago.
Elaine Meinel Supkis
January 3rd, 2009 at 6:22 am
Internally, the US is a total mess. Worse than China. We aren’t suppressing Tibetans, we are suppressing Palestinians, and quite violently, too.
Obvious Guy Says
January 3rd, 2009 at 10:21 pm
China is great unless you are healthy practitioner of Falun Gong – then your organs are perfect targets for forced removal after a bit of tenderizing at the end of a baton.