I am completely at a loss as to why the UK should seek to join in with the US in considering China an enemy, and in looking to build up military forces in the Pacific to oppose China.
In what sense are Chinese interests opposed to British interests? I am not sure when I last bought something which wasn’t maufactured in China. To my astonishment that even applies to our second hand Volvo, and it also applies to this laptop.
I have stated this before but it is worth restating:
I cannot readily think of any example in history, of a state which achieved the level of economic dominance China has now achieved, that did not seek to use its economic muscle to finance military acquisition of territory to increase its economic resources.
In that respect China is vastly more pacific than the United States, United Kingdom, France, Spain or any other formerly prominent power.
Ask yourself this simple question. How many overseas military bases does the USA have? And how many overseas military bases does China have?
Depending on what you count, the United States has between 750 and 1100 overseas military bases. China has between 6 and 9.
The last military aggression by China was its takeover of Tibet in 1951 and 1959. Since that date, we have seen the United States invade with massive destruction Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
The United States has also been involved in sponsoring numerous military coups, including military support to the overthrow of literally dozens of governments, many of them democratically elected. It has destroyed numerous countries by proxy, Libya being the most recent example.
China has simply no record, for over 60 years, of attacking and invading other countries.
The anti-Chinese military posture adopted by the leaders of US, UK and Australia as they pour astonishing amounts of public money into the corrupt military industrial complex to build pointless nuclear submarines, appears a deliberate attempt to create military tension with China.
Sunak recited the tired neoliberal roll call of enemies, condemning: “Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, China’s growing assertiveness, and destabilising behaviour of Iran and North Korea”.
What precisely are Iran and China doing, that makes them our enemy?
This article is not about Iran, but plainly western sanctions have held back the economic and societal development of that highly talented nation and have simply entrenched its theological regime.
Their purpose is not to improve Iran but to maintain a situation where Israel has nuclear weapons and Iran does not. If accompanied by an effort to disarm the rogue state of Israel, they might make more sense.
On China, in what does its “assertiveness” consist that makes it necessary to view it as a military enemy? China has constructed some military bases by artificially extending small islands. That is perfectly legal behaviour. The territory is Chinese.
As the United States has numerous bases in the region on other people’s territory, I truly struggle to see where the objection lies to Chinese bases on Chinese territory.
China has made claims which are controversial for maritime jurisdiction around these artificial islands – and I would argue wrong under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. But they are no more controversial than a great many other UNCLOS claims, for example the UK’s behaviour over Rockall.
China has made, for example, no attempt to militarily enforce a 200 mile exclusive economic zone arising from its artificial islands, whatever it has said. Its claim to a 12 mile territorial sea is I think valid.
Similarly, the United States has objected to pronouncements from China that appear contrary to UNCLOS on passage through straits, but again this is no different from a variety of such disputes worldwide. The United States and others have repeatedly asserted, and practised, their right of free passage, and met no military resistance from China.
So is that it? Is that what Chinese “aggression” amounts to, some UNCLOS disputes?
Aah, we are told, but what about Taiwan?
To which the only reply is, what about Taiwan? Taiwan is a part of China which separated off under the nationalist government after the Civil War. Taiwan does not claim not to be Chinese territory.
In fact – and this is far too little understood in the West because our media does not tell you – the government of Taiwan still claims to be the legitimate government of all of China.
The government of Taiwan supports reunification just as much as the government of China, the only difference being who would be in charge.
The dispute with Taiwan is therefore an unresolved Chinese civil war, not an independent state menaced by China. As a civil war the entire world away from us, it is very hard to understand why we have an interest in supporting one side rather than the other.
Peaceful resolution is of course preferable. But it is not our conflict.
There is no evidence whatsoever that China has any intention of invading anywhere else in the China Seas or the Pacific. Not Singapore, not Japan and least of all Australia. That is almost as fantastic as the ludicrous idea that the UK must be defended from Russian invasion.
If China wanted, it could simply buy 100% of every public listed company in Australia, without even noticing a dent in China’s dollar reserves.
Which of course brings us to the real dispute, which is economic and about soft power. China has massively increased its influence abroad, by trade, investment, loans and manufacture. China is now the dominant economic power, and it can only be a matter of time before the dollar ceases to be the world’s reserve currency.
China has chosen this method of economic expansion and prosperity over territorial acquisition or military control of resources.
That may be to do with Confucian versus Western thought. Or it may just be the government in Beijing is smarter than Western governments. But growing Chinese economic dominance does not appear to me a reversible process in the coming century.
To react to China’s growing economic power by increasing western military power is hopeless. It is harder to think of a more stupid example of lashing out in blind anger. It is a it like peeing on your carpet because the neighbours are too noisy.
Aah, but you ask. What about human rights? What about the Uighurs?
I have a large amount of sympathy. China was an Imperial power in the great age of formal imperialism, and the Uighurs were colonised by China. Unfortunately the Chinese have followed the West’s “War on Terror” playbook in exploiting Islamophobia to clamp down on Uighur culture and autonomy.
I very much hope that this reduces, and that freedom of speech improves in general across China.
But let nobody claim that human rights genuinely has any part to play in who the Western military industrial complex treats as an enemy and who it treats as an ally. I know it does not, because that is the precise issue on which I was sacked as an Ambassador.
The abominable suffering of the children of Yemen and Palestine also cries out against any pretence that Western policy, and above all choice of ally, is human rights based.
China is treated as an enemy because the United States has been forced to contemplate the mortality of its economic dominance.
China is treated as an enemy because that is a chance for the political and capitalist classes to make yet more super profits from the military industrial complex.
But China is not our enemy. Only atavism and xenophobia make it so.
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Hi Craig, I agree with you but it is wrong to say that “The last military aggression by China was its takeover of Tibet in 1951 and 1959.” China under Deng Xiaoping attacked Vietnam in 1979 in retribution for Vietnam’s removal of the Khmer Rouge, a Chinese ally, in Cambodia. The attack only lasted three weeks but claimed tens of thousands of Vietnamese casualties (and possibly as many casualties from the PLA). China and India also went to war in from October-November in 1962 over the disputed Aksai Chin and North-East Frontier Agency territories.
Good comment, Jack. You beat me to it – I need to start getting up earlier. Anyway, for what it’s worth, here’s my list of examples of post-1959 events in which soldiers & sailors from the P.R. China were behaving aggressively by killing people from other countries (who often were trying to kill them as well, of course), and in some instances invading other countries’ well-established territory:
First Sino-Indian War, 1962 – thousands killed fighting over rock & ice
Second Sino-Indian War, 1967 – hundreds killed fighting over rock & ice
Sino-Soviet Border Conflict, 1969 – scores killed, perhaps hundreds, in what nearly became a full-scale war
Battle of the Paracel Islands, 1974 – nearly a hundred killed in a sea-battle between China & South Vietnam over the islands
Sino-Vietnamese War, 1979 – tens of thousands killed after China invaded Vietnam trying to help out the Khmer Rouge (yep, Pol Pot’s lot)
Johnson South Reef Skirmish, 1988 – over 60 Vietnamese killed by China on an atoll in the Spratly Islands that they were attempting to occupy
China-India Skirmishes, 2020 – at least 20 killed (with clubs & rocks) in the upper Galwan valley fighting over rock & ice
Every day’s a school-day, as Jim McColl used to say on The Beechgrove Garden.
(I’ll admit that the Chinese have been fairly quiet these last 40 years compared to the US and its posse.)
Can you now write all USA interventions to balance the aggressive China.
I know that I am asking to much.
I like those 10’s and 20’s and probably 100’s killed.
Thanks for your reply PE. You’re not asking too much.
Here are the ones I can think of where members of the US armed forces have been involved in killing people since 1959. I may have forgotten about some. (* = UN Security Council authorized or in support of UN operations):
Bay of Pigs Invasion, 1961, hundreds killed
Vietnam War (including interventions in Cambodia & Laos), 1964-1973, up to three million killed
Invasion of Grenada, 1983, nearly a hundred killed
Bombing of Libya, 1986, over 60 Libyans killed
Invasion of Panama, 1989-1990, up to 3000 killed
Gulf War*, 1991, tens of thousands killed
Somalia Intervention*, 1993, over 300 killed
Haiti Intervention, 1994, over 300 killed
Bosnian Intervention*, 1995, over 50 killed
Kosovo War, 1998-1999, thousands killed
War in Afghanistan (including intervention against TTP & Haqqani Network in Pakistan), 2001-2021, circa 200,000 killed, mostly not by US armed forces
Intervention against al-Qaeda & ISIS in Yemen, 2002-present, over a thousand killed
War in Iraq, 2003-2017, hundreds of thousands killed, mostly not by US armed forces
Intervention against al-Shabaab & ISIS in Somalia, 2007-present, over a thousand killed
Intervention against ISIS in Syria, 2017-present, tens of thousands killed
My list of conflicts involving the P.R. China in my above comment was in response to this untrue sentence in the original blogpost: ‘China has simply no record, for over 60 years, of attacking and invading other countries’. The conflicts I’ve listed involving the US are mostly well known in the West – the ones involving the Chinese, not so much.
The thing with the America is that it’s generally damned if it does intervene, and it’s damned if it doesn’t: e.g. “it should have intervened in Rwanda”; “it should have intervened in Liberia”; “it should have intervened in earlier in Syria, then Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine, etc etc”; “it should have intervened in the Second Congo War, then over five million people probably wouldn’t have died before their time” (OK, fair play, that last one’s just me – most people haven’t even ****ing heard of it).
If al-Qaeda had flown airliners into two skyscrapers in Shanghai killing thousands of Chinese, and Mullah Omar had refused to hand over OBL to them, I suspect that the P.R. China’s foreign body count would be much higher. Maybe in 60 years’ time, it will have a similar tally to the US – or maybe it won’t. As Zhou En-Lai said of the effect of the French Revolution on world history: it is too early to tell.
Forgot about Libya, 2011-present – tens of thousands killed, mostly not by US forces.
An impassioned defence of US policymakers. One can only conclude from all that that Washington is unfairly maligned while Beijing, notwithstanding its peacemaking, is not to be trusted. Highly reminiscent of the clear eyed wisdom I see from our parliamentarians and commentariat.
Thanks for your reply Jay. How exactly is listing the numbers of people estimated to have been killed in conflicts involving the US (and quoting the high-ball number in the case of Vietnam) a defence of US policymakers, let alone an impassioned one? For the record, I would have been against US involvement in all of them, apart from the Gulf War and Somalia (and probably Vietnam too, but only before it became obvious that the US couldn’t win).
Today’s America is not the America of 20 years ago. It’s getting tired of always thinking of itself as being the world police, especially as it gets little credit for it. It’s getting tired of policing its own country as well: in several states, they’ve essentially given up fighting the War on Drugs, even though drugs like fentanyl are much more deadly than anything that was around two decades ago.
However, today’s China is not the China of 20 years ago either. In the unlikely event that I’m still alive, I will reserve judgement for another 60 years.
I would posit Washington gets nothing *but* credit for its policing, although that is hardly the word I would use to describe it. Certainly from every corner of mass media and mainstream liberal & conservative politics. Or from the only voices considered legitimate and respectable and that monopolize public discourse.
Nor do I see any suggestion in Washington’s words and actions of the past year of some diminished appetite for warmongering. On the contrary they are more fanatical and dangerous than ever, having shifted focus from low hanging fruit in the mideast and Latin America to provoking/ gearing up for WW3 on two fronts.
Btw what justification was there for US “involvement” in Vietnam, other than the fact its people were about to vote overwhelmingly to improve their lot?
Thanks for your reply Jay. If you think the US gets nothing but credit for its foreign policy, I have no idea what you’re reading or listening to. The 20th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War has just passed. I haven’t found a single puff piece for it in the British press – maybe I’m not looking hard enough – and Bush & Dick haven’t dared to show their faces in public.
Rather than rushing headlong into World War III, the Biden administration have been taking a fairly cautious approach to Ukraine, if you ask me. Despite pleas from the Ukrainians, along with Poland and the Baltics, they’re still not prepared to send them any planes or long-range ATACMS missiles, even though previous threats from the Russians about nuclear escalation have so far proved hollow, and as every parent knows, if you issue threats and then don’t carry them out if need be, pretty soon it’s as if you haven’t made any at all.
Unlike North Vietnam, South Vietnam never signed the Geneva Accords of 1954, so was under no obligation to hold any free and fair elections, whether they would have improved its people’s lot or not. I never claimed it was a democracy, even though it pretended to be. Nevertheless, it was entitled not to have the North interfering in its politics by (openly) supporting and aiding the murderous Viet Cong – especially as it hadn’t interfered in the politics of the North – and was entitled to ask the US or anyone else for help in combating them, just as the Assad regime in Syria was entitled to ask the Russians for help in my book. That said, the US only really got involved after the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
I’m in a bad mood since, despite managing to keep him safe for three whole years, my dad has just tested positive for Covid and currently has mild symptoms. Let’s hope that the ivermectin, vitamin D etc does its job, as I’d rather he doesn’t end up in the local antibiotic-resistant bacteria factory.
Oh boy, so it’s IRAQ they haven’t received enough credit for ‘policing’!? Or is it their policing/ genocide of Vietnam? Or both? No doubt policing is also how you regard their ceaseless antagonism of Russia and China. Just well-intentioned policing in pursuit of global security, freedom and democracy or some such. A speedy recovery to your dad but I can see I’m wasting my time.
“If al-Qaeda had flown airliners into two skyscrapers in Shanghai killing thousands of Chinese, and Mullah Omar had refused to hand over OBL to them, I suspect that the P.R. China’s foreign body count would be much higher.”
That’s a completely unfounded supposition. The USA’s knee-jerk reflex is to go to war, as Tom Lehrer pointed out in his song “Send the Marines” back in the 60’s:
“When someone makes a move,
Of which we don’t approve,
Who is it that always intervenes?
UN and OAS,
They have their place, I guess,
But, first, send the Marines!”
and nothing has changed since. That doesn’t mean all countries are like that. The US’s military response to the World Trade Centre destruction completely failed to capture Osama Bin Laden, who was eventually killed using the sort of secret services operation that could have achieved the same result without a war.
Thanks for your reply Jay. Please read carefully what I wrote in my above comment: ‘It’s getting tired of always *thinking of itself* as being the world police [my emphasis]’. Twenty years ago, the idea that the US shouldn’t intervene in conflicts without Security Council backing was an idea on the Ron Paul fringe of the Republican Party; today it’s mainstream MAGA politics – and many of them think it shouldn’t intervene in foreign disputes even with UN support. I never said that I think the US should be, or have been, the world’s police. You’re putting words in my mouth.
The US wasn’t trying to commit genocide in Vietnam, it was trying to help the South Vietnamese – just as the Russians have been trying to help Assad’s regime in Syria, which I support. I don’t support the US’s intervention against ISIS in Syria, because it hasn’t been invited by the regime. The Russians & the US may have committed war crimes in Syria, which I don’t support, but neither has been committing genocide. North Vietnam could have stopped the Vietnam War in its infancy by withdrawing its support for the Viet Cong, and later on, by withdrawing its army from South Vietnam.
As for your claim that the US gets nothing but credit from the media for its foreign policy, apropos the 20th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, this was published this week in the UK security services’ house journal:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/19/violence-us-invasion-iraq-bombs-al-qaida-islamic-state
After a rough night, my dad says he’s feeling a bit better this morning. Thanks for your good wishes.
————
Thanks for your reply Bayard. If the US had had the foresight to install troops on the Spin Ghar mountain passes into Pakistan, they probably would have captured or killed OBL in late 2001, and then left Afghanistan fairly soon after.
“If the US had had the foresight to install troops on the Spin Ghar mountain passes into Pakistan, they probably would have captured or killed OBL in late 2001, and then left Afghanistan fairly soon after.”
Quite possibly, but method of OBM’s eventual capture and death still shows that the invasion of Afghanistan was completely pointless if its raison d’etre was to capture him.
“Rather than rushing headlong into World War III, the Biden administration have been taking a fairly cautious approach to Ukraine, if you ask me.”
A cautious approach would be not to have got involved in the first place. What possible reason has the US to be interfering in Ukraine, a country with which it does not have a formal alliance and which is on the other side of the world?
These were not wars , your other chosen word skirmishes is more accurate , if China had gone to war with these countries you would not be describing them as you have, yes people were killed but in the real world people are killed virtually every day in skirmishes around this planet and wars never last a few weeks
Thanks for your reply Terence. If you think that the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979 was a skirmish, it’s time to buy a new dictionary.
Re: ‘wars never last [for only] a few weeks’. All-out nuclear war between NATO and Russia (or P.R. China for that matter) will last a few hours at most.
Far from surrounding distant countries with military bases, couping their governments or invading them, bombing ,fuelling wars, etc, China is seeking to reconcile bitter enemies far from its borders and bring peace to the world. Witness not just its peace plan for Ukraine but its (cynically undereported) reconciliation of Saudi Arabia and Iran. Contrast that with the words and actions of western leaders, especially Anglophone ones. We are being instructed yet again by the world’s worst actors to believe that good is evil and night is day.
just something I like to add to this discussion among Europeans; China means 1,4 billion human beings.
That´s 3 times of what Europe has, without Russia and Ukraine, the territory is comparabe to what we have between Spitzbergen and Algiers, (if we count North Africa/Mediterranean in) and Lisbon and Istanbul.
How many fights and bloodshed did we experience on this territory since 1990?
How foreign is one place to the other?
How many quarrels did we have, and yet, these are mostly rich nations, many of them colonial powers not too long ago, enriching themselves with other people’s work and natural resources.
It does occur to me as odd to refer to China in terms of Belgium or France.
As far as solving problems is concerned, sustaining human rights, statehood etc.
I mean not the absolute validity of them. But what is day to day reality.
French police is corrupt and racist. Its prisons are awful.
I don´t know about England.
The Covid crises has multiplied the number of billionaires in France while the number of the poor has as well exploded.
In Germany 50% own 99.5% of the nation’s wealth. The other 50% own 0.5% (sure they don´t tell you that on the daily news).
Immigrants are dying at “our borders” day after day. People who want to help them are threatend with prison.
Since 2022 NATO has included immigration as a major threat to “our” security. So North Africans are now on par with atomic powers like Russia and China. They will surely be proud.
In Italy´s harbour cities, Africans are hunted. In the North of France they live in camps like small towns.
Not to speak about Hungary, Poland or Greece.
And I don´t want to get into the civil war history business on European soil.
Enough experts on that subject here, too.
Good points AG , global warming causes destruction prevents people making a life so they have to move , if you have to move with no prospect of return you are as well to make it a one off move and if you cannot take all your belongings with you it’s best you go to the wealthiest countries and the countries that have welfare benefits that will give you a start or black market work that will give you a start.
The eu started off well enough helping refugees but then the refugees kept coming so instead of stepping up and offering more help they put up the barriers , U.K. was first to do this , awful selfish behaviour I’m ashamed of holding a U.K. passport .
Who will present themselves capable of reaching , galvanising and leading a rising up of the poor and working people against the monied minority that makes the decisions we suffer
Another article on par for Mr. Murray when the topic is NOT related to Scottish politics or Julian Assange:
1) The “heart” is in the right place, and the main thrust of the article is true, but…
2) Forgot a number of important facts (1979 in Vietnam, 1962 war with India, etc) and
3) Fooled by a piece of Western propaganda (Uighurs)
Just wish you had an editor, is all I’m saying 🙂
So You are in the Team of Warmongers..DO YO KNOW THAT this is Life on Earth Situ..
I can Post Points Too ..if you want to go down that path …
I am being sentimental, but this is touching:
Dan Ellsberg and Noam Chomsky, part 2:
A bit about China, but that’s more in part 1 –
Second half has interesting things on Nixon and Pentagon Papers post their publication:
https://znetwork.org/zvideo/take-arms-against-a-sea-of-troubles-chomsky-and-ellsberg-pt-2-2/
Some factual errors in this article, Craig. Others have pointed out the Sino-Vietnamese war of 1979. Also it’s incorrect to say that “The government of Taiwan supports reunification just as much as the government of China, the only difference being who would be in charge.”
Technically the ROC claims to be the government of China, for one reason only – if they drop that claim the PRC will take it as a declaration of independence and invade. In fact the ROC government has long since abandoned any intent to reassert authority over the mainland, and statements have been made to that effect. I don’t have time now to dig them up.
It seems Western political thought is slow to learn from experience. We’ve been down this road at least twice before with dire consequences. The first time was fear of rising German economic dominance which brought about WW1, then we have NATO’s aggressive posturing after the demise of the USSR by siting yet more missile bases around Russia, which has brought about the current war in Ukraine. And now China. It beggars belief.
I worked for large multinational companies in 90’s and 00’s and I watched them close down factory after factory in the US and Europe and ship the manufacturing to China.
I remember thinking at the time this will just make China strong and us weak. And all so some executives can grow the bottom line and make a killing on their stock options. And that is exactly how it worked out.
It was Wall St and the City that made China into an industrial powerhouse and now they are bleating about China becoming a threat… I am so sick of these w@nkers to be honest.
They screwed over the workers in their home countries. People who often after decades of service were told that if they wanted to get redundancy payments they would have to train their foreign replacements before they would be eligible.
High ranking people in the US talk openly about wanting to break up Russia and then move on to China. And then wonder why Russia and China become much stronger allies.
We are witnessing a massive geo-political change right now and the ‘West’ has horrifically miscalculated. This is the end of the US unipolar dream and the rebirth of a new multipolar age. And the US/West has actually precipitated it.
China will never do what the West did and ship its manufacturing base back to the West. They are not stupid greedy dirtbags like Wall St etc. and unlike Wall St they actually have some loyalty to their own population.
Seymour Hersh’s revelations on the Nord Stream bombings are ignored. Norway and the US were the main players in blowing up a crucial piece of energy infrastructure of an EU state. German pensioners will have died in higher numbers this winter as a result of that action. It is an astonishing thing to have done to a supposed ‘ally’. And shows what Germany still is, an occupied country.
The US is prepared to fight to the last Ukrainian life. Hundreds of thousands of mostly men have died in a completely unnecessary war that the West engineered and systematically provoked. It is shocking that this is being done on mainland Europe in 2023.
It may not seem so right now but this folly is going to seriously endanger both the EU and NATO. The UN in its current format is also as good as redundant.
What has to be understood is that the US is not the greatest military power on earth but it has the most hyperactive secret service busily operating the three Bs – Bullying, Bribery and Blackmail – to make sure that leaders of other countries act in accordance with US wishes and weaken themselves by acting against their own interest. In weakened debt-drenched Europe where our economies are deeply entangled with the US, this works very smoothly.
So, of course, we have no interest in quarrellng with Russia, Iran or China. we have a big interest in trading with them especially post Brexit but the US arranges things with our élites so that we weaken ourselves. The US pressures things so that the City of London’s major asset, an independaet legal system, makes decisions that weaken us as with the Venezuelan Gold Reserves or the case of Julian Assange. Germany must be complicit in blowing up its own pipeline. The EU must impose sanctions that damage the EU.
It is time to rid ourselves of the American incubus that is smothering us and the rest of Europe.
The UK political/media class knows that the British Army had to be bailed out by US troops in both Basra and Helmand, having previously assured the Americans the BA was the world’s preeminent counterinsurgency force. They know those humiliations were against young men riding bicycles wearing sandals. They know it happened *before* the swingeing cuts to the MoD throughout the 2010s. They know all of this very well but still perpetuate a fantasy where Britain is a global military power that should be escalating its taunts and provocations of Russia and China. This is considered completely sensible behavIour right across British public life and any questioning it is considered aberrant and naive.
Everything you say about China, I would also apply to Russia.
Not our circus, not our monkeys. Our EU friends never offer to assist or materially subsidise us for disadvantages of peripheral geographical location, or historical and current obligations to colonial countries and populations.
Their eastern flank is not our issue until an actual NATO member is attacked.
Hobson (1902) in his prescient way offers a cogent explanation for making China an enduring enemy long before communism took over. “It is the organised attempt of Western nations to break through this barrier of passive resistance, and to force themselves, their wares, their political and industrial control, on China that gives importance to Imperialism in the Far East”. (Imperialism p 295) China has always been a hard nut for the capitalist rapists and plunderers to crack, and we all know what happens when they don’t get their own way.
China, like Russia, does not like having democracies along its borders, lest the viruses of democracy and human rights spread and cause problems for these countries. You mention the industrial military complex, but China has one too, and it is rapidly developing its military capacity. The problem is how to dial down the arms race and rein in the military on all sides. Treaties and negotiation are the best way to do this. With regard to the strength of the Chinese economy, do we really know the precise figures? Are we to trust what the Chinese government tells us? The US economy is not going to decline any time soon. The US and EU economies are strong because speech and expression of opinion is relatively free. Bad news and contrary opinions compete through argument, allowing more often for right decisions to be made. In a dictatorship, if you are critical you are locked up, so people are afraid to speak out and so poor decisions are made.
James ‘the US economy is not going to decline any time soon’. Well no, it is blowing up the EU/Germany’s main economic base, a NATO country sh…ing in its own tent and wonder what the smell is. Norway and US frackers are making a mint on our cost of living crisis.
It’s all economies going down, world wide, and harvests are failing due to the climate situation we accelerate so well. There comes a point when we have to stop playing the strong man; we are not invincible or strong.
Very Well Said nevernind .X
“China, like Russia, does not like having democracies along its borders, lest the viruses of democracy and human rights spread and cause problems for these countries.”
Indeed, “democracy”, as practised by the West and “human rights” as asserted by the same, are not democracy and human rights. Calling them viruses is about right. “Democracy” always means “oligarchy”, with the oligarchs almost invariably chosen by those who were so keen to promote “democracy” in the first place. This was known, even in ancient Athens. Since nearly all “democracies” are allied to or under the control of the West, it has become no more than a label to delineate that fact. China is right to be suspicious of such “democracies”: they have declared themselves its enemies.
“Human rights” are, again, almost invariably the projection of a foreign philosophical heritage onto another country in the arrogant assertion that these particular ideas are both true and universal. They are so are from being universal, that the countries that shout loudest about them are usually the ones honouring them more in the breach than the observance.
Bayard
I believe you would like this video by American Psychologist talking numbers regarding USA democracy.
Average USA Senator is a white male worth 14 Million $.
John Kroth: The myth of American democracy (13 Jun 2012) – YouTube 15m 34s
If we were living in china, Russia or Saudi Arabia we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. I’m not saying the US is perfect, but I’d rather be living there than in those other countries.
The trajectory in the West for the past generation has been ever more grotesque inequality and declining living standards. Any political efforts to try and reverse that are demonised and quashed. In China policymakers are not popularly selected (nor are they here) but policy has not been enacted solely to benefit the rich. The material conditions of hundreds of millions there have been dramatically transformed for the better in the past 40 years. Moreover cheap Chinese goods have been a lifeline for hundreds of millions in the west as wages stagnate and living standards decline (no matter what colour tie the “popularly” selected leaders are wearing).
You must be new here, or you would know that there is at least one Russian citizen who regularly joins in to these conversations without any problems.
“The US and EU economies are strong”.
Have a look at this to see how strong some of the economies of various nations are.
https://www.usdebtclock.org/world-debt-clock.html
Nothing to do with free speech, more to do with debt, printing money and corrupt governments.
Whilst China focuses on its country and people the west focuses on profit. This model guarantees China will prosper and the west will decline.
As an aside, the EU ‘economy’ can safely be ignored because it is run out of Washington, like the UK.
Interesting to see that the countries with the lowest public debt to GDP ratio and the lowest external debt to GDP ratio are none other than our two bogeymen, Russia and China.
GDP is a shit metric anyway, much better is gross added value as an indicator of the size of the part of an economy that matters, i.e. manufacturing. China has almost twice the share of the US of the total global GAV. What was that about why would China be an enemy again?
James Chater, the US economy is not going to decline anytime soon because it already did. Ain’t no place left to go on that downward slope. As for “speech and expression of opinion is relatively free” you should, having barf bag handy, listen to an NPR broadcast sometime. NPR, and PBS on TV, are nearly entirely privately funded now–thank you Republicans–and the funders tell the news teams what to say. Private censorship can be just as bad as public, just as private taxation costs you just as much as public.
James Chater:
“In a dictatorship, if you are critical you are locked up, so people are afraid to speak out.”
Mexican president AMLO to Britain and USA in a speech yesterday:
“if you’re talking about freedom of speech, why do you have Assange in jail?”
James Chater , you are in dreamland , get real
Who are The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), London? Look a right bunch of killers. Don’t fancy their chances against a tidy bunch of Tai Chi experts able to transmit earth force though. All the better China propose 5 Principles for Peaceful Coexistence. In addition, what says the world about their 12 point plan for a diplomatic solution to UKR/Rus? Again I found a mention of it on the Schiller Institute website here
https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2023/03/06/world-war-iii-or-peace-support-chinas-peace-plan/
Peace plan https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/202302/t20230224_11030713.html
And then there’s Eric X Li, investor and political scientist, who says there’s more than one way to run a successful modern nation.
Ah well, watch your back
RUSI is just a MI6/CIA/MIC ‘think tank’ populated with war pig, faux academics.
Stevie Boy.
The RUSI is funded by The Smith Richardson Foundation, a CIA front that Funds thinks tanks are other bodies.
Very good and necessary piece. Unfortunately your very obvious question is not being posed by any political party or mainstream journalist, despite the vast amounts of public money being squandered on this highly dangerous and ludicrous posturing. This is not normal. Even on the British Right this insanity about China is quite recent. During Cameron’s reign there were very good relations. And why wouldn’t there be? China poses no threat and is the world’s economic collosus. There was always clucking from Guardian type chickenhawks about human rights, all in extreme bad faith once you recognise their tolerance of abuses by any regime Britain props up. Yet with Brexit you’d have expected both elite factions would have been anxious to maintain good relations with the world’s industrial and trading juggernaut. Instead they went the other way. For no logical reason they suddenly tightly aligned with Washington’s super aggression towards China. I know very obvious questions are not encouraged about British foreign policy, but will we ever as a country receive some discernible reward for all this counterintuitive subservience? What the hell is it all for?
Having enemies creates the kind of fear that gives popular political support. For example, Bibi Netanyahu and Hamas were made for each other, each gives justification to the other for existence. I thought for a long time that Netanyahu was as bad for Jews as Arabs and he is now proving that. The USA & Iran seemed the same to me, after the 1979 takeover of the US embassy in Tehran by armed Iranian students taking US staff as hostage, the US maintained a vendetta against the Iran government. Again each side found benefit in that by gaining home support, otherwise I suspect we would not still have this extreme theocratic government in Iran. I am sure you are right about the US dollar dominance, which may have been a big factor in the 2003 Iraq regime change. Of course there are human rights issues for China, but that same issue does not stop us being friends with the Saudi government. Could it be that we want to push China and Russia together? Keep the war in Ukraine simmering?
It wanted only this:
“Their purpose is not to improve Iran but to maintain a situation where Israel has nuclear weapons and Iran does not. If accompanied by an effort to disarm the rogue state of Israel, they might make more sense”
It wasn’t enough to have the govts. of both the UK and Scotland mad at you, now you want to offend Israel? Mr. Craig, I don’t know whether to admire your courage or shake my head over terminal – I do not use the term lightly – foolhardiness. Maybe, as a former diplomat, you know where some inconvenient bodies are buried? I do hope so.
Israel has long had an illegal nuclear weapons programme. Recent reports by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem have all designated Israel an apartheid state. Beyond its borders it has been incessantly bombing Syria in violation of international law.
In a sane world it would be controversial to say Israel isn’t a rogue state.
Mary Bennett
Israel you say, don’t you mean the oppressive, apartheid, occupying military force, even the ex-apartheid state of South Africa has taken a stance against those murderous oppressors. If the Chinese-brokered deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran (normalise relations) can hold and the US and “Israel” will try and undermine it, then the Israeli/oppressor government will not be able to throw its weight about in the region with the ease that it has done so in the past.
Mary Bennett , if you don’t see the evil in Israel you have lost the thread of life as it is , Israel a country that laughably claims to be religious at the same time killing Arab people of all ages because they try to stand up to the bullying occupation of their land.Go to Israel see Palestine watch the behaviour of Israeli people, you will be followed , questioned , unable to equate their behaviour with the religious vigour.
Worth remembering that Israel has nuclear weapons precisely because of the never-ending threats by Iran (primarily) to wipe Israel off the map.
No doubt a happy result for many of the posters on here, but maybes even they might concede it’s not a result the Israelis are just going to sit there and accept.
JM: “… never-ending threats by Iran (primarily) to wipe Israel off the map.”
Never-ending threats? Then it will be easy for you to reference one. Just the one will do. Thanks in advance!
It was a (probably deliberate) mistranslation of the Persian. The correct translation was “disappear from the map”, in the passive.
Trouble is, it doesn’t appear that Ahmadinejad was talking about the country of Israel either, the reference is to the regime in the apartheid state of Israel, or the militant racist ideology of Zionism. I don’t think it says anything about maps either – it was “the pages of time”. There was no military context to the statement.
Kind as your contribution was, Laguerre, I was hoping that John would – for once – actually look for actual sources for the ‘facts’ he has no doubt heard talked about a lot, but are not actually true.
John Main
“Worth remembering that Israel has nuclear weapons precisely because of the never-ending threats by Iran (primarily) to wipe Israel off the map.”
If you are going to”remember” something can you at least “remember” rightly?
Israel “acquired” atomic strike capability a long time before the 1979 revolution occurred, say mid sixties- a time when an American puppet Shah made no pronouncements regarding Israel, without checking with the puppeteers in Foggy Bottom and Langley.
JFK was against an “atomic” Israel as his correspondence with Ben-Gurion amply demonstrates. Some recent historians have a proposed a causal link between the assassination and Israel’s “acquisition” of such genocidal weaponry
Much of what ails the world today is down to US foreign policy, and the doing down of China is no different, the US wishes to maintain its hegemony around the globe and Washington sees China as a threat to its dominance, so its answer is to “persuade” its allies (a loose term for those who don’t want to fall foul to US sanctions or aggression) to see China in the same light.
Australia has always had problems with UK interference. Gough Whitlam is testament to that. However, as ex- Aussie PM Paul Keating has said, China isn’t a threat to Australia, in fact it’s the opposite – a good trading partner. However the UK and the US – the latter protecting its hegemony – is using Australia as the tip of the spear in an economic and possibly at a later date physical war against China, Keating’s sees through this and the utterly mad A$368 billion AUKUS sub deal.
The conflict in Ukraine has sped the division economically between East and West, and the East has created its own bodies in the SCO and BRICS etc, which again challenges US and Western dominance.
As for the Uyghurs in China, of which I’ve read that their living conditions have thrived since the 1950s – more schools, doctors and dentists etc., wjth good rates of employmen – again I’d say that the West has highlighted any indiscretions by the Chinese authorities because the BRI has/will run through the Uyghur region of Xinjaing.
Scotland on independence should not look upon China or Iran for that matter as an enemy; they’re not – Iran has suffered at the hands of the US, from coups to sanctions – and let’s not forget Iran is a founding member of the UN. The wise and fair King Cyrus the Great had a scroll created on human rights, or a form of it thousands of years ago; a replica of this scroll was given to the UN, to remind it of its remit.
As ‘we’ all know (?), the USA hegemonic playbook uses the British Empire tactic of ‘divide and Conquer’. NGOs creep into a state and start targeting and funding groups where there may be an element of dissatisfaction, actual or manufactured, this is then held up as a popular colour uprising which enable sanctions to be applied. Also any whiffs of socialism in smaller, poorer states are counteracted by the IMF and World Bank that ensures all assets are sold off to the capitalist sharks ensuring whole populations are reduced to poverty – or ‘democracy’, as we know it. These tactics have been applied across the planet by the USA to destroy any economic progress in states that threaten the hegemon – Eg. Hong Kong, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Iran, UK, China, Russia – they will also be applied to Scotland. The registration of foreign agents (FARA) is popular in the USA but apparently not permitted in Georgia where the activities of NGOs might be exposed. So obvious, but so invisible to many.
I agree Stevie Boy, you only have to look at South and Central America to see just how bad consecutive US administration on foreign policy have been in that sphere of the world, looking across Europe, well most of it and the UK, you could be forgiven for not thinking that the Monroe Doctrine applies there as well such has been the subservience of both with the Ukraine/Russian conflict in mind.
Craig is right. And China’s economic fortunes are largely dependent on its tremendous investments in ports (via operating concessions) and shipping without which its massive trade flows would be unable to move. Six of the world’s top-10 container ports today are in China handling a third of global box trade. This port infrastructure has all been created in the last 30 years. Chinese companies such as Hutchison and China Merchants also invest in new container ports globally. Hutchison Ports own and operate the UK’s biggest port Felixstowe and several large terminals on the continent.
In contrast, England’s Tories sold off Scotland’s main central-belt ports (together with the port authority regulatory functions) over 30 years ago, and which have hardly seen any major new infrastructure investment since, hence little trade growth either. The capital Edinburgh can’t even berth big cruise ships that wish to call, so ship calls are limited. High port prices also dissuade trade.Here the standard global port concession model was ignored. This depends on retaining a public port authority to plan future development and allow for and manage terminal concessions to bring in private operators and investment. What we have in Scotland is what my continental maritime research colleagues termed ‘the Anglo Saxon’ model of port development. Continental ports also adopt the standard port concession model run by public port authorities, hence they get the investment and terminals run by the best global operators.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S221053951300076X
Absolutely spot on Craig. Indeed It is suggested in some quarters that Australia only signed up to AUKUS because they were scared ****less about what the USA would do to them if they didn’t.
why is Britain going along with this? because that is what good lapdogs do. same reason it went along with Iraq 2, and the same reason it is all in on the proxy war in Ukraine.
The US are a, warmongering bastard nation just like the British before them.
China is powering forward in economic development. The United States is receding. And of course, the UK is in even greater decline.
The world is therefore changing. Yes the US may be a military super power but it is no longer the world economic superpower. Economic power is the key to success, to prosperity, and China has that key whereas the US doesn’t.
And Great Britain is just a Buster flush hanging onto the US coat tails as it slides down the orl league tables.
Good summary Craig.
Willie , well said
“The anti-Chinese military posture adopted by the leaders of US, UK and Australia as they pour astonishing amounts of public money into the corrupt military industrial complex to build pointless nuclear submarines, appears a deliberate attempt to create military tension with China.”
Like this, perhaps? Australia’s Defence Policy Explained – Whisper555 (10 Aug 2020) – YouTube, 1m 31s
We know geopolitics evolves in a space akin to a children’s playground where a gang of US neo-thugs are miffed that the Ukraine ruse to break and bankrupt Russia has failed under economic support and sincere friendship from China while Iran is willing to add muscle to defeat the Anglo bullies who will supply a nuclear component against Russia without an iota of thought for the DU contamination it caused in Iraq that resulted in hundreds of deformed babies. Bravo Craig for a succinct and timely post.
Maybes we’re still waiting for Russia to spare an iota of thought for us Europeans who were on the receiving end when they blew up Unit 4 at Chernobyl in 1986.
It’s been a long wait.
How many deformed babies from that snafu?
Truth is they are so far away from sparing any thoughts at all that they have been toying with the idea of a repeat performance, with their constant shelling of the rest of the plant.
A bit rich of the Russians to start bleating about some splashes of DU, should that ever come about. Especially as any such splashes will be in somebody else’s sovereign, national territory.
If the Russians are so concerned about radioactive contamination, they should fuck off back to their own country.
Maybe if the USA/UK/EU is so concerned about democracy and sovereignty they should fuck off back to their own cuntries !
I was unaware USA/UK/EU were currently aggressively occupying Russia.
Because they’re not.
Let me guess – you’re just another one who thinks the free, sovereign, nation of Ukraine has no right to exist.
Just another one who thinks that freedom and self-determination belong only to the ideologically pure. With you the only one qualified to administer the ideological purity test.
“I was unaware USA/UK/EU were currently aggressively occupying Russia.”
Not yet, but they are trying and their first step is to aggressively occupy Ukraine via a ‘colour revolution’ without which Ukraine would have remained a free sovereign nation instead of being ruled by a nazi infested puppet regime controlled from Washington, which then made war on those parts of the Ukraine which remained sovereign and free, namely Crimea and the Donbass. This then made a humanitarian intervention necessary by Russia. Hopefully there will be a free sovereign Ukraine, in those parts where it’s wanted, once the USA/UK/EU are out of the picture.
You encapsulated the truth Johnny and we note the US/UK lies have evaporated as insight expands.
US are currently aggressively occupying Syria and Iraq. It’s not relevant whether it is Russia or not.
“I was unaware USA/UK/EU were currently aggressively occupying Russia.”
From Wikipedia “The military of the United States is deployed in most countries around the world, with between 160,000 to 170,000 of its active-duty personnel stationed outside the United States and its territories.”
The US may not be aggressively occupying Russia, but having that number of military stationed abroad shows that they are occupying quite a lot of other places, before you even get to places like Syria, which they definitely are “aggressively occupying”. That’s an awful lot of fucking off back to their own cuntry.
“humanitarian intervention necessary by Russia”
Good one, but not the best.
Best one I have heard so far is that the Russian military is enthusiastically blowing Ukrainian kids to bits to save them from a fate worse than death at the hands of Western paedos and girly men.
You’re going to have to up your game.
“nazi infested puppet regime controlled from Washington”
Do you have to type that out in full, or have you set up a single-click function key?
“Best one I have heard so far is that the Russian military is enthusiastically blowing Ukrainian kids to bits to save them from a fate worse than death at the hands of Western paedos and girly men.”
Do I hear the sound of a barrel being scraped? I’d give up if I were you. Other commenters do this kind of thing so much better than you and even they are pretty lame.
JM: “Best one I have heard so far is that the Russian military is enthusiastically blowing Ukrainian kids….[]” etc. etc.
My word, you have the most impeccable sources! Rather explains your rather, erm, curious world view.
Craig Murray: I cannot readily think of any example in history, of a state which achieved the level of economic dominance China has now achieved, that did not seek to use its economic muscle to finance military acquisition of territory to increase its economic resources.
China itself in the past, say 500 to 1000 or 1500 years ago was usually another example. Occasional invasions of Korea and Japan, but they at best didn’t hold and usually failed. Rome after Augustus’s conscious decision to cease expansion is another famous example.
But there is an obvious recent example. The USA from 1920-1950 say:
From Barbara Ward’s The International Share-Out, Thomas Nelson (1938):
“After a period of marked imperialist ambition at the close of last century, it has now abandoned interest in overseas expansion and is actively engaged in liquidating those obligations such as the Philippine Islands, which it incurred some thirty years ago . . . A special category must be reserved for the United States, which is neither decadent nor static but actively “contractionist.”
My guess is that New Left writers like Chomsky, Zinn & the Kolkos bear responsibility for ignorance of the obvious. Most on the internet and by now elsewhere get a great deal of history from them and their imitators. But much “New Left” history was just refried tropes and smears of the old extreme Right aimed against the realer “Old Left” of the New Deal, social democracy – and the Soviets too, for all their faults. Basically, the New Left & far more, that it influenced- got played by the Right.
The USA then and likely China & Rome understood that military acquisitions did not increase economic resources, but were a drain. At best they would increase the wealth of an imperialistic capitalist class, while diminishing national wealth.
The USA couldn’t have been “actively “contractionist.” if it hadn’t been “actively expansionist” beforehand. Your example in no way contradicts Craig’s point. All imperial expansion is driven by the desire to increase access to resources. The fact that some empires realise that some territory is not worth the trouble of holding it and contract is neither here not there. By that time they had already sought “to use its economic muscle to finance military acquisition of territory to increase its economic resources.” In any case, being contractionist didn’t stop the USA from being warlike.
No, that example is quite apposite. One can always cavil, but there is no essential way that today’s China is more pacifist and non-imperialist than the rather similar interwar USA. You can’t become a great power without amassing some territory. A phase of expansion is a given, a logical necessity. The USA’s phase of active expansionism outside of what became US states had been rather short and did not amount to all that much. One could criticize today’s China the same way if one insists on missing another forest by examining some small trees.
For Chinese views, Lin Yutang – in his 1943 Between Tears & Laughter – said much the same thing during WWII. Naming China, the USA and a few more as pacific, anti-imperialist powers. Because of that he said they deserved to sit on a future “Security Council” – unlike warlike imperialist UK or Japan. Should be better known that Mao & Zhou had similar attitudes – they wanted to come to the USA to meet FDR, to initiate the kind of US capital, Chinese labor development that occurred in reality 30 years later. (See Barbara Tuchman)
For a current view of the US in that era, just yesterday AMLO – in defending Mexico’s lithium nationalization and recalling and celebrating Cardenas’s oil nationalization – also spoke of FDR’s wise and non-imperialist attitude then. As usual, FDR had enough to handle with the corporate imperialists of the day and their puppets, baying for Mexican blood or treasure. But also, as usual, being smarter and wiser than they were, he won.
.
In any case, being contractionist didn’t stop the USA from being warlike.
But it wasn’t at all warlike then, but quite pacifist in that era, across the political spectrum. A wonderful and beneficial attitude for a great power to have. Tragically, it was in a very unusual world situation where it was not wise. FDR had a terribly hard time getting Americans to see the threat of Germany & Japan, to convince people that Hitler was the new Hitler. 🙂
“As usual, FDR had enough to handle with the corporate imperialists of the day and their puppets, baying for Mexican blood or treasure. But also, as usual, being smarter and wiser than they were, he won”
One slightly less warlike president doesn’t a pacifist nation make and, in the end, he went to war anyway.
.”FDR had a terribly hard time getting Americans to see the threat of Germany & Japan, to convince people that Hitler was the new Hitler.”
Quite possibly because Germany wasn’t a threat to the USA.
FDR was very unwarlike after WWI. So was the rest of the USA at the time, including the Republican presidents and both parties in Congress. That’s the way the whole world saw it. To not understand that is to not understand the immensity of the catastrophe of WWII. During the 30s, the US armed forces were the size of Portugal’s or Belgium’s or smaller. Had war somehow been avoided, there would be no US military-industrial complex & neo-imperialism and surely a better and more prosperous world, with the most powerful state a great example of anti-imperialism and peace.
Quite possibly because Germany wasn’t a threat to the USA.
Then I wonder why Hitler was obsessed with long-range bombers – which he named the New York class. Japan had plans to occupy the Virgin Islands – in the Atlantic! Crazy, but had Nimitz not won at Midway with inferior forces but superior intelligence and cunning, the whole West Coast and its great industries would have been a shooting gallery for Japan, unprotected by a nonexistent US Navy, that could not be rebuilt there. Could the Soviets & British held out then, with supply sources and lines cut? I doubt it.
Germany and Japan quite nearly won, because of leaders in Europe like Chamberlain, who probably deserved to be hanged – that FDR called the dimwits (mainly) of “demons and dimwits”. From his writings even after the war, Herbert Hoover still was one of these dimwits even after the fact- so much more opposed to Communism than Nazism that they would have let the Nazis became so powerful they could dictate terms to the USA.
An old World, all of Europe, Asia and Africa in German and Japanese hands was a very real possibility. Really, trust Hitler, master of most of the globe then, in a position of superior strength, to not pick a fight to get the rest? As it was, after Pearl Harbor, Hitler went out of his way to blow up Brazilian shipping, which they remember as their Pearl Harbor, and gained another enemy there. [The Brazilians ended up sending troops to help invade and occupy Italy.] As Michael Carley says, the existence of the Grand Alliance of the UK, US and USSR and the victory in the whole damned war – was a very near-run thing. Victory looks inevitable only in retrospect. But there was very good reason to doubt it would happen back then.
” At best they would increase the wealth of an imperialistic capitalist class, while diminishing national wealth.”
Well that would workout fine for the imperialistic capitalist class, for a while anyway, and if they had control of the state they might go ahead and do it anyway.
Yup, that is often or usually the way it works out. But people should never forget the exceptions – as one current world leader has not. Sometimes the good guys win.
What short memories people have.
Only a couple of years since China unleashed a genetically engineered bioweapon on the world, taking millions of lives, with millions more still to be lost as the pandemic and its downstream effects play out, and costing uncountable trillions of whichever is your reserve currency of choice.
Sure, the lab leak was probably accidental, but we will never know for certain, because the PRC has made strenuous efforts to cover up everything about it.
It is the most costly and destructive single event in human history.
An Act of God? Don’t make me laugh.
Trust the Chinese to behave ethically and respect human rights, international norms, etc. etc. after what they just did with Covid?
Bioweapon, LOL. You mean the flu, rebranded as scary ‘Covid-19’. What a load of shite that was, enabled by the lying bastard media who are nothing except MIC propagandists.
Wake up and smell the stench of a dying empire of bullshit which has imprisoned the human race for too long.
Rubbish! Dig deeper John…
“What short memories people have.”
Unlike you, most people have trouble remembering things that didn’t happen.
My two pence worth…..
China’s economic ascendancy was founded on international capital, the owners of which (TPTB) appear to own our politicians in the west.
Try as they might, TPTB have failed to gain control over the Chinese political system,
so, as in the case of “Putin’s Russia”, they are a target.
BTW, I visited Tibet in 2008, traveling by road from the Nepal crossing, west to Mt Kailas.
To my surprise I witnessed the native Tibetans openly practise Buddhism, also seasonal pre-Buddhist celebrations.
I formed the opinion that the Chinese government objects only to political deviation, and that is due to an ideology based on social harmony, not on dominance.
So I wonder a bit about the veracity of claims of Uighur persecution that we are fed in the west.
The Chinese military invasion of these western neighbours is another matter, of which I can claim no knowledge.
John,
The outstanding Brian Berletic offers a more accurate, honest and documented explanation of the anti-Chinese Uighur smear:
The Hidden Proxy War Washington Wages against China, with Brian Berletic (The New Atlas, 21 Mar 2023) – YouTube, 18m 26s
Thanks for that Peter.
Unfortunate affirmation of my cynical view on the “Democratic West”.
Another interesting learning from my trip to Tibet was the political role of the Dalai Lama.
The Olympic Games were ongoing in Beijing when I arrived in Nepal without a visa for Tibet.
I was expecting to slip over the border while the Chinese authorities were occupied in the west of the country.
But a bunch of Buddhist monks went on a violent rampage in Tibet to take advantage of Western media coverage, and the Chinese closed the land border for a couple of months in response.
There came no condemnation of the monks’ violence from the Dalai Lama.
Why are we going to war with China. For the same reason that has driven endless wars, China refuses to privatise its monetary supply!
Winston Churchill told Lord Robert Boothby:
‘Germany’s most unforgivable crime before the Second World War was her attempt to extricate her economic power from the world’s trading system and to create her own exchange mechanism which would deny world finance its opportunity to profit.’
So Germany’s unwillingness to be looted by international bankers was the reason million and millions of Europeans had to perish.
We are Going to war with China,,,Becauase We Thought Russia would Fold… AND TO ALL LIFE ON EARTH
And there was me thinking it was untermenschen and lebensraum and Hitler & Stalin pre-agreeing the divvying up of the sovereign nation of Poland.
These international bankers eh, what are they like?
And these pesky historians are worse. Honestly, what are they like, blaming the Nazis, just because the Nazis persuaded the Germans to invade Poland, Belgium, France, Norway, Russia, Egypt, Greece, Tunisia, Italy, the Channel Islands, and maybes a few more I can’t remember.
“And there was me thinking it was untermenschen and lebensraum and Hitler & Stalin pre-agreeing the divvying up of the sovereign nation of Poland”
History as we are taught it is just the official narrative written down. It is not necessarily what actually happened.
Correct Bayard.John Main is naive in the extreme.
Oh deary me, John Maine has bust his vessel now. It was Bandera who killed over 100,000 in East Galicia, women and children mainly, your free sovereign OUN Nazis that has thousands of dead soldiers spinning in their graves all over Europe and here, hearing your bent twaddle.
Munich should get his grave moved to Liev, another area his lot ethnically cleansed of its jewish population and stole from Poland.
Your affliction of MSM bias trying to tell us sob stories of ‘favoured”refugees here, will not extinguish the facts this comedian represents in history.
If Zelenski was to call Bandera an antisemite murderer, he would not survive the next 48 hrs.
If the British imperial government was really concerned about the Uighurs, it would have objected to Chinese nuclear testing in Xinjiang Province and elevated cancer rates, but of course it cannot do that without double standards as it was using its imperial subjects as human Guinea pigs in Maralinga (see Maralinga Tjarutja, 2020 television documentary) and elsewhere, just like the USAmericans (see Jon Pilger on the treatment of the Marshall Islanders) and French (Murder in the Pacific is on BBC iPlayer).
NB, not the ‘Peter’ that posted at 19:56 yesterday.
“I am completely at a loss as to why the UK should seek to join in with the US in considering China an enemy …”
Aye, there’s the rub.
The question is – what exactly is the nature of the relationship between the British establishment and the American establishment/deep state?
Is it a fully voluntary one on the part of the British or is coercion involved? Why exactly are we walking/being dragged into this criminal insanity?
There is not a single politician in sight standing against conflict with China let alone a party. To do so in Jackboot Starmer’s Labour Party would probably get you expelled.
Democracy? Schmocracy.
How many people would vote for conflict with China? Considerably less than 10% I would suggest.
Yet the entire European political and media class appears obeisant to the lunatic fringe that has taken over the US political system. Neither German politicians nor the German media dare even raise the issue of American involvement in the blowing up of their pipeline. How can that be so?
Is there not a single politician of standing that will stand up and call out that the Emperor has no clothes?
How can it be so?
As Trump stated for the USA, so it is also true for all western nations – our greatest enemy is our own governments.
“How can it be so?”
I suspect a conspiracy.