Analysis: 'Theory of aChina Threat' Is Groundless, Erroneous

Peoples Daily (CCP NEWS) ^ | 6/6/02

[Enemy Of The State]

Analysis: 'Theory of aChina Threat' Is Groundless, Erroneous

For quite a while, the "theory of China threat" has been spreading like pestilence here and there within Japan. The view about China "threat" spread by a handful of personages in the economic and financial circles, entrepreneurs as well as some news media has been rife and rampant.

As a matter of fact, in terms of overall national strength, China's GDP (gross domestic product) is only an equivalent of one-fourth of Japan's. Japanese per-capita GDP amounts to US$35,500, ranking first in developed countries, almost 4.5 percent higher than that of the United States.

Japan's defense spending has been well over US$50 billion, exceeding the military expenditures of the three Western countries of Germany, France and Britain. Japan has become the second largest military power following the United States.

In terms of strength, Japan obviously is a "powerhouse", then why does it raise a clamor about China "threat"? There are the following three reasons for this:

First, Japan has a group of people who obstinately cling to the "imperial conception of history", preaching "everything Japanese is best" and ultra-nationalism, their representatives include Fukuzawa Yukichi, an advocate of imperialist expansion who was the initiator of the theory of "breaking away from Asia and joining Europe" during the Meiji time, and who revered Tennoism (the imperial system), as well as a handful of current agitators of the "theory of China threat".

They ignore Japan's history of invasion of other countries and slaughtering of the innocents and yet refuse to repent, they are a band of people who never show reverence toward the code of ethics. Just as German Philosopher Immanuel Kant said, "The deeper and more persistent we think about the two things, the greater awe and veneration they arouse will fill our hearts, they are the overhead starry skies and the code of ethics in our minds."

Second, the ambition of some Japanese politicians and ultra-right forces is swelling with each passing day, they are bent on "breaking away from Asia and joining the United States". On the basis of being an economic and high-tech power, they are trying to turn Japan into a military and political power. In order to secure their "position as the elder" in Asia, they slander that China has created "potential threat" to Japan, they even look upon China as a "power" that may "challenge" Japan's strategic superiority in Asia.

Japan is doing its utmost to turn its Self-defense Force into a capable and highly efficient modernized army, but in its defense white paper, it wantonly plays up so-called China's mighty military strength, charging that China has gone beyond the necessary "limit of defense", expressing its strong "anxiety and caution".

Third, there exist uncertain supposition and imagination in the minds of some Japanese entrepreneurs and employees of some news media as well as a small number of right-wingers. Driven by their twisted mindset, they concocted the "theory of threat" from the Chinese economy. They claim that the main factors for Japan's long-term deflation are "Chinese cheap commodities flooding like tidal water into Japan", and that the immigration of Japanese factories into China has aroused concerns about the hollowing out of Japan's economy. This implies decreasing employment opportunities". If things go on this way, "China will seize and carry off everything Japanese".

As everybody knows, the emigration of manufacturing industry exists not only in Japan, the proportion of industrial shift in the United States and Europe is higher than in Japan. The internal cause of the outward shift of industries lies in the loss of their competitive edge at home, if they are not shifted, they will suffer the misfortune of closedown. Only with the transfer of these industries, can these countries have the opportunity to adjust their economic structure, and have sufficient space to develop new industries.

The "theory of threat" from China's economy doesn't conform to the law of economic development, it is also an erroneous viewpoint characteristic of ignorance of the present state of affairs. In fact, real threat comes from the creator of the "theory of threat". As China has already joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), it is merging itself into the existing globalization system stepwise.

China and Japan are two neighbors with common interests. From the long-term point of view, the development of China's economy is beneficial to Japan. Judged from Japan's investment in China, 70 percent of its enterprises in China are making profits. In order to maintain the stable, long-term relations of friendship and cooperation between China and Japan, Japan should proceed from reality, shake off its narrow-minded view, change "confrontation" into "complementarity", and "conflict" into "interdependence", the two countries should strengthen cooperation through competition and realize common prosperity in the course of development.



By People's Daily Online

[Enemy Of The State]

[rohry]

For quite a while, the "theory of China threat" has been spreading like pestilence here and there within Japan.

More propaganda from the "friendly" Red Chinese. Let's help re-arm Japan, we're going to need all the help we can get.

[antidisestablishment]

"the main factors for Japan's long-term deflation are "Chinese cheap commodities flooding like tidal water into Japan", and that the immigration of Japanese factories into China has aroused concerns about the hollowing out of Japan's economy. "

Patricko Buchanan San.

[maui_hawaii]

China is not a threat. And you better believe that, and you better not get in China's way, or else we are gonna nuke Los Angeles and Japan. We are peace loving people. /sarcasm

[tlrugit]

Let's help re-arm Japan, we're going to need all the help we can get.

The sooner the better.

[lavaroise]

I am sure that China feloniously confining South Asia with its pointed nukes is just a figment of imagination.

[lentulusgracchus]

Let's help re-arm Japan, we're going to need all the help we can get.

The sooner the better.

Ummmm, wait a second. Let's think about that one a while.

[tlrugit]

Aint nobody here but us Chicoms. Which makes about as much sense as what Kant purportedly said.

The Chinese has a a term for a person who has done some shameful thing but shows no regard or remorse, such people are "fatfaced." It has long been known that Chinese leaders are personally fat faced in their relations with the 'people' they pretend to serve. In recent years it seems that FatFace has become a national policy.

[Constantine XIII]

Ever see that "Recess" cartoon? There was one where a girl is playing kickball and sends the ball all the way to China, where it makes a crater in what is clearly Tianamen Square. Chinese soliders promptly chase everyone off and yell "This ball is now the property of the State!" he he

[lavaroise]

Are these people on crack?

Epicurus and Marx

The point is to neutralise human intelligence, to make it run after utopian goals which, by way of an infernal dialectics that transfigures every defeat in a sign of close victory, will absorb it the more completely as the actual achievements fall short of the dreamed finalities. Only this can explain the phenomenon of thousands of intellectuals who have refused, through a whole century, to see the evils of communism, or, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, to acknowledge any relationship between these evils and the socialist ideal. Truly, is it not the effect of a peculiar scotoma that leftist intellectuals see in any movement of the right, however small, the signs of nazi-fascist insurrection and, on the other hand, that they believe the socialist ideal to have immaculately emerged from the Gulag? Is it not strangely morbid that the ideology which reduces the actions of individuals to the mere expression of deep ideological biases explains the sixty million victims of Stalin as the result of one man’s accidental evilness, with no root at all in the ideology he professed? That the intransigent defenders of the concept of society as a substantial whole, as an organic block in which ideology and practice are inherently bounded, explain the crimes of the Soviet government as accidental deviations completely alien to Marxist ideology? Is it not something really sick the obstinacy in keeping Karl Marx’s figure – or Lenin’s – free from any contamination with the crimes of the Soviet dictatorship, when even Christ himself was held responsible for the cruelties of the Inquisition? Is it not odd that, after all that was revealed about the communist tyranny, socialism still be a respectable ideal, whereas crimes on a much lesser scale have been enough to blood-stain forever the image of Italian and Spanish fascism, or of Latin-American dictatorships? Finally, is it not an intellectual anomaly that the philosophy which most emphasised the social and historical rooting of abstract concepts – condemning as "metaphysics" any acknowledgement of non-historical or supra-historical evidence – now try to present socialism as an essence most pure, uncontaminated by one whole century of communist experiment? How to explain the obstinate blindness of philosophers, of intellectuals, of artists, among which can be found some of the most remarkable people of this century, if not through the amazing illusionist power that is inherent to the very root of Marxism, through its almost diabolical ability to transfigure the appearance of things, leading people to see things different from what they are?

[lavaroise]

The Chinese have this sick way of priding themselves of their sinlessness. Mark my word, in their paranoia fed by such delusions, they are out to kill and torture us.

[Richard Axtell]

"As everybody knows,.."

There are styles or manners of speaking and writing that are emblematic of propaganda; this phrase is so characteristic of Chinese government press and news releases as to be tell tale. It shows that this piece was written by a commitee, and this phrase was inserted later on to bolster that committee's own fears of exposure. The lack of subtley, the arrogance it takes to "tell" everybody "what" they know simply would not be voiced by someone schooled in logic and western rhetoric. The authors are worried that they might very well fail in their mandated objective of issuing a convincing story proving that "The Theory of a China Threat." is groundless. They do not grasp the real irony and transparency of this characteristic "Orwellian" language they use so often, that almost any student of western politics and rhetoric 101 should know in their sleep. Perhaps it is not fair to base an analysis on just one phrase... perhaps it is.

[PhilDragoo]

Richard Bernstein and Ross H. Munro, The Coming Conflict with China, Vintage, 1997, 1998, Chapter 7, "China's Plan for Japan", page 185:

In the post-Cold War world it is Japan's weakness that threatens peace and stability by creating a power vacuum that the United States cannot fill, but that China can. A strong Japan in genuine partnership with the United States is vital to a new balance of power in Asia. A weak Japan benefits only China, which, the evidence indicates, aims not at a new balance of power but at Chinese hegemony, under which Japan, if it yields to that fate, would serve as China's richest and most useful tributary state.

The authors elsewhere stress that only an alliance of the U.S. and Japan can counter China.

What is groundless and erroneous is the theory that a central economy subordinated to militarist ideological beetles bent on world domination has anything in common with Japan's democracy and fastidious adherence to international agreements.

China not a threat? The thousands of students' ghosts created June 4, 1989 say Hu do you think you're Fu Lin?

China not a threat? Dead Tibetans disagree--altogether with Mao's murdered millions, and the hundreds of thousands of murdered or imprisoned, starved, beaten, tortured Falun Gong, Christians, Muslims, labor leaders, democracy advocates.

The 350 IRBMs aimed at Taiwan are a threat--to an independent democratic nation allied with the U.S.--and only ruled by the mainland for thirteen years in three millenia, 1887-1895 and 1945-1949.

Oh, it's all too Orwellian, too Sun Tzu, too much a load of Long Island Railway Killer Krap.

China is the Main Enemy--of all peoples.

ADM is Supermarket to the World--PRC is Hegemon to the World.

[Pearls Before Swine]

"I'm from the government of [the People's Republic of China] and I'm here to help." Right.

[Paul Ross]

Bump.

All we want is peaceful coexistence...

[Ahban]

The CIA world fact book shows China's GDP to be much larger than Japan's.