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‘You can never be China’s friend’: Spengler
Asia Times ^ | 10/20/2019 | Urs Gehriger

Posted on 10/21/2019 9:55:41 AM PDT by steel_resolve

Asia specialist and distinguished columnist David P Goldman is convinced the US and Europe stand a chance against the Red Dragon – but the clock is ticking...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS: apple; china; kag; maga; trump
Absolutely fascinating glimpse of a China expert's view of the Chinese juggernaut. This is the type of deep dive that most news and political websites never produce. Buckle up - it's a scary read.
1 posted on 10/21/2019 9:55:41 AM PDT by steel_resolve
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bkmk


2 posted on 10/21/2019 10:00:08 AM PDT by farming pharmer
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To: steel_resolve

Great article. Thanks for posting. HOORAY Spengler. I wonder how he looks at the over abundance of males (aggression) given their 1 child policy for years. If we stop buying their junk (brought manufacturing back) it would destabilize their economy, society, government and the $ is still the world’s reserve currency backed up by a war machine second to nobody.


3 posted on 10/21/2019 10:46:46 AM PDT by PGalt
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To: steel_resolve

The Chinese have peaked like the Japanese peaked in the late 80s. It’s just not apparent to the world yet.

If Trump gets re-elected...


4 posted on 10/21/2019 12:03:56 PM PDT by glorgau
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To: steel_resolve
I disagree with a good chunk of it, including the idea that China's borders have been static since the year 800. But this part, I agree with:

This sounds like the Chinese have some sort of a superbrain.

I think that can be exaggerated. What holds China together is the ambition of the Mandarin cast. China has always been a very disparate set of ethnicities and languages, and so forth. What holds it together is that the Chinese Empire has recruited, through the Mandarin system, the cleverest people from the provinces and aligned their interests with the center.

What, in your view, is the biggest misconception about China in the West?

The single biggest misconception is that you have a wicked government and a good people. The Chinese have had 3,000 years for the government and the people to shape each other. The institution in the West that most closely resembles the Chinese system is, in fact, the Sicilian mafia. You have a capo di tutti capi who prevents the other capi from killing each other. Because they’re natural anarchists, they don’t like any form of government. They’re loyal to their families. The emperor is nothing but a necessary evil. The idea of public trust and subsidiarity that’s fundamental to democracy is unknown to the Chinese.

What holds a country of anarchists together, if not the emperor?

There’s an old joke about [former American President] Eisenhower and [former Israeli Prime Minister] Ben Gurion from the 1950’s. Eisenhower tells Ben Gurion, “It’s hard to be president to 200 million Americans.” And Ben Gurion says, “It’s even harder to be prime minister of 2 million prime ministers.”

Well, China is a country of 1.4 billion emperors. Everyone wants to be an emperor. Everyone strives for his own and his family’s power. There’s no sense of Res publica. Certainly no Augustinian sense of common love to hold a country together. What holds the country together is ambition.

China's territory around 800, in orange, superimposed upon China's territory today, in white:

5 posted on 10/21/2019 2:06:48 PM PDT by Zhang Fei (My dad had a Delta 88. That was a car. It was like driving your living room.)
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To: steel_resolve

Excellent, in-depth analysis. Goldman is a national treasure. He was so on point when Obama was running about Obama’s flaws and misintentions, and later also correctly predicted Trump’s election. His view of Trump’s possible missteps with China is very important and well argued. Thanks for posting this article.


6 posted on 10/21/2019 2:34:49 PM PDT by Albion Wilde (It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it. --Douglas MacArthur)
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To: Swordmaker

Ping!


7 posted on 10/21/2019 2:35:13 PM PDT by Albion Wilde (It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it. --Douglas MacArthur)
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To: glorgau
The Chinese have peaked like the Japanese peaked in the late 80s. It’s just not apparent to the world yet.

I remember how convinced people were that Japan was going to be the dominant economy and we were toast. But it was American's inventiveness that saved us — Japan was great at production, but we were the innovative nation. Goldman's essay mentions that same aspect of US-China relations.

China, however, has an even more troublesome aversion to "loss of face" than Japan, which has been graceful in its attempts to ally with us in the aftermath of its hideous cruelties of WW2. This article so ably points out the gaps in spiritual development of the inscrutable Chinese thought process. What is missing is any prognostication about the effects of underground Christianity in China that might mitigate China's typical "lovelessness" in future.

8 posted on 10/21/2019 2:45:59 PM PDT by Albion Wilde (It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it. --Douglas MacArthur)
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To: Albion Wilde

Goldman seems to think that government funding of cutting edge technologies is crucial. He cites goods examples, and of course the Internet itself grew out of a military program.

On the other hand, I remember Japan pouring a LOT of money into supercomputers in the ‘80s. Outside of laptops, the PC revolution didn’t really create computer dominant companies from Japan. NEC, Epson, Fujitsu weren’t the giants of the field, nor were they the innovators.

Anyway, by the time the supercomputers were ready, the technology had changed, and the U.S. companies (IBM, DEC, Sun, HP) had already leap-frogged whatever it was the Japanese were working on.

I don’t understand enough about quantum computing or 5g to know if that would play out the same way. It could well be that some projects (e.g. the Internet) can’t get started with private funding in exchage for a promise of big bucks VERY far down the road. Who really is going to invest in a hyperloop, except for those who don’t care whether it is a scam because the money will be made and lost before that gets figured out.

If Goldman is right about the Chinese as a people and as a government not having a deep, truly held underlying philosophy, that it is all raw power, then it will always be vulnerable to a REAL idea, whether that idea is International Communism, Islam, Christianity or Falun Gong.

I would also like to think that the 20 million+ Chinese who have embraced Christianity do have friends, because of the filial love that is essential to the Faith. I do know that the Faithful Chinese Bishops have been among the most amazing,strong Christians in modern times.


9 posted on 10/21/2019 3:11:28 PM PDT by Dr. Sivana (Sutor, ne ultra crepidam--Appelles of Kos)
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To: Dr. Sivana

A very thoughtul post. Sorry I’m days late in responding.

China is brutally suppresssing Christianity, along with Islam. We have to pray for our brothers and sisters over there that they can survive. Xi is using the Hitler playbook of rewriting the Bible to put communism in the mouth of the Lord, which is a deadly poison to the people.


10 posted on 10/25/2019 9:02:22 PM PDT by Albion Wilde (It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it. --Douglas MacArthur)
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