We had, in fact, hit the wall. You always do hit the wall with the Chinese when the National Question comes up. It makes no difference if you are talking with Communists or Nationalists, old or young, government flacks or dissidents. I found QingLian formidably articulate. She defended her opinions with the force of a strong intellect.
This experience is very familiar to me. You are sitting there kicking ideas around with some friendly, witty, well-educated, and worldly people. Then the National Question comes up, and suddenly the façade of reason and sophistication drops away and you are confronted by something cold, hostile, and atavistic-the reptilian brain stem. The attachment of the Chinese to every inch of the territory of the old Manchu empire is rooted so deep, it cannot be touched by reason or argument.
The same applies to the resentment the Chinese feel for the humiliations inflicted upon them in the nineteenth century by Japan and the European powers. To an outsider, this seems a little unfair. By far the larger part of the Chinese people's sufferings these past 200 years has been visited on them by their own countrymen. The greatest calamity to afflict China in the nineteenth century was not the depredations of foreign imperialism, but the Taiping Rebellion, an entirely Chinese phenomenon.
Similarly, if there is a prize awarded in hell for murdering Chinese people, the easy winner for the twentieth century division is Mao. All this is forgotten in the fixation on foreign wickedness. A well-adjusted Chinese citizen is expected to have "moved on" from the horrors of Maoism (1949-76) but to be fuming with great indignation at the Opium Wars (1839-42).***
Derbyshire: SORRY STATE (Communist, Nationalist, and Dangerous)***OBSTACLES TO EMPIRE - The grand project of restoring and Sinifying the Manchu dominions has unfortunately met three stumbling blocks. The first was Outer Mongolia, from which the Chinese garrison was expelled following the collapse of Manchu rule. The country declared independence in 1921 under Soviet auspices, and that independence was recognized by Chiang Kai-shek's government in 1945, in return for Soviet recognition of themselves as the "the Central Government of China." Mao seems not to have been very happy about this. In 1954, he asked the Soviets to "return" Outer Mongolia. I do not know the position of China's current government towards Outer Mongolia, but I should not be surprised to learn that somewhere in the filling cabinets of China's defense ministry is a detailed plan for restoring Outer Mongolia to the warm embrace of the Motherland, as soon as a suitable opportunity presents itself.
The second is Taiwan. No Chinese Imperial dynasty paid the least attention to Taiwan, or bothered to claim it. The Manchus did, though, in 1683, and ruled it in a desultory way, as a prefecture of Fujian Province, until 1887, when it was upgraded to a province in its own right. Eight years later it was ceded to Japan, whose property it remained until 1945. In its entire history, it has been ruled by Chinese people seated in China's capital for less than four years. China's current attitudes to Taiwan are, I think, pretty well known.
And the third stumbling block to the restoration of China's greatness is…….the United States. To the modern Chinese way of thinking, China's proper sphere of influence encompasses all of East Asia and the western Pacific. This does not mean that they necessarily want to invade and subjugate all the nations of that region, though they certainly do want to do just that to Taiwan and some groups of smaller islands. For Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Micronesia, etc., the old imperial-suzerainty model would do well enough, at least in the short term. These places could conduct their own internal affairs, so long as they acknowledged the overlordship of Beijing, and, above all, did not enter into alliances, nor even close friendships, with other powers.
Which, of course, too many of them have done, the competitor power in every case being the U.S. It is impossible to overstate how angry it makes the Chinese to think about all those American troops in Japan, Korea, and Guam, together with the U.S. Seventh Fleet steaming up and down in "Chinese" waters, and electronic reconnaissance planes like the EP-3 brought down on April 1 operating within listening distance of the mainland. If you tackle Chinese people on this, they usually say:
"How would you feel if there were Chinese troops in Mexico and Jamaica, and Chinese planes flying up and down your coasts?" Leaving aside the fact that front companies for the Beijing regime now control both ends of the Panama Canal, as well as Freeport in the Bahamas, the answer is that the United States is a democracy of free people, whose government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, so that the wider America's influence spreads, the better for humanity: while China is a corrupt, brutish, and lawless despotism, the close containment of which is a pressing interest for the whole human race. One cannot, of course, expect Chinese people to be very receptive to this answer.
Or, indeed, to anything much we have to say on the subject of their increasing militant and assertive nationalism. We simply have no leverage here. It is no use trying to pretend that this is the face-saving ideology of a small leadership group, forced on an unwilling populace at gunpoint. The Chinese people respond eagerly to these ultra-nationalist appeals: That is precisely why the leadership makes them. Resentment of the U.S., and a determination to enforce Chinese hegemony in Asia, are well-nigh universal among modern mainland Chinese. These emotions trump any desire for constitutional government, however much people dislike the current regime for its corruption and incompetence. Find a mainlander, preferably one under the age of thirty, and ask him which of the following he would prefer: for the Communists to stay in power indefinitely, unreformed, but in full control of the "three T's" (Tibet, Turkestan, Taiwan); or a democratic, constitutional government without the three T's. His answer will depress you. You can even try this unhappy little experiment with dissidents: same answer.
Is there anything we can do about all this? One thing only. We must understand clearly that there will be lasting peace in East Asia when, and only when, China abandons her atavistic fantasies of imperial hegemony, withdraws her armies from the 2 million square miles of other people's territory they currently occupy, and gets herself a democratic government under a rule of law. Until that day comes, if it ever does, the danger of war will be a constant in relations between China and the world beyond the Wall, as recent events in the South China Sea have illustrated. Free nations, under the indispensable leadership of the United States, must in the meantime struggle to maintain peace, using the one, single, and only method that wretched humanity, in all its millennia of experience, has so far been able to devise for that purpose: Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum. ***
Space set to become war zone, warns US general*** "I believe space is the place we will fight in the next 20 years," said Haver, now vice president for intelligence strategy at Northrop Grumman Mission Systems.
"There are executive orders that say we don't want to do that. There's been a long-standing US policy to try to keep space a peaceful place, but ... we have in space assets absolutely essential to the conduct of our military operations, absolutely essential to our national security. They have been there for many years," he said.
"When the true history of the Cold War is written and all the classified items are finally unclassified, I believe that historians will note that it was in space that a significant degree of this country's ability to win the Cold War was embedded," Haver said.
Responding to a question about the implications of China sending a man into space this week, Haver said: "I think the Chinese are telling us they're there, and I think if we ever wind up in a confrontation again with any one of the major powers who has a space capability we will find space is a battleground."***
Indeed. I once spoke with a first generation Taiwanese who told me that "disarming" Korea and Pakistan was tantamount to recinding the second amendment (rights for states anyone?) and that Taiwan didn't need the seventh fleet to defend itself against the mainland because Taipei makes all the chips in our weapons, anyway.
I was stunned. Others have denied that Wen Ho Lee gave away nuclear secrets. Two that I know are pro-China despite having been at Tianamen square. The ones I appreciate most are the Christian immigrants, and the Christian activists. But one stands out in my mind the most: he spent 12 years hoeing weeds in a reeducation farm after being captured on the campus at Beijing university by some red-armbanded thugs. His hands were too soft, because you see he was near the top of his class in literature.
This is how I learned about communism. And from the others, I've learned that today, Chinese ambition knows no ideology, and few boundaries.
Let every nation know.... that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of Liberty --John F. Kennedy, January 1961Kennedy was right. Every field of battle pitched against every communist general on every foreign shore was right. And now the war continues without ideology, for these people intend to rule the planet one mind at a time, and one chain link after the other.
Bush should act now before a potentially vicious cycle of competition spins out of control.
Earth to Toshi: Competition is good for the US. The US usually wins competitions. (Remember the Cold War?)
Let me ask you this. What ticks you off more, a white man raping a white woman, or a black man raping a white woman ?
Communism's failure is that the theory does not take into account human nature. For you to say the chinese should be equally upset when a foreign power does something bad inside china as when a domestic power does something bad insided china is ignoring human nature.
Let's try another question. What ticks you off more ? Mugabe killing blacks or Mugabe killing the whites in Zimbabwe.
One more question. How many posts on FR have you made deploring the situation in Zimbabwe compared to the number of posts you made concerning any other problem in Africa, most of which are more horrific than what has happened in Zimbabwe.
The second solution: Get started on a cruiser sized Orion drive ship and launch it from the Pacific or the high Nevada desert. Chemical rockets are obsolete.
The third solution : Build 10 more Orion ships and send them to the asteroid belt to capture a small asteroid (5 miles across or so); use nuclear propulsion to move it into HEO or geo sync over the US. Bingo, we have infrastructure, a new moon and a base for space operations.
The fourth solution: Build a shipyard up in space for constructing MORE ships.
Heinlien stated correctly: Once you're in orbit, you're halfway to anywhere in the solar system.
Objection, your Honor! China is an irresponsible member of the "international community." Their ambition is to be a super power. They assume this will cause war with the U.S within 20 years, and they're okay with that.
The Cold War with China started years ago. The fact that some people don't know that is worrisome.