Posted on 12/09/2006 1:43:40 PM PST by neverdem
BEIJING, Dec. 8 — China’s Communist Party has a new agenda: it is encouraging people to discuss what it means to be a major world power and has largely stopped denying that China intends to become one soon.
In the past several weeks China Central Television has broadcast a 12-part series describing the reasons nine nations rose to become great powers. The series was based on research by a team of elite Chinese historians, who also briefed the ruling Politburo about their findings.
Until recently China’s rising power remained a delicate topic, and largely unspoken, inside China. Beijing has long followed a dictum laid down by Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader who died in 1997: “tao guang yang hui,” literally to hide its ambitions and disguise its claws.
The prescription was generally taken to mean that China needed to devote its energy to developing economically and should not seek to play a leadership role abroad.
President Hu Jintao set off an internal squabble two years ago when he began using the term “peaceful rise” to describe his foreign policy goals. He dropped the term in favor of the tamer-sounding “peaceful development.”
His use of “rise” risked stoking fears of a “China threat,” especially in Japan and the United States, people told about the high-level debate said. Rise implies that others must decline, at least in a relative sense, while development suggests that China’s advance can bring others along.
Yet this tradition of modesty has begun to fade, replaced by a growing confidence that China’s rise is not fleeting and that the country needs to do more to define its objectives.
With its $1 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, surging military spending and diplomatic initiatives in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Beijing has begun asserting its interests far beyond its...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Great news! I hope the arrogant bastards shout themselves hoarse about their manifest destiny, and every other barely-concealed Chinese arrogance under the sun.
Cuz that's what Washington DC and the people really need.
I hope they declare their intention to BURY US.
Then their ships and submarines can become Mk. 48 bait.
Please explain N. Korea and Cuba...
Just wait. Do you expect a "Castro" dynasty. Also, do you expect a Kim dynasty? History grinds slowly but it grinds. Transfer of power is in a despotic government is also a great weakness and especially so if it relies on the charisma of one person as its primary prop.
Thank you Richard Nixon/Henry Kissinger
"China sheds its false modesty (ahem!!)" ping
"A Day of Infamy, Two Years of Hard Work" (unpublished NY Times article written a year after Pearl)
I gave the admin moderator the URL for the printpage. The last that I looked it was still http://www.nytimes.com/opinion/
It's an incredible story. Here's the Times' printpage:
A Day of Infamy, Two Years of Hard Work
A Day of Infamy, Two Years of Hard Work That's page 1 of the webpage for the article with an Audio Slide Show "Salvaging Pearl Harbor," that's a must see for just how they righted the Oklahoma as well as 6 pdf links on the salvage efforts.
Back to Your Studies - The unbearable shallowness of the Iraq Study Group.
Our Unceasing Ambivalence -- Why it's so hard to define victory in Iraq. The inimitable Shelby Steele
From time to time, I’ll ping on noteworthy articles about politics, foreign and military affairs. FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.
China? Shy? Someone needs to hit the history books again. They don't call themselves "The Middle Kingdom" for nothing.
No need to pick on China. The world's going to need them to destroy the Muslims some day, since we've lost the will to do it.
The day will come, and it won't be long, when there is more freedom in China than there is in Europe or the US.
Good stuff! Give yourself an attboy.
ATTBOY
helluva navy wasn't to far off the mark for this barbarian. Thank you.
One big disadvantage the West and Muslims have is that "we" can read your works, "we" can absorb the classics like Homer or Virgil like right up to Mark Steyn and Victor Davis Hanson. "We" know that they exist and can absorb the soul of the West. While "you" would probably only know Confucius at best. "You" would be an expert if "you" know who Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming are, and in the modern era Chien Mu and Tang Junyi's works on comparing Chinese culture with the West in values, philosophy, and man vis-a-vis nature are relatively anonymous to most of "you".
(Although I should stress that relatively few Chinese scholars living today have a working knowledge of classical Greek and Latin).
But one thing in the PRC is that in fact the regions such as provinces and going down that level, cities and counties, are virtually like their own turfs when it comes to much of politics. The party bosses in Shanghai, Guangdong, Yunnan, etc basically don't listen (much) to the Central Committee in how to run their own turfs. Each party boss is like his own king in the province/city/county/village. In a sense, the PRC has basically no central authority.
But historically speaking, the apparatus that controls the state are pretty weak when compared with Mao's times and there is no fear on the part of the regional bosses, or adulation from the base level soldiers towards Hu Jintao as they did towards Mao: if "the central" (i.e. Peking) crumbles, the regional levels won't rush in to save the regime. What I understand is that if such things occur, the party bosses etc will be the first to pack their belongings and flee the country, and the PRC will fall like a stack of dominoes.
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