“...the Chinese have demonstrated that their default position is that Beijing’s only real priority it to look after its own interests...”
As any country with even a shred of survival instinct and not afflicted with political correctness should be doing 24/7.
Bingo. And since when is rejecting the AGW scam something bad.
If environmentalists were serious about energy independence, they wouldn’t be allowing the solar cell factories in California to outsource wafer fab to China.
During the 1980’s China sent several hundred scholars to study the US and how it became a superpower at the beginning of the 20th Century when other nations had to exist for hundreds of years before achieving it. The scholars were unique because they were specially screened and isolated from the rest of Chinese population and instructed to divorce all their Communist notions of the US and study it objectively as possible. One of their conclusions was that the US developed their economic strengths first before using it to support their military power, and to achieve this the US basicly kept out of world affairs until after WW2.
China since the 1980’s basicly took this path. Economic development and very little international involvement. Maoist wars of liberation efforts ceased, and most of the resources were concentrated inward to economic development. The only sources for friction were their claims of Chinese territories (Tibet, Sanjing, Taiwan, unresolved border issues with India, Hong Kong, Macau, and certain islands in South China Sea). China did not participate in international or UN efforts. Most of the time China voted abstain in the UN.
IMHO China will continue this policy because they saw what happen to the US as they got involve in one region after another and see how the US economy is being sapped by all the wars as the US played policeman of the world. The only sources for war is China’s disputed claims over territory with her Asian neighbors.