Moreover, these reversals from amity to hostility have occurred on the same timetable, or near enough. That cannot be a coincidence. Nor are those countries US dependencies, whose relations with Beijing were ruined at Washington’s orders, an untrue proposition but particularly absurd in India’s case, whose non-alignment even had an Anti-American tinge to it. When, in 2011, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s state visit to Beijing and the major joint programs then announced inspired heady talk of “Chindia”, influential Indian figures argued that their country had to “wean itself” off American temptations to get into bed with Beijing. But what ensued was the opposite: the joint programs never happened but border incidents did — with territorial claims asserted once again and “Chindia” cast into ridicule.
In the case of Australia, when the Mandarin-speaking Kevin Rudd became Prime Minister in 2007, the “broadening and deepening” of Sino-Australian relations accelerated. Australian exports to China rose every year to reach 30% of Australia’s total. Meanwhile, everything Chinese was welcome, including Chinese purchases of Australian firms, housing and agricultural lands. The Chinese tourists that arrived in ever-growing numbers were uniquely valuable, not least because they stayed away from the over-visited Great Barrier Reef, instead preferring harmless sightseeing, shopping, and even more profitable gambling.
Australia’s welcome extended to the Hanban, the Chinese Language Council which opened “Confucius Institutes” in several Australian universities, operated by Chinese personnel who not only provided Chinese language teaching but also helped university administrators to handle the ever-increasing influx of students from China. Australian travel to China was also much facilitated by the opening of consular offices in six Australian cities (the United States only had four), which also provided services for the increasing number of Chinese students and immigrants.
Everything is different now. Yes, if Chinese gamblers arrive, they would still be welcomed, and China can still import all the Australian raw materials it wants. But Chinese attempts to purchase Australian firms are now very closely examined and mostly denied, and all the Confucius Institutes in New South Wales have been closed after it became clear that they were propaganda outlets whose staff compelled Chinese students to function as their agents, to shout down Hong Kong protesters for example.
Most dramatic is the changed strategic attitude to China, from Kevin Rudd’s confidence that Beijing was willing “to make a strong contribution to strengthening the regional security environment and the global rules-based order” to a rising sense of insecurity that already in 2011 induced the Australian government to invite US Marines to train in their country. Not just once either, but on a prolonged basis with increasingly permanent facilities in Darwin. That was a response to China’s claims to some three million square kilometers of ocean waters that extend very far from China and very close to the coasts of Australia’s neighbours — claims rejected as entirely baseless by the Law of the Sea arbitration court.
The off-duty Marines in Darwin are the most visible evidence that Australia now views China as a strategic threat. The least visible is Australia’s “strategic dialogue” with Vietnam, China’s most resolute opponent and favourite target (Vietnamese fishing boats are regularly attacked by Chinese vessels), with “strategic” an euphemism for intelligence; the Vietnamese contribute ground intelligence while Australia shares satellite intelligence released by its Five Eyes partners.
The Chinese have since retaliated, applying the logic of war in the medium of commerce with import blockages that exploit the dependence of Australian exporters on the Chinese market. Only last November, Beijing leaked 14 demands as their conditions for the restoration of normal trade relations, starting with the opening of the Australian telecom market to Huawei and extending to the dismantling of Australian security measures across the board, as well as an end to Australian statements on Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan and “unfriendly” media coverage of China.
In the case of Japan, the reversal in relations with China was a good deal more abrupt, and again it was entirely unrelated to US-China dynamics. At the start of the financial crisis in 2009, Sino-Japanese relations had improved so much that Japan’s Minister of Defence Hamada Yasukazu visited Beijing to sign a comprehensive set of agreements covering extensive information-sharing arrangements, an overall “maritime contact mechanism”, mutual naval visits, a very extensive schedule of high-level meetings and joint military exercises. The US-Japan security relationship seemed to be in danger.
But on 7 September, 2010, the Chinese trawler Minjinyu 5179, one of many fishing in Senkaku’s waters, collided with two Japanese coastguard patrol vessels. Its skipper was drunk, but when he was duly detained, Japan’s ambassador in Beijing was summoned to the Foreign Ministry where he was told that Japan should stop operating its coastguard in the entire Senkaku archipelago. A nationwide campaign of incitement led by the Chinese Foreign Ministry generated vast protests in front of the Japanese embassy with demands for the immediate handover of the archipelago.
Soon it was rumoured that Japan’s advanced manufacturing would be strangled by Chinese threats to stop the supply of rare earth metals, which are indispensable for high-tech industries. Japan’s response had to await the accession of Shinzo Abe to the premiership in December 2012. By the time he resigned eight years later , he had roundly rejected China’s territorial claims, and had strengthened Japan’s national security structure along with the US alliance.
Likewise the UK, which only a few years ago under David Cameron was pursuing a privileged “Golden Age” relationship with China, started contending with its technology thefts and its threat to global security. Along with India, Japan, Australia and many others, it will continue to do so, regardless of who is in the White House.
In the end, there is no need for another Kennan, or another Long Telegram. There is no need to invoke Thucydides when Goethe’s Faust is quite sufficient. Xi Jinping’s China is bent on world domination, starting with the international institutions that one-by-one cease to uphold Western values.
But because China threatens a few countries while seducing many more, what we do emphatically need is another George Marshall. More than any other individual, Marshall built up the Alliance that successfully resisted the Soviet Union, precisely by subordinating military priorities to a comprehensive economic plan that defeated its ideology by drastically accelerating the recovery of war-wrecked Europe.
This time, there has to be a better response to Xi Jinping’s “Belt and Road Initiative”, which is building ports, highways and rail lines around the world. The current global response amounts to little more than quoting Proverbs 22:7 — “the borrower is slave to the lender” — to countries desperately in need of investment. The World Bank has degenerated into a provider of very high tax-free salaries to employees who hold up even modest projects with impossible environmental, indigenous rights and rate-of-return demands.
So, there is room for a “strategic infrastructures” initiative by the US and Japan with Australia, Canada, India the UK, and other members of the China-containment coalition. To cite a very obvious example, a Calcutta-Haiphong road and rail project would provide a horizontal alternative to China’s north-south influence vectors for Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Laos while connecting India and Vietnam, who are already cooperating at sea to resist China.
At a time when Mr Musk can invest $1 billion in the digital abstraction of bitcoin, a “coalition bank” should be able to outcompete China’s investments. George Kennan managed to wake the world up to the threat of the Soviet Union. Our leaders are awake to China. Truly ambitious action on a Marshall-like scale must follow.
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SubscribeChina thrives because the West has given up on democratic values. We didn’t care when Chinese children were producing cheap goods for us in sweat shops. American companies still use slave labour in China. The EU has just signed the Comprehensive Investment Agreement. Sports stars take the knee while profiting from the Chinese market and kowtowing to demands to ignore HK. Our hypocrisy and our greed have gifted victory to totalitarianism. Our failure to reach out through the great firewall to ordinary Chinese people, seeking only to engage with the elite and the wealthy is symptomatic of our abandonment of democratic values. As the western middle class is squeezed by developing nations’ increasing wealth and competition domestically for social status spirals into woke hypocrisy, we will learn that we are not so different from them after all. The battle is with ourselves first.
Excellent post. I would add that our own elite, specifically its younger generation, has not only kowtowed to Beijing’s abuses, it has positively internalised the totalitarian way. Witness “lockdown”. Ferguson, its chief scientific proponent, has freely vouchsafed that the example of China showed us the way. Witness also the prolonged, unseemly tantrum of that same elite in the face of Brexit; and the now habitual imposition upon employees, in both the state and private sectors, of ideological stances to which they may have conscientious objection. There is a superb essay in this month’s Critic by Edward Skidelsky on this very subject and all its opponents can do is deny, deny, deny.
Yes. As I have said many times here and elsewhere, western leaders don’t see China as an authoritarian abomination, they see see it as a model to emulate. This applies particularly to the EU and the Democrat party in the US.
That was maybe true 10 years ago, but as the above op aptly points out the tide has definitely turned.
No, the like of the EU and the Democrats will do all they can to create China-style societies of command and control, with 100% surveillance.
Sure, they might have become more aware of the military and mercantile threat that China poses, but they have no interest in creating free and democratic societies. China will merely become the ‘other’ that is used to justify their own structurres of power and control.
As in Orwell, once again; a set of perpetually antagonist regimes using each other to justify oppression.
I think you are right. It is very frightening. I can imagine the EU and the Democratic party double crossing their people to gain what they want.
The left see it as making the trains run on time, aka 1930s Germany and Italy, and to be admired and emulated. History is very much repeating its self again – but this China much more along Japans Great SE Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, as in brutally colonizing the region to exploit it. (and what fallowed, attack on the Free West)
Spot on!
It is the multinationals which are the danger worldwide. These are the Achilles Heal of the west which are tending to co-operate with China as they have no one national country to worry about. These multinationals can do deals with China on their own and ride roughshod over national sentiments. I predict that you will see these grow over the coming years where their power will supercede governments to the detriment of nations.
And Indeed, it is the multinationals that have been driving US Foreign Policy, mostly with respect to controlling and getting other people’s resources on the cheap. It would be so refreshing if there were, for example, a South American continental arrangement that was able to negotiate effectively with the North, without the regime change meddling we have seen for the last 150 years.
A ‘US Centric’ analysis vis-a-vis China does the rest of the world no favours either, because the US is the current dominant power to rule by the gentle art of capturing ‘hearts and minds’ by bombing faraway countries to oblivion, to make them safe for Burgers and Ipads.
China is just using these companies for their own benefit and their technology, look what happened to Uber there. They really aren’t that powerful outside the ability of Western politicians to be corrupted.
I mean, the Dutch East Indies company or East India Company ran entire regions of the world as pseudo-governments with armies and militaries. Modern multinationals have none of those things so are brittle against any state action. Of course there is a difference between multinationals taking on large countries and smaller countries. But again this is nothing new, smaller countries have always been economically subjugated by larger ones.
Yes. The East India company operated to maximise profit to its shareholders, embroiling the British people in conflicts in the Far East and the Americas, overriding national best interests. History may not repeat itself, but it does tend to rhyme.
Thanks for the reference to the Skidelsky essay. A brilliant analysis of how totalitarians weaponise language to advance their agenda. Perhaps he should turn his attention to how to combat it.
Many good points but what’s with the ‘we’?
‘We’ the West.
No Johnathan, it is not because we gave up on democratic principals at all, it is because they (the commie/left) have infiltrated every level of Liberal thinking, and they have always been a tool of Communists. The liberals teach such loathing for Western history and values that the peoples believe even China cannot be as evil as the West is/has been. Education has been the tool to this, the university system which brought Burgess and Kim Philby was in its traitorous infantsy then, but it also tought the educators, the poloticos, and they formed the popular education, which is the real enemy of the Free West, our own education system is the real enemy as it is Fifth Collumn, it is Cato’s ‘Emeny within the Gates’.
It may not be ‘you’ singular, but it is ‘we’ plural; those infiltrated are part of us, the West, whether we like it or not.
This is primarily an issue of neoliberal corporate globalism, the ‘Left’ are just useful foot soldiers
Or useful idiots.
‘Useful idiots’ indeed. The unholy alliance between the Globalist corporations’ pursuit of cheap Labour, and the social justice warriors of the left, has paved the way for uncontrolled illegal mass migration into Western countries.
The enemy within, Oxbridge being a prime culprit, that Cato the younger would easily recognise
This….”American companies still use slave labour in China. “ is a bit misleading.
So let’s be clear. It’s been illegal to import anything into the US produced with either prison or slave labor since 1930. The Tariff Act of 1930 was actually strengthened in 2016. So while saying something happens, it isn’t legal. So let’s be fair. Robbery isn’t legal but it still happens, after all.
If a company gets caught, and they usually say it was unwitting which with China is not wholly unbelievable, the negative media attention is usually enough to rectify the situation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/29/business/economy/nike-coca-cola-xinjiang-forced-labor-bill.html
Where in your link does it say it’s legal? Your link makes my point. Not the one you thought you were making.
Whether or not it’s legal is something of a moot point. All the evidence suggests that slave labour is being used in China, particularly in the 300 labour camps housing the Uighers. There was a very good piece about this in The Spectator a few weeks ago. Some major corporations are -allegedly – involved, including VW.
Of course China uses slave labor. It’s China. Don’t miss the point. It’s illegal to import anything into the US that was made using either prison or slave labor. And it should be illegal to do so. I would hope it’s illegal throughout Europe as well.
It’s not a moot point to note that companies cannot legally import anything made with slave labor, it’s what we do to ensure that we do not help China to thrive from this practice. Unless you have a better suggestion as to how to do this?
Corporations caught importing into the US products made with slave labor are fined and have to cease. As to VW, I doubt that Germany will just look the other way, do you believe it will? What else would you like to do?
I would hope that every country would make it illegal to make products using slave and/or prison labor, but my guess is that is not the case. Is it legal in Kenya, for example, where China’s influence is so apparent and growing? What about SE Asia, can manufacturers allow the free use of Chinese slave labor and then import their products?
The West has been played like the proverbial Strad by China or, more precisely, its ruling elite which comprises at its core, I believe, only around four or five families.
There is a simple approach everyone can take.
Look for where something is made and refuse to buy anything made in China. Then tell the retailer why you didn’t buy.
This is impractical: your only option would be to turn Amish – no technology or industrially produced goods. On the plus side, they do make nice furniture.
I wouldn’t say we would would have no technology without China. They spend a lot of time trying to steal ideas from the west and have been successful in this.
That is not quite what I meant. Any tech you use right now will have been made (manufactured not designed) anywhere between 100% and 20% in China – for example the device on which you entered your comment. The west can easily make any of that, but would be more expensive, plus not necessarily offer the scale at quality China does. I have been saying for ages those tech dependencies on China should be broken, but until they are we are vulnerable.
And China is capturing the emerging sources of cheap labour for this too (in Ethiopia for example) under the nose of the Western countries.
Good idea. Why back such an oppressor as China. The problem is their government not particularly their people. In the same way that Stalin oppressed his own people and tried to pretend he was nice in public.
Too late, Tom. By now, this means you’d starve.
Somehow people fail to relate China’s ascension to the industrial devastation caused by “economic liberals” such as Reagan & Thatcher. Under the guise of “minimizing government interference”, these paragons of imbecility removed any controls preventing predatory capitalism from buying and dismembering companies in the West, under the credo that “profit justifies anything”.
Rather than upholding true democratic values such as enforcing fairness and balance between the gains of investors and workers, they took the simplistic narrative that unions = communism.
The irony is that their “anti-communist” narrative was ultimately responsible for the absurdly fast transfer of industrial manufacturing power that enabled the monster that China is today.
Then again, some people will excuse Reagan & Thatcher as being first and foremost interested in the workings of their respective countries political disputes – even lauding them as patriotic heroes for doing just that. The same can be said about Donald Trump’s divisive politics – just look at how many are cheering his myopic “patriotism” and “us against them” narrative, and consider just how much this is the best kind of support Xi Jinping could have hoped for.
So yeah, good luck with your plan for boycotting Chinese products now…
At least Nixon, who initially opened the Chinese Pandora’s Box had the good grace, late in life to admit he/we had created a Frankenstein.
How exactly do you know if it was built in China? Most modern products are made up of components sourced from a variety of areas.
I agree – but the problem seems to be that the frog’s bath temperature has been heating up (very rough metaphor agreed) and we of the west can no longer cope with even a modicum of austerity. Our household has cut out 90%+ of chinese goods-but most people we know are in reality ‘consumers’ ie psychologically predisposed to consume. Cost is often used as an excuse but does not hold up except for aftermarket car parts. You are correct we DO have the power but do we have the WILL ??
I agree with with a lot of the analysis of the author, but with some caevats. I don’t agree with all the remedies – in particular the ‘Marshall Plan’ method to contest the soft power China is projecting. I certainly agree the idea that the US can undermine the Chinese leadership is outright laughable – they couldn’t even overthrow little Castro on their own doorstep.
My personal approach is more direct, if rather extreme, and is not specific to China. Stop pandering to horrible regimes – Saudi, Russia, China, many others. The only thing that will work is: don’t do business with them. That of course hurts both sides. It would undoubtedly come at a huge cost to our merchintilist interests. Nor are you going to stop the further ascent of China – although you would ringfence yourself better from IP theft and a host of other vulnerabilities – like your people and politicians being bought-off to act as shills and even spies. But at least you would stop strengthening the hand of those who would steamroll you when they become strong enough.
That said, a distinction needs to be made between the Chinese leadership and the Chinese nation – the two are not synonymous, and the Chinese population is not monolithic. One area where China is vulnerable, is where everyone and everywhere in the west is vulnerable – age demographics, instabilities generated by rising inequalities, revolutions inside the heads of under-pressure younger generations despite the CCPs best efforts, etc. It may look unlikely but I believe the CCP is on a collision course with China’s younger generations. The CCP is also vulnerable on tech: it’s need to keep control over information means it will attempt to suppress technologies which loosen the CCPs grip, which means the west should be able to stay ahead on tech. Woe betide if the west doesn’t stay ahead on tech! As for going down the ‘Marshall Plan’ route, instead let China get on with ‘Belt and Road’ – this will certainly create tech and debt dependence on China in a host of countries, but will potentially also act as a millstone around China’s neck – because it costs a ton of money even for China. The crunch would come when those countries can’t repay debts and China decides to get heavy by demanding they cede control and sovereignty instead. I can’t see too many nations would accede to this, they would instead turn to the west for help, which is the point at which the west should secure such countries militarily. China is hardly going to send the gunboats round.
What if the BRI works?
Yes that risk exists and it would be a big mistake to underestimate the CCP. The CCP leadership is full of extremely smart people who can afford to think and plan long term because they are not going to be ousted from power. I didn’t think they would manage to keep a lid on information flowing into the Chinese populace, but they have done so remarkably successfully so far. Whether they manage to do so in the future remains to be seen. For myself I believe they will face a choice of embracing all coming tech advances, or suppressing some types of tech. They have managed to keep a lid on their internal cyberspace so far by operating a high-surveillance dystopia. China’s success is based on the fact that the outside cyberworld has been shut out (The Great Firewall) and that anyone logging on to their internal cyberspace is required to identify themselves via facial recognition tech or other means – everyone and everything tracked in effect. Additionally, the CCP has direct hooks into the companies that produce both the software and the hardware that the majority of Chinese are coaxed into using. It is highly likely that the versions of Android that go on devices for internal Chinese consumption are doctored to allow the government to spy on the people operating the devices if required. Ditto the hardware produced in China. All this is not so easy to circumvent for the vast majority of people, although not impossible. But China is playing the percentages – just as it did during the pandemic.
There are many things the CCP is very practiced and competent at, and one of them is suppression – be it of it’s own people, or of information, or of viruses.
At least this sounds like a fightback. It’s better than one comment saying we have already lost.
Completely agree with so much of what you write, Prashant. The CCP is busily re-colonising the developing world whilst claiming it is only doing it to boost their (host nations’) economic development. They give loans for massive infrastructural projects then when the country cannot repay the interest, take over partial or complete ownership – the Sri Lankan port is the biggest example of that. The destruction of coastal villages in Mozambique by tidal changes caused by the export of millions of tonnes of sand to supply their homeland construction projects is another example of their ruthless exploitation of foreign hosts once embedded. They are busy establishing their influence/ownership throughout so much of Africa with huge numbers of their own Party expats. Whilst declaiming the venality & greed of the old colonial powers (criticism not exactly unjustifiable, but perhaps partially debatable) but they are entrenching themselves far deeper in Africa than whitey ever did, and they will probably prove infinitely more difficult to winkle out. Some kind of Marshall Plan would be an excellent counter – provided the vast inflow of such funds does not end up as the piggy bank for corrupt political and economic elites. And who is going to put their own gambling money on that not happening..? I
Love your references to the Celon extortion and Africa being coropt-Colonized. They pay the Third World minerals gov guy some bribe, get a contract to exploit resources at a fair royality, build the roads, plant, ports and so on with an army of Chinese labour, expolit the resource with 100% Chinese labour, then bill the nation the cost of the infrastructues so they get almost no royalities – AND all the work is done by Chinese, no jobs locally, so all the resources go to China, as does the construction profit, and all the wages in the whole building and mining – the colonized country gets a token income.
At Least the Marshal project gave the locals money to create their own plant and infrastructure to create jobs and wealth locally!
The CCP of The Long March also has a long memory. They have utilised some of the same tactics used by the foreign powers in China in the 19th century to exploit its weaknesses for profit: supplying opium and bribes to its ruling elite in return for trading concessions has been updated by the CCP as they buy access to technology, investment and markets by targeting foreign elites with infrastructure projects and lucrative contracts. One need look no further than Joe Biden’s cooperation purchased by the CCP with a contract to manage some $1 billion handed to his inexperienced son Hunter.
Britain used to do this very same thing in places like Argentina and Chile in the 19th century and even at that time it was known as the ‘informal’ British empire that extended beyond the official bounds. There is really no difference here.
I think you are wrong on almost every count you made. Too many to elaborate on, but just saying I disagree with all your post.
It’s a free country Sanford (:-) . Talking of free countries, which part of the world are you posting from? Asking for a friend.
The West cannot implement zero-carbon policies without Asia using cheap and reliable fossil energy to produce the goods we need. Feeling good about nonsense will be the downfall of the West.
It IS the downfall of the West. It is happening.
Pessimism and defeatism doesn’t get us anywhere.
The world needs carbon. The trees need carbon. Zero carbon is not an option.
any downfall is largely self-inflicted. The climate cult, the race warlords, and the anti-capitalists would still be around even if China were where it was in the 1940s.
Since you brought it up, why can’t the West make “the goods we need”? Post-WWII, the US made everything while other countries rebuilt. Today, some of those countries are capable of making quite a few things.
‘Feeling good about nonsense’ . I couldn’t have said it better. I just hope it’s not democracy’s epitaph.
Until sanctimony ceases to be the first priority of Western policy making in all matters, the for more ruthless and pragmatic Chinese are going to win every time.
It’s time to remove the Guardian reading Western elites from power and install some real leaders, or were finished. Its probably already too late.
China itself aims for carbon neutrality by 2060
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54256826
Let’s hope this is one insane idea from the west that China embraces. It will hobble them better than any trade war could.
Western Corporations have outsourced production to the People’s Republic of China – and Chinese ownership will eventually follow. Western Corporations and institutions (such as schools and universities – and the media) also support a form of Chinese “Social Credit” system were people are punished for expressing their political and cultural opinions – in the West this is called “Cancel Culture”.
As for the political and military side – the West can not stand without the United States, and the American Executive branch has, since the blatantly rigged election, been under a puppet of the People’s Republic of China (Mr Joseph Biden). Mr Biden does not decide things himself – but he is under the control of people who, by and large, do what the People’s Republic of China want them to do. The American Corporations (such as Google) would not have it any other way – which is why (for example) Mr Zuckerberg (Facebook) spent almost 400 hundred million Dollars controlling the November election, deciding where the polling booths would be, how the votes would be counted and-so-on. The United States is not longer a functioning democracy – it is under Corporate rule, and that means (given the relationship the Corporations have with the PRC – with the CCP) under the influence of the People’s Republic of China.
Sun Tzu, in the Art of War, said the highest skill is to win without fighting – this China has done. The last real resistance was from President Trump and he is gone. The People’s Republic of China (the CCP dictatorship – with its Corporate servants in the West) has won, the West has lost.
There is such a thing as fightback though.
‘We’ might start by trying to prise Guangdong Province away from the rest.
With a population of about 114 million and a seaboard it could easily stand on its own, unlike for example wee little Scotland.
How dare you insult “wee little Scotland “, Nicola is a leader beyond compare!
Nice one! But maybe after Wednesday she will be able to be compared to ‘the Salmond”!
By the way, the end of the Middle Class is begun, it has been the latest victim of covid. All that Work From Home, it will soon off-shore to China, India, and the Philippines. Like no TVs are made in the West, no drudge computer work will, unless AI gets it all before the developing world does. That office! It meant a work visa was required to work from, No Longer!
China isn’t monolithic. It isn’t one United, harmonious nation. If we were to be completely cynical (as a nation(s)), with the expenditure of a few million dollars, in the right places, to the right groups, China could be made very difficult to govern forcing its leadership to worry more about its internal issues. Of course a lot of people would die. The repression would be murderous and the lack of stability would bring it’s own risks, but China has a history of internal instability. It’s how the Communists got to power in the first place.
An excellent analysis of the potential weakness of China, and ‘we’ in the West should be doing our level best to exploit this.
As you correctly say China has a history of monumental civil wars and rebellions that have frequently brought the state to its knees.
How else for example could the East India Company have been so successful in plundering the place in the mid nineteenth century?
But this example is flawed, for the China of the mid nineteenth century lagged behind its competitors in all sorts of crucial ways – the most obvious being military hardware. Junks were sent into battle with squadrons of the Royal navy with predictably dire results. None of this applies now.
Military technology doesn’t erase the political and deeply seated cultural stresses of the Chinese state. In many ways China resembles an Eastern USSR, rather then a Russia.
The balance between Han regions and the minority regions in terms of population is far more unequal than the USSR. And it doesn’t have economically privileged minorities, like the Baltic states in the USSR, or the Armenians.
I beg to differ, even now the Chinese have nothing in their locker to equal the USN’s Ohio class ballistic subs. With a launch capability of 336 Trident II D-5 missiles for 102 Chinese cities with a population of over 1 million, it should be checkmate in one.
Returning to your original point one has ask why was Manchu China (Qing) so backward in the 1840’s?
Because there society rotted from the inside with insularity and arrogance (the Middle Kingdom vs. the ‘barbarians’) and a disdain for the modern world, until the modern world turned out to be rather more capable of imposing itself than the cozy conventionalities of the Confucian classics.
The Japanese figured this out much faster, and China paid for that also.
I was giving it as an option, I’m not sure I could recommend it. As I say a lot of innocent people would die. BUT it’s all to easy to see China as invincible and without weaknesses. It’s not. It’s potentially very unstable and vulnerable.
And so is the West, Richard – as we are now so painfully realizing.
Perhaps the West should strive to find a better alternative than fighting imperialism with imperialism? History tells us that it always ends in war.
The world has made international trade the best deterrent for global war – i.e. better to trade goods than missiles. How come the West has been so thoroughly defeated in the global trade arena? Why do western populations tolerate their national government’s educational, political and trade incompetence?
When China invaded North Korea in 1950 as the UN army were just at the river border MacArthur had a plan to stop them, he was in charge, it was 20 Nukes! Nuke the manufacturing and bases, get Chang Chi-Shek to invade from Formosa, and other things – Truman fired him. (youtube last part of MacArthur America Caesar)
I like MacArthur a lot, like I do Patton, they both had a similar idea, do it or lose it, they were the ultimate patriots. But the world is moved on from those days, and patriots are harried from their jobs like Trump and his fallowers are.
Was it only 20 ‘nukes’?
I thought it was considerably more.
Either way, the B team CEO made the wrong decision and we are left with the consequences.
If the US had used nukes then, you can be damn well sure the Cuban missile crisis or the 1983 Abel Archer scare would have ended in a nuclear exchange and we wouldn’t be having this conversation on this level of technology.
China wasn’t hobbled by civil wars and rebellions any more than Europe was hobbled by multiple wars and civil wars over the last 200 years.
It was hobbled by its backwardness, its inability to compete by the world thanks to an inward looking elite, cultural arrogance and technological and scientific backwardness. There is more a warning for the West in that, if it doesn’t want the Chinese inflicting their revenge.
Keep the ideas coming. Many monolithic structures have fallen in the past through internal instability.
It is a harmonious nation where every second you, and every person around you, are geo-located, listened to, every money spent, every word read or written examined…. Your face is recorded everywhere, your gait, your everything. Not so easy to be inharmonious when Gulags are plentiful, and every kind of thing may be denied you capriciously. Also the people have reconciled themselves to this, they know the Mao times, this is easy street to them, and the Chinese people have never been bothered with privacy and individualism and freedom/justice concerns. What happens when your phone’s e-wallet stops spending? There is no ability to resist.
Yes, and Western governments since the Great Lockdown of the last 18 months have learned how easy it is to obtain the compliance and submission of their populations with the simple tool of fear.
That may have worked decades ago. But now they have pretty effective methods for dealing with this issue, and no one cares any more either with enough palm grease c.f. Muslim countries turning a blind eye to their co-religionists being incarcerated in Xinjiang.
The world is now wide awake to communist hostility — coordinated action must followThe sub-heading assumes a great deal that is not in evidence. We’re awash in leftist agitprop across the West, people said nothing as Hong Kong was brought to heel, free speech is under assault in some quarters. Who, exactly, is going to conduct this ‘coordinated action’ the writer believes is necessary? There might be some old guys like me who remember freedom, but I’m not sure we’re going to get very far.
As one who fought in the British Army in North Borneo aged sixteen, in 1958, Mr Luttwak has had a lifetime of confrontation.
This present polemical essay is based on a long career of strategic thinking, and neatly summarises the dilemma faced by the West.
China is a clear and present danger, that must not be appeased under any circumstances. It clearly seeks world dominance and will have to be opposed even if this means war. We have perhaps as little as ten years to decided this global issue.
Thanks, Edward.
I’ve been observing this for some time but have not seen it put so succinctly before.
You can say similar in some respects about many UN and foreign aid projects.
Surely some of our finest minds, men with quadruple firsts from Balliol and Trinity are worth the enormous salaries they earn in the World Bank, UN, WHO etc?
Are these not the impeccable Proconsuls who determine the future of this benighted planet?
Just look and the superlative response by the WHO to this Corona Crisis, let alone the stellar performance of our own HMG, and off course the simply wonderful Joe Biden of that Ilk.
Fortunate indeed are ‘we’ to have such leaders, and to begrudge them their astronomical salaries is churlish indeed.
We have ever increasing socialism in the West, and socialism in China. Even the civil service in the UK is trotskyist. Kids learn socialism in school, they read about it in the media, everywhere. Many economists used to look logically at economies and draw sensible conclusions. Nowadays it is all socialist biased, nonsense. China is not going away. In my view it will take over the world.
The British are more Trot than anywhere else. Back in 1964 when the group ‘Militant Tendencies’ began to take the Labour Party, they perfected the tool of ‘Entryism’ that all commies and hard Liberals use to multiply their power exponentially. M Foot later crushed them as beeing too far and too crazy, but they resurfaced as ‘Momentum’ and with entryism got Corbyn in, and now are on the down turn, but will soon be back in the fore when the economic collapse happens.
It all started with Amritsar in 1919.
Eighty years ago the Japanese had very similar thoughts.
Of course we live in a different world from 1945 but I don’t think even if we know more – and I suspect many knew of the barbarity of Stalin’s Soviet Union without George Kennan – we have a morally contemptible class of politicians who will not do anything.
I have been very anti-China on line for years, I suppose China loosened covid on the world for exactly the results gotten. Either the region of SE Asia is immune, (they have 0.5% the cases we have – search Worldometers for numbers) or they have such less comorbidities and younger age they knew it would not bother them, not that they would care anyway, but they know what Pu,**i* s we have become, so know we would destroy ourselves to save voter anger. This disaster of lockdown has killed us, killed our economy, our will to struggle, or youth’s education, your jobs, our prestigue, and caused a great many casualities made chronically ill from neglect, mental issues, made unemployable, bankrupt, and so on, who will be a huge drag on future recovery, destroyed out great cities, the office, and on and on.
This must have been intentional. But watch out, I had a viscous attack on me from China, I had bad contraband sent to my address, in my name, from China and I got pulled by Homeland Security. They do play tricks, and that is why Chinese overseas toe the line.
“They do play tricks, and that is why Chinese overseas toe the line.” That and party officials embedded in Universities and other places use direct threats against their families in China.
I grew up learning of the horrors of Soviet communism. I had to stop reading as it was nightmarish but it has left an indelible mark in my soul. China have their horrors as well. My wife and I are aware of the torture and murder that goes on in this country secretly but enough gets out to show one the horrors of this country. They used to call, in my memory, the west filthy capitalists. Now they have discovered that capitalism works. The problem is that capitalism can be used to oppress if handled by unprincipled governments such as China’s. I am glad that people are waking up to this. I don’t know how Australia are going to extricate themselves from China but they need to before it swallows them.
China has become the master at exploiting the West’s weaknesses be they inherent or self-inflicted, whatever they may be and whenever they arise.
Today’s ascendant China is the inevitable outcome of the post war Western societies’ decades long addiction to a level of consumerism that could only ever be maintained by the ongoing creation of ever more debt.
This seemingly neverending ‘right’, as long as it looked like being broadly sustained, albeit with occasional interruptions, bought with it an unprecedented level of social and political stability amidst a democratic political backrop, hence the prevailing political and economic consensus around its wisdom.
Things started to go seriously pear shaped during the ‘too much is never enough’ Noughties when it appeared to many Western political elites like there was no longer any need whatsoever for any of these financial, monetary or governmental constraints on consumption or debt and, just as importantly, how or where something was produced was no longer relevant just so long as it was and it was done as cheaply as possible.
Of course, this reckless, myopic approach ultimately culminated in the 2008 financial crisis where states were effectively forced to bail each other and themselves out, inevitably with more debt.
This left them all hugely vulnerable to outside interests that, funnily enough, might not have their best, long term interests at heart but, crucially, were uniquely placed to help them sustain one of the lynchpins of their stability in their hour of most need and at a seemingly attractively low price.
No prizes for guessing who stepped into that role with relish and who is now reaping the rewards for that earlier dreadful act of dereliction of duty by our political masters.
I don’t disagree with you that the west has not adequately addressed China’s rise, but let’s not let the rest of the world off quite so easily. I know it’s satisfying to point to ourselves as the bad guys here, wallowing in our myriad weaknesses but the vast majority of the world isn’t part of the west.
And while the addiction to consumerism in the west is well recognized, it’s probably the case that consumerism has risen at even greater rates outside the west. If you look at Africa today, the influence of China is far greater than in, say North America. Same with Southeast Asia where living standards have risen at even faster clips than they have in the west and just a generation ago, consumerism was unknown throughout such regions,
And while the west can get together and mostly talk about China, while doing practically nothing about it, how would we interest non-western even faster growing consumer economies in also being aware of the dangers of China’s rise and suddenly doing without what they are only just now able to have?
If the west can’t all sing off the same hymnal re China, how would the rest of the world be expected to? We have to get over the idea that somehow the west is single handedly responsible for everything in the world.
Unfortunately, I agree, but whilst the West isn’t solely responsible for everything that happens in the world I maintain that it is still largely responsible for what it has done to itself.
If there was a time to act it is now long passed in terms of containing China.
Even now, we in the West can only talk of a ‘loose coalition’ of nation states in terms of addressing its ascendancy for fear that anything more robust and defined would be interpreted as antagonistic by it.
I agree, the west is responsible for its own behavior. The time has indeed passed for containing China for two reasons, 1) the west did not do what it should have long ago and 2) the west has no power to contain rapidly growing consumer focused economies outside the west. Robust action on the part of the west now would do nothing to address #2, which may be the larger issue in the long run.
And what was the alternative to consumerism? Deliberately crippling the financial system with government controls so all investment dried up and 80% of the population remained in grinding poverty as they did prior to WW2? Why exactly would anyone have preferred that to Soviet style socialism? And even this was unlikely to have much of an effect. In the end the availability of credit is just a product not of government actions, but changes in technology and social stratifications that made more people eligible for credit than was previously the case.
I mean, the Soviet Union did an excellent job in tamping down consumerism and making people ‘virtuously poor’. Unfortunately it also resulting in the country imploding in itself.
Consumerism isn’t in and of itself the problem, rather the lack of monetary and fiscal controls that governed it.
You’re falling into the basic trap of dichotomising the argument as though the only alternative were communism or socialism.
The truth is the alternative was having responsible political and financial classes that saw beyond their own self-interest and recognised that too much of a good thing wasn’t necessarily the best policy in the long run.
Given the fractured nature of modern US society and the apparent lack of interest (or perhaps it’s just weariness) by the US population in continuing to exert global leadership, I would be interested to know the author’s view of the likelihood that the US will participate in a coalition to oppose China’s expansion.
The west is fractured, is it not? Can we really trust the peoples of modern Europe and America to show sufficient patriotic dedication or public unity in the face of sustained conflict with modern China? Can we trust the Atlantic alliance to hold together? Can we trust the elite, marinated in suspicion of western power and horror of the western past, to fight for our interests? With the long march now all but complete and wider society impoverished, demoralised, aged, sterile and negotiating new and unfamiliar identities – reluctantly, to say the least – there is no energy for advance or resistance. And this is the level to which the left has long wanted to reduce us.
I agree with your post. My hope was that someone might present a more optimistic view of the future of the West. I am a pessimist who very much wants to be an optimist.
I’m completely optimistic that ‘we’ will see off the Chinese challenge, but then the major problems that beset the West will really start.
When the Roman Republic was in a similar position in 146 BC, having totally destroyed it’s perceived rivals, Carthage and Corinth, it rapidly descended into internecine conflict, that lasted almost a century.
Dear Sir, I know how you feel, believe me. But I have spent years holding to optimism in the face of repeated disappointment. I suppose that two things have finally sundered me from that stance: one, the appalling conduct of British and European elites over Brexit – the lies of project fear, the connivance of establishment figures at Brussels’ attempt to undermine our negotiating position, the pretence that the malign choices of bullying functionaries were unavoidable fact and the open disdain for the public. And two, the squalid, multiple betrayals of Boris Johnson – not standing up for Britain’s past, not resisting the perversion of law by a malign grievance industry, not controlling government expenditure and not responding with intelligence or agility to the pandemic. I feel politically rudderless and bereft in a society being changed beyond recognition by the same creatures who did so much to delay, damage and discredit Brexit. How can one “hope” in times such as these? If there is any hope it can only lie in first grasping the nettle of how bad things actually are. I fear it will be a long hard road by to those sunlit uplands, if – that is – we even begin to take it.
What has this to do with the article on China please ?
What have you got to do with our conversation?
The cult of empire exhausts the nations that follow it. Yesterday Britain, Russia, Germany; today the US; tomorrow China.
Simon, how about we show true patriotism by rolling up our sleeves, rebuilding our national industries and buying locally manufactured goods – even if they cost more than Chinese imports?
How about we shift some billions from the weapons industries into effective education, to revive a bit of old-fashion ingenuity instead of indoctrinating ever stupider grunts into a very expensive military deterrent tool?
Time to take responsibility for our own problems and bad choices, rather than twisting everything into the tired rhetoric of “us vs. them”.
Oh, excuse me whilst I construct a nuclear power station in the back garden. And as for billions for education – that’s like pouring gold into a sewer – British education has been an increasingly sick joke since Crosland began to vandalise it. We need fewer and better schools for fewer and more intelligent pupils; and the military provides an excellent training for those deprived of high intellectual gifts. Time to drop the school master’s tired rhetoric of “taking responsibility for our own … bad choices” when it’s a matter of macro-economic decision making, not some trifling matter of shopping priorities.
Yes. The fifth column of leftist media, academia and political elites in the West have been egged on by those abroad like the CCP who, with their Long Memory, are dedicated to reversing the humiliation imposed upon China and others by the West in the 19th century. Thus will be a great triumph for Xi, who has traced an uninterrupted link between Confucian China and his CCP.
What was “racist” in this piece? This flaccid response from people who see everything through the prism of race or ethnicity makes the proverbial Little Boy an expert on wolves. You have blinded yourselves to the point that you only see racism, most egregiously where none is intended.
The Establishments in the West think their values always have been, and continue to be, superior to values emanating from other cultures. They can’t even imagine the values of other racial groups could provide for better human flourishing. They simply believe they’re inherently superior. That’s what’s racist about Mr Luttwak’s article because it echoes that supreme sense of superiority of Western thought.
China, in contrast to Western empires, and despite being an enormous economic power on and off for millenia, has not been, a major colonial power. In contrast to the USSR it is not a proselytising state trying to export its values by fomenting revolutions in other countries, and continues to avoid major colonial conquests.
Why not allow an alternative polity and value system show how it can provide for human flourishing? By my yardstick raising 850 million people out of abject poverty over a 40 year period is a pretty good start.
China may not have been a colonial power in the terms traditionally recognised in the West, but from 1949 onward the CCP exported Marxist revolution throughout Asia, – and the dominance of Chinese commercial elites there goes back centuries.
What is happening here, 63 comments claimed but only 59 shown? 4 have been erased in the past two hours , (1800GMT).
I had one reviewing Mr Luttwak’s somewhat unusual CV, amongst other things.
The old cold war warriors are dusting off the war drums to engage another ‘enemy’ doing the same as the ‘West’ has been doing avidly since end of WW2, namely interfering in other countries to extend influence and control. The US is estimated to have interfered in foreign elections to some extent in 81 countries and overtly overthrown elected governments eg Iran, Chile, Nicaragua, sponsored invasions of Cuba, fought wars in South East Asia to name only a few. The Chinese are now following our example, attempting to extend their influence, exert power, control resources etc. I don’t like the way the world runs, but at least I can recognise hypocrisy.
Thanks Ian. For a moment there I thought no one else had noticed just that.
How terrible it is that we in the West cannot find a more sustainable political approach than more old-fashioned imperialism.
Also, no one mentions the fact that gives China its current edge: Its population is less used to pampered comfort, and can produce more for a lower cost. Rather than addressing this real issue, lots of people here are already considering threatening a nuclear war!
Much as I realize how bad Xi Jinping’s China is, I sometimes wonder if we really deserve to triumph…
Imperialism is when a country takes over another and subjugates it. Since the Brits left India, Western nations have not done that. The US/UK etc have been defending countries from domination by the USSR, China, etc, and from communist takeovers.
Chinese laborers are paid less, but are worth less, far less. Western workers, particularly in the US and W Europe are far more productive on a cost basis for any non-trivial work.
I have in-laws from mainland China who are afraid to go back to visit. Are people afraid to return to the US or UK or France? Very few.
Western Values ARE superior…but they’ve been sniped at and sidelined so much by 5th columnists ideology whose values&outlook are in league with barbarians.
Barbarians welcomed by the million into the hearth of Europe&latterly USA.
I think that TABLOID T.V, the Kardashians et al are Barbarians and that Peter Branagan is correct: Our Society is COMPLETELY DYSFUNCTIONAL and will capitulate to the YELLOW PERIL…
Reading this I kept having the feeling he was describing US econ/military behavior over the last 120 years.
Furthermore, at least since Viet Nam it’s been clear, Kennan & Co. were inflating a paper tiger. All our lives they brainwashed us to think the Kremlin only understood “one thing”. Then in ’91 it collapsed without a shot fired in anger. I guess Luttwak missed it, but historians universally now agree the USSR was never 10′ tall.
Like “WMD” the “Long Telegram” was a pretext for conning us into not demobilizing, and permanently supporting an imperial apparatus around the globe. And now it’s being reprised.
You are correct about the Soviet threat being massively over hyped. From about 1960 with the advent of US Corona Satellites, augmented by U2 aircraft it was quite obvious that the USSR was a ‘basket case’, military, industrially and socially.
Unfortunately marxist inspired academics and others in the West did their utmost to deny this and perpetuate the myth of the Soviet giant. JFK’s climb down over the Turkish based Jupiter Missiles may have something to do with this.
However the subsequent naivety towards China, possibly inspired by ill founded racist assumptions is inexcusable. The former USSR was just the hors d’oeuvre in the struggle with this marxist beast, as China has proved to be the main course.
University faculties, the press, Hollywood, the unions, … , all leftist thinkers were thoroughly Hoover’d up after the war. There were no “marxist inspired academics”. Capitalist group-think reigned unchallenged until Cuba, Dominican Republic, Viet Nam exposed to anyone with eyes the bloody ferocity of US imperialism.
Recently the populist movement is exhibiting signs of National Security State, “forever wars”, fatigue. The Military-Industrial Complex senses its control of its trillion-plus share of the Federal budget threatened. So it brings out the old reliable hacks, like Luttwak, to nip it in the bud. The chorus of neocons will soon pick up the tune along with their old Terrorism standby; and we’ll have to go through it all again.
“You don’t argue with a man who has thirty Legions at his back”.
At home or abroad?
Actually, the hacks have found a better solution this time round, by attributing the greatest threat to “domestic terrorism.”
I can’t agree that the Soviet Union was a paper tiger. They had a large if unsophisticated army, and by the late 60’s as many nuclear weapons as the US. Their tanks were superior to the US as well. A Major in the USArmy I knew who was stationed in Germany in the early 80’s told us that if the Soviets attacked with full force W Europe would last about a week. The US was out-manned 5:1, and out-gunned 3:1, and had long supply lines. The USSR may not have been a great industrial power, but what power it had it put into military might. Fortunately Thatcher, Pope JP2, and Reagan did a very skillful job of stressing out their system with SDI and the Voice of America etc. and they collapsed.
It would be interesting to know the precise details of Private Luttwak’s active service, with the British Army, as a sixteen year old in North Borneo in 1958, referred to by Richard Audley below.
My understanding is that British Forces were not committed to North Borneo until 1963 at the start of the so-called “Confrontation” with Indonesia.
‘
After some searching seems this claim comes from a Guardian article in 2015:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/09/edward-luttwak-machiavelli-of-maryland
‘In 1957, at the age of 15, he quit school, temporarily cut off contacts with his parents, and moved to London, where he worked in a teashop in Piccadilly and enlisted in the Honourable Artillery Company, a territorial regiment quartered in London. Luttwak claims to have first seen military action in 1958, as 16-year-old in the jungles of North Borneo, where a small British force was sent in a clandestine operation to prop up the native Dayaks against Chinese communists. But then, according to Luttwak, the world would be a very different place without him: he claims a significant hand in a large proportion of the most momentous events of the postwar era: from the decision to throw molotov cocktails at Soviet tanks in the Prague Spring, to Iran’s 1981 release of American hostages, to the existence of the Toyota Prius.’
Make of that what you will.
Why wouldn’t China want to catch up with the West. And it’s on our back if they overtake us.
As to if they will wish to impose, well the West has done that a plenty.
If they wish to take the place of the USA, and then behave live the USA has behaved, well then we’d get a taste of our own medicine.
Isn’t that what we mostly fear ?
Surely countries have a right to be strong.
The point being, we should just raise our game to not be overtaken.
At then end of the day 99.9% of people just want a pleasant life (numbers may vary in your locale).
Let’s not forget they probably helped rig the USA 2020 election too. Very frightening. There is nothing they will not do I’m sure of that. The article “China Could Turn Off Britain’s Lights” is also “illuminating” if you’ll excude the pun.
That’s a trifle unfair. Mr Luttwak claims to have fought with the British Army in North Borneo at the age of 16 in 1958*.
Ten years later he wrote his acclaimed “Coup d’Etat: A Practical Handbook, from whence he eventually surfaced in the Reagan administration as a notable ‘hawkish’ advisor.
His present polemic is an unambiguous warning of what awaits the West, if the current policy of insane corporate greed and appeasement continues.
*’Guardian’ interview, 2015.
My god! What a lot,of sweeping and should,I say, totally empty statements. Liberal democracy is stone dead? Is your argument as simple as ‘wokeism = end of democracy. Not much of an argument. Similarly ,are you saying that because just like the rest of the world – China in particular- the West has generally followed Covid guidelines and laws it means that democracy is dead . Your argument seems to be one of a democratic people would not follow the guidelines and laws. A kind of empty argument.
Yes in my censored and deleted comment, my claim was that FOR ME ‘Wokeism’ means that liberal democracy is stone dead. We may have a residual form of democracy but the liberal bit is ‘stone dead’. In a genuinely liberal society values and norms are not imposed by law – other than in extreme cases like wilful substantial harm. People would have the right to work with, and associate with, whoever they wish (that is, for example, without the legal imposition of quotas for various ‘identities’) and could do so without the risk of prosecution or losing their livelihood.
You may think that imposition of detailed values by law is for the greater good. That may, or not, be the case – but it definitely is not liberal.
The fact that my comment – albeit trenchant – was censored while another comment which advocated the incineration of 100s of millon of Chinese with nuclear weapons was left up frankly astonishes me.
the word wumao springs to mind, but too wordy a post. I did like the second half, sums up the Eastern view of Westerners, and is true, which is really sad.
Error 1: strap line insists that the voracious capitalism of China is still “Communist”.
2: Kennan’s follow-up to the (less famous) Long Telegram, “The sources of Soviet conduct” (1947) -http://slantchev.ucsd.edu/courses/pdf/Kennan%20-%20The%20Sources%20of%20Soviet%20Conduct.pdf – laid great stress on Communist IDEOLOGY. Luttwak entirely ignores Xi’s, which is entirely different from Stalin’s. A grave mistake, especially as Xi’s has more and more adherents in the west – as a number of comments here remind us.
3: To portray Australia’s Sinophobic 2011 turn as having nothing to do with “dependency” on America is ridiculous. In November that year, Obama and Oz PM Julia Gillard announced the arrival of US troops at… a joint press conference. See https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/truthout.org/articles/a-marine-base-for-australia-irritates-china/%3famp
Can The Han Chinese Vote? Can they hold their leaders to account?
Once they’ve all got washing machines & colour TV, what will they want next? Can China survive without Co-operation with the West & it’s Allies? World domination, isn’t all its cracked up to be: ask the USA!
Wise words – there’s only one way out from first place, and its a long way down. When the leaders of the Roman, Mongol, British or US empires were at apogee they all thought it would last forever. Hard to see why this is the case when popular culture has warned against it from Ovid to Patsy Cline.
Who cares about China. I want my own government and billionaire class to be tried for crimes against humanity. Let the Chinese people deal with their own criminals. End all lockdowns. End the mask mandates. Throw the billionaires in jail, sell off their assets, distribute the proceeds to small business owners.
The recent sinophobia across the UK/US MSM doesn’t seem to have caught on elsewhere. I agree the Chinese govt is repressive and often disregards human rights. However with allies like Saudi, Turkey, India etc we need to think before pointing the finger elsewhere. There is no shortage of ethnic Uighers willing to work in the “re-education camps” and as Han owned businesses. The Chinese debt bondage offering clearly appeals to African and SE Asian investors more than the US/UK model version which has been too extractive for too long. The yellow man bad/western man good message isn’t going to wash with marginalised groups in the west, ask the urban blacks or moslems and travellers/gypsy/sinti. Add in the fact that in Chinese local elections there is more variety between the far left Maoist and the centrist State Capitalist than say Milliband v Cameron in UK and the simplistic analysis of western media looks like a propaganda error. Mind you if our US/UK chattering classes can’t understand the biology of flu viruses or Ghz range telephony its not really a surprise international politics has them stumped and lashing out at those different from ourselves.
As always , regardless of format, Edward Luttwak combines most impressive and manifold erudition with a steely realism rooted in firm command of history (unadulterated by PC) and Kennanesque analytical brilliance, but one sprinkled with a pleasant sense of humour even when dealing with Xi Jinping’s nightmarish “Chinese dream.” On December 27, 2012– one day after returning to power (for an unprecedented 8 consecutive years) former Japanese prime minister Abe Shinzō published “Asia’s Democratic Security Diamond” [ADSD in Project Syndicate], a short essay focusing on the existential challenge of Chinese expansionism to Japan, Asia and the world – a clarion call to the world’s democracies to cooperate in the defense of liberal democratic values as well as economic and geo-strategic interests. The still evolving QUAD (Quadrilateral Security) geo-strategic and economic mechanism of Japan, the US, Australia and India, joined by Britain, France , Holland and Germany and the FOIP [Free and Open Indo-Pacific] political, economic and security concept have their origin in the Kennanesque ADSD. I have dealt with Abe Shinzō’s transformational role in Japanese and global international relations and security in freeandopenindopacific.net , and with Xi-ism as a case of historical déjà vu , in “Dire history repeated: one-party state, Lebensraum foreign policy and rabid antisemitism of the neo-fascist Beijing regime” at the Analysis link of the website. The way nations are reacting to Putinite imperialism (against Ukraine) and its Xi’ite counterpart may yet bear two competing global camps: a QUAD Plus [EU but also Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, etc] alliance vs. a BIMAT [Beijing/Islamabad/Moscow/(NATO-member) Ankara/Tehran] Plus [North Korea, most African and Latin American states ] totalitarian axis of sorts.