>>I hope that Hillary Clinton gets the nomination

No one in the entire process is under more pressure to “look tough” than HRC — she’s a woman and a Democrat. That’s why she says asinine things like we are safer now than we were before 9/11 and that she wouldn’t talk to any bad guys. She would be the anti-Nixon: her total lack of credibility and perceived weakness on national security would probably force her to out-Bush Bush. Nixon could go to China because of his hawk credentials; she’d have to bomb it just to prove she wasn’t “weak.”

It wouldn’t surprise me, though, if the Democrats were dumb enough to nominate her. At this point, that would probably be the only thing on the planet that would ensure a GOP victory in ’08. Her campaign slogan, in any case, ought to be: “Four More Years!”

August 2, 2007 @ 7:38 am | Comment

“Obama does not inspire confidence over foreign policy”

Uh, and someone who voted for the Iraq War does?

August 2, 2007 @ 8:07 am | Comment

“No one in the entire process is under more pressure to “look tough” than HRC”

Yet she still hasn’t endorsed an attack on a country like Pakistan without its permission. The reason I think Obama is no good is that he fails to realise the shit-storm he’d be kicking up if he did that – it could lead to any number of nasty events.

Seriously, he’s being so moronic I’m having trouble expressing myself.

“Uh, and someone who voted for the Iraq War does?”

More that someone who thinks invading a “friendly” nation without their permission is a good idea.

It’s ridiculous to judge someone on foreign policy just over the way they voted on the Iraq War. What they’re suggesting they would do now is much more important.

August 2, 2007 @ 8:09 am | Comment

“It’s ridiculous to judge someone on foreign policy just over the way they voted on the Iraq War. What they’re suggesting they would do now is much more important.”

What someone says about war is more important than how they vote on it?

August 2, 2007 @ 8:16 am | Comment

“What someone says about war is more important than how they vote on it?”

So you’re going to reduce this to a “four legs good, two legs bad” argument?

If Clinton was claiming to be a peacenik who would never sanction the use of troops outside of a UN peacekeeping force or something, ok. But she’s not. What I’m talking about is the candidates’ current positions on foreign policy as a whole. One has to remember that they want to become President, where they would get access to all the information – as a senator, Clinton et al were not given all the facts.

Now, what Obama has said is that he’d essentially do what Bush did in invading Iraq but towards a non-hostile (even “friendly”) country like Pakistan. Now maybe you’d like to actually address that point?

August 2, 2007 @ 8:25 am | Comment

Pakistan is not much of an ally, we sell them lots of military gear, then they turn some of it over to China (F16s, C-17-100Ls, etc.) and while Musharraff is naturally against having his country bombed/attacked by the US, he is also powerless to get rid of AQ and the Taliban because many enlisted and officers in the Pakistani military, as well as in the ISI, support either AQ or the Taliban…this is a tribal heritage issue not a political one.

It can be said that Musharraff has lost control of NW Pakistan. Additionally, there is alot of good intel from Afganistan and the ISI that China is supplying AQ and Tabilan cells in Pakistan.

And he is unfortunately right to meet with the leaders of nations we don’t like. We can’t do much about them being there and we don’t have to give them anything, just keep relations open.

Vote Obama ’08

August 2, 2007 @ 8:32 am | Comment

Wow, already invoking Orwell, are we?

Clinton supported the war as a preemptive strike against Iraq for having nuclear weapons.

What if Pakistan — a nation that has tried to (if not succeeded succeeded) in selling nuclear technology to Iran and North Korea, has radical Islamic elements control portions of its government/country, and is the sworn enemy of U.S.-ally India — is deemed a similar threat?

What does her record indicate that she will do?

August 2, 2007 @ 8:33 am | Comment

>>It’s ridiculous to judge someone on foreign policy just over the way they voted on the Iraq War. What they’re suggesting they would do now is much more important.

Well, don’t worry, if bombing Pakistan becomes a popular notion, I’m sure Hillary will be all for it. She’ll support anything with 70% support in the polls. I don’t doubt that.

>> as a senator, Clinton et al were not given all the facts.

Funny, I’m not even a senator — nor a Democrat — and I was against the invasion of Iraq from the beginning. I don’t think I was the only one, either. There were enough facts in plain sight for anyone to see that it would be a disaster.

Anyway, Raj, I think you are underestimating the visceral hatred that a lot of people have for HRC. The country has a major case of Bush-Clinton dynasty fatigue…enough already.

August 2, 2007 @ 8:45 am | Comment

>It’s ridiculous to judge someone on foreign policy just over the way they voted on the Iraq War.

Then, it is even more ridiculous for you to judge Obama on his foreign policy by a few things he said just to look tough.

August 2, 2007 @ 8:54 am | Comment

It’s ridiculous to judge someone on foreign policy just over the way they voted on the Iraq War. What they’re suggesting they would do now is much more important.

Um, no it’s not. What she’s saying now (a phased withdrawal from Iraq) is no different from what many other Democrats and even Republicans are saying. But her vote for the Iraq War showed her true colours – as an unctuous enabler of the mistakes of the current administration, a true Beltway establishmentarian. Like 88 said, she’ll support anything with more than 70% support in the polls.

As for Obama – well, I don’t think much of him to begin with, and GWB has more than amply shown what can go wrong with a President with little to no foreign policy experience who must rely on the advice of “experts”. So this statement doesn’t surprise me in the least.

( Although I’ll agree with nanheyangrouchuan that there’s nothing wrong Obama’s other recent statement about how the U.S. should engage in diplomatic relations with enemy countries. Remember the Soviet Union, guys?)

August 2, 2007 @ 10:41 am | Comment

Sorry to trot out this Internet meme again, but: Ron Paul.

He opposed military interventionism then. He opposes it now.

August 2, 2007 @ 11:21 am | Comment

Apologies for inserting a completely random comment, but I took the time to write this, and then found out for some reason comments are closed on the ESWN/ Chen/ Chavez post.
Someone said:
“…unless you still support colonialism, then i have nothing to say…”
I will tell you that I, for one, do not support colonialism, which is why I recognize the right to self-determination for all of China’s provinces/ autonomous regions/ and other countries that it lays claim to. I believe that Hong Kong should be its own independent country. I believe that Taiwan is already an independent country. I believe that East Turkmenistan, Tibet, and any other “part of the country” that does not want to be exploited by the imperial monolith should have the right to be independent.
What is the definition of colonialism? Colonialism does not necessarily mean a bunch of white guys in funny clothes ruling over people of different skin colors. In my opinion (and I might take some big hits for this), no matter how you slice it, China is the largest colonial power in the world at the moment, laying claim to and exploiting vast masses of land without the approval of their inhabitants, and attempting to assimilate these people culturally and economically for the benefit of the empire.
Apologies for the diversion.

August 2, 2007 @ 11:38 am | Comment

China is not the largest colonial power in terms of land area colonized. The Han people have historically ruled over the Huang and Yangtze river valleys (as well as the Eastern coast) for thousands of years.

The honor of the largest colonial empire in terms of land area would go to the United States, which, for all intents and purposes, used its superior social order, economic intensity, and technological prowess to exterminate, assimilate, and steal from the native american tribes (which occupied most of the Midwest, the Great Plains, the Eastern Seaboard, etc.), ignoring, in the vast majority of cases, the intrinsic right of self-determination of its native peoples.

Although I really have to say it’s a meaningless debate–China will not relinquish its hold over Xinjiang or Tibet or Taiwan for that manner anytime soon, and the United States won’t return Georgia to the Cherokees, Florida to the Seminoles, or Texas to the Comanches either.

In spite of what international law has to say, realism is still the name of the game, and the forces of capital in this world are still far stronger than any winds of social justice nonprofit NGOs can bring about.

(Sorry for the off-topic post).

August 2, 2007 @ 3:43 pm | Comment

Edwards!!!! Go Go Go….!

August 2, 2007 @ 4:11 pm | Comment

I like Edwards. I don’t think he will get the nomination, and I don’t know how good a candidate he is in some ways (worth as a candidate having only a tangental relationship to the worth of one’s policy positions). But on the issues, he’s got my vote.

The thing about Hillary, and I say this as a person who is not crazy about her and was never a Clinton fan (we’ll talk about what I did during the 92 campaign some other time), she’s a much more effective candidate than I would have thought. This is not an endorsement of her policies or positions. But in watching the debates and her recent speeches, I have to say, she’s good at this – prepared, poised and strong. She seems (ugh) “Presidential.”

I’m even thinking she can win now, and I never thought that before.

Again, not an endorsement. Just an observation.

August 2, 2007 @ 4:29 pm | Comment

t-co mentioned “the intrinsic right of self-determination” of America’s native peoples.

Funny thing is, the (Wilsonian) concept of the “right to self-determination” is an American invention, and a very recent one at that.

August 2, 2007 @ 4:56 pm | Comment

The thing about Hillary, and I say this as a person who is not crazy about her and was never a Clinton fan (we’ll talk about what I did during the 92 campaign some other time), she’s a much more effective candidate than I would have thought. This is not an endorsement of her policies or positions. But in watching the debates and her recent speeches, I have to say, she’s good at this – prepared, poised and strong. She seems (ugh) “Presidential.”

To quote Gore Vidal: “We are governed by public relations.”

August 2, 2007 @ 5:51 pm | Comment

Funny thing is, the (Wilsonian) concept of the “right to self-determination” is an American invention, and a very recent one at that.

Well, nationalism itself is also a pretty recent invention.

August 2, 2007 @ 6:00 pm | Comment

Yep, nationalism is a recent invention, and it has been an almost uniformly disastrous one, the most powerful and most destructive idea of the 20th century. That’s why on the one hand I actually think China and the world will be better off if China maintains its present territorial boundaries – although they don’t have to commit cultural genocide in Tibet and Xinjiang to do that. On the other hand, for China to base its claims to Tibet and Xinjiang on a chimeric idea of Chinese nationalist “self-determination” is an oxymoron.

August 2, 2007 @ 6:37 pm | Comment

True. Although regarding Inner/Central Asian nationalism – it’s only destructive if the CCP makes it so. Nationalist movements, many of which turn ugly quickly, are usually born out of oppression.

P.S. But wait, I though Marxism was the single most powerful and destructive idea of the 20th century! 😉

August 2, 2007 @ 7:38 pm | Comment

P.P.S. The right of ethnic groups to self-determination may be an American invention but it seems Wilson is far less popular in American nowadays than Strauss.

August 2, 2007 @ 7:45 pm | Comment

P.P.P.S. (sorry for spamming, Richard)

Have I mentioned how glad I am that you’re back? Now if only davesgonechina can put in an appearance.

August 2, 2007 @ 7:49 pm | Comment

Thanks for that, Nausicaa; I’m handing you a virtual beer.

As for Marxism, it has always been a far weaker ideology than nationalism. That’s why Russian Communism was virtually stillborn in its cradle, and the Soviet system was doomed from the start, because after the 1930s or so, hardly any Russians really believed in it, least of all Stalin. But I’m afraid nationalism will be with us for a long time (including, most alarmingly, in the USA, whose nationalism is not based on mythical notions of “blood and soil”, but on an unhistorical abstraction of itself.)

And it’s debatable whether nationalist movements are born out of actual oppression, or rather out of perceived oppression and perceived grievances. America’s peculiar form of nationalism has nothing to do with perceived memories of historical oppression – its inspiration is the opposite of that, a mythical sense of divine dispensation and omnipotence.

August 2, 2007 @ 8:15 pm | Comment

Dave

“What if Pakistan — a nation that has tried to (if not succeeded succeeded) in selling nuclear technology to Iran and North Korea, has radical Islamic elements control portions of its government/country, and is the sworn enemy of U.S.-ally India — is deemed a similar threat?

What does her record indicate that she will do?”

I don’t know. What would Obama do? If you want to cite his opposition to the Iraq war and criticising Clinton for her support, you’re suggesting he should not do anything.

If you’re saying Obama should get involved, your criticism of Clinton is hypocritical.

——
Z

“Then, it is even more ridiculous for you to judge Obama on his foreign policy by a few things he said just to look tough.”

If he retracts his comments, fair enough. But I would say suggesting he would invade Pakistan is pretty serious business and should be viewed as such.

——
88

“I was against the invasion of Iraq from the beginning”

And? You didn’t know that the evidence wasn’t there, you merely suspected it. Senators can’t be so jaded.

August 2, 2007 @ 8:59 pm | Comment

“Pakistan is not much of an ally, we sell them lots of military gear, then they turn some of it over to China (F16s, C-17-100Ls, etc.) ”

Care to back it up?

August 2, 2007 @ 9:50 pm | Comment

>>And? You didn’t know that the evidence wasn’t there, you merely suspected it.

What evidence are you referring to? I said there was enough evidence there in plain sight to see that the whole thing was a ruse and would turn out disastrously.

August 3, 2007 @ 12:07 am | Comment

I guess he means that you have to get in Iraq to find out that there is no evidence of WMD. I might be wrong.

August 3, 2007 @ 12:38 am | Comment

Not quite, fatbrick. I certainly wouldn’t say Iraq had to be invaded merely to find out. More that the initial detractors of the war didn’t really know there was no WMD in Iraq, more that they decided to believe the “no case for war” side. If the evidence was that clear-cut I doubt Congress would have supported the war.

Besides there were other reasons to support the war. For example, there was a great fear that Saddam was going to be able to get sanctions lifted and then go back to his bad old ways. I doubt very much that he would have turned into a peaceful Middle Eastern dictator. He would have waited until the UN got distracted by something else (e.g. North Korea and Iran) and then started his old programmes back up again. It was justifiable to argue that if he hadn’t been stopped in 2003, he would have become a problem again later.

August 3, 2007 @ 1:52 am | Comment

“would have” is a pretty lame excuse in this case.

August 3, 2007 @ 2:44 am | Comment

>>More that the initial detractors of the war didn’t really know there was no WMD in Iraq, more that they decided to believe the “no case for war” side.

I guess Hans Blix and Scott Ritter were hallucinations. And, in any case, even if Iraq had WMD, would that automatically justify an invasion and occupation by the US? I don’t think so. You must support the immediate invasion of Iran and the DPRK, not to mention Pakistan. But I thought you were criticizing Obama for warning Pakistan??

>>It was justifiable to argue that if he hadn’t been stopped in 2003, he would have become a problem again later.

So in other words the only reason it is now correct not to support the initial invasion is that it turned out that Iraq didn’t have WMD?
The entire premise is flawed: “if Saddam had WMD he would give them to al Qaeda.” That was as laughable on its face then as it is now.
I guess Hillary and all of those non-jaded senators who supported the war were just too serious and evidence-bound to see that. It had nothing to do with polls and the fear of appearing weak. And the neocons who had been pushing for an invasion of Iraq long before 9/11 — Hillary and those other poor, helpless senators couldn’t see that, right in front of their faces. Well, plenty of people did — some of them even in Congress.

August 3, 2007 @ 2:56 am | Comment

C-17s working for the PLAAF

“http://tuku.military.china.com/military/html/2007-06-06/38555.htm”

Boeing 707 adopted for military use by PLAAF

Google image
“http://tinyurl.com/3645nt”

C-135 (707) line drawing
“http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/bomber/kc135_line.gif”

August 3, 2007 @ 6:15 am | Comment

The opinion piece copied below is an interesting and informative overview of
the problems in China. It conveys the impression (though it doesn’t explicitly
state it) that China is descending into a fascist-form of anarchy and could
soon (a few years) suffer a major economic collapse, if it doesn’t drag the
rest of the world into something worse.

China is a troubling question to me. Are we seeing the rise of the next Nazi
Germany, but one with enormously greater danger attached to it because of
greater population, modern economic power, and potentially great military
power? Greater yet, because Republicans and the Democrats alike seem bent on
reducing the U.S. to second-rate status?

Or will the Chinese people, emerging from decades of communist rule, be
unwilling to give up new freedoms and prosperity and resist imperialistic
ambitions of their government?

I honestly don’t know for sure. I’ve talked to a Chinese ex-patriot at work
about this (I think his father was somehow in the Party apparatus, cause he was
protected as a child during Mao’s cultural revolution), and also an
ex-Taiwanese (also at work), who both have given me fascinating perspectives I
haven’t found in any Western sources. Both are surprisingly (to me) well read
and informed of the geopolitics even if they don’t have the big philosophic
perspective. I’ve also had third-hand knowledge from others who know people
from China, or have visited China. Mixed, uncertain opinions from all with an
undercurrent of worry.

I’m tempted to say the opinion piece below tells a story with an inexorable
logic that flows along with that undercurrent, and frightens me.

Is China a major threat to the world? I don’t feel qualified enough to pass
that judgment — I’m simply not knowledgable enough. From an Objectivist
perspective, I haven’t identified the philosophic fundamentals well enough —
but anyone who’s read Atlas Shrugged can see frightening, though imperfect
parallels. Unlike the world of John Galt, which explodes in anarchy because
the motor of economic power stops when the men of ability go on strike, China
sounds like a country about to explode because of a motor running out of
control and far into the red (forgive the pun, and it has three entendres
here), fueled by the ambitions of a quasi-fascist communist government that is
pumping in an explosive mixture of influence peddlng, stock market
manipulation, currency inflation, intellectual property theft and a host of
other ills too numerous to list at this time of night.

I disagree with one implied contention of the op-ed. The problem is not
insufficient regulation of Chinese businesses. I think the Chinese government,
while nominally communist (much as the Nazis were nominally Socialist) has
simply morphed into a fascist super-state (like the Nazis did, as explained so
well in Peikoff’s book, “Ominous Parallels”). The power of the government has
extended itself to rampant corruption by pull-peddlers of the kind Cuffy Meigs
and Orren Boyle and Jim Taggart would feel right at home with. That’s the
primary cause of the trumpeted problems of poisoned food and defective products
and the cover-ups and murders surrounding them. In the long run, and in the
big picture, these are symptoms of a greater disease, but in the short run,
just a red herring (last pun); companies that want to do business with China
will simply strengthen quality control standards or risk fatal litigation.

The pro and con of what’s unwrapping in China seems almost too dynamic to
analyze and reduce to a clear principle, but my inclination is to reduce the
problem to its simplest essentials: The desire for a people to be free and
prosperous is not a fundamental; the ideas they hold are. The people in China
do not yet hold the right ideas. They want to be free, but they don’t know
why. This makes them terribly vulnerable to the power-lusters of any statist
government.

Likewise, the government of China, however much it has loosened the reigns,
does not yet have the right ideas. It doesn’t know its proper function. The
Chinese people may have been granted greater freedom of action and freedom to
prosper, and superficially some official respect for property rights has
appeared, but any “rights” their government seems to have granted seem to be
only for the purpose of buttering up the milch cow.

The operative word is “granted”. A cow that has a “granted” right to exist,
rather than an actual right to exist, could just as easily be slaughtered as it
could be milked.

Under a genuinely free, non-threatening government, rights are not “granted”,
they are inalienable. In the absence of that idea — inalienability of
natural rights — a government that appears to have an overweening desire for
power concerns me.

More succinctly, my simple inclination is to say: in principle a fascist
government with a philosophically unschooled populace (at least, unschooled in
a philosophy of reason and rights) has to be a threat. We shall see.

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2007/s7_27.asp
Friday, July 27, 2007
Sol Sanders, “China in crisis: Export disaster, eco-mess threaten Party’s
economic gameplan”

Perhaps it tells us something about contemporary America that food and
medicine adulteration in products the Chinese use themselves and increasing
sell the world should come to light because American pets suffered. It was no
secret that the nominally Communist Chinese regime had for decades looked the
other way when scandals involving Party members or government officials came to
light concerning lapses in health and safety standards.

But the current continuous foreign – and even domestic — media reporting
of poisoned products for pet food, adulterated tooth paste, deadly cough syrup,
fish products containing cryogenics, defective pharmaceuticals, dumplings which
may or may not have been stuffed with cardboard, etc., etc., are all part of a
pattern of the virtually complete failure of Chinese regulatory agencies.

It is not as new story. When the 72-year-old Dr. Jiang Yanyong in 2003 exposed
the outbreak of China’s SARS, a deadly respiratory virus which could have
turned into an international pandemic, he and his wife were arrested and the
government attempted to continue to cover up the whole outbreak. –

A half million people suffered from the negligence of the responsible
authorities and the greed of the underground “blood heads” organizing the sale
of blood for plasma in the villages in eastern and southern Henan Province.
This led directly to the eruption and spread of AIDS to whole villages. Again
the authorities tried to hush it up.

Although the death toll in Chinese coal mines was officially put 661 in the
first three months of this year, less than the official figures last year, the
official State Administration for Coal Mine Safety Supervision reported a
succession of “cover ups” of fatal accidents in March. China, with vast
reserves and a desperate need for energy, accounts for around one-third of the
world’s coal output, but accounts for four-fifths of industry deaths — 50
times higher than in the United States, the world’s second largest producer,
but also even ten times higher per ton of coal than in India where accidents
are also far too prevalent.

These are only a few examples of a failure of a rapidly growing economy to
cope with the demands for health and safety required of any modernizing
society. True, China’s rapid growth rates make it difficult to institute new
safety and health requirements. An impoverished society is trying to catch up
and environmental concerns, as one Chinese spokesman has said bluntly recently,
will have to take lower priority to economic development.

But just as environmental concerns now threaten the water supply for some of
China’s largest cities and industrial water resources may curtail that very
development, the bad publicity for China’s exports has taken on economic
consequences. The China brand is increasingly becoming suspect in foreign
markets.

Toward the end of July, faced with potential boycotts of Chinese products
abroad and a massive array of reports of inferior products, the government has
set up a team of top officials to steer efforts at repairing the stained
reputation of the country’s food and products at home and abroad. The
government gave no details of how the new agency would operate – especially
important given the already existing proliferation of half a dozen regulatory
agencies with conflicting jurisdictions.

The execution of the head of China’s food and drug regulatory agency for
taking bribes to validate pharmaceuticals and the sentencing of a second
official of the agency also to death was intended to tell the world Beijing
means business. It also dramatized the acceptance by Beijing authorities that
the problem has now become a critical politico-economic issue, perhaps at home,
but certainly abroad..

The reason is clear: China’s economic development program is overwhelmingly
dependent on its export-led product manufacturing and sale of intermediates and
components overseas. The avalanche of reports of faulty manufacturing and
adulteration threatens that whole economic program. A government media report
in July claimed that 19.1 per cent of goods for domestic consumption checked in
the first half of this year failed quality standards. Among smaller
manufacturers, the failure rate was 27.1 percent. The statistics are probably
not less bogus than other statistics that take on imaginative and creative
aspects in the China environment.

But having virtually abandoned any ideological or national goals except
economic growth – however unequal and limited to elite in the major port
cities – the very raison d’etre of the regime is now jeopardized by this
sudden explosion of revelations about the seriousness of the problem of
inadequate standards and Party greed gone berserk.

Nor is it clear that despite Herculean efforts to remake Beijing, it would be
able to provide a healthy environment for next year’s Olympic games. The
regime has stake a great deal on the Games as an international accolade which
crowns “a rising China’s” ambitions and progress. The Chinese capital
suffers a perennial water shortage – the government has a massive canal
underway to bring water from the south to the north across much of China and
with many barriers. Its frequent dust storms — the loess blowing in from the
increasing march of desertification now extending only a few miles west of the
capital — leads to an almost permanent haze now worsened by the exhaust of a
growing automobile traffic and unrestricted belching of fumes and particles
from new industry..

It is far from certain, then, that the central government will be able to
bring the whole chaotic mess under control because of the fissures opening in a
one-party regime which is now functioning on pure opportunism.

Several factors lead to this speculation:

The Chinese Communist Party leaders appear to have lost control over local
cadre, particularly in the rural areas. With no substantial investment in
agriculture there are falling living standards in the countryside by all
estimates of international organizations – and, indeed, by the Chinese
economists themselves where they have been allowed to publish. Legitimate tax
collection has given way to extortion by the local Party cadre. They have
become the principal entrepreneurs as well in most instances since they have
the only access to capital and the use of government fiat for appropriation of
land and other resources. Increasingly they thumb their nose at the central
government which is, nevertheless, given the nature of the state dependent on
them for cohesion and order. Again, a situation pertains as the old saying
about Chinese imperial governments, “The emperor’s writ stops at the
village gate”.

In the major provinces and the larger cities, Party officials also blackmail
the government with the proposition – which has validity – that unless they
are given a free hand to pursue development, the government’s principal
virtually only goal of rapid economic development will not be met. With the
residue of a formerly failed centrally planned economy including giant moribund
state enterprises, the country is dependent on these new relatively progressive
enterprises for economic progress. Therefore, in instance after instance
reported in the official media, when the government has intervened to impose
higher standards of environmental controls or to curtail questionable
infrastructure projects or to enforce intellectual property rights for foreign
owners, Beijing has had to back down in the face of local Party “economic
warlords”.

Mining is the perfect case study of central-government relations with local
government in China,” says Arthur Kroeber, editor of the China Economic
Quarterly. “The clash is between the central government’s desires and the local
government’s pressing economic needs, and in 99 cases out of 100, local
government wins out.”

So Beijing resorts to the kind of band-aid announcements of new regulatory
devices that would make it appear that it takes the problems seriously and is
solving it: it embargoes cargoes of food and raw materials from the U.S.,
damning them as inferior merchandise, in a tit-for-tat operation and to prove
the problem is universal and no better in the West and Japan than in China. It
issues public relations statement after statement that the whole problem is
being addressed. But these moves are only propaganda which does not address
fundamental problems.

It is not racist [nor “culturally intolerant” or any of those other PC
charges] to point out that cleanliness has never had a very high priority in
China’s incredibly rich and varied cultural history and inheritance. The
Chinese Communists and their intellectual fellow travelers who came to power in
1949 recognized – as had earlier reformers –that the issue was one that had
to be addressed if traditional Chinese custom was to be overcome. And so you
had the incredible things such as the “no flies in China” campaign, or at
least what was sold to starry-eyed foreign visitors as a new beginning for
Chinese sanitary and health standards. But like so many of the projects of the
Maoist era – not excluding the so-called “barefoot doctors” in rural
areas – the reports of success were largely the imagination of the visitors
and government propaganda than they concrete reforms. [The continued insistence
that a health care infrastructure and other social emoluments under the Maoist
regime had been allowed to lapse are observations of those who did not know the
era and depend on official propaganda of that time.]

With a Party Congress looming on the horizon, President Hu Jintao and his
fellow apparatchik Prime Minister When Jiabao are now exerting all their
efforts to maintain their always precarious hold on power. The sacking of the
Shanghai Party chairman in late July was one more evidence of the backroom
games being played out among leaders in a Party which once had a grip on the
country through terror and charismatic leadership but now is dissolving into
irrelevance on every major issue, not excluding environmental concerns.

——————————————————————————

Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@cox.net), is an Asian specialist with more than 25
years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News &
World Report and United Press International. He writes weekly for World
Tribune.com and East-Asia-Intel.com.
—– End forwarded message —–

August 3, 2007 @ 6:59 am | Comment

And now Clinton is attacking Obama because he said he would swear not to use nuclear weapons if President.

First he’s too tough, now he’s not tough enough.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3441342&page=1

August 3, 2007 @ 10:57 am | Comment

That nuke thing is absurd. How the hell do you use nukes against terrorists? This Kiwi’s non-existent vote goes to Obama.

August 3, 2007 @ 12:27 pm | Comment

Well it’s good not to use nukes, but that’s a far cry from any kind of courageous moral stance. Saying nuclear war is a bad thing is like saying we shouldn’t torture puppies – not exactly a “profile in courage.”

August 3, 2007 @ 12:34 pm | Comment

>>Saying nuclear war is a bad thing is like saying we shouldn’t torture puppies

But we should torture puppies if they are going to nuke Los Angeles in the next 24 hrs. Maybe Obama is for enhanced puppy petting techniques. Or maybe he just wants to torture puppies to look tough.

August 3, 2007 @ 1:32 pm | Comment

This is too funny! You guys can’t even find a candidate to get behind. Nothing makes me smile more than listening to all of you piss on each other about the handful of pathetic Democratic candidates. I mean, it’s so bad that Other Lisa feels compelled to get behind … John Edwards?! Holy shite! It doesn’t get any better than that.

Carry on, people.

I’ll be laughing all night.

*

August 3, 2007 @ 2:45 pm | Comment

Surely will be more interesting here now Ivan’s back.

August 3, 2007 @ 5:42 pm | Comment

Dave

“First he’s too tough, now he’s not tough enough.”

You mean he’s flip-flopping. Remember the last Democrat flip-flopping Presidential candidate?

That’s exactly what Obama did.

From ABC News:

Regarding terrorist targets in the Afghanistan/Pakistan region, Obama told The Associated Press Thursday: “I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance.” He then added: “Involving civilians.”

Seeming to think twice about his response, Obama then said, “Let me scratch that. There’s been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That’s not on the table.”

August 3, 2007 @ 6:41 pm | Comment

Jeffrey said, “This is too funny! You guys can’t even find a candidate to get behind.”

Huh-huh, uh, heheh, huh, you said “get behind.” Huh-huh, heh, huh, you’re pretty funny, Beavis.

Sincerely yours,
Butthead the Chinese Nationalist

August 3, 2007 @ 9:07 pm | Comment

@Kevininpudong
“Apologies for inserting a completely random comment, but I took the time to write this, and then found out for some reason comments are closed on the ESWN/ Chen/ Chavez post.
Someone said:
“…unless you still support colonialism, then i have nothing to say…”
I will tell you that I, for one, do not support colonialism, which is why I recognize the right to self-determination for all of China’s provinces/ autonomous regions/ and other countries that it lays claim to. I believe that Hong Kong should be its own independent country. I believe that Taiwan is already an independent country. I believe that East Turkmenistan, Tibet, and any other “part of the country” that does not want to be exploited by the imperial monolith should have the right to be independent.
What is the definition of colonialism? Colonialism does not necessarily mean a bunch of white guys in funny clothes ruling over people of different skin colors. In my opinion (and I might take some big hits for this), no matter how you slice it, China is the largest colonial power in the world at the moment, laying claim to and exploiting vast masses of land without the approval of their inhabitants, and attempting to assimilate these people culturally and economically for the benefit of the empire.
Apologies for the diversion.”

You took my comment out of context. This statement was made with regard to Hong Kong. Its a fact that Hong Kong was stolen from China. Of course, handing a liberal society back to a communist state is distasteful. However, Hong Kong is Chinese territory. In HK, when asked about their ethnicity, most would reply “Chung Kuo Jen” i.e. people of the Chinese nation.

And with regards to your idea of supporting secessions, it seems like you are parroting Shintaro Ishihara’s idea of chopping up the Chinese nation into pieces until it cease to exist. Interesting.

August 4, 2007 @ 2:11 am | Comment

sp said, “it seems like you are parroting Shintaro Ishihara’s idea of chopping up the Chinese nation into pieces until it cease to exist.”

Funny, the CCP and its myriad regional feudal mafiosi have been doing a fine job of breaking up China on their own.

August 4, 2007 @ 1:56 pm | Comment

Home truths are vying with the party line as television is saturated with costume dramas that reflect the official view. China correspondent Rowan Callick opens a door into a world of intellectual courage | August 04, 2007

CHINA’S chief censors gathered at the conference room of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television several weeks ago to address the Government’s leading propaganda concerns. Top of the list: getting history right.

China’s communists are relaxed about letting go much of the economy, about the 137 million people with access to the internet, about letting people travel widely. But the Soviet experience has taught them that losing control of the past would be the step too far.

The officials who gathered at SARFT were urged to “watch the erroneous trend of denying the historic achievements of the party and comrade Mao Zedong”. It was crucial, said the leading speakers, “to create the correct atmosphere for the 17th Communist Party congress, to promote the main melody”, steadying the ship for the five-yearly meeting in October that will decide the next generation of national leaders. Publishers were severely criticised for letting writers “run the red light”, getting too close to taboo topics.

China’s history war started boiling over last year with the sacking of the editor and deputy of Bing Dian (Freezing Point), one of the country’s most influential weekly publications, a section of China Youth Daily. This was the sign that the party had decided that, although it had conceded most of the economy to market forces, it was going to tighten its grip on the country’s cultural life, especially on its history.

Yuan Weishi, a courtly 75-year-old professor, is one of the vital voices of the new China. It was his article about the bloody Boxer Rebellion in 1900, when the cult-like Boxers killed tens of thousands of Westerners and Chinese Christians, that forged a crucial battleground in the war.

He says: “The Communist Party’s propaganda department views the rebellion as a revolutionary action, but I think it was not. They think it was a contribution to social evolution, I think it was a crime.”

In his late teens, Yuan joined a secret student organisation set up by the Communist Party, then became a full party member in 1950, the year after it took power in China. He remains a member.

In a trendy coffee shop overlooking a garden next to the Zhong Shan (Sun Yat-sen) University campus in Guangzhou, he turns off his tiny new mobile phone and says with typical understatement: “Things changed after the Cultural Revolution. It was a disaster for China and it made me think of its historical origins.”

He is busy writing and reworking books, a half-dozen of which were published or reprinted in 2006. That’s understandable because he has been doing a lot of rethinking. China had two significant streams of history during its chaotic 20th century, he says: the Marxist school and the more pragmatic outlook of Jiang Ting-fu, who was a Kuomintang or Nationalist diplomat “who built the foundations of Chinese foreign relations”.

Yuan says that he observed the impact of Mao from both viewpoints and through “my own study of the historical facts”. He recalls vividly a seminar held in May 1979, soon after the Cultural Revolution ended, when senior cadre Deng Li-chun told the story of a woman in Liaoning province who was killed because of her vocal opposition to the anarchy.

“First they slit her throat so she could not speak, then they shot her,” he says. “Deng asked, ‘Why such cruelty? Because we were raised on the milk of wolves.’

“The class struggle was taken to extremes and nationalism was taken to extremes, and these two damaged the Chinese people severely.”

But thinking has evolved rapidly in the past few years. “At universities, as a new generation of teachers is emerging, fewer and fewer people in the history departments now believe what was taught before.”

When his essay on the Boxer Rebellion was published, “I was surprised at the response from the official mouthpiece. They don’t want to give you any room to dismantle their system of interpreting history because they think the Communist Party is the heir of the revolution.”

According to the version created by official historian Hu Sheng, he says, the late 19th century and early 20th century saw three revolutionary climaxes: the Boxers, the Taiping Rebellion led by Hong Xiuquan, who viewed himself as Jesus Christ’s younger brother, and the 1911 rebellion led by Zhong that overthrew the Qing dynasty. “Hu claimed the Communist Party is the inheritor of all three, so it is very hard to criticise any of them,” Yuan says.

Official China remains intolerant of diverse histories. “China is still in transition,” Yuan says. “From one perspective, it’s quite open economically and in social life, but in apparent compensation the ideological controls keep tightening.”

There are “many trigger points that make the propaganda people upset”, he says. “The official evaluation of Mao as 70 per cent right and 30 per cent wrong makes it very hard for historians” to rethink not only Mao, but also other emblematic figures or events in modern China.

The professor says: “This is too simplified a formula to describe any historical figure, especially one like him, who played such a big role.”

Today, he says, many people support the party “because of China’s opening up and reform, and the improved life of the people. Its defenders think its continued monopoly rule is gloriously bestowed by history. They keep promoting their view that history has chosen the Communist Party. So they must maintain a tight grasp on the interpretation of history.”

Lei Yi, a professor at the contemporary history research centre of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, says the party has always paid great attention to the ideology surrounding the process by which it took power, as a crucial element of its legitimacy.

The party’s two linchpins during this period were that it was anti-feudalism and anti-imperialism. Because the Boxers were viewed as anti-imperialist, they were co-opted into this story. Lei says that founders of the party noted negative aspects of the Boxers, but “gradually their image became positive, reaching its peak during the Cultural Revolution”, when many Red Guard groups began naming themselves after the Boxers.

Most historians, however, retained a grip on reality, he says, and after the Cultural Revolution, “little by little, articles and discussions extended this freedom. But this is restricted to academic study, not to popular publications or to the media. Even now there remains a big gap” between the thinking and discussion tolerated on campuses and in the wider Chinese society. “We can openly discuss economic theory in public today, but not history.”

The appeal to nationalism is constantly strengthening, he says, and helps to explain the fever for emperors, reflected in an outpouring of television series, films and books.

Historian Xia Chun-tao, 43, vice-director of CASS’s Deng Xiaoping Thought Research Centre, one of China’s core ideological think tanks, says: “It’s very natural for historians to have different views on events. But there is only one correct and accurate interpretation, and only one explanation that is closest to the truth. Professor Yuan’s article represents only his personal opinion or maybe that of a small group of academics. The majority will disagree.”

He says this mainstream views the Boxers “as an anti-imperialist and patriotic movement, and as an uprising of the peasants. They wanted to uproot Christianity totally from Chinese soil, as well as all goods and commodities from Westerners.”

Xia says the historical background was that China faced “being split apart by the colonialists. It was facing unprecedented danger.”

The resulting methods of protests included killing Westerners and burning Western objects, he concedes. But because Yuan’s critique of the Boxers represents only himself or a few other people, “there’s not much value to have a big debate”.

And some issues, he says, are “quite clearly defined” and thus not susceptible to debate. “There is a pool of clear water and there’s no need to stir up this water. Doing so can only cause disturbance in people’s minds, for example, by only seeing the backwardness of the Boxers.”

But despite such academic critiques and “however much time passes, the party’s general judgment” on such key events won’t change.

This is especially the case with “contemporary history”, the period from 1840 to 1949 when the Communist Party’s rule began. During this period, anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism were preconditions for national development, he says.

“We are talking here of a Marxist explanation of history. There have been a few academics who tried to interpret history from a very different perspective, but their conclusions are not convincing,” Xia says.

There is also, for instance, “a fixed definition of assessment of Mao. In the early 1980s, the party developed an authoritative, scientific document on his achievements and flaws. No matter how many years pass, I don’t think this definition will change.

“In his later years he made some mistakes, but they were the mistakes of a great proletarian leader. Neither party nor people will ever forget the glorious achievements of Mao.”

Some cadres (party officials), says Xia, seemed to want to stress Mao’s mistakes too much. “But Deng Xiaoping said we can’t throw dirt on Mao’s image because to do so would also dirty the party’s image. We think history is our treasure and history stresses the need for domestic stability. Because of our stability, this has become the golden era for China in the past 150 years. The need for academics to have a strong sense of responsibility means a strong sense of the need for such stability, and not providing absurd opinions that disturb people’s minds.”

Xia has been heavily involved in the run of recent TV costume dramas in China. Typically, he says, he was invited to a reading of a new play about a top mandarin in the Qing dynasty and to review the script of a TV drama about the Taiping Rebellion. He says: “Several times I have had to speak up frankly to China Central TV to point out where they have violated historical truth.”

Falling further back into history, emperors can be divided into two clear categories, he says. Good emperors are deemed to have worked to unify China and, even if their reigns were bloody, they were justified. Bad emperors tolerated or failed to prevent division.

Yu Jie, one of China’s leading dissident intellectuals, has been a highly popular author — his 16 books each selling more than 100,000 and the first, Fire and Ice, almost one million — and has a masters degree in contemporary Chinese literary and philosophical history.

But he has become so outspoken and has won so much attention within China that he is unlikely to obtain a job from a Chinese institution or again be published within China. He is unequivocal about Mao, uninterested in whether he was 25 per cent or 35per cent good or bad. “He was the worst tyrant in China’s history; in world history, actually,” Yu says. “Worse than Hitler or Stalin. Under his rule, millions of Chinese people died, far more than in the anti-Japanese war. The pity is the interpretation of history is in the hands of the Communist Party and ordinary people don’t know about him.

“For instance, last year I was attending a seminar at the University of Technology in Sydney, and walked into a Hunan restaurant and saw Mao’s portrait hanging on the wall.

“Westerners don’t think that’s strange, but if it was Hitler or Mussolini it would arouse criticism, people would get upset. I didn’t say anything to the owner at the time, but said in a lecture to the Chinese community in Sydney that I thought it was wrong.”

Because “there is no real religion in China”, he says, “one of the functions of history is to construct a religion and official historians play the role of bishops in the West”. Mao, he says, described the party’s rule as based “on the gun and the pen, thus on force and a lie. And one of the important foundations of the empire of lies in China is the distortion of history, interpreted by Marxist thinking.”

He says the party has benefited the country by liberalising the economy but wants to maintain its own economic privileges by halting the liberalisation there, short of the world of ideas and history. “If the truth of historical events were revealed to the Chinese people, it might trigger a domino effect.”

There was greater freedom in China in the 1920s, Yu says. “There was a lot of independent publishing and private universities, and if people were censored they could escape to the treaty ports, which together with the missionaries sped up the modernisation of China.” He says that while he sees many academics broken by the system, they are not being sent to labour camps any more.

But this does not indicate a greater tolerance. “In recent years academic freedom has grown more restricted and the situation has worsened. But people are not totally isolated, as long as their articles can be published in Hong Kong or Taiwan.”

He says the costume dramas that have flourished during the past decade “redefine historical tyrants as heroes, praising such golden times, especially if the emperor extended the country’s borders, for peak-hour viewing. Under this propaganda, unity is the ultimate value and strength is to be applauded regardless of the effect on people’s lives. This has a strong flavour of fascism.

“And this poisonous propaganda will gradually, day by day, penetrate the judgments of ordinary people.”

Yu has many friends who are moving, in their early 30s, into positions of power in party, government or campus. “A lot of them laugh at me today, saying I’m a naive Quixote tilting at windmills. But I think I’m happier. I don’t have to look up at the face of any superior.”

The secret police invited him for a meal some while ago and suggested politely that he’d be better off moving to the US. But he stays in China, living with his wife in a small flat in a new estate on the eastern edge of Beijing. “I’ve had many offers of work as a visiting scholar overseas, but I don’t want to live outside China because I am a commentator on China and if I move I will lose contact, will lose my sense of things here.”

He says that he and other young intellectuals have become Christians, “forming a small family”, and that this religious belief “is embedded in my thinking and in my relationships, and that belief helps me to remove a sense of fear”.

Yu, whose father is a party member, says: “In the long run, I’m optimistic. Democratic society is a must for China. But it will take a long time, maybe 20 years. The economic reforms have made China more vigorous and communism more vigorous and long-lasting. The party has billions of dollars in its pockets.”

And, China’s free-thinking historians complain, it has the country’s colourful but often cruel past in those pockets too.

August 5, 2007 @ 2:15 am | Comment

Another funny thing about me “parroting Shintaro Ishihara’s idea” is that I had no idea who he was until I looked him up on the Internet. He never even gives me crackers!?!

August 5, 2007 @ 5:08 am | Comment

Pakistan is troubling and China has a tight relationship with it. Who gave the Atom Bomb plans to Pakistan? That’s why the Atomic Bomb plans Libya had still had Chinese on them.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42692-2004Feb14?language=printer

Who had an arms embargo after Pakistan’s nuke program – US. Basically after Russia left Aghanistan the US turned it’s back on that part of the world. And those poor lonely F16’s were left in Pakistan with no support. And I would be surprised if Pakistan’s friend, China, who also fought with India, would get a good look.

Plus as mentioned the fact that Pakistan is still meddling in Afghanistan and Musharaf has for political reasons, kept on the good side of the radical Islamic types.

Hillary is doing a brilliant job of hitting Obama every way she can to make him look like he’s not ready for the job. She’s a shark and her other half, Bill, had the comment “it’s hard for the other guy to talk when he has a fist in the mouth” And she’s doing that to Obama beautifully!

How I understood Obama’s comment was he would be willing to have an attack against US enemies in Pakistan. The US already has done with Predator missiles, which have upset the Pakistan public a bit.

Pakistan has a lot of nightmare scenarios for the US, and is a mess. It could be worse, but it could be a lot better. Right now I would give it a C- from a US viewpoint.

I wish any of the people running for President would talk about the real issues with Pakistan and what the US can do to help out. Such as reducing tariffs on textiles (jobs) and improving the education in Pakistan – so Madrasas with many of them being Saudi funded with their ultra orthodox/fundamentalist version of Islam are not the only education available for much of the population.

August 5, 2007 @ 2:25 pm | Comment

The eclectic mix of comments here brings to mind a conversation I had with a much younger expat some while back, regarding his views of the Vietnam war, which had been skimmed from movies of the “full Metal jacket” ilk. To my retort that it wasn’t history, he replied: “So what? It’s where most of my generation get their views of history from!”. Many commenters above exhibit an acute sense of the issues, but in the end the majority of those stepping into voting booths will possess views gleaned from sound bites. I think the only ppositive sign I’ve seen in this election is that a relative newcomer like Obama could step up to the plate and seriously challenge a party machine. If he fails on his own merits, then so be it. Something in the American political system must still be working.

August 5, 2007 @ 4:55 pm | Comment

You mean he’s flip-flopping. Remember the last Democrat flip-flopping Presidential candidate?

Ah yes, the old “flip-flopping” meme. (Thank you, Republican PR machine.) Because god knows what unspeakable horrors would have been inflicted upon the world had the American polity elected Kerry the “flip-flopper” instead of the moronic chickenhawk who never questions his own decisions, never reflects upon hypotheticals,
blindly follows the dubious advice of dubious foreign policy advisors, and is still preaching “staying the course” in an increasingly disastrous war.

Many commenters above exhibit an acute sense of the issues, but in the end the majority of those stepping into voting booths will possess views gleaned from sound bites.

Well, that is nothing new, especially for Presidential elections.

I think the only positive sign I’ve seen in this election is that a relative newcomer like Obama could step up to the plate and seriously challenge a party machine.

Perhaps, but Obama is still trailing Clinton in the polls by a significant margin.

The resulting methods of protests included killing Westerners and burning Western objects, he concedes. But because Yuan’s critique of the Boxers represents only himself or a few other people, “there’s not much value to have a big debate”.

some issues, he says, are “quite clearly defined” and thus not susceptible to debate. “There is a pool of clear water and there’s no need to stir up this water. Doing so can only cause disturbance in people’s minds, for example, by only seeing the backwardness of the Boxers.”

despite such academic critiques and “however much time passes, the party’s general judgment” on such key events won’t change.

This is especially the case with “contemporary history”, the period from 1840 to 1949 when the Communist Party’s rule began. During this period, anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism were preconditions for national development, he says.

“We are talking here of a Marxist explanation of history. There have been a few academics who tried to interpret history from a very different perspective, but their conclusions are not convincing,” Xia says.

There is also, for instance, “a fixed definition of assessment of Mao. In the early 1980s, the party developed an authoritative, scientific document on his achievements and flaws. No matter how many years pass, I don’t think this definition will change.

“In his later years he made some mistakes, but they were the mistakes of a great proletarian leader. Neither party nor people will ever forget the glorious achievements of Mao.”

Some cadres (party officials), says Xia, seemed to want to stress Mao’s mistakes too much. “But Deng Xiaoping said we can’t throw dirt on Mao’s image because to do so would also dirty the party’s image. We think history is our treasure and history stresses the need for domestic stability. Because of our stability, this has become the golden era for China in the past 150 years. The need for academics to have a strong sense of responsibility means a strong sense of the need for such stability, and not providing absurd opinions that disturb people’s minds.”

…wow. So this is an example of the great intellects at work over at CASS. God, what a fucking waste of money. (And I thought the Brookings Institution was bad, but CASS truly brings prostitution to new heights.)

Yu, whose father is a party member, says: “In the long run, I’m optimistic. Democratic society is a must for China. But it will take a long time, maybe 20 years.

I agree with pretty much everything Professors Yuan and Yu said in the article, but this line gave me such a laugh. China would be very, very lucky to have a democratic society in 20 years.

August 5, 2007 @ 7:58 pm | Comment

Nausicaa, five-dollar-a-blowjob crack whores are more authentic scholars than the whores at CASS.
The vermin at CASS remind me of the medieval “grooms of the stool”, whose job was to wipe the king’s ass.

August 5, 2007 @ 9:36 pm | Comment

Sorry to drag the discussion off topic again. But this is just too funny and I can’t possibly resist it. TimesOnLine has an article with this title: “China tells living Buddhas to obtain permission before they reincarnate”. The article begins with this sentence: “Tibet’s living Buddhas have been banned from reincarnation without permission from China’s atheist leaders. The ban is included in new rules intended to assert Beijing’s authority over Tibet’s restive and deeply Buddhist people … ”

This is just like asking my 4-month old puppy to refrain from pissing indefinitely until I’ve given him permission to do so.

Since when does the CCP have such faith in the power of reincarnation?

August 6, 2007 @ 1:26 am | Comment

Becoming a living Buddha, you can get living stipend and other economic benefits from local governments, as far as I know.

CCP already appoints bishops. It is not a big deal that they appoint living Buddhas too.

August 6, 2007 @ 10:41 pm | Comment

Jeffrey, see, we debate about the different candidates because that’s what you do in a democracy. We look at their strengths and weaknesses and decide who to support. Then we have these things called “elections,” where we vote. Debating about the candidates in advance of the election is an important part of the process.

I know that must be a little complicated for you to grasp, so I thought I’d explain the basics.

August 7, 2007 @ 4:21 am | Comment