China, Not our Friend.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Ahhh, Fox News... the true purveyor of journalistic ethics and media integrity since time immemorial... Their bare-faced lie of a motto: "Fair balanced reporting" is something we laugh at here at the Columbia School of Journalism.

I remember back when Bush actually seemed like he wanted to pick a fight over the China issue. The fact of the matter is, there's so much trade going on between the two nations that this rather sad sabre rattling is about as far as any side will go towards disturbing the peace.

I grow tired of repeating that China is a nation that is about as misrepresented to the West as America is to the Chinese. Next time some idiot wants to start some sort of crusade (about any topic, really) over something he heard on Fox News, I think everybody's warning flags should come up. Plenty of my California born friends are doing well and prospering in the environs of Beijing. Seems a shame not to join them.

[Joseph]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


That's what some of them want you to believe. In fact, some of them might actually believe in this, but such has no basis in fact.

There is no indigenous people of the island. All inhabitants moved there from the main land, from the adjecent Fujin province. The so called natives speak the same dialact spoken around the coastal regions of Fujin province. They have similar customs. These people were never isolated from the mainland, trade - thus cultural exchange - occurred continuously.

When the Dutch arrive in 16??, they found that the island had Polynesia people living there. The Polynesian told the Dutch that they did not know how long they had live on Taiwan, however their Grandfather, Grandfather had live on the Island, so they must have live there for several hundred years before the Dutch arrived.
They also told the Dutch that Chinese Pirates stop there from time to time to hid from the Chinese Navy, but they were the only people who live on the Island.

Jiang used force, but not because he believed Taiwanese were different from Chinese. It was because some locals resented being lorded over by these "outsiders."

Several thousand local.

[oedo]

Re: China, Not our Friend.

Originally posted by http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,94355,00.html
...,China has spearheaded,...,blah, blah, blah,...,blunt American military,...,People's Liberation Army,...,"piggyback satellite.",...,blah, blah, blah, ...,,...,ballistic missile attack on the U.S ,...,blah, blah, blah,...,,...,That's worth keeping in mind the next time they exhort "peace-loving nations" to stay grounded.

awesome article! thanks for posting. I always thought we could trust the chinese. but now I know better.
those damn bastards secretly build piggyback satellites!!!

[Dinner]

The whole polenesian culture originated from Taiwan in pre-historic times. Jared Diamond did a really good job of summing this up in Guns, Germs, and Steel.

[mindseye]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
On the other hand I fail to see what is wrong with seeing China as a strategic competitor of the US.

In your opinion, what are we competing with China for/over? Do you mean in the economic sense? If that's the case, then just about every nation on earth is our strategic competitor. Or are you talking about geopolitical influence? Military strength?

[MrFun]

There are many countries that are not our friend -- Texas is one of them.

[Lord Merciless]

Originally posted by Oerdin

The only reason the Chinese weren't world conquorers on the same scale as the western powers is because they were so much more backwards then the western powers for nearly all of the last 500 years.

Actually, that was not the reason. China was already in self-imposed isolation when Europeans began their ascendence. The reason why China stopped expanding was greatly due to the geographic limits imposed by the nature: Pacific Oceans to the East, frozen forests to the North East, Gobi Desert to the North, more deserts to the North West, and Tibetan High Plateau to the South West. For a society and culture based on agricultural farming, the geography sets the limit on how big China can grow.

The Manchurian conquest of China in the 17th century actually helped it to greatly expand its territory. They brought their ancestral homeland into China, permanently pacified Mongols, conquered Tibet, and crushed Muslims in East Turkestan. At height of the Qing dynasty, China's terrority used to be three times that of Ming dynasty. When Manchurian empire later declined, large parts were occupied by Russians and Outer Mongolia would become independent. China's territory today is about twice as big as during the Ming time.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by mindseye
Or are you talking about geopolitical influence? Military strength?

Yes.

[mindseye]

Originally posted by Defiant
My point has always been, we cannot depend on China to do the right thing if their interests are different (...) Nothing to do with helping us, only their interest.

(my bolding)
As GePap earlier pointed out, few nations would be able to satisfy your definition of "friend". Where do you get the idea that other nations should support the US when it is against their own national interests? Should other nations put their national interests aside to support their "friend", the United States? With people like you crying that China is not our friend, is it possibly in the Chinese national interests to take steps that might limit US military influence, especially in their own region?

If a nation doesn't support our "interests", does that make them our enemy?

If the US sells AEGIS destroyers to Taiwan, is the US acting as China's "friend"?

but don't pretend you are not trying to create a more lethal military

What are the Chinese supposed to do, take out an ad in the New York Times? Do you think the Chinese are "pretending" they are not trying to develop their military? If so, they seem to be doing a poor job of hiding it, consider how much I read about it in the western press.

Does the US ever develop new weapon systems in secrecy?

[mindseye]

Originally posted by SpencerH
Maybe your opinion of China is coloured by the 'fact' that Shanghai is a more open city than many in China (and AFAIK always was).

Sure, it's something I have to always be careful of. I've done a little travelling here, including the countryside of Shaanxi in the west, so I think I have a general feel of what's going on. Also, many people who live in Shanghai are from other parts of the country. However, you are certainly correct in that Shanghai (and other major cities) are very different from other parts of China. Development is happening here earlier and faster than anywhere else.

In a more general sense, you have to be careful about talking about "China" no matter where you live, as the diversity of the enormous nation defies many generalizations. Even here in Shanghai the development gap can be striking. In the apartment building I lived in six months ago, some residents owned BMWs. In a building half a block away, people did not have interior plumbing. Two days ago, I visited my old neighborhood, the no-plumbing building has vanished. Very Shanghai.

[mindseye]

Originally posted by SpencerH
What do you know of the Falun Gong types? They have been popularized here in the south by the religious types and I'd like to have another opinion.

In my opinion, they are a bizarre and dangerous cult, although I don't agree with the degree to which the government has suppressed them. I consider them dangerous, as FG members are advised to avoid medicine, which has (according to the Chinese press) led to the deaths of some children. Also there were the self-immolation suicides in Tiananmen Square about two years ago. The suiciders were told that they would go straight to heaven in a cloud of white smoke. One horribly charred woman spoke from her hospital bed, saying that she suspected something was wrong when she saw ugly black smoke curling skyward from others already alight.

To save typing fatigue, I'm going to quote myself from another thread:

From what I've seen, most of the portrayals of Falun Gong ("Falun Dafa") in the US press characterize it as nothing more than a benign form of meditative tai-chi-like exercises. There are few references to the more bizarre teachings of Li Hongzhi, the cult's messianic leader. Here's a few interesting nuggets translated from various speeches, publications, and tapes of Li Hongzhi.

Aliens are controlling mankind through computers, making them slaves to machines
Why have aliens invented such a scientific thing for people? Because it belongs to their planet, and they want to bring it to our world to finally mankind. As they discovered, the human body is so perfect that they want to use it to replace people. People would in turn become the slaves of computers and machines, and finally replaced by aliens. How do computers develop so rapidly? Why does the human brain become so active? Because human minds are controlled by aliens, who have assigned a number to every person who is able to run a computer. I have deleted the numbers for my followers so that they would not be disturbed when using computers.

Taking medicines merely presses back karma and finally destroys you
Diseases do not arise from this space. Taking medicines can kill the surface virus, and it really works. But the power achieved by practicing Falun Gong can automatically eliminate viruses and karma. When medicines kill the surface virus, other viruses and karma in other spaces know it and do not come to you, so you feel better. But I assure you, they are still there. Human beings accumulate karma from beginning to end. When a person accumulates too much karma his illness will be incurable and he will be thoroughly destroyed when he dies.

When you reach a very high level after spiritual cultivation, you may gain compound eyes like those of flies
Beyond the worldly spiritual cultivation, compound eyes appear. That is to say, a big eye appears on the upper half of the face, with countless small eyes in it. Practitioners at master level may have many eyes, filling the whole of their faces. All these eyes may see anything they want to see through this big eye. One glance may see thorough all levels. Modern zoologists and entomologists have studied flies. Their eyes are very large, and through a microscope one can see that they contain many small eyes. This phenomenon is called a called a compound eye. Only when a person reaches a very high level can he attain compound eyes.

Modern science is wrong
Modern science has actually developed on a basis which is wrong, and which has incorrect understandings of the universe, mankind and life. Therefore, the practitioners of Falun Gong do not accept modern science at all, and regard it as erroneous.

The Nanjing Massacre and Hitler's killing were caused by changes of astronomical phenomena

I defeated the "snake spirit"

Mankind had been completely destroyed 81 times

The Earth has exploded many times

Falun Dafa is a magnificent palace, while Christianity is just a small and simple room

I will stage a marvelous spectacle by bringing all my disciples to fly into the sky

Science has led to the moral degradation of human society

Demons will take the lives of those who betray "Falun Dafa"

[Lord Merciless]

I see the whole FLG matter as thugs beating up on crazies.

[mindseye]

Originally posted by David Floyd
Reading through this thread, I found it enormously amusing how mindseye tried to justify China's human rights record by saying that China doesn't actually violate human rights, but it's just a matter of perception based upon society.

Then I guess you haven’t been following the things I have written about China in the many other OT threads where I have previously commented.

Originally posted by David Floyd
So, then, I take it that you feel that if "society" says that torture, for example, is OK, then it's perfectly fine?

Can you please read what I wrote? Jeez, in this very thread I said:

Originally posted by mindseye
Torture and abuse (not just in prison) is a big problem here

Originally posted by David Floyd
That is, you don't feel that there is any objective individual right or moral truth that should stop those in power from torturing those not in power?

Sorry, but your example isn’t even internally consistent. First you posit "society" approving of torture, then have "those in power" using it against those not. Besides the inconsistency, your example is so extreme that it's nonsensical. It's akin to asking "If someone decides jabbing a needle into their eye is pleasant, then for that person is jabbing a needle into their eye really pleasant, or is there an independent, objective standard of pleasure?" In other words, it's as hard to conceive of a society approving of being tortured by their gov't than it is to imagine someone enjoying eye-jabbing.

[mindseye]

Originally posted by Lord Merciless
China's human rights situation is completely indefensible. Beside the usual government made oppressions, there are kinds of social ills associated with early stage capitalism going on.

(my bolding)
Well, to some extent some social ills are defensible because of the very next sentence you wrote. Most human rights abuses by the gov't are, I would agree, indefensible. (NB David Floyd)

When discussing Chinese "social ills" (which I see as distinct from human rights abuses), I think it's crucial to bear in mind that China is at a completely different point than the west in its development. Up until very recent history most of China was a barely-industrialized peasant society. Even as recently as the 1980s animal transport could still be seen on the streets of Shanghai (you can still sometimes see it in rural cities out west). For 21st century Americans to lecture Chinese on things like human rights or environmentalism comes across to many Chinese as ethnocentric and arrogant. After all, the west already went through the same problems years ago. China doesn’t have 250 or more years of democracy and economic development under its belt. In many ways it's at a point roughly equivalent to early 1800s US or Dickensian Britain.

It would be as if the 1840s US had to put up with an information-age hyperpower China lecturing and hectoring it about pollution, slavery, worker's rights, women's suffrage, political corruption, religious oppression, treatment of Native Americans, the war of territorial aggression against Mexico, etc. In this situation, how would Americans feel if Chinese were using international forums to browbeat the US about Mormons or the working conditions of 1840s American factories - especially if they were basing these views on traditional Asian moral concepts? In this situation would the American response be terribly different from that of contemporary Chinese?

Also, because of the exceedingly rapid pace of change here, it's a terrible mistake to look at China as though frozen in a snapshot. You have to look at it in a historical context. On any given issue, you should consider how things were 5, 10, 25, and 50 years ago, then plot out where they will likely be 5, 10, 25 years from now. Looking at a single point in time will lead you to very different conclusions than looking at a vector of progress. That vector is why many foreigners living here are so excited about China. Ignorance of that vector is a common shortcoming of foreign criticisms.

edit: clarification of "social ills"

[mindseye]

Originally posted by Gatekeeper
Pardon my curiosity, but I'm assuming — based on what you said above — that you can also run for political office (at any level of government, i.e., local, provincial, national) as something other than a member of the Communist Party? You could get away with writing a letter to the editor in the local paper criticizing leaders and nothing untoward would happen to you? You could access the entire Internet — including sites "forbidden" and "blocked" by your authorities — with the government's full knowledge and they wouldn't necessarily do anything to inhibit you?

Please note that I said "not all that different", obviously there are some differences.

* I could not run for political office in Germany, Brazil, or Japan either, right? I'm a foreigner!

* You can write critical letters to the editor within limits. Did you not read earlier in this thread where I spoke of front-page newspaper stories critical of the gov't? I guess not. The press is far from free here, but there are very encouraging signs (see "vector" comment in previous post).

* Yes, there is some internet censorship, although it's pretty limited. I can read almost any western news source (e.g. New York Times, CNN, Washington Post). One of the few exceptions to this is bbc.com (I don't know why). Some sites related to Taiwan, Tibet, Falun Gong, human rights, etc are blocked. If you really want to visit one of these sites, you can use a proxy server. The blocking has become steadily less of a nuisance since I moved here 2-1/2 years ago. No problems with email or phone calls - perhaps less monitoring than the US!