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Posted By Colum Lynch
Sunday, October 24, 2010 - 1:34 PM
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Just days after the Obama administration decided in August to support the prosecution of Burma's top military rulers for war crimes, China's U.N. ambassador, Li Baodong, paid a confidential visit to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's chief of staff to make his opposition clear: The U.S. proposal, he said, was dangerous and counterproductive, and should not be allowed to proceed, three U.N.-based sources familiar with the exchange told Turtle Bay.
Li's meeting with Vijay Nambiar, who also serves as Ban's Burma envoy, was the beginning of an all-out campaign by Beijing to thwart a key American initiative that was designed to raise the political costs for Burma's military junta for failing to open its Nov. 7 election to the country's political opposition. In recent months, China has mounted a high-octane, Western-style diplomatic effort, lobbying European and Asian countries to oppose the measure on the grounds that it could undermine the country's fragile political transition, according to diplomats and human rights advocates.
In contrast, the United States has pursued a more measured diplomatic strategy, sounding out top U.N. officials and potential allies about their willingness to support the prosecution of top Burmese officials, but not offering a clear plan on how to do it, these officials said. For the time being, China appears to have the upper hand, leaving the United States with little public support for the initiative from Asian and European governments, or the U.N. leadership. Even some U.S. officials are pessimistic about the prospects for establishing a commission of inquiry for the time being.
"What we are seeing is the Chinese practicing American-style diplomacy and the Americans practicing Asian-style diplomacy," Tom Malinowski, the Washington, D.C.-based director of advocacy for Human Rights Watch, told Turtle Bay. "The Chinese are making it clear what they want, and they are using all the leverage at their disposal to get what they want. And the Americans are operating in this hyper-consensual, subtle, indirect way that we associate with Chinese diplomacy."
Malinowski said the problem is less about Chinese or Russian opposition, which was to be expected, so much as a failure of U.S. leadership. "One should recognize why the Chinese are against this: They recognize it would be a consequential measure," Malinowski said. "If you allow Chinese opposition to deter you then what you are saying is that you are only going to take steps on Burma that are inconsequential."
Burma, which is also known as Myanmar, has one of the most appalling human rights records in the world. The ruling junta has detained more than 2,100 political prisoners who endure torture, inadequate medical care, and frequently death. The Burmese military has also imposed abuses on ethnic minorities, including the forced relocation of villages, forced labor, and systematic human rights abuses, including rape. The country's Rohingya Muslim community in northern Rakhine state are subject to severe bureaucratic restrictions that limit their ability to travel or marry, and which deny citizenship to Muslim children.
"There is a pattern of gross and systematic violation of human rights which has been in place for many years and still continues," the U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in Burma, Tomás Ojea Quintana, wrote in a March report, saying such crimes may amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity. "There is an indication that those human rights violations are the result of a state policy."
In August, the Obama administration separately briefed Turtle Bay and the Washington Post's John Pomfret on its plan to support Quintana's call for a commission of inquiry to investigate such abuses. Such commissions in other parts of the world, including Sudan and the Balkans, have led to war-crimes trials.
The decision reflected frustration that U.S. officials' effort to engage the regime had failed to produce democratic reforms or the release of political prisoners, including Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who serves under house detention. The most likely venues for pursuing the creation of a commission of inquiry is through the passage of resolutions at the U.N. General Assembly's human rights committee, which is currently in session, or the U.N. Human Rights Council, which will convene early next year. Washington could also appeal to Secretary-General Ban to do it under his own authority -- although Ban, who is seeking reelection, needs China's support for a second term.
At the time, a senior U.S. official told Turtle Bay the United States anticipated the effort could take years, comparing it to the decades-long struggle to hold Khmer Rouge leaders accountable for mass killing in Cambodia in the 1970s. The official said the U.S. supports an investigation in actions perpetrated against ethnic groups and dissident organizations by Burma's senior leadership, including Burma's top military ruler Than Shwe. "Responsibility lies clearly at his doorstep," the official said.
In the first major test of the strategy, the annual debate on human rights at the U.N. General Assembly, the Obama administration was the only country that explicitly called for consideration of a commission of inquiry -- though Britain, the Czech Republic and Slovakia signaled support for holding human rights violators accountable for crimes. In contrast, China, Russia, Singapore and other members of the ASEAN nations voiced firm opposition to the proposal. Ban's report to the General Assembly on Burma's human rights record made no reference to the controversial proposal.
Rick Barton, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Economic and Social Council, told the General Assembly's 3rd committee, which deals with human rights, that the U.N. consideration of a commission of inquiry was "significant."
"After carefully considering the issues, the U.S. believes that a properly structured international commission of inquiry that would examine allegations of serious violations of international law could provide an opportunity for achieving our shared objectives of advancing human rights there," he said.
But another top U.S. official interviewed by Turtle Bay last week appeared more tentative about the prospects for success. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, characterized the U.S. diplomatic effort as "exploratory."
"We have been and continue to consult with others," the official said. "It's on the list of things that are good ideas that we want to discuss and explore, but we don't run the resolution in the General Assembly. So that's not our call. My sense is there is not much momentum right now in the General Assembly to add this new element to the resolution. But the dynamics could change over time."
State Department spokesman PJ Crowley said, "Countries have different ideas on how to engage Burma. As a result, we are consulting on a path forward. We have made clear that a carefully structured commission of inquiry is warranted. We will continue to engage as events in Burma unfold. We are at the forefront of this effort and we expect to attract international support. At this stage it is easier to play defense than offense. But that can and will change over time, particularly as countries see an election that lacks any legitimacy and the grim status quo that follows."
Follow me on Twitter @columlynch.
Human Rights Violations by USA
The Bush Admininstration, representative of the US people, committed human rights violations by invading Iraq for nothing. They had not found any weapon of mass destruction. The Bush Administration, or rather the US people, tortured prisoners in the Guantalamo prisons. If there is a God, how can God permit these injustices. The US people are hegemonic in nature. He who accuses should come with clean hands!
Very few people I know defend the creating or existence of the Guantanamo camp. Pres Obama always opposed the Guantanamo camp and is committed to closing the facility asap.
US courts have ruled against the practices and the semi legal procedures once used at Guantanamo. Opening it was easy and simple minded, closing it is more complex. Bush used Words of Mass Deception to take the United States into Iraq.
I reference the Chinese Nobel Peace Laureate Liu Xiaobo imprisoned in a grim prison in the desolation of northeast China because Dr. Liu advocates a peaceful, slow gradual change of the CPC/PRC to a more democratic government, society, economy.
When a detainee at Guantanamo wins the Nobel Peace Prize, give me a call so I can be the first to know.
Meanwhile the CPC/PRC continues to build naval bases and facilities in Burma/Myanmar near the Strait of Malacca and too close to India. The CPC/PRC also is constructing naval facilities in Sri Lanka which is another notable human rights swill hole same as the CPC/PRC.
Republicus: your wake up call is here
As requested by you, this is a wake you call for you. The founder of Guamtanamo prison, the US people represented by Barrack Obama, had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year for continuing the Iraq war and criticism of other third world countries that were too poor to stand up to the hegemonic (bully) US people.
Fascism "with Chinese characteristics"
The following appeared the the Taipei Times earlier this year. Those of you who think Taiwan is a province of the PRC/CCP and who suffer from that particular delusion should read this peice, as follows:
Fascism "with Chinese characteristics"
Taipei Times
Editorials
Fri, Mar 12, 2010 - Page 8
China shows signs of neo-fascism
By J. Michael Cole
With its strong emphasis on technology, the military, strong single-party leadership and a collective national identity that refuses to recognize pluralism, the PRChina is displaying increasing — and worrying — symptoms of fascism.
From the military parade surrounding the 60th anniversary of the birth of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on Oct. 1 to forced relocation and assimilation programs targeting ethnic minority groups such as the Uighurs, the PRC is in many ways reminding us of the fascist states that reared their ugly heads in the first half of the previous century.
In some ways, it is difficult to apply that term to the rising dragon, primarily because of some marked differences from its predecessors. For one, fascist states tended to be short-lived and led by strong — and often charismatic — rulers. he PRC, even if we take 1949 as its starting point, has a long history and its leaders, with the possible exception of former premier Zhou Enlai, are not known for their charisma.
The PRC's embrace of capitalism in the early 1990s has also masked its fascistic tendencies, because “unrestrained capitalism” was one of the principal targets of fascism. The fact that the PRC finds its roots in communism and 19th century European class conflict — both of which fascism traditionally opposed — can also mislead the observer.
Still, today’s PRC arguably represents fascism 2.0, neo-fascism or “fascism with Chinese characteristics.”
One of the most peremptory signs of fascism is the state’s negation of individualism and the idea that citizens draw their identity and raison d’etre from the state. Evidence of this emerged earlier this week when Chinese Vice Sports Minister Yu Zaiqing chided 18-year-old Olympic champion short track speed skater Zhou Yang for thanking her parents — but not her country — after winning gold at the Vancouver Winter Games last month.
“It’s OK to thank your parents, but first you should thank the motherland. You should put the motherland first, not only thank your parents,” Yu told the Southern Metropolis Daily.
In his book "Anatomy of Fascism," American historian Robert Paxton defines fascism as “a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites abandons democratic liberties,” traits that are apparent in the PRC today.
Traits.
In his essay" Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt," published in the New York Review of Books in 1995, Italian intellectual Umberto Eco highlights aspects of fascism that have disturbing reverberations in the contemporary PRC. Features of Ur-Fascism, or “eternal fascism,” Eco writes, “cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.”
Let us explore the features unearthed by Eco that apply to the PRC today.
For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.
In the contemporary PRC, this translates into the state’s intolerance of dissent. Reporters (foreign and local), rights activists and ordinary citizens face censure, arrest and loss of employment if they dare criticize the state. Critical coverage of everything from lagging reconstruction in quake-hit Sichuan to calls, recently published in 13 daily newspapers, for an end to the unjust hukou passport — a system introduced during the Maoist era that prevents most Chinese, especially residents in rural areas, from moving to other parts of the country — is seen as treason. Even when motivated by love of country, anyone who criticizes the authorities over such matters as environmental catastrophes, social inequity, corruption, forced relocation, outbreaks of disease (such as SARS) and censorship can be assured of negative repercussions for himself and his relatives. [The Nobel Peace Laureate] Liu Xiaobo and Gao Zhisheng are two recent examples.
This phenomenon is behind Beijing’s oft-used reference to the “feelings of the Chinese people” being hurt by negative news coverage or other counties’ policies that run counter to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) national policies.
Disagreement is a sign of diversity.
Eco writes: “Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
In his book "When China Rules the World," British author Martin Jacques, whose views on the PRC are hardly critical, argues that the greatest problem likely to accompany the PRC's rise will not be political, but rather “Han Chinese” racism. Beijing’s attempts to portray its citizens, regardless of ethnic background, as “Han Chinese,” is part of that feature. Its refusal to regard Taiwanese or Aborigines as ethnic groups in their own right is also a symptom of its enmity toward diversity.
To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country.
This, of course, is the very core of nationalism.
“At the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology,” Eco writes, “there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.”
Yu’s berating of Zhou for thanking her parents but “neglecting” the nation — her “only privilege” — stems from this phenomenon. The obsession with plots, both domestic and international, is also prevalent in CCP rhetoric, from fears of US “encirclement” and “containment” to “splittism” in Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan.
The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies.
“However,” Eco writes, “the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the democratic opponent.
This obviously applies to perceptions of the US and, to a lesser extent, Japan and India. It also explains fears, mostly expressed by political scientists, that the PRC could “miscalculate” by expecting that it could prevail in a conflict in the Taiwan Strait despite US participation. As the PRC's military modernizes, reinforced by notions of victimhood and nationalism, the likelihood that it will embark on military adventurism — either against Taiwan or elsewhere, such as a border conflict with India — will increase.
Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology … [and] cruelly implies contempt for the weak.
“The members of the party are the best among the citizens [and] every citizen can [or ought to] become a member of the party,” Eco writes. However, “knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically, but was conquered by force, [the leadership] also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler.”
The CCP’s claims that Chinese are “not ready” for democracy also derive from this aspect of fascism.
Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism.
“For Ur-Fascism ... individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter,” Eco writes.
Not only do Chinese citizens have no “common will,” but the “interpreter” — the CCP — endeavors to ensure that no large group can achieve common will, which would threaten its hold on power. Religious groups like the Falun Gong and the Roman Catholic Church, opposition parties, ethnic groups and protesters — all are closely monitored, forced underground or dispersed when the “threat” of organized opposition to central rule begins to form.
This fear is also inspired by memories of warlordism, which for decades compelled the CCP to impose restrictions on each region’s control over the armed forces, even at the cost of loss of effectiveness.
“There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People,” Eco writes.
The CCP's control of information, its use of Internet Police to monitor Web and SMS activity, and a strong emphasis on Chinese symbolism and culture that is prevalent in the film industry are Eco’s future, and it has arrived.
Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.
“Elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning,” Eco writes.
The CCP’s imposition of simplified Chinese, which deprives Chinese citizens access to ancient texts and, in many ways, created an intellectual Year Zero in 1949, is such an instrument, as is censorship of the media and control of the material allowed to enter the country.
“Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes … [It] can come back under the most innocent of disguises,” Eco writes.
It is rising next door.
(J. Michael Cole is a journalist at the ‘Taipei Times.’)
Publicus: don't waste time in copying someone else
Please enlighten us with your great knowledge of Chinese readings:
1. What language do the Taiwanese speak?
2. Please compare Jammu and Kashmir with Taiwan in terms of language, cultures, and religion, and origins.
3. Was the Taiwanese newspaper in Chinese or did you read an English newspaper in Taiwan?
I admired you long pastings.
Chinese who live on the mainland erroneously think Hong Kong uses the Renminbi. Mainland people also are misled by Beijing to think and believe the Chinese of Taiwan use the Renminbi.
The world knows of course that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the PRC/CCP continues to use the Hong Kong dollar, and that the Republic Of China - Taiwan - uses the Taiwan dollar. The RMB is the currency of the mainland PRC only.
Bill888 you missed the name the "Taipei Times" at the beginning of the article I published to this page and at the end of the article. The source of the article, the Taipei Times is identified twice in the article. I know you never heard of the Taipei Times newspaper and that English is not your first language, but the name of the newspaper is presented twice in the piece. I myself also identified the name of the newspaper in my introduction. The article comes from the English language daily and Sunday newspaper of Taiwan, the Taipei Times.
Jeez Bill888 (and 1 400 000 000 other Chinese sheeple).
Does anybody have any doubts left as to the beginning of second cold war, this time between US and China?
If US had a upper hand in the first cold war against Soviet Union, then China has a upper hand against US in this second cold war. China has US by its tail - US businesses are hooked to huge profits that cheap Chinese products generate for them as a walk through any Walmart, Sears, Home Depot or Macy’s filled with Chinese goods proves and US government is hooked to huge investments that China makes in US treasuries.
Little could Mao or even Deng have imagined that by wearing a capitalist mask, their followers will beat capitalists at their own game. Lenin used to say that ’capitalists will sell us the ropes with which we will hang them’. With the West selling such ropes (in the form of technology transfers), China has proved that Lenin saying quite prophetic.
Nixon’s embrace of China in 1972 to counter Soviet Union has come back to haunt US in the form of second cold war just as Reagan’s embrace of Islamic fundamentalists in 1980s to counter Soviet Union in Afghanistan came back to haunt US in the form of 9/11 attacks.
What goes around, comes around indeed.
Lenin and his USSR collapsed of their own dead weight a generation ago after 74 years of a moribund totalitarian dictatorship. Mao was another totalitarian dictator who was a disaster. You have the wrong heroes but don't let that stop you!
And how Marty Martel will your new Second Cold War take shape? Will, for example the APEC countries side with the US or with PRC/CCP? Will all APEC countries side with the dictators in Beijing, or will most, or some, or few? How will ASEAN countries align? We know the PRC/CCP already has the hearts - and wallets - of every African dictator one can name, in addition to strongmen such as in Sri Lanka, Burma and elsewhere.
How would Japan, South Korea, Taiwan react to a new Second Cold War?
The USA devaluing the dollar only today got an unprecedented huge public howl from the PRC/CCP Commerce Minister because the devaluation by means of 'quantitative easing' in the US is already costing Beijing hundreds of billions of dollars in its USD$ foreign currency reserve holdings, soon to exceed $1 trillion in losses. The minister said today the CPC/PRC is "under attack" by the US devaluation policy. I think the extinquished, er, the distinguished minister is correct. I also think this is only the beginning of the G-20 campaign to equalize the global trading market and to reconstruct their economies.
Those such as the PRC/CPC who choose to live by selfish mercantilism sooner or later have to face the consequences. The time to start paying the piper has begun.
Your logic and reasoning are in fact illogical and anti-rational.
What's this you say? The US people represented by Barak Obama advocate and support the Guantanamo prison? You're an idiot to say that. Anyone who would say that lives in his own world of unreality and a self invented fantasy of the mind.
You are deaf and blind to the the fact that while in the United States Senate (from Illinois) Barak Obama opposed the Iraq war, the Guantanamo facility, and eloquently opposed George Dumbya Bush.
As the ultimately successful 2008 candidate for president, Barak Obama always and consistently made clear his opposition to the Gitmo facility and since becoming president has been working the complexities of closing the Gitmo prison. You have missed this. You know nothing of this. Your post is so self embarrassing and revealing of ignorance that I need not dwell on this fact any longer (too long already, I'm afraid).
Suffice to say that in this and in all other matters pertaining to the United States, you have a tin ear and tunnel vision. You as with all the Jung Gwo ideologues of Beijing have your own (out of this world) realities which are so distant and apart from the facts and realities of the world as to make you and your possession and buildup of nuclear weapons a threat.
You speak for and within the framework of your 5000 year fantasy history by which the Middle Kingdom (China) is the central country of the world and the center of all things. All roads lead to China? Get real.
The ancient Chinese had four great inventions. That was long ago, very long ago. Since then, there have been thousands of thousands of new inventions that have left the Jung Gwo chewing dust and, since CCP rule of China, directed only by a grudge and dangerous disrespect of the world that is apart from the 5000 year old Jung Gwo (all the others of us).
Are you among the Jung Gwo, i.,e., those certain important Chinese who believe that the United States has "disturbed" the 5000 year old Jung Gwo (Chinese) imagined domination over the world? Are you of all the Chinese among those lunatic Jung Gwo who focus only on the USA while forgetting that the West has surged forward in modern history to eclipse the decrepit Jung Gwo society, culture, government and state controlled economy?
The fact is you in China who are the Jung Gwo - which are not all of the Chinese but too many for comfort - share the view of the Chinese Army General Chi Haotian who wrote in 2009 that "war is not far from us and is the midwife of the Chinese century." In Chinese reality, the Chinese century means the delusional resumption of the fantasy of the Chinese eternal rule of the world under heaven.
You who among the Chinese people and CCP are are the hard core Jung Gwo are nuts - absolutely nuts. Worse, dangerous.
Publicus: don't get too up tight; it's just a discussion.
Please don't get too up tight and use all those personal attacks. I must apologize for making you very disturbed with my discussion of the world. But let's get back to what you have said.
1. During the Bush Administration, Barrack Obama was a citizen and was represented by Bush under the democracy representation logic. Bush represented the committal of the crime for invasion of Iraq by the USA people. When Barrack Obama was effected president, he ultimately inherited the USA people's crime and effect of conduct, irrespective of his opinion earlier. If there is no continuation of one president to another, the no law enacted prevails. So, by rewarding Barrack Obama during the pleasure of his presidency, the Nobel Peace Prize committee is rewarding a crime because the Barrack Obama had not anything significant for peace. And the purpose of the Nobel Peace Prize is for peace and not for other purposes. The committee made a mockery of the award to the world unless Obama has done enough to deserve that prize. If this logic of continuation does not prevail, then when Bin Laden bombed USA during the Bush Administration, his crime of action can be punished during the Obama Administration. So continuation of action and law must prevail, unless hegemonic characteristics prevail.
2. China had four great inventions. The world has many great inventions. Einstein had postulated Relativity theory as USA citizen, German, or Jewish? China had just made the fastest computer in the world. Another 5000 years, what's the big deal? Lately, who has been disturbed?
3. Through out the last 1500 Chinese history, Hanese was a peace loving cultures. The Chinese build on the "Great Wall of China" to do what, to defend itself from outsiders. Those resources for building of the Great Wall could be used to conquer the world, but they were not. Before Columbus, the Chinese Muslim general led a sail of 20000 soldiers touring around the India Oceans, but he did not make any campaign to raid other countries when he had the most powerful navy in the world. That is conspicuous action of peace, unlike some countries which always use democracy as a facade for its crime toward humanity: Iraq invasion; the Opium war on China; the boarding of the Chinese Galaxy Ship, etc.
4. I believe the word "Jong Guo" should not be translated into "middle kingdom". It is a short for its long form "Jong Hua Remin Gonghe Guo". It is a wrong translation by some foreigners who know nothing about the language.
5. The Chinese general Chi's assertion is basically right about the surrounding of hostilities around China by foreign military bases and exercises. Would any country say the same thing if other people build up military bases around that country and perform military exercises every month? It will be absurd if that country would say "war is far away as ever before" when it is surrounded by foreign military bases. "Midwifes of the Chinese century" is referring to the century of being oppressed by others.
6. Why are you so up tight?
Publicus: don't get too up tight; it's just a discussion.
Please don't get too up tight and use all those personal attacks. I must apologize for making you very disturbed with my discussion of the world. But let's get back to what you have said.
1. During the Bush Administration, Barrack Obama was a citizen and was represented by Bush under the democracy representation logic. Bush represented the committal of the crime for invasion of Iraq by the USA people. When Barrack Obama was elected president, he ultimately inherited the USA people's crime and effect of conduct, irrespective of his opinion earlier. If there is no continuation of one president to another, then no law enacted prevails. So, by rewarding Barrack Obama during the pleasure of his presidency, the Nobel Peace Prize committee is rewarding a crime because the Barrack Obama had not achieved anything significant for peace. And the purpose of the Nobel Peace Prize is for peace and not for other purposes. The committee made a mockery of the award to the world, unless Obama has done enough to deserve that prize. If this logic of continuation does not prevail, then when Bin Laden bombed USA during the Bush Administration, his crime of action cannot be punished during the Obama Administration. So continuation of action and law must prevail, unless hegemonic judgment prevails.
2. China had four great inventions. The world has many great inventions. Einstein had postulated Relativity theory as a USA citizen, German, or Jewish? China had just made the fastest computer in the world. Another 5000 years, what's the big deal? Lately, who has been disturbed?
3. Through out the last 1500 Chinese history, Chinese was a peace loving cultures. The Chinese build on the "Great Wall of China" to do what: to defend itself from outsiders. Those resources for building of the Great Wall could be used to conquer the world, but they were not. Before Columbus, the Chinese Muslim general, Zheng He, led a sail of 20000 soldiers touring around the India Oceans, but he did not make any campaign to raid other countries when he had the most powerful navy in the world under his control. That is conspicuous intention of peace, unlike some countries which always use democracy as a facade for its crime toward humanity: Iraq invasion; the Opium war on China; the boarding of the Chinese Galaxy Ship, the Annexation of Sikkim and split of East Pakistan.
4. I believe the word "Jong Guo" should not be translated into "middle kingdom". It is a short for its long form "Jong Hua Remin Gonghe Guo". It is a wrong translation by some foreigners who know nothing about the language.
5. The Chinese general Chi's assertion impending war is basically correct about the surrounding of hostilities around China by foreign military bases and exercises. Would other countries say the same thing if other people build up military bases around that country and perform military exercises every month? It will be absurd if that country would say "war is far away as ever before" when it is surrounded by foreign military bases. "Midwifes of the Chinese century" is referring to the century of being oppressed by others.
6. Why are you so up tight?
@ Bill888: You needn't apologize. Just grow up.
No apologies necessary Mr. Bill888.You haven't done or said anything that should require an apology. You spout the one dimensional Beijing party line, which is offensive but not a grounds of apology. As to your step by step, rote numerical post above:
1) Your logic is of course logical but one thing you Chinese can't get is the fact that that which is logical is not always and every time necessarily correct or right. Logic has many great strengths and many useful applications, but logic per se is not to be worshiped as much as the Chinese worship it. The Chinese are unable to receive this reality. Hence your nonsensical Item Number 1 above that tries to condemn forever all and every one of the people of the United States for Guantanamo. My argument to you that the people of the US never accepted the Guantanamo facility is entirely dismissed by you as you resort to your convoluted logic that in voting to elect Barak Obama president, who always opposed Guantanamo and the Iraq war, the people of the US continue to bear ownership of Guantanamo.
2) Yes, the CCP/PRC currently have the fastest computer of the world. That has happened because the Jung Gwo have stolen wholesale much technology from the West, and will steal more. So now you have the fastest computer in the world but during the course of next year you no longer will have that position, even as you continue massively and systematically to steal Western technology. Same for the stolen moon program technology and other technology in China. By your own Chinese only technology, you just recently have managed to design, construct, manufacture and roll out the PRC/CCP's first commercial passenger airliner which has all of 29 seats. Your own technology is 100 years behind. Using stolen technology, you can get a bit ahead for a temporary short while but not much more.
3) You make another Beijing party line attack against democracy as nothing but or as more than a pretense and pretext which is actually a grand design to conquer the world and to exercise Beijing's favorite word which you recite and recite, hegemony. The fact is the Han Jung Gwo consider that their 5000 year existence as a culture (with hazy disappearances of the culture from time to time which are arbitrarily dismissed as meaningless, insignificant) proves the Jung Gwo "rightful" claim to be the dominant and ruling culture of the world, based only on longevity. The reality is that the contemporary Chinese continue to have nothing more than the 5000 year old dictatorship the Jung Gwo always have had. The Jung Gwo in the contemporary and future world stand for nothing more than the same same dictatorship by control freaks whose only idea of life and the world is control, a subordinate-superordinate relationship between the population and its people, a reactionary and punishing obey or disobey mindset between the government and the population.
4) The name in Chinese the Chinese use to identify themselves - and I'm not a speaker of Chinese whether the Chinese spoken is Cantonese, Mandarin or any of the myriad dialects of the Chinese languages - is interpreted in English (and in other languages) in many ways. To the Chinese of the mainland, they themselves in English are the Zhong Gwo as transliterated in the Roman, Latin, alphabet on all of their currency, the Renminbi (the people's money hahahaha). The English language transliteration for hundreds of years of the name (and sounds) the Chinese call themselves is the Jung Gwo. I as a native speaker of English use this common and long term transliteration. You need to get used to the hundreds year old English language transliteration of your own reference to yourselves as the Jung Gwo. There are more to the world you know than the Chinese and their own inborn and ingrown will and willfulness. You Chinese call everyone who is not Chinese (Han) devils, and we 'devils' are used to that, accept it and, speaking for myself, ridicule it much to the disapproval of the humorless Jung Gwo. (I seldom if ever call myself an American, as I'm accurately a natural born citizen of the United States of America and because there is a greater meaning to the words "America" and "American" than one particular country of the 33 country place known as the Americas - North, South, Central.) Grow up.
5) You deliberately try to deflect and misrepresent grossly Gen Chi's officially written statement I quoted that, "war is not far from us and is the midwife of the Chinese century." Gen Chi means the Chinese must defeat the United States (and Japan) in war in order to "regain" the central country's (Jung Gwo's) 5000 year old delusions of being the ultimate rulers of the world.
Beyond your recitation of the party line's five points above:
The Chinese self name is the Jung Gwo which in translation/interpretation literally means the 'central country.' To the Jung Gwo, this means all roads lead to China, always have and always will. The Chinese historically also refer to themselves as the Middle Kingdom which has essentially the same meaning (the Heavenly Flowery Middle Kingdom to boot).
The Jung Gwo (central country) for 5000 years have lived in a dreamland and a in a self induced state of dreamtime. This delusion continues today, in the modern world, which in the nuclear age is a horribly dangerous prospect.
As I said at the beginning of this post, you don't need to apologize. That's an ancient mentality of subordinates-superordinates - in other words, face. You instead need to get real. Getting real requires that you grow up from your thousands year old walled in and closed culture that is inbred, inborn, ingrown, ignorant, to recognize that the modern world is radically more than a "disturbance" to the 5000 year old central country (Jung Gwo) Heavenly Flowery Middle Kingdom dominance which, in fact and reality, never existed in the first place.
Publicus: degrading another's opinion is no use.
I am really sorry to get you to speak with a caustic tongue and write about subjects with incoherence thoughts. Let me have a discourse with you regarding your answer point by point as below:
1. You agreed the reasoning is correct in confirming that there is continuity of presidency and responsibility etc. Yet you will agree to depart from reasoning and logic whenever you wish. This situation is same as the Roman time during which Galigula Caesar had ruled by decree, irrespective of the objection from the Senate. Most historians referred to this period as authoritarian governance with cruelty. The little Galigula "booty" Caesar was in madness. So you agreed USA or India is same and are hegemonic countries which choose to rule by decree as it sees fit. Hegemonic...just admit it!
2. The production of the fastest computer in the world by China was not a steal. Please, Publicus, enlighten us from your vast experiences where one can steal the fastest computer when no one else has one before. Particularly, the USA and EU had put an embargo on selling of military hardware to China. But I think for that computer, they use parts bought from Nividia and Intel. Other parts are made by China themselves. So it was a purchase of parts; no need to steal. However, I believe British/India stole South Tibet from China/Tibet. Dalai Lama is restricted to go there.
3. About me toeing that communist party line, I let in with a little secret: I have nothing to do with any communist parties in the world. That all I can tell you about myself. I like to point out another fact to you: all the governments 200 years ago were under dictatorships by kings and queens including China. So China was under dictatorship of Emporers for 5000-100 =4900 years. Whereas India has 6000 years of history => 6000-60 years = 5940 years. Ha! Still more than China. USA was not a country 300 years, so there is no references.
4. Let me remind you of what you have learn from your grade school teachers. The English speakers call P.R.C. simply "China". The French called it "La Chine". I believe the Italian called it "Cine" because C is pronounced as "ch" same as in English. The Chinese called themselves "Zhong Guo" for short. So your grade teachers had taught you incorrectly to call China "Jong Guo" in English and it is not your fault.
5. I guess you must be a good friend of General Chi. My apology. Can you talk to him and ask what he meant and rather than guessing what he meant from your part? Please let us know of what he intends to say. Don't guess. I appreciate it.
@BILL888: Stop the nonsense now.
Stop this nonsense now.
It's Jung Gwo not "Jong" Gwo as you erroneously write - and we learned the term at university from a History professor who'd lived on Taiwan for many years, not in grade school as you erroneously try to assert. Get real.
One of your posts above asks me three questions, however, you can keep your questions to yourself as you are not in the self-presumed position to examine me. In point of fact, the piece I published to this page from the Taipei Times of Taiwan mentions that the CCP has dumbed down the Chinese language on the mainland - the Taiwan Chinese continue to use the classical Chinese characters.
Stop pumping out blue smoke and holding up mirrors concerning General Chi's threatening statements such as the one in 2009 that "war is not far from us and is the midwife of the Chinese century." That's a clear statement of warmongering and there isn't any honest way you can deny it or try to beat around the bush about it. PRC/CCP bullets are killing peacekeepers in Darfur just as PRC bullets killed student demonstrators in Tianaman and citizens of Beijing in 1989, killled demonstrators in Tibet more than once, and kill the civilian Muslim Turkic speaking peoples of your newest conquered province XinJiang at your far western borders.
Your drivel about Caligula is further proof that, contrary to your false representations of my statements, I do not agree with your wrongheaded statements about the Guantanamo detention facility. Your convoluted logic as an anti-democrat in trying to say to a democrat how a democracy is organized and structured falls flat on its face. The people of the PRC are not the sovereign authority of that country whereas the people of a republican democracy ARE sovereign. One reason the electors of the United States chose Barak Obama in 2008 is his absolute opposition to the Guantanamo facility.
Get real.
Publicus; Get your money back from your Professor
If your professor taught you to call P R C as "Jung Gwo" instead of China in English, then you should ask for your money back from the professor. Obviously he did not know too much about English, so he taught you the wrong thing. Your "Jung Gwo" is direct sound translation of a short form which stands for a longer form with different meaning. So it cannot be translated directly into "middle kingdom". For example, Taiwan is the name of the Island. However, it can be translated into "Platform Bay". Then if you call Taiwan as "Platform Bay" in English, people think you are crazy. Because it is a name for a place, it can only be translated into sound name. And sometimes custom prevails like China in English with no sound translation. Another example, India in Chinese will be translated into "Copy Degree". If you start calling India as "Copy Degree" in English, people think you are a nutcase. So, you have to ask your money back from your Professor, who taught you the wrong thing.
I only said it was your grade teacher who taught you this because I don't want to embarrass your professor.
I think you should quote the whole speech from general Chi. No one knows what you are talking about without further references. Just for your information, there are probably no midwifes nowaday in China. For General Chi to use that metaphor in Chinese, he must be very poetic.
You have conflict of logic for reasoning in your argument regarding Guantanamo prison and Obama's inherited responsibility of a Nation. Go back and read what I wrote.
There you go again. You write above, and I quote:
"If your professor taught you to call P R C as "Jung Gwo" instead of China in English, then you should ask for your money back from the professor. Obviously he did not know too much about English, so he taught you the wrong thing."
The professor of Chinese History I studied under, and I myself, are native born US citizens and native speakers of English, respectively. Neither the professor nor I are of Indian nationality, ethnicity or descent. The professor didn't teach me English, he taught us Chinese History at the graduate level at a university in the United States.
The professor is literate (speak, read, write, listen) in several Chinese tongues, to include the classic Chinese used on Taiwan and the dumbed down "simplified" (vulgarized) Chinese tongue popularized by the PRC/CCP; also Mandarin (Putonghua, aka Beijinghua). The prof lived and worked eight years on Taiwan because the mainland was experiencing the cultural revolution at the time.
Fear not BILL888 because the native English speaker prof calls China by its English name, i.e., China. He always points out to his classes the English transliteration "Jung Gwo" as being the Romanized (Latin alphabet) word the Chinese call the place, the country, where they live. We native speakers of English can use "Jung Gwo" interchangably with the word China because each term refers to the identical place on the map. However, in the United States the usual and routine reference to the place is simply 'China'.
More properly of course, nowadays it's the People's Republic of China ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, wherein lies the rub. I want to be careful not to confuse you too much here, but you also need to know the PRC/CCP some time ago morphed into a fascist state and society.
The PRC/CCP uses its preferred transliteration into English "Zhong Gwo" (i.e., China) on its currency and in everyday life. It is 'Zhong Gwo' in Chinglish, and it is 'Jung Gwo' in English. Either way, it remains the identical place on the map, China.
I have stated to you several times I'm not in, of or from India. I've said to you before I've never been to India. The people of India are fine people but I'm not one of them. My interest in India is based on my being a democrat from a democracy, the United States, that India which has more than 1 000 000 000 people is a democracy, has been a democracy for longer than there has been a PRC, and that the PRC/CCP with its 1 400 000 000 billion people is a fascist dictatorship which insists falsely that because of its large population it cannot have democracy.
Because you PRC types like to try to bash India, I will point out its democratic virtues and your shortcomings as a fascist dictatorship. That's all.
Actually, altho your posts are specious and characteristically dictatorial - "go back and read what I wrote" - you do try to present arguments and to engage in discourse and dialog however feeble is your anti-democracy world view.
This is in stark contrast to the certain Chinese I'd met during my recent time in the PRC/CCP who have your views but, because they have the absolute and eternal truth (their absurd and dangerous fantasy of course), completely reject any discussion and discourse to instead favor their own closed little world of their certain (hubris based) verities which as the people of the land of the Jung Gwo are certain exist (for them and for them only).
Many Chinese at least speak from the heart, although your heart is full of anger,T parapher beats 72 times a minute to "settle old scores," mentality and and which bleeds for China.rule the world.. which is fine by me.
Publicu: don't deny the Crime by hiding behind Democracy
I had just proved to you a democracy country can commit as much crime as a dictatorship. Examples: Iraq invasion; the Opium War, the EP-3 incident off the coast of South China coast. Just because there is a change of president, crime do not diminishes. Don't hide behind this democracy screen!
The CCP is another historically reactionary dynasty
Government by its very nature is an evil.
This is true no matter whatever good it does. Indeed, ask the government free zone mind of Marx, but don't ask the worshipers of perpetual government such as Lenin or Mao, among others, of their eternal totalitarian government ilk. Can you self examine yourself? NOT! Not ever for any reasons or purposes.
Government always wants and seeks more power, more control, more money - more more and more of itself. As you might be able to see here, the key word about governments and government per se is more. More of itself. And yet more of itself. Then again more ad infinitum.
In China the government always has had not only the power, but the absolute and ruthless power. In the modern contemporary IT world the newest dynasty, the PRC/CCP, seeks unprecedented power and powers over new means of communication and interaction such as the internet and global cable satellite TV and other such communications.
Western and all Liberal democracies generally have constitutions and constitutional systems that limit this natural greed inherent to government. In contrast, the Jung Gwo always have lived by elitism and elitist government which is all controlling and all directing - governments and societies that are dictatorial, dictatorships.
I quote to you to consider (as if you ever would haha) Winston Churchill: "Democracy is the worst form of government ever devised by the mind of man, save for all of the others."
"Save all of the others" includes your dearly beloved and worshiped Beijing fascist dictatorship. But you still don't get it. Do you?!? You and your kind of the Jung Gwo never can and never will.
Fortunately not all of the Chinese are like you and your ilk who make posts here. I welcome your posts as it gives us the occasion in the marketplace of ideas to expose your reactionary and irreversible totalitarian/authoritarian mindset.
You and other contemporary PRC/CCP fascists do not represent the significant number of the teens and twenty-somethings of the PRC who reject their past of totalitarianism and authoritarianism and who, knowing of the freedoms and liberties of the West in general and of the United States in particular, want both the CCP, you your anti-democracy fascists out of government, out of power, out of this world.
Longtime Washington Post correspondent Colum Lynch reports on all things United Nations for Turtle Bay.
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