How do you view the economic rise of China? For some it will lead to democratisation as a growing middle class demand political rights. However how true is this? Do you think Asian values will prevent this occuring on similar lines to the way economic development has not led to civil rights in say Singapore? Will China become a peace loving and liberty loving country as it continues to grow richer?
For all the hullabaloo I hear from frothing neoconservatives and Objectivists, I can’t find evidence the People’s Republic of China has invaded a single country in it’s entire history. It will continue to grow and industrialize, though this will, in all likelihood, be subject to ABCT if the Bank of China decides to pursue a policy of credit expansion.
Well, I suppose ou haven’t heard about tibet. Anyway, besides the masses of death inside china itself, I agree that china is, at least compared with the former USSR and the US comparitivly peaceful -as far a you can call a state peaceful in the first place.
The People’s Republic of China invaded China.
Two possiblities:
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They continue to reform and normalize with the west.
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They wait until they’ve got enough wealth to tax to win a big war and pull a Hitler.
A civil war isn’t a foreign invasion, by definition.
With whom? China has historically been an isolationist nation with little foreign ambitions towards even close neighbours like Japan or Korea. Germany, on the other hand, was a major imperialist power with colonies in Africa, China and the Pacific with an active ultranationalist sentiment and hyperinflation. It’s apples and oranges.
Tibet, to my knowledge, was conquered by the Mongols, made subordinate to the Manchus, invaded by the British Empire in 1904, the British signed a treaty with China to not annex Tibet while China would not allow foreign interference in Tibet, then China sent troops to Tibet in 1910 and deposed the Dalai Lama in an imperial edict, then the Dalai Lama fled to British India and returned in 1912 after the Chinese revolution, proclaiming Tibet independent and it’s relationship with the QIngs to have been priest and patron, not a subordinate one and declaring an independence no other country recognized until 1949, when the victorious Red Chinese sent their military to Tibet.
Hell, as Bevin Chu has demonstrated, the US has less claim to California than China (either one) has to Tibet.
China still has not fully awakened from the Maoist nightmare. At the moment what their leadership prizes above everything else is stability: this is obtained by that curious admixture of politics to ensure a strong economic growth and Asian despotism. Chinese have a longer historical memory than our own and they remember very well the Tai’Ping, the Boxers, the Long March and the Cultural Revolution. Deng Xiaoping crushed the Tienanmen uprising so ruthlessly because he would not allow the country to have another Cultural Revolution with Red Guards running amok after all he did to undo the Maoist model.
While it’s very difficult to understand the Chinese mentality we may well imagine that they’ll try to keep the present model as long as possible. They have no need to invade other countries to get raw materials since they can either pay them cash or strike good financial deals like they did with many African countries. On a different note they are keeping a very close eye on India, which may turn out to be their most fearsome rival, if it will manage to hold together long enough: India is one of the world’s most dangerous ticking time-bombs and the Chinese (and the Russians) know this very well. There are a number of very frightening scenarios about a China-India war and, as improbable as they may sound, they are by no means impossible. At the moment Chinese haven’t scaled up their military spending that much but may well do if India shows signs of unrest.
What are ‘Asian values’?
Apparently the Free Tibet movement hasn’t caught your eye.
Korea was a protectorate of China during feudal times and there was a Sino-Japanese war. So what you are saying is incorrect.
By Asian values I am referring to the view that market institutions are viewed instrumentally, as a means to wealth creation and social cohension, not as ends in themselves. To take some examples to highlight Asian values: Japanese market insitutions rely on networks of trust rather than upon a culture of contract. Their relations with the state are close and continous. Thier ethical life is not individualist. It has a full employment culture. There is an unwritten social contract that assures job secuirity. In China the idea of market exahnge separate from the family life is foreign. In ‘The Spirt of Chinese Capitalism’ the characteristics identified include such things as central decision making, close overlap of ownership control and family, a paternalistic organisational climate etc.
For Weber western capitalism developed by displacing family and personla relationships within economic life. Profit ruled not family. Due to the centrality of society and family, this individualism is lacking in Chinese economic life so affecting its development.
…Vietnam?
It’s funny how people believe the worst of their government while in the same time dismissing the possible threat from other, far more brutal regimes.
It’s funny how people believe in their government, and don’t realize that ‘their’ government is their worse enemy, worse than ‘foreign’ governments.
Huh? Who believes in government? I even doubt it’s going to do a good job of defending the homeland against the real attack should it happen or let us defend ourselves, what with all the crackdown on militia and private gun ownership. But just because right now the federal government is the bigger threat to my liberty it would be silly to completely dismiss the outside threat either.
yeah, those damn ‘foreigners’…
The idea that China has never participated in a war of aggression is ridiculous—China invaded Vietnam after the United States withdrew. China also participated in North Korea’s war of aggression against the South (although, admittedly, when the United States et. allies crossed the 38th Parallel after the initial North Korea invasion had been repulsed, they could have suddenly become the aggressors). On the other hand, China does not pose a real threat to the people of the United States. It poses a threat to the government of the United States, since it will be the government which loses when China absorbs through political-proxy a plethora of natural resources in the East Pacific Ocean. Furthermore, China continues to provide competition against the United States for Middle Eastern oil, and China has extended its sphere of influence on the African Continent (in many cases, replacing the now deceased Soviet Union). So, China is a threat only to the political machinations of the United States, not to the people of the United States. The supposed threat is a threat only to American mercantilism.
Dude, I was a foreigner, you know. Unlike some naive Americans, I’m fully aware what collectivist regimes are capable of doing to their own people as well as unfortunate others on the lands where they dominate. I don’t think that peoples of Eastern Europe are always happy with their governments, but I seriously doubt they’d prefer the time of the Nazi or Soviet occupation. Or why do you think they rushed into Nato after the Soviet collapse, purely out of paranoia? Or maybe because they still remember the Soviet tanks overrunning their streets?
And who’s in charge of Russia now by the way? None other than KGB successors who employ many of the Soviet methods and are anti-American and hostile to many of their neighbors (but not China, which is saying something). It’s easy to feel safe in the US with no war on its territorry in anyone’s living memory but as my friends in Russia just love to remind me, it takes only minutes for intercontinental nuclear missiles to reach North America from any place on the planet.
But who pays when the governments quarrel? The people 
I wouldn’t mind if Chinese helped get rid of the government and then left us alone but I don’t want to die or lose my home in the process and I doubt that it’s going to happen this way. Governments don’t like anarchy, you know 
If China and the US got into it, the entire goddamn world would pay: Asian allies would become targets as China moved to keep its homeland secure(the North Korean army would inevitably receive some shiny new toys to keep the American forces south of the DMZ tied down); the US would push NATO to get involved; Iran would likely go empire building; Russia would certainly get involved somehow to restore some of its Soviet-era power(it’s Putin we’re talking about); if a Sino-Indian war erupts(likely, it would be the cause of the Sino-American one), Pakistan would definitely make a move on Kashmir. These are just the most glaring issues I see: a number of other things could happen as well depending on how the wars went(how would Canada fare if China landed in the US? What would happen in South American and Africa? Would Russia’s aggression be geared to Europe or China?). No matter what happened, a massive, global depression would be inevitable.
You missed my point. Who pays for the war has nothing to do with what I am trying to say. I am trying to dismiss the idea that China is a threat to the American people.