President Bush and the Five Halloween Monsters. Part II - China

President Bush and the Five Halloween Monsters. Part II - China

By Prof. Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

Five key realms matter most for America and the promotion of Democracy, Freedom, and Multiculturalism in today’s world. Developing bilateral relations with them in an efficient way will be determinant for America’s effort to shape the entire world in the years ahead. The idealist approach of the reinvested American President is viewed very differently by these five realms, namely Russia, China, France, Turkey and Islam. In a first article, we focused on the vastest Halloween monster, i.e. Russia. Here we are going to study the largest one: China.

China

The Beijing dragon is extremely perilous for the global economy, stability, security, and peace. The Chinese demographic boom endangers Russia, and the entire Islam. With regard to the former, Northeastern Siberia may be viewed by some Beijing nationalistic rulers as the 3rd millennium Chinese Paradise, a badly needed ‘Lebensraum’ rich in resources of all sorts. With respect to the latter, a seemingly peaceful deportation of 50 million Chinese – an easy case, if we take into consideration how totally dispossessed the three fourths of the entire population are, and how brutally they are ruled by the Beijing tyrants – would make of the Islamic masses of Eastern Turkistan a minority within that vast territory (almost 1.7 km sq, so as large as Iran), creating therefore another focus of Islamic terrorism.

Japan also feels threatened by the combination of the Chinese demographic and economic booms. The present Russian – Japanese rapprochement (precisely 100 years after the lost war of the tsar!) is quite indicative of the existing tensions, worries and anticipations. Added to this, the American insistence on the enduring arms embargo to China (following the 1991 Tien An Men events) places the Chinese leadership in a rather uncomfortable position.

The secret dreams of the dragon’s tyrannical and uncultured elite

It would be wrong to consider that a country with China’s dimensions did not shape its own long term strategies. The present Chinese elite are the children of the Cultural Revolution revisited; their cultural background pushes them to long term visions of quantitative nature and cultureless contents. China is a fully accredited nuclear power that has ultimate spatial ambitions. They keep a rather low profile by opposing American options without a real frontal clash. This is for now; but it will not last much! China’s GDP ranks second in the world and accounts for no more than two thirds of America’s. When China will rise to no 1 position in terms of GDP, America will notice a dramatic change in the Chinese global policies. The American administration will then find itself engulfed in an alarming situation that looks rather unimaginable today. But it will then look like a nightmare, and the public debates will focalize on the lack of anticipation. The main problem is precisely the fact that the elite of the Beijing’s dragon views Freedom, Civic Society, Modern Democracy, and Human Rights as a direct threat to its vision of global predominance.

China will keep a low profile as long as it will take for Beijing to become no 1 GDP in the world, and during that time China will deploy all possible efforts to become the Global Factory par excellence. When phase 1 will be achieved, China will embark on phase 2, involving radical rejection of American options, and direct confrontation with any Freedom and Democracy promoting policy. Beijing counts that when phase 2 is to start, China will have at its mercy the rest of the world; at least economically. Furthermore, the Chinese elite that bases its calculations on economic data is fully aware of global political realities.

The Chinese know that the world is not a democratic paradise; Human Rights, Democracy, Freedom, Respect for the Other, and Education promoting Civic Sense prevail in few parts of the world. Their further propagation and expansion over the past few decades was real, but at the same time the opposite ‘ideals’ gained some terrain, and become stronger as well. The Chinese elite is sunk into corruption, brutality and immorality. Any sort of democratization is perceived as a threat. The Chinese commitment to sustaining oligarchies, tyrannies and dictatorial regimes is total.

The ultimate Chinese vision of the world is a realm of corrupt and criminal leaders surviving by means of mafia gangs, and ruling collapsing nations by means of unchecked and unquestioned orders. Within the Chinese nefarious vision, the success of which would herald the sunset of global civilization, bestialized masses – totally cut from their historical and cultural identities and roots – have nothing to expect in terms of personal, social, educational and cultural betterment, whereas the civilized West – viewed as corrupt and decadent – has to be reduced to the level of total dependency. The Chinese will try to exploit any friction between Europe and America, and France has helped them tremendously so far.

Preoccupying figures taken into account by the Chinese

There are some very preoccupying figures to support all that. With industry and construction representing approximately 53% of its GDP (US $ 6.4 trillion), China is already a greater industrial power than America, where industry represents 26.2% of the US GDP (US $ 11 trillion). Gradually, China reduces the agriculture’s portion within its GDP (by now it is around 14%). At the same time, China’s economy grows at an unmatched 9%, having quadrupled since 1978. The Chinese leaders want to continue at the same rhythm, and this is the real challenge for America and the free world.

This growth however is not the result of a magic recipe; a lot has been, and a lot is being, invested in China. In the year 2003, investment in China rose to almost 44% of the GDP, whereas in America it did not exceed 15.2% of the GDP. Few people notice that China achieved industrial production growth 30% in the year 2003, when America’s corresponding figure was a meager 0.3%.

More alarming indices are in this case America’s negative account balance (more than half a trillion dollars for the year 2003), and the unprecedented, vertiginous character of the American external debt (US $ 7.8 trillion as of 30/9/2004: see the link: http://www.treas.gov/tic/debta904.html). In an excellent study, L. Josh Bivens stipulated that America enters into a serious trouble by being engulfed into a vicious circle of borrowing more and more. As he put it, ‘the United States is currently borrowing $665 billion annually from foreign lenders to finance the gap between payments to and receipts from the rest of the world, an amount equivalent to $5,500 per American household’. The article published recently (14/12/2004) in the authoritative Economic Policy Institute (see the link: http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/Issuebrief203 ) under the title ‘Debt and the dollar – The United States damages future living standards by borrowing itself into a deceptively deep hole’ ends with an alarming warning about the combination of the present debt with unsustainable low interest rates, and the author seems to expect the full consequences of the U.S. international debt problem to ‘have real bite, as soon as the interest rates begin to rise in the United States’.

On the other hand, the soaring Chinese forex and gold reserves is another preoccupying issue, since it gives China the possibility to eventually play a major role in the global economy, influencing developments at will.

China’s uneasiness and points of American focus

The Chinese reaction has been already attested as uneasiness, hindrance and at times direct opposition in various cases allover the world from Taipei to Iran, and from Iraq to Sudan. The intensifying Sino-European relations, the contracts awarded to the French, the Germans and the Italians in the recent European presidential visits to China, the military and spatial plans of Beijing, everything heralds a forthcoming Chinese nationalist explosion that Russia is unable to anticipate and incapable to contain. At a first stage, Northeastern Siberia should become a matter of greater concern for America. The US and the Japanese must be there before the Chinese anti-Russian game starts.

Furthermore, America must concentrate its strategy with regard to China on issues related to Human Rights violations, lack of Freedom and Democracy, and regional underdevelopment. In this way, the US will gain the sympathies and the trust of the various local peoples. In the same way Russia is a hell for democratic Russians and its various minorities, China is the Cemetery par excellence in today’s world. The international body must be properly restructured in a way to bring face to face the representatives of Turkic, Tibetan, Mongolian and other oppressed populations, and the official Chinese delegates. Here we refer to our earlier suggestion for institutionalizing the Tribune of Oppressed Peoples (see the link: http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/1-3-2005-63698.asp).

The grave violations of Human Rights throughout China, and the total lack of respect for the minorities that characterizes the Chinese administration in Eastern Turkistan, Tibet (approximately 1.2 km sq), and Inner Mongolia (of equally large surface) must become another focal point of the global politics.

At the same time, we must realize that we speak about an area as vast as India and Pakistan together, since these three nominally ‘autonomous’ regions equal almost half the surface of China. That area between Russia, Kazakhstan, India and China is the real heart of Asia. All the developments that reached faraway Western Europe, Rome, Constantinople, Baghdad, Egypt, Persia, India, and China have been generated in that huge area that must become no 1 topic of any bilateral agenda with China.

The expansionist Chinese plans must be met with immediate reaction, and a link must be established between Global Trade and Human Rights. Eager for economic growth, the Chinese will yield now, if dealt with a resolute approach. The American silence about the aforementioned tyrannized Chinese provinces cannot go on.

It is essential for America to avoid any uncontrolled radicalization of the situation in Eastern Turkistan (the so-called Chinese province of Sin Kiang), since any explosion of the oppressed, local, Islamic population should not be expected to mainly function as direct impediment to Chinese development but rather to take the form of a terrorism breeding furnace. The vicinity of so many independent Central Asiatic states, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir would make the link between the Northwestern province of China and various other parts of the Central Asia and the Middle East, ultimately creating a perilous volcano for the Western and the entire global security.

Supporting the rights of China’s Muslim Turkic, as well as Tibetan and Mongolian, populations for self-determination may be the best way for America to prove its good intensions towards the Islamic World, and at the same time to engulf China into a marsh that will stop the Beijing dictators’ dreams as soon as possible.

Even more important for the present American administration is to realize that dealing with China as it does the US runs against time; the quantitative approach to issues prevails in the minds of the current Chinese administration, and with a GDP of US $ 11 trillion China will not be containable anymore. Proper and efficient policies of containment can work today; in 2008 it will be too late. More specifically, every transfer of know-how to China must be linked with free Internet, respect of Human Rights, and a genuine plan of democratization. Outsourcing will have to follow Human Rights implementation.