Getting Real About China. To Manage China, Fix America First.
By WESLEY K. CLARK OCT. 10, 2014
China's harsh suppression of political dissent, from Hong Kong to Xinjiang, and its close ties to Russia, Iran and North Korea, have finally laid to rest the dream many Western leaders have had since the 1990s: that constructive engagement would eventually, inevitably lead to more openness and democracy.
Instead, the opposite has occurred: China is more confident, more assertive, and also more closed. Thirty-five years after Deng Xiaoping freed up the economy, the Communist Party is using material prosperity and nationalist ideology to maintain its legitimacy in the face of the wrenching social tensions. It has rejected both the move toward democracy and the acceptance of human and civil rights that Americans had hoped would emerge from Chinas astonishing economic rise. Even more worrisome, Chinas foreign policy relies on keenly calculated self-interest, at the expense of the international institutions, standards and obligations the United States has sought to champion. It increasingly views the United States as a rival and potential adversary.
What went wrong? . . .
If there was a turning point in Chinas assessment of America, it could be found in the financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath. While still respectful of our military might, China began to see the United States as a failing system, with a debt-saddled economy and a dysfunctional government, vulnerable to being replaced as the worlds leader. In 2011, a well-placed Chinese associate told me that the countrys new leadership intended to dominate the South China Sea; that its regional rivals, like Vietnam, would bow to its ambitions or be taught a lesson; and that if the United States interfered, our assets would be targeted.
By 2013, this associates warnings had become even more ominous: We can see your stealth aircraft; we have our own GPS and can shoot down yours; we know your technologies from all your companies and from NASA, because Chinese scientists work these for you; you will not have any military relations with the Philippines unless we allow it, because China provides them $3.5 billion per month in remittances through Hong Kong; Chinese shipyards are working 24 hours a day, seven days a week; more than 30 ships were launched between October 2012 and April 2013; by 2019 China will have four aircraft carriers deployed.
China doesnt seek conflict it can achieve most of its goals by adroitly combining traditional diplomacy with its vast economic power. But neither will it avoid conflict. It has in the past used its military pre-emptively rather than defensively. A danger is that an ascendant China seeking recognition of its power and rights, will, whether deliberately or through miscalculation, spark conflict.
But the deeper strategic problem for America is Chinas more fundamental challenge to the global architecture of trade, law and peaceful resolution of disputes that the United States and its allies created after World War II. Chinas strategic rise patient, nuanced and farsighted threatens all of this. Just as the United States has sought the worldwide adoption of democratic values and American norms for international behavior, China will seek structures and relationships that support Communist Party rule at home, and its policy that countries should not intervene in one anothers affairs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/11/opinion/sunday/getting-real-about-china.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1
cprise
(8,445 posts)Lost me there.
The US will only promote "democracy" in countries that do not allow its land and resources to be bought up at firesale prices by Wall St. banks. It is the type of "democracy" where "NGOs" are funded by a foreign power (the US government) and nearly all military capability is expected to be contracted to US corporations.
For everyone else, the US government will promote fascism, monarchy, ethnic division and religious extremism to further the interests of its corporate patrons when and where it suits those stakeholders. It will even do so from a platform literally festooned with the logos of its largest coporations without its corporate "free press" so much as raising an eyebrow.
Meanwhile, the US has a deep deficit in democracy at home. The government's job is to look after the interests of oligarchs, yet we're not supposed to recognize this arrangement as its own form of authoritarianism.
Clark is clearly another self-deluded establishment fool who feels compelled to demonize a "patient, nuanced and farsighted" country. And all for the cause of "democracy-no-wait-multinational-corporations" and a highly biased interpretation of international law that exempts NATO countries from war crimes prosecution.
rafeh1
(385 posts)to seek
"China will seek structures and relationships that support Communist Party rule at home, and its policy that countries should not intervene in one anothers affairs. "
If such a policy was adopted cousin clark and friends would be out of a job if they could'nt intervene or invade small countries at will.