Europeans see China as greatest global threat

[Skybird]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/89261466-0...nclick_check=1

China has overtaken the US as the biggest threat to global stability in the eyes of Europeans, according to a Harris opinion poll for the Financial Times.
The recent wave of protests and riots in Tibet and the ensuing Chinese crackdown, together with competition from cheap Chinese exports, appear to have dramatically hardened opinion, with the proportion of Europeans who saw China as the biggest threat almost doubling since last year.
(...)
Only inhabitants of Spain still considered the US to be a bigger threat than China, by 41 per cent to 28 per cent.
(...)
The story of the last five years has been about economic opportunities. The story of the last six months has been about China as a threat in Darfur and in Tibet.” The little that Europeans knew about China came from news coverage, recently unfavourable, whereas they were constantly consuming US popular culture, Mr Leonard explained.

[Tchocky]

Could be more to do with the current Olympic mess (which I can barely hear over the sound of creaking bandwagons) rather than a long-term trend.
The more we trade, the better an investment stability becomes.

[Skybird]

The more we traded, the more dominant their economy became, the less they showed a will to change their policestate-methods.

Maybe we shouldn't have delivered them the knowhow and machinery to build machinery on their own that produces and overroles our own production.

[joegrundman]

China's a flawed country, as are many others, and it's flaws are none too nice either - but in what way is it a threat to global security?

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by joegrundman

China's a flawed country, as are many others, and it's flaws are none too nice either - but in what way is it a threat to global security?

THey are on a one track course to build or buy equipment that competes directly with US military hardware, and it is all capable. Couple that to the fact that they are probably willing to use it over Taiwan, and it gets worse. Their published military expenditures is about 1/4 that of the US, and that is only what they are allowing you to know. They could be spending equal money to the US on their military right now, and no one would ever know.

Basically, if you spend that kind of money, even 1/4 of it at a specific adversary in mind, you will have no problem accomplishing your goals if that adversary is spending their money on a more rounded approach.

They defintiely have the capability to stall the US Navy at this point, long enough to over0run Taiwan. They may even have enough power to take them on directly for a given time. THeir sub fleet outnumbers The US now even.

So you tell me? They sound willing to use that power for conquest at any time as well.

I think one day, China will give up on the world market and start taking over territories that it thinks is theirs. It will be pure conquest.

-S

[CaptHawkeye]

I'm so damn tired of the China sensationalism the warmongers love to spam down everyone's throats. They were saying all of the same stupid ass stuff back in the 80s when Japan's economy was out of control too. Now look, as with ALL countries, Japan's economy grew at such a rate it's bubble has EXPLODED and it's economy is stagnant and utterly impotent. At least they didn't have billions of people reliant upon the continuous growth of their sustainable infrastructure. China can barely feed its billions of inhabitants TODAY. That's why I get a kick out of all the "lawl China's economy is powa!" nonsense that I hear. Oh sure they manage to kick up a few extra hospitals and schools in the cities every now and then, but here's a hint, urban enviornments always benefit from even minimal growth. Their are plenty of rural regions in China that aren't even aware of this stuff. It's so exagerated it's hilarious.

[CaptHawkeye]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

Basically, if you spend that kind of money, even 1/4 of it at a specific adversary in mind, you will have no problem accomplishing your goals if that adversary is spending their money on a more rounded approach.

Tell that to Hitler.

They defintiely have the capability to stall the US Navy at this point, long enough to over0run Taiwan. They may even have enough power to take them on directly for a given time. THeir sub fleet outnumbers The US now even.

Oh noez, Submarines. Yeah, I mean, the entire Navy doctrine of carrier escort has only been built around the concept of an enemy who will rely upon strategic submarine attacks to neutralize US carriers. Which was the whole plan against the Soviet Union. They knew this because even in their prime the Soviets could never operate as many aircraft carriers as the US could even during its prime. For christ sake, the US operates no less than 16 nuclear aircraft carriers during peace time.

So you tell me? They sound willing to use that power for conquest at any time as well.

You tell me why China would even bother. What's a war going to get them? This is just sensationalist dishonesty. No one in the Chinese government wants war with anyone. Since their is too much to lose economically. What people keep hearing are the insane rantings of a couple of over nationalist Chinese generals.

I think one day, China will give up on the world market and start taking over territories that it thinks is theirs. It will be pure conquest.

-S

What do you think this is. Ace Combat?

[SUBMAN1]

Well, you are entitled to your wrong opinion. I guess China has no need of all that military hardware then now does it? They better pull the cork. Actions speak louder than words my friend, and their actions are extremely hostile. How about the missiles built and aimed at Taiwan? How about the shots across taiwan airspace with them? These Generals seem to have a lot of freedom to cause tension and use hardware. But it must be a figment of my imagination. You told me it is, so it must be true.

-S

[CaptHawkeye]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

Well, you are entitled to your wrong opinion. I guess China has no need of all that military hardware then now does it? They better pull the cork. Actions speak louder than words my friend, and their actions are extremely hostile. How about the missiles built and aimed at Taiwan? How about the shots across taiwan airspace with them? These Generals seem to have a lot of freedom to cause tension and use hardware. But it must be a figment of my imagination. You told me it is, so it must be true.

-S

Yeah, I hear random skirmishes = complete war. Fear monger more plz.

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by CaptHawkeye

Yeah, I hear random skirmishes = complete war. Fear monger more plz.

Its not me - look at China! Open your eyes.

-S

[CaptHawkeye]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

Its not me - look at China! Open your eyes.

-S

Open your supporting evidence that China's invasion of Taiwan is imminent! Wait where is it?

[SUBMAN1]

You tell me? They passed this law by the way.

-S

January 10, 2005, 7:15 a.m.
The Invasion of Taiwan
A Chinese law would make it legal.

By John J. Tkacik
News that China's National People's Congress Standing Committee has placed an "anti-secession law" on the agenda for next March's NPC session raises the question, "Don't China's lawmakers have anything better to do?" Indeed they do, but as the Argentine colonels reasoned in 1982, it's clearly easier to whip up national opinion over small islands like the Falklands — or Taiwan, in China's case — than to solve the country's problems. Beijing's top Taiwan-affairs director, Chen Yunlin, was in Washington, D.C., last week to lobby the Bush administration and Congress on the absolute necessity of such a law, and the fact that Taiwanese independence is an existential threat to China's "core national security interests." (This, despite the fact that Taiwan has been de facto independent since 1949, so whatever China's "core" interests are, they have successfully kept for the past half century.)




Although the actual text of the draft "law" has yet to be published, it appears to be a watered-down version of a truly fanatical "Unification Law" advocated by at least one Chinese professor, Yu Yuanzhou of Wuhan University, whose proposed legislation requires the Chinese People's Liberation Army to attack Taiwan as soon as it is able. Yu's legislation, which has been circulating on the Internet for over two years, calls for the PLA to immediately start bombarding Quemoy and Matsu — and it "would not be limited to conventional weapons."


Sadly, the kind of nonsense that Prof. Yu touts via the Internet passes for rational legislative discourse in China, and last May, during a tea party for visiting Premier Wen Jiabao with Chinese expatriates in London, an elderly Chinese demanded the premier pass such a law soon. The flustered premier humored the old man, "Your view on unification of the motherland is very important, very important. We will seriously consider it." But before the thoughtful premier had finished his session, his traveling propaganda entourage had it on all the Chinese newswires, and "unification law" became official policy.


Since then, Chinese propaganda departments have changed the name from "unification law" to "anti-secession law" — not (as some in the Western press have speculated) as a gesture of moderation, but to avoid any misunderstanding that China might not already be "unified." Perish the thought! No, Taiwan is an integral part of China illegally struggling to be "independent." Therefore, Taiwan is already unified with China, so "anti-secession" it is.


One need not wait until March 5 to see the first draft (which, under the leadership of the Chinese Communist party, will also be the final draft) of the law to know that its goal is not "anti-secession" and that it is not even a "law." It is clear from the official Chinese media that the "law" is supposed to authorize China's military to invade Taiwan immediately upon some future Taiwanese "declaration of independence." But both China's existing National Defense Law and its legislation governing national territory already require that the military defend China's homeland. This new legislation, as with most exercises in Chinese foreign-policy legislation, is a propaganda tool designed for two audiences.


First, it readies the Chinese people for war with Taiwan, and second, it will be trotted out and exhibited as a diplomatic lever whenever Americans point to the U.S. obligation — under Section 2(b)(6) of our own domestic legislation, the Taiwan Relations Act — to "maintain the capacity to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan."


As such, this proposed Chinese legislation is highly destabilizing. Beijing's leaders believe their bellicosity has already prepared Washington for a Chinese military attack against Taiwan. In December 2003, according to CNN's respected China analyst, Willy Lam, a senior politburo member declared that President George W. Bush's "unambiguous opposition to attempts by Taipei to change the status quo" was such that if "we were to respond militarily, the U.S. can't raise objections let alone interfere." In May, another noted China scholar, Bonnie Glaser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, warned that the U.S. was sending a dangerous message to Beijing. "Some Chinese even believe," she reported, "that the U.S. may acquiesce in a limited use of force by the PLA — for example, to seize an offshore island, temporarily impose a limited blockade, or fire a lone missile at a military target on Taiwan." Yet Chinese leaders still think they need a "law" to legitimize their threats.


On the other hand, American leaders get very defensive in the face of China's increasingly strident threats to launch a military attack against Taiwan. Rather than articulate U.S. interests, they lamely point to the Taiwan Relations Act as somehow tying their unwilling hands. As recently as October 25, Secretary of State Colin Powell stammered that "the Chinese leaders who I spoke to today said that [Taiwan] is an internal matter for [China] to determine . . . and I appreciate their position, but nevertheless, that build-up creates a degree of tension and instability across the Straits and puts pressure on the Taiwanese side to seek additional weaponry. And under our law, we have an obligation to see to their self-defense needs." In essence, the State Department's response to China's demands to halt our defense relationship with Taiwan is to claim that U.S. law requires it.


The Chinese, unfamiliar with a true "rule of law," are now prepared to respond with their own "law," one that probably will say, "China shall wage war against an independent Taiwan." This, notwithstanding that Taiwan is already independent in every way — including by its own insistence — and that Taiwanese have been carrying on their own existence separate from China's for over a century (if one doesn't count the three postwar years of what was legally a Chinese "military occupation" of a former Japanese colonial territory). If the U.S. administration is ruled by principle instead of craven expedience, it will respond to this Chinese ploy with the kind of forceful declaration usually reserved for Taiwan's leaders. So, President Bush should declare explicitly, in terms identical to his jibe at Taiwan's democratically elected president last December, that China's proposed anti-secession legislation "indicates that China may be willing to make decisions unilaterally to change the status quo, which we oppose." This would be a nice bookend to President Bush's overreaction to Taiwan President Chen's rather benign effort last December to legislate a "referendum" of protest against China's undeniable missile threat to the island.


But above all, the United States must be candid with the American people, with our democratic allies and friends in Asia, and above all with the Chinese dictatorship, about the American commitment to help Taiwan defend itself. Although the State Department seems abashed that the U.S. helps defend democratic Taiwan, it could find an eloquent statement of U.S. policy over at the Defense Department. Last April 21, Assistant Secretary of Defense Peter Rodman explained to the House International Relations Committee that "the President's National Security Strategy, published in September 2002, calls for 'building a balance of power that favors freedom.' Taiwan's evolution into a true multi-party democracy over the past decade is proof of the importance of America's commitment to Taiwan's defense. It strengthens American resolve to see Taiwan's democracy grow and prosper." That sums it up nicely.


If Chen Yun Lin can take a healthy dose of reality back to Beijing from his Washington visits, perhaps China's National People's Congress can begin to focus on China's real problems — ones like the vast official corruption at all levels of government and party, rural poverty, the collapse of public healthcare, the financial crisis, unsafe mines, AIDS, and the wholesale pollution of its waters and earth.

— John J. Tkacik Jr. is a research fellow in the Asian Studies Center of the Heritage Foundation.

http://www.nationalreview.com/commen...0501100715.asp

[CaptHawkeye]

Oh, they made a policy of beligerent military stance against Taiwan! This is different form the past 50 years of their relationship how? So far this is just more smoke and mirrors on China's part, nothing new. Where's the invasion anyway? Where is the mass force build up and pre-emptive bombardments? All of this is still just slippery slope fallacy nonsense.

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by CaptHawkeye

Oh, they made a policy of beligerent military stance against Taiwan! This is different form the past 50 years of their relationship how? So far this is just more smoke and mirrors on China's part, nothing new. Where's the invasion anyway? Where is the mass force build up and pre-emptive bombardments? All of this is still just slippery slope fallacy nonsense.

Uhh, where have you been? Hiding out in your basement? Do you know how many missiles are pointed at Taiwan now? Look it up.

And your opinions mean nothing. Actions are being taken against Taiwan and they are not friendly. China means to destroy Taiwan if they can't have it back. That is where we are now. Welcome back to the world - you seem to need some catching up.

-S

[CaptHawkeye]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

Uhh, where have you been? Hiding out in your basement? Do you know how many missiles are pointed at Taiwan now? Look it up.

Just like how many missiles were pointed at the Soviet Union during the 60s. That was one hell of a war right? Whoops.

And your opinions mean nothing. Actions are being taken against Taiwan and they are not friendly. China means to destroy Taiwan if they can't have it back. That is where we are now. Welcome back to the world - you seem to need some catching up.

-S

You're still relying upon your slippery slope nonsense to just conclude that an invasion of Taiwan is imminent in the near future. You have no direct evidence of this other than China's usual beligerant posturing against Taiwan. You believe that since Event X has occured event Y must therefore follow. War doesn't just START. Their is a series of steps that must occur for a war as serious as this to occur and plenty of the puzzle pieces are still missing. Like it or not, it takes more than a simple policy shift to start a war.