I must apologise for making a more prompt response. I had put in the last remark about a nuke war as an aside that we should not go there, that being a pointless argument. However, I also found out that this problem is not going to go away as any comments from US vis a vis China participants in any newsgroup discussion will inevitably come back to this scenario. This distraction had taken me into several directions that detract from what I am trying to say.
Elsewhere in SCS I had written
The US and China are indeed not natural enemies.
One of my general buttumptions is that China is essentially inward looking as it had been throughout its entire history. Court officials who had lost favor were exiled to the frontier as punishment, not as an opportunity for military glory. Historical expansion of territory had been in response to incursions by nomadic tribes. To this day you woun't find any Chinese leadership or the comman man having a thought on territorial expansion. Taiwan is an unfinished civil war. It is a serious misreading of Chinese intentions to attribute very move to modernize her military or economic power as moves to conquer territory.
The other general buttumption is that there can only be one central authority in China. My other post elsewhere:
This is what I see is happening in China.
Unlike western and Japanese imperialism that saw the solution to their problems in the conquest of other lands up to WWII modern day China does not have this option. All of China's neighboring countries are densely populated. There is no possibility of her neighbors or anywhere else in the world that can provide new living space for China's mulbreastudes. The founding leaders of the Long March realised this and the anchor of their foreign policy is that China live with the borders that the events of WWII left China with. China has maintained this policy with remarkable consistency since the CCP came into power. To those who disagree please read up the history books.
Four thousand years of the dynastic model is enough. The recurring cycle of initial vitality, middle age, then the century or two of chaos that comes with the decay of a dynasty before the establishment of a single successor. For this reason the CCP has established a collective leadership where no single man can ever dominate the whole government again. The fate of China must not depend on the whims and abilities of a single man. For this we have to thank DXP, who had personally suffered under Mao, who used his prestige and had the wisdom to establish the insbreastution of the current collective leadership.
The men and women who are at the highest level of China's leadership didn't get there because they were there to build personal empires. They also didn't get there by bumbling through. There will be no short cuts. They are highly intelligent people of the highest integrity. China has a long history of scholars and gentlemen who were not afraid of end to right a wrong by their emperor. I do genuinely believe that they hold China's future well above their own fates. I do believe that they must have thought deeply on how to govern China and how to restore China's historical pre-eminence in the world. I do believe that they all know they can never step into the shoes of a Mao or a DXP for none of them has the prestige or power to govern China all by himself. Thus the non-hereditary collective leadership gained though a long and arduous process. To achieve this there must be internal peace in China.
This brings us to the curious fuss over the recent ceremony of Zhou ziyang. My interpretation of the event is not about the leadership's fear of Zhou's ideas about democracy. My reading of the reason why Zhou was demoted by DXP was that Zhou went direct to the student to curry their support and bypbutt the carefully crafted party mechanism to banish chaos in matters of national importance. In other words Zhou made an attempt to gain popular and personal power a la presidential style.
A long time ago I came across that Mao curiosity called "internal struggle." What this means is that within the inner confines of the party one can argue about anything and everything. After considering all the arguments the Party makes a decision and everyone must stick to that line. There must be no public dissent by party members. We have seen the results. The Chinese leadership may seem slow in arriving at a decision. But once made it is rarely if ever changed although it can be modified in response to circumstances. Thus we see ultra long range strategic programs that have a timeline of decades. This is in contrast to the western presidential or parlimentary systems of destructive domestic strife every three and a half years or so as an opposition party tries to smear the incumbent to gain power for itself.
Apply that western model to China. Zhou's actions was a pesonal appeal to a very tiny section to pressure for change, a move that will certainly arouse horrors to any responsible leader in China that had seen what such events can ensue. Worse this tiny section was used by foreign interests under "the push for democracy in China" to interefere in China's domestic politics. There will be no more Zhous and he was fortunate to suffer only house arrest. At any other time in Chinese history he would have been dead and utterly disgraced.
TAM is indeed a watershed in Chinese history. I'll just stick to the results. First there was never another movement to repeat the events that led up to TAM because the general consensus is that TAM was not the way to approach political issues. Next: The PLA came up smelling of roses. There were casualties on both sides but no mbuttacre. The army did its job and left. There were no retributions. The army did not make a bid for political power. Third: The issues at TAM have been totally refuted. Not one of the so-called student leaders at TAM has any credibility or legacy in spite of all the buttistance given them by western insbreastutions. and special interest groups.
As a footnote the US planting of the Chinese embbutty in Belgrade in which the US refused to admit was a mistake and apologise finally convinced the commonman Chinese that all western pronouncements of democracy for the good of China are shams. You will not find one man or woman in China that will believe in anything the US says when it comes to political ideologies for China.
We return to my statement that China is forced to seek solutions to its problems within its own borders. The events that will ensue are:
The pace of China's development will be driven entirely by internal factors. It is a mistake for the US and other nations, particularly India, that what China does has them in mind and is anaginst them.
While the opportunities exist China will export all she can. Should there be a trade war China's internal market can sustain that growth. I had come across somewhere that China's exports consbreastute under 20 per cent of her production.
During the first fourty years of the CCP when China was shut off from the world she managed to subsist and even make progress. China is practically self sucfficient in most raw materials and in food. She cannot be strangled by an embargo.
China has an aggressive policy to cultivate alliances with countries thus far neglected by the developed countries. These countries form a natural market for China's consumer goods and light industries. They form an untapped source for raw materials.
(more some other time)
I have barely mentioned the US so far. My arguments above are that China has her own development agenda will keep her present course regardless of what the US does. Conflict will ensue as both giant countries vie for the same diminishing resources. The difference from past conflicts that led to shooting wars is that China's compebreastion is in the small stuff that you get to use everyday. The compebreastion is for resources that make that stuff possible. I have argued that China has no territorial ambitions as per invading another country (Taiwan is not one) but has the strength to resist other superpowers imposing their miltary will on her. The US seems capable only of a military response which she can't use on China.
Schiavo: Overlooked in the ShadowsI don't think there is such a notion of betweenness in this case. The ``decisions between husband and wife'' was actually one "decision" --- a casual remark that Teresa (Terri) Schiavo allegedly made to...
Already China has shown what can be done and many developing and even developed countries are impressed by China's development model. They arte also impressed by China's political model, they includes Russia. Thus what may happen in this new millenia is an adoption by many second and third tier countries of the Chinese model. What that does to America's perception of her place in the world is the Trillion dollar question.
