China's nationalism mutating into aggression

[Creed of Heresy]

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3687/c...ationalism

The choice quotes for anyone wanting to just skim follow. Bolding is mine, to highlight the biggest points.

Last April, China's ships surrounded Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. By July, the Chinese had erected a barrier to the reef's entrance, denying access to all but their own vessels. The swift action was taken despite mutual promises by Beijing and Manila to leave the area, which up until then had been controlled by the Philippines. Chinese state media gloated over the deception.

After gobbling up Scarborough, Chinese vessels and aircraft stepped up their intrusion into Japanese territorial waters and airspace around the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, in an effort to wrest them from Tokyo. In a display of massive force, eight Chinese ships entered the waters around the uninhabited outcroppings on the 23rd of this month. On Friday, China's Foreign Ministry said the islands were a "core interest," meaning that Beijing will not stop until it has taken control of them. Some analysts think China will try to land forces on the Senkakus soon.

Beijing's aggression on the seas is being matched by its aggression on land. During the night of April 15, a Chinese platoon-strength force advanced 10 kilometers south of the Line of Actual Control, the de facto border between China and India in the Himalayas, and established a tented camp in the Daulat Beg Oldi sector of eastern Ladakh. In recent days, Chinese troops advanced another 10 kilometers into India, one more bold attempt to take ground from a neighboring country.

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The policy of engagement of China was enlightened, far-sighted, and generous.

It was also a mistake. ... Now, however, they believe they no longer need others and are therefore trying to change the world for the worse. China is not only claiming territories of others but also trying to close off international waters and airspace; proliferating nuclear weapons technology to Iran; supplying equipment to North Korea's ballistic missile program; supporting rogue elements around the globe; launching cyberattacks on free societies; undermining human rights norms, and engaging in predatory trade tactics that helped tip the global economy over the edge in 2008.

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In early 2010 China's flag officers and senior colonels made a point of publicly talking about fighting a war -- a "hand-to-hand fight with the U.S." as one put it -- in the near future. China, as Robert Sutter of George Washington University points out, is the only major power actively planning to kill Americans, and, judging from public comments, China's senior officers are relishing the prospect of doing so.

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The implications of these internal changes are, obviously, large: China's flag officers want to use their new-found power. "China's military spending is growing so fast that it has overtaken strategy," said Huang Jing of Singapore's Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy. "The young officers are taking control of strategy and it is like young officers in Japan in the 1930s. They are thinking what they can do, not what they should do."

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The risk of getting China wrong, as we are now doing, is that an aggressive regime can undermine the institutions of free societies and take down the multilateral framework built after the Second World War. The Chinese have learned all the wrong lessons in recent years, but we have yet to adjust our approach. We have, with the best of intentions, created the conditions for the rise of a militantly hostile state.

This is something that I've been paying attention to fairly closely for a while, ever since I was in high school, in fact, and one that spiked shortly before the Olympics [and become something I focused on even more during and after them].

I remember hearing people talk endlessly about China being the "next superpower." I dismissed these statements then as a teenager and I dismiss them now. China is not a superpower. It will not be a superpower. It lacks the strong foundations necessary to become one.

However, that is not going to stop them, of this I am very sure. They realize, as this article points out, that their economy has largely peaked. They're hitting a plateau of development, and there's nothing on the horizon for them to look forward to to give them that next boost. So, what happens when any swelling nation starts to realize its resources are going to soon become insufficient for its growth and prosperity?

Well, to quote Arthur Koestler...

The most persistent sound which reverberates through man's history is the beating of war drums.

Quite, Mr. Koestler...quite.

Well, the European Union wants to pretend nothing bad is happening with China. They want to sit on the sidelines and just pretend everything will be hunky-dory. So, they're useless in this regard, and probably will remain useless up until and maybe even past the point where China starts to directly encroach on more than just east Asia. So, we have an increasingly belligerent China, with a population numbering 1.5 billion...with nuclear weaponry, too. We have their ships encroaching on international waters, intruding upon sovereign territory openly and with every intention of outright claiming it as their own, to the point that even the Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Indians are petitioning the US to intervene. We also have the matter of North Korea.

A quick tangent on N. Korea. It's worth noting that Kim Jung Il died of a very sudden surprise heart attack, while on a train between cities, at the moment where he was furthest from any medical facility that he could possibly be. Il, for better or worse, had been RELATIVELY stable. He had been erratic in his actions but predictably so. His son, however, was strangely very pro-American there initially...only to suddenly switch mindsets and immediately become even more aggressive and overtly hostile than North Korea has been since the Korean War, to the point that the US actually had justification for sending more units of troops and more equipment to South Korea.

My suspicions, my hypotheses? Kim Jung Il was assassinated by the CIA and his son is a CIA puppet dictator who is acting so as to give the US an internationally valid reason for increasing its presence in east Asia without outright provoking the increasingly-belligerent nation of China. My suspicions deepen when I notice Chinese militant belligerence and Il's death are very close together chronologically-speaking. VERY close together. Now, this just a conspiracy theory, I might be wrong, but still, it's an uncomfortable suspicion that I can't very easily dismiss.

So we have North Korea rattling sabres. China is rattling sabres too, but it's not rattling them over North Korea. It's rattling them over zones of interest, zones where if they get a foothold, they will be able to project their largely land-based military [their navy is laughably small and under-equipped compared to the overall might of the US Navy and they know this] far more effectively. They are developing weapons that are meant to be cheap throw-away one-trick ponies that nevertheless are meant to be just good enough to kill what needs to be killed, such as their new "stealth" jet. Something that is just stealthy enough to get it in closer than non-stealth jets to, say, aircraft carriers, without costing so much that they can't build hundreds of them on the cheap, making them expendable...but capable.

So...once again, the drums of war are beating. Once again, optimistic naivete on our part has led to us creating a monster and once again we're gonna end up having to square off with the Chinese Dragon.

WWIII might be closer than you think. The question is...will THEY come into play as we all fear? And if you really don't know what I mean, well...

Yeah...just remember. China has 'em...and so does India. And the US. And Pakistan [who hates India and vice versa], who happens to be an ally of China, has them. And so does North Korea, who may or may not be our newest puppet.

Gotta admit. The ramifications of this are...unpleasant, to say the least.