Welcome to the Antipodean Morass of a world ruled by China.
In this world, "good" things like the inherent goodness of minorities, the individual's inherent right to freedoms and liberties, and the harmony associated with everyone working to better the social good do not exist. They are projections of a Western mentality that no longer has the wherewithal to enforce those views.
The world is already acting this way. It's a scary vision to humanitarians like me, who grew up thinking that we must really be nice to one another and that everyone is valuable, each in his own way.
Why do I believe that such a world exists around the corner? Because I lived in China for nearly six years, and I have begun to believe that one must look at the world with ultimate pragmatism. It's a fascist world.
The New York Times starts us off on a journey to this territory with an op-ed article today offering scintillating suggestions that Great Britain's request that China donate more economy-rescuing monies to the IMF included a revision of Great Britain's stance on Tibet.
Maybe, maybe not. But is it really about the economy?
I don't doubt that "first world" countries are changing their positions on China, but I don' think that we can find the source for these changes in the recent bursting of the credit super-bubble and a desperate scramble for cash by what some are calling a
Deterioration in strong positions began long before, and the first shift in positioning that comes to mind is the melting of the hard-iron position held by George W. Bush that he would not attend the opening of the Beijing Olympics.
The reason for that, I suggest, had more to do with gaining strategic ground with China to influence a better outcome from the now almost defunct six party talks with North Korea.
But back to the Great Britain shift and its historical context:
After the People’s Republic of China joined the United Nations in 1971, British politicians refrained from referring to their country’s recognition of Tibet’s autonomy to avoid embarrassing Beijing. But that didn’t make it less significant. It remained the silent but enduring legal basis for 30 years of talks between the Dalai Lama and Beijing, in which the Tibetans have called only for autonomy and not independence — a position that a conference of Tibetan exiles in India reaffirmed on Saturday.
Mr. Miliband described the British position as an anachronism and a colonial legacy. It certainly emerged out of a shabby episode in colonial history, Francis Younghusband’s cavalier invasion of Tibet in 1903. But the British description of Tibet’s status in the era before the modern nation-state was more finely tuned than the versions claimed by Beijing or many exiles, and it was close to the findings of most historians.
Britain’s change of heart risks tearing up a historical record that frames the international order and could provide the basis for resolving China’s dispute with Tibet. The British government may have thought the issue of no significance to Britain’s current national interests and so did not submit it to public debate. But the decision has wider implications. India’s claim to a part of its northeast territories, for example, is largely based on the same agreements — notes exchanged during the Simla convention of 1914, which set the boundary between India and Tibet — that the British appear to have just discarded. That may seem minor to London, but it was over those same documents that a major war between India and China was fought in 1962, as well as a smaller conflict in 1987.
To say that the world outside of China usually treats China's relationships with kid gloves is an understatement. Look at China's relationships with Sudan. But the same can be said about the efforts put to bear on America, regardless of the intention behind them that some of the world would like to see America act less aggressively as a military power.
The paradox for me is that America has the might to be an effective and antagonistic world military power. China is not quite there yet. So, why do people seem to worry about China's influence, but always try to "save face" with China by not pushing them to do anything about it?
Could it be that everyone benefits from inconvenient relationships?
Posts
