Polarized Confrontation No Blueprint for Peace
"Western countries led by the United States have implemented all-around containment, encirclement and suppression of China, which has brought unprecedented grave challenges to our nation's development.""[In the face of this situation, China must] remain calm, maintain concentration, strive for progress while maintaining stability, take active actions, unite as one, and dare to fight."Chinese President Xi Jinping"[Washington's China policy has] entirely deviated from the rational and sound track.""If the United States does not hit the brake, but continues to speed down the wrong path, no amount of guardrails can prevent derailing and there surely will be conflict and confrontation.""Such competition is a reckless gamble, with the stakes being the fundamental interests of the two peoples and even the future of humanity."Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang
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| Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping during the Eastern Economic Forum in Russia in September 2018. (Sergei Chirikov/AFP via Getty Images |
Verbal histrionics are a Chinese specialty. Aggravating vocabulary to stress Beijing's displeasure with the actions and attitudes that clearly poke fingers where they don't belong, irritating the Politboro members of the Chinese Communist Party. Indignities to Chinese self-regard are not to be taken lightly. Western governments are forever 'following the wrong path', and are in dire need of recognizing the 'errors of their ways'.
Predicting a world war to arise out of conflicting ideals and public confrontations over ideology and interference in one another's stratagems and actions clearly send Beijing into convulsions of rage. That the championing of south-east Asian nations, geographic neighbours of China by the world's sole superpower acts like a door-stopper in Beijing's hasty plans to consolidate its air, sea and land grabs sends it into an apoplexy of transparent threats.
But Beijing is not alone in this situation. While the U.S. steadfastly cautions Beijing on its plans for 'reunification' to absorb a sovereign Taiwan, a similar situation plays out with Russia in Ukraine. Moscow too claims that the West, NATO and the United States in particular have grimly and with malign intention 'implemented all-around containment, encirclement and suppression' to bring Russia to its knees and destroy it. When all it is doing is exercising its regional rights as a hegemonic nation.
While Moscow and Beijing accuse NATO, the United States, The European Union et al of colluding against them, they in turn collude to challenge the territorial, sovereign and human rights entitlements in a free world of countries with no wish to be forcibly placed under the rule of totalitarian states for whom territorial expansion is an imperative they cannot resist at any cost. It is also conceivable that the enmities expressed are diversionary tactics in part, aimed at their homegrown audiences.
In China, on the sidelines of the annual legislature meeting when the country's leaders set out their economic and political priorities for the year to come, China's foreign minister warned that Beijing and Washington, polarized beyond tolerable limits, are on the verge of a violent confrontation. And this impending danger is none of China's fault, but rather that of an aggressive, imperialist, racist United States of America.
The United States is interfering in China's internal affairs, a situation that is beyond intolerable. Which is how countries like Australia, Canada, and others feel about Beijing's interference in their internal affairs. In, for example, a Chinese law that compels all Chinese companies and individuals whether they are located in China or are expatriates living elsewhere with citizenship in other countries, to cooperate with Beijing's intelligence services. Chinese living abroad are under threat when they demur and declare their allegiance to their new countries.
And nor are other countries left to their own lawful internal rule without China sending out its probing listening and cyber0intelligence projects to pry open the secrets of foreign governments, corporations, universities, research institutes to avail itself of data and intelligence to enhance its edge in surveillance, technology, scientific studies. Beijing has opened what passes for unauthorized police stations in other countries. Its manufacture of popularly-sold communication devices hold software responsive to China's search for intelligence.
Above all, what has the West and China's neighbours on tenterhooks of anticipation and concern is its expansive political and economic goals, including the potential for a breakout of war over Taiwan. Beijing's influence campaign under its Belt and Road initiative, installing its new Silk Road in places as diverse as Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East, is a covert model for influence, trade, surveillance and power. Along with the economic impetus of Chinese investment.
"Despite China’s opposition, the US passed and signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, which contains negative content concerning China. China deplores and firmly opposes this US move, and has made serious démarches to the US"."This Act, in total disregard of facts, hypes up the “China threat” narrative, blatantly interferes in China’s internal affairs, and attacks and discredits the Communist Party of China (CPC). This is a serious political provocation against China. The leadership of the CPC is the choice of history and the people. The Chinese people are clear-eyed about the US’s ill intention of suppressing and containing China’s development and thwarting the Chinese nation’s rejuvenation. Attempts to drive a wedge between the Chinese people and the CPC will not succeed.""This Act also contains a large number of negative provisions on Taiwan which seriously violate the one-China principle and the stipulations in the three China-US Joint Communiqués. This sends a gravely wrong signal to “Taiwan independence” separatist forces and severely affects peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. Taiwan is China’s Taiwan. No external interference in China’s internal affairs will be tolerated. The US needs to stop seeking to use Taiwan to contain China, stop fudging, distorting and hollowing out the one-China principle, and stop moving even further down the wrong and dangerous path.""We urge the US to earnestly follow through on the important common understandings reached between the two presidents in Bali, abandon the Cold-War and zero-sum mentality and ideological bias, adopt an objective and rational view of China’s development and China-US relations, and not to implement the negative China-related sections in the Act. China will take strong and resolute measures to firmly safeguard its sovereignty, security and development interests."Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China
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| Three months after the Biden-Xi summit, the two sides’ divergent framings of the bilateral relationship are hindering progress. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace |
Labels: China, Confrontation, Ideologies, Interference, Russia, Threats, United States
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, March 09, 2023
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