How much of a 'threat' are China to the West?

Great Debates
21

China is only looked at as successful because it’s huge. About 300 million people live in middle class or better. Now one looks at that and thinks WOW, that’s the same size as the United States. But about another BILLION people live in poverty, most in absolute poverty. They have no access to the basics. WHO estimates about 75% of China (as well as India) have latent TB. Diseases like cholera and diptheria which are well controlled in the west still break out routinely in China.

This doesn’t mean China will implode, all it means is that China despite it’s successes has a LONG way to go. You have an enourmous number of people, remember A BILLION who do not share in any sort of middle class priviledges.

How these people fair for better or worse is going to decide the fate of China, and the same roughly applies to India too.

22

Regarding Taiwan: Taiwan is one of the biggest foreign investors in China. Why would the Chinese be so foolish as to jeopardize that? I am quite sure that China has told Taiwan to just “quiet down”-meaning: don’t criticize us, and we will leave you alone. The Chinese value subtlety-and we don’t seem to realize that.
Why we persist in publicly criticizing China is beyond me-it only humiliates them and accomplishes nothing.

23

China has a long-standing desire to rule Taiwan that goes beyond reason or it’s own interests. Perhaps the one thing I learned in China was how very real the concept of “face” is, and how that affects China’s foreign policy decisions in ways that make it seem irrational to us. China’s national mythology, in my experience, is something like this:

“At one time, China was the greatest and most refined civilization on Earth. Then some foreigners came and used brute force to humiliate China, causing the once-great nation to fall apart. The Communist party, in the tradition of China’s great emperors, re-united China and are restoring it to it’s former glory. Once Taiwan returns to the motherland, China will have regained it’s former territory, reversed the “century of humiliation” and can hold it’s head up high as it takes it’s rightful place in the world.”

Unfortunately, Taiwan become such an important symbol in this mythology that the very legitimacy of the current regime relies on their ability to make people think Taiwan is coming back. It’s the keystone, the final challenge, the symbol of victory. To give up on it would call into question everything about the party’s strength and purpose, and they do not feel like they are strong enough at this point to stand up to that.

Taiwan is also a useful rallying point. Whenever people start asking too many questions or getting too critical, it’s always easy to bring up Taiwan, whip up a bit of fervor, and get people excited again about the Communist party. They’ve done this enough that it’s become very real to the people. My students would get starry-eyed and tearful when they’d talk about Taiwan. Even if the party wanted to make Taiwan less important they couldn’t. It’s got a life of it’s own now.

Of course it’d be insane for China to make a move now. Things are going to good. The real question is what will they do if things go bad? If the Communist party feels like their rule is seriously threatened (say, by an economic downturn) they be scrambling for legitimacy and Taiwan might be the way to do it. In any case, if things were that bad they might think they have nothing left to lose and might as well try it.

Meanwhile, Taiwan could probably cool things down a bit by saying the right words and giving what China views as proper deference and respect. But the big question is, why should they? Why should they have to play nice-nice with China’s ego? Meanwhile, America’s ambiguous position doesn’t help much, since it makes Taiwan feel protected enough to make provocative moves.

24

In some way the Taiwanese economy is becoming so intertwined with the Chinese one that there is something like a RMB take-over of Taiwan already in progress. Business interests in Taiwan are desperate not to rock the boat WRT cross-strait relations. Some Taiwanese are very enamored of their relatively new found political freedoms, but even more are enamored of their standard of living. China has been in control of Hong Kong for more than ten years now, and except for a few “malcontents” everything seems to be going swimmingly. Macau is another data point. At some point to most people in Taiwan, one country, three systems is not going to seem totally unacceptable. The frog will be slowly boiled, so to speak.

25

Most of the billion poor in China are relatively well off by third world standards. Most of them have basic housing, electricity, running water (not drinkable), some very basic health care, education up to 10th grade. The number of people in “absolute poverty” as you put is is not nearly one billion.

I know this from first hand experience. I grew up in Pakistan and have visted poor areas in China. Our adopted daughter comes from one of the poorest parts of China. There is no comparison between the level of misery. In China, you do not have children and mothers dying in childbirth on a routine basis, you do not have excrement lining the streets, you do not have ten people living in a 10x10 mud hut, with no electricity, no toilets, no water, not even a communal well.

Heck, I have seen places in Karachi that are much worse off than the poor in China.

I think the truly miserably poor in China are in Inner Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang. But they don’t amount to anything like one billion people. We don’t get to visit them. But just look at the life expectancies between China and India/Pakistan. China is closer to Japan than India.

Though I will concede that in China poverty is less visible than in India and Pakistan, because in the large cities in China there is less poverty, while in India and Pakistan the poor are living cheek-to-jowl with the middle and upper classes to some extent. Though the rural areas in India and Pakistan are even worse. Actually after working in the slums of Karachi, I didn’t think it could get much worse. Then our University sent us to a fishing village about 150 km outside Karachi. It WAS worse. I have nightmares about that twenty two years later. Literally children being eaten alive by maggots.

I never thought I would ever be in the position of talking up China, but some of you are taking things too far.

26

What is “RMB”? Please don’t use acronyms without explanation.

27

The Renminbi (人民币), “the people’s currency”, is the currency of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

28

But it did have economic growth, just not spectacular ones. I’m not talking economics, but more political governance than anything else. The Raj was built upon an authoritarian government, which like the current Chinese government, rests upon force of arms and popular support, they are supposed to be envisioned as an uncorruptable force, working on behalf of the common peasant, because they don’t know any better.

Sorry I wasn’t clearer, but I’m disagreeing with you.

Economic growth distracts the population, the distraction of Taiwan, rural development all shut the population up to some extent. I’m not talking solely ‘lockin’ em up in prison’ but more softer methods. I’m not read up on the Chinese navy so I don’t know, but three out of four which you described are methods of helping the current Chinese government maintain its grip in power, and where it derives its legitimacy.

Ever since Tiananmen when the Chinese economy was bad, and where coincidentally anti government protests happened, they’ve been struggling in maintaining the status quo as much as possible.

29

Never mind.

30

Historically, they are.

31

Maybe I shouldn’t have used ‘mathematically’, as it makes it sound like an unassailable, fait accompli fact. ‘Realistically’ may have been a better adjective here.

However, to factor foreign mail-order brides for Chinese men as anything but a infinitesimal consideration is being pretty naive. Chinese women as foreign brides - okay… especially given their likely new-found independence through China’s Capitalistic growth. But with all due respect to the male members of our future overlords (:p), I just don’t see too many foreign females rushing over to mainland China to find their prince charming! : /

What this translates to, of course, is a heck of a lot of hormone-fueled, discontented, directionless Chinese males in all strata of Sino society. Men who have a lot of potential bellicose energy that naturally requires venting… venting that could possibly be directed at those they have historical/political grudges against.
Tibet looks the first port of call. Then Taiwan, Korea, Japan… the West!?

Didn’t that book of fictitious fun know as The Bible prophesize something about a “200-million man army”? :eek:

32

The word of choice for things past is ‘were’.

33

There is a law in China that it is illegal to tell a pregnant woman the sex of her fetus. This prevents the parents to abort their female babies. I think it is an excellent law and will stablize the male/female ratio in one to two generations. Probably a lot of older men with money will take wives in the countryside.

China has a problem with prostitution. Prostitution is rife in China. They do not stand outside and solicit (talking Mainland, not HK or Taiwan.), but have “barber shops” with pink windows. This is done because of economic necessity. Because China is an “authoritarian” type of place, it doesn’t get the sex trade like other countries do.

There are not enough Turkic Uighyers (Xinjiang folk) or Tibetans to fight for independence. They get pissed off about something, the Chinese come in and kick their asses. The last time was last year which prompted the government to completely unplug the internet for 6 months.

What’s funny about Xinjiang is that most Han Chinese don’t want to live there. It is too far away. It’s barren. It’s dangerous, the locals will hurt us. The food is bad. I have been to Xinjiang and thought it was a nice area of the country, with open spaces versus the way overcrowded eastern coast. I went to the city of Kashgar which felt more like Uzbekistan than China. The Chinese govt. is in the process of tearing down the old city of Kashgar which is really sad to me.

China needs an authoritarian government. They need to have competant leaders on the top telling everyone else what to do. It has been that way for thousands of years. There are few Asian democracies, and the ones that are not that strong politically. Many of the nations that are democracies are really one-party states. It is rule by monarch, or by Chairman, or President, etc.

I think President Hu’s administration has done an excellent job under the circumstances. Running a country of 1.4 billion people would be very tasking, even for someone with direct powers. China is not fighting wars with any country, and hasn’t been in a conflict since 1979.

34

Two words: Thai Land!

35

:confused: You seem to be saying that China needs an authoritarian government because . . . because that is all it has ever had. How does that follow?!

36

That law- like many Chinese laws involving social justice or environmental issues- isn’t worth the paper it is written on. China is famous for writing great pro-active laws about all kinds of big issues that they have no intention (or even the means to) actually enforce.

Anyone can a slip ten buck “show of appreciation” to their doctor and get a nice wink-wink-nudge-nudge hint about the sex. Hospitals do booming business on the side giving secret ultrasounds and there are all kinds of back-street ultrasound clinics using cheap portable ultrasound machines. Short of that, I’ve heard firsthand accounts of family members “getting an abortion after baby is born.” Less direct families leave their females in poorly equipped orphanages or just fail to get them adequate medical care when they fall sick as infants, citing 'economic difficulty" for their decision to “leave it up to god” if the kid lives.

37

External threats are a boon to weapons manufacturers. We must always bear this in mind when assessing whether a threat is real or exaggerated. Weapons manufacturers have a vested interest in keeping us scared, and they have the means to make their voices heard (loudly) in Washington.

38

More accurately, returned India to the Middle Ages. India was richer and more advanced than Europe in the 18th century. The main goal of British Imperialism was to destroy India’s domestic industry and turn India into a producer of raw materials for British industry. Then the Indians would be forced to purchase British finished goods. It’s a circle of life thing.

39

I won’t advocate that an authoritarian government is best for China, but some observers have noted that if elections were to be held in China today or the near future, it is quite probable that an uber-nationalist party would obtain power on a platform of pursuing China’s traditional grievances far more aggressively and with a short-term perspective than the CCP. Issues such as Japan, territorial claims etc. The CCP is often viewed by middle-class Chinese as delievering somewhat weak responses to recent slights by the West and Japan (Belgrade embassy in 1999, the Hainan Spy Plane in 2001, the USS Impeccable in 2009 to name a few).

In many ways the CCP plays their nationalism card quite well and recognize the double-edged sword they created following Tiananmen Square (fanning and dousing when they see fit) and while they are still green on the international scene, they remain rather level-headed. Sort of the Devil you kind of know vs. the crazy one you don’t.

40

People used to say the same thing about Russia. There are viable democracies in the far east. Korea, Taiwan, and Japan come to mind