He did say something like that. His entry in Wiki has a little on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Xiaobo If you can read Chinese, he talks about it here: http://www.open.com.hk/0701p26.html He never sponsored China be colonized by the West before that interview, and he never did after that interview. He was trying to make a point. He went way over board and used a horrible example to illustrate his point. The point he is trying to make the point that all the best things China had done in the last 30 years were taking the best part of western thought (such as economic theory, market economy, increasing personal freedom, etc.). He then go extreme on this and said something like "Hong Kong only had 100 years of colonization, China so big, she will need to have 300 years of colonization. Even 300 years might not be enough.."
Out of curiosity, I checked out just how censored Liu getting the prize was in China. Censored His English wikipedia page Trying to search his name in Chinese on google Prominent Chinese forums where people posted about him, but those posts were deleted All news related to the matter is a bit piece published by the Foreign Affairs office(first 20+ hits all link to the same article which admonishes the commitee). No opinion/news pieces written by anyone else. Note that the results are only found on yahoo and baidu search engines, which adhere to Chinese censorship policies. Whereas google, which doesn't, gets blocked totally. Not censored English hits on google and yahoo. Baidu english searches tend to be crap in general that it doesn't really matter. This includes both the nobel peace prize and name(liu xiaobo or liu xiao bo). All articles written in English on the matter. Rants on Clutchfans regarding the matter, or any other bashing of Chinese policies, despite being a Rockets site where millions of Chinese YOFs presumably wander and may come in. /random info.
Adding to the above not censored list. There are some lively discussions on various Chinese boards regarding the win. They are not prominent ones though.
It's funny. I think Western countries are entertaining that thought of control more and more. Europe with their public cameras and surveilence. US with the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretapping, and storage of all our electronic media. Maybe at some point in time, all governments will be on the level in terms of civil liberties. China because they have no choice. Western society because the public either don't care or are too afraid of their fellow citizens that might have "something to hide".
I don't see that happening anytime soon. Certainly not in my lifetime (and I hope never). Our personal freedoms are too dear to be thrown away because of paranoia.
I exaggerated a China-like situation for the US, but I definitely see a gradual erosion of privacy and civil liberties that makes it easier for the state to abuse those powers on citizens as time passes.
Oh, without question. Perhaps the worst thing the bastards did on 9/11 was the affect it had on our lives in the States. Sure, we still have far more freedom than most of the people in the world, but not nearly as much as we did before that happened, in my opinion.
People say the same about the US government And well, at least the Chinese economy is improving And the Chinese are slowly getting more freedom (as compared to 30 years ago)....
The fear does have substance to a certain extent. The west, especially the US, are quite notorious in Latin America and the Middle East for setting up, supporting and maintaining regimes friendly to them, even though such regimes are brutal, bloodthirsty dictators and tyrants. The most blatant examples are Saudi Arabia and Iran pre revolution - in return for supporting the Saudi Arabian ruling family and the Shah of Iran, the US secures its supply of oil. I very much doubt the US has "opened up" to China. I recently read an article that Huawei, a major Chinese telecommunications company, was prevented from undertaking several projects with US telecommunications companies (e.g. AT&T) after they (the US companies) were warned by the US government not to do it. Washington Post has the story. Also, one cannot forget how CNOOC was prevented from acquiring Unocal. Also, China is not allowed to trade with the US in high technology products, which are practically the only products that China would ever want from the US other than wheat and soybeans (China does not need low technology products... they can manufacture it 10 times better, cheaper and faster than the US ever can). There is always this fear from the US that exporting high technology products to China would allow them to use the technology against the US or something. That's why the Chinese prefer to trade with the Germans and there is little exporting from US to China. So if there is no "reciprocity" from the US on trade, I can understand why the Chinese would refuse to open their sectors to the US. To the Chinese, if the US wants a relationship with them, they need to meet at the halfway line. Re currency issues... well, the Chinese want the US to stop doing quantitative easing. The Chinese want the US to stop printing dollars. The Chinese want the US to maintain a strong dollar, or else why should the US be the fiat currency of the world. See... both sides want things they cannot get. Ultimately, Wen Jiabao quoted statistics saying that 50% of the imports from China into the US are from US export companies based in China. Those US companies are taking advantage of cheap Chinese labour and resources to provide cheap goods to the US public. This gives them (the companies) profit. In return, those companies do well on the stock market. In return, US pension funds and nest eggs do well too. One of the biggest exporters from China to the US is Apple. If they manufacture everything in the US, their Iphones would probably cost 3X more, and very few people would buy them and their stock wouldn't do well and the pension funds of the US public wouldn't do well. Not everything is easily cut and dry in this matter. This positioning is a fallacy. The Chinese are already moving heavily into an internal consumption / domestic development driven economy. Slapping sanctions would most probably play into their government's plans to force China's economy to grow internally and force their exporters to look inwards. Also, Wen Jiabao likes to quote... slapping sanctions against China is essentially slapping sanctions against the US's own companies. And those are jobs that are certainly not going to come back to the US because they will move to Indonesia, Bangladesh and what-not. The Chinese counter sanctions would hit the US heavily too, especially the US farm sector. Imagine if China stops buying US wheat and soybeans and imports only from South America. Imagine if China stops buying Boeing airplanes. Imagine is China tells GM to bugger off. This exercise might just accelerate China's march towards global economic superpower. The sole economic superpower. Taking a page from the US playbook. Taking a page from the US playbook. Japanese mistake in this matter. They made a statement of position to test the Chinese and forced a Chinese statement of position. How did they bully India? Nothing has changed. Last I read, they were trying to resolve it peacefully until the US "butted-in" and threw a grenade into the crowd. The last time a US state (or states) tried to declare independence from the US, it resulted in a pretty serious civil war. And naturally, the Chinese will try to push back. Mind your own business is what they will say. Don't stir up a hornet's nest if possible. The Chinese could become very uncooperative on matters of US interest if they view that the US is becoming too arrogant and interfering into their affairs. Heck, you never know, they might even pump USD1 billion into the Tea Party's coffers to help them to mess up the US government :grin:
Misguide u.s. policies of the past to be sure, policies of a past generation though and all political with the exception of agricultural dumping in latin america mainly by companies like dole. In fact, it was the U.S. insistance of the opening of the markets that directly lead to the explosion of cocaine production, since farmers were subsidized to produce the one plant that made them money - the cocoa leaf. But China is not Latin America. Let's not be naive here. THe U.S. has lost so much of it's manufacturing to China of the last 30 years - it really is the opposite direction. The NSA refused to use AT&T if they used Huawei for their routers since the Chinese were know to install technology to spy on foriegn gov't. Indonesia caught them red-handed. The deal wasn't blocked, AT&T dropped them after the NSA, which has every right to make that refusal, did so. Frankly, this is more examples of how Chinese is trying to bully it's way around, even against the u.s. The chinese try to hack major u.s. companies as well to steal information. Google and other companies again have caught the Chinese red handed. Again, China is known for massive copy-right violations and stealing technology. Also it uses those products to spread nuclear proliferation to our enemies and build other weapons to bully nations. No wonder we won't give China that technology. Germans aren't rivals to China and so will sell them anything to make a Mark. The Chinese want a strong dollar to keep their exports cheap. That is the only reason. So what they do is prevent their currency from floating against the dollar. Doing this hurts U.S. exports into China and frankly is a very unfair trade practice that should not be tolerated anymore. The U.S. printing more dollars affects everyone and is necessary right now. But if China continues to block American imports and hurt us domestically with ultra cheap goods I think we should put a trade tariff on all Chinese goods. Making iPhones in China does not make them cheaper to us. It just makes Apple more money. It's already over priced in the U.S. market. More profits for Apple doesn't translate into higher GDP for Americans. And pension funds don't buy only u.s. stocks - the market isn't doing that great. Your logic may be true in some scenarios but it's overall sketchy at best. If they made them in the U.S., we'd have a lot more jobs, and Apply would have lower margins, but overall, our economy would be better as the money would be kept in the U.S. and spent on other things, instead of going to China to build nuclear missiles to be pointed at our cities. Not everything is easily cut and dry in this matter. Hardly, the China is far more dependent on the American consumer than the u.s. is on the chinese manufacturer. Once our economy is back in gear, a trade war would piss of u.s. companies to be sure, but it would be a victory for the every day American. Other countries can fill in the gaps so it would not be inflationary too much, and we import far far more than we export to China so it would not help china's economy grow but in fact knock it into a deep recession. I think you have drank too much of the cool aid. We all know that China has tried to directly meddle in U.S. politics to influence our gov't. So this is highly hypocritical. But you can try to find an excuse for blame the U.S. for all of China's aggression, but the fact is at the end of the day, not a single of china's neighbor's except North Korea likes China. They all want to work with the U.S. to contain China's growing belligerence. China has invaded India, has bullied Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, and many other nations. The world looks to the U.S. as the counterbalance to that, not the other way around.
Well, those policies of a past generation were repeated several years ago. One of those well recorded invasions was over a none existent matter. At this stage, the US still has a consistent track record of being misguided. Well, do you blame the Chinese or do you blame the US companies who move to set up their factories in China? Also, I think the US has generally lost their manufacturing to all over the world. I was in Chicago about 2 months back, and I did some shopping at a few of Chicago's premium outlets. The clothes I bought weren't only manufactured in China (in fact, only 3 or 4 pieces that I bought were). They were manufactured in Vietnam, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh too. I am talking famous, renowned brands. To paint the bullseye solely on China is..... selective thinking.... Whose to say that US telecoms manufacturers do not do the same thing, i.e. install their technology to enable US spying? Last I read, the FBI and CIA had a lot of access to US networks and internet sites. So does that mean that China should completely bar access to their markets to US telecommunications companies and the US does vice versa? And if the US is so technologically advanced and savvy, they then can't detect such spying equipment and use it to embarrass China and score a political point? BTW, I hope you can provide me with the internet links on Indonesia catching Huawei red-handed. I conduct business matters in Indonesia, and last I heard, Huawei is doing pretty well in there.... Er, all countries have a history of stealing technology. Great Britain's industrial revolution was kicked off using stolen technology. The US blatantly copied and stole technology when they were the upcoming country during the late 1800s to early 1900s. They also stole German technology during the two World Wars. Japan copied and stole technology during their rise in the 50s, 60s and 70s. South Korea did the same. Silk producing "tech" was stolen from China by monks from Venice. Nuclear proliferation - the US gave Israel nukes. The US is giving India nuclear technology even though India isn't a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. US is planning to deal in nuclear technology with Vietnam. Why shouldn't the Chinese be pissed and hit back at the US on this? Re: build weapons to bully other nations... last I read, China did not invade any independent countries, while the US, which has a military budget of USD10 trillion (practically more than the rest of the world combined) has been generously doing its share of shock and awe bullying. The US wants a weaker dollar because it is trying to "decrease" the amount of debt it owes to China. By weakening the dollar and getting the RMB to rise, the US has to pay less back to China, which keeps its books in RMB. Since the US national debt is too great (to the amount of practically every person in the US owing approximately USD31,000.00 in public debt), the US has to "cheat" their way out of the debt through currency manipulation. The Chinese knew how the US pulled this stunt against Japan and Germany, and now, being the US biggest creditor, they will not be bullied into giving the US a free ride. The US subsidizes its banks, subsidizes its auto industry, subsidizes its farm industry, etc. and you don't hear the Chinese b****ing about it. How many billions (trillions?) did the US pump into US banks, AIG, Fannie and Freddie? The Fed is now even loaning US banks multi billions at interest free rates so that those banks can make a huge profit off their loans. A huge subsidy to the banks. Don't hear the Chinese b****ing about it making US banks more competitive against their banks. Ultimately, many notable economists have said that if the US declares a trade war against China by slapping tariffs on Chinese goods, the Chinese have their own forms of counter-attack, which will result in a financial Mutually Assured Destruction of both countries. So in short, is the US willing to pull the trigger, knowing that the Chinese has the own financial "deterrent"? Making Iphones in China allows Apple to lower the prices and yet, still give them a 60% profit margin on the Iphone. Making Iphones in the US would probably force Apple to price it to 3 times their current price and only give them a 10% profit margin... if anyone buys them in the first place. Re US pension funds, I suggest you read the websites of CalPERS, CalSTRS, Teachers Retirement Fund of Texas, etc. and see the extent of their exposure in US equities. Also check out the endowment fund of many of the US Ivy League universities including Harvard, Stanford, Columbia and Yale endowment funds. Fairly high exposure to equities there. These pension funds depend on good returns on investments to cover their pension liabilities. They are certainly not going to get good returns from the US savings rate or even US treasuries. Re nuclear missiles from China aimed at US cities, maybe you forget that the US has hundreds, if not, thousands of nukes aimed at China. I read a US defence report that states that in the event they decided to go ahead with a nuclear war with China, they would carpet bomb China's military facilities and high target cities with at least 10 nukes each, on the assumption that some nukes may miss their target and some nukes may be shot down. The Chinese have only 30 - 50 nuclear missiles capable of targeting the US. Analysts have said that this is insufficient - they need at least between 200 to 400 nukes capable of hitting continental US (again, due to the fact that some missiles may be disabled in a US first strike, may miss their target, or may be shot down). Also, the Chinese have a clear none-first use policy of nukes.... unlike the US.... I think the country that the world needs to be wary of is the US, not China. The Chinese have an average of 50% savings rate waiting to be tapped. If the Chinese government is able to get the Chinese to spend even 10% of their savings on the economy, they can easily cover their entire exports to the US. It may be a victory for the every day American... until their companies start to lose profits, their stock crashes, and US companies are forced to layoff even more workers to save costs. Then the US gets the double dip recession they are trying to avoid. Maybe even a depression. Remember Hoot-Smalley? Want 20% - 30% unemployment in the US? I think you are overconfident on the ability of the US economy... just like you were probably overconfident that the US stock market would go up forever, the US home prices would go up forever, the US financial industry would be the most powerful and healthy in the world forever, and the US citizens can afford to have a 1% savings rate forever. Overdose of cool aid? And the US government has not done the same? Er.... China's neighbours acknowledged her as their saviour and anchor during the Asian Financial Crisis when China pegged the RMB at a rate that overvalued the RMB to their currencies. China has given a lot of aid to African countries and entered into a lot of favourable ventures with her other neighbours. Ask Pakistan who they would prefer - an American or a Chinese, and you know who they would answer. China has the SCO, which rejected the US application for observer status. And as you can see recently, Greece, Italy and Turkey have become China's good friend. China and Japan are mending their relationship. China and South Korea have agreed to have a trilateral summit with Japan on the ASEAN + 3 conference. Re the Sino-Indian war.... well, the US's very own CIA acknowledged that the belligerent party in this matter was India, especially Jawarhalal Nehru's hostility, arrogance and overconfidence. Your CIA concluded that the Chinese were right. The US on the other hand.... the country that invades other countries, tells them what to do, threatens them with sanctions and military action, incites regime change, causes chaos in the world financial markets.... hmmm........ are they actually liked or are they just being "used" by other countries.... Nothing wrong with that. Just as the world looks to the US as a counterbalance for China, the world will also look to China as a counterbalance for the US. Check and balance. P.S. I am not from China, neither am I a paid propagandist of the Communist Party of China It just amuses me to see such wild generalizations of the Chinese government.... perhaps you bite on too much US propaganda... :grin:
I think in the end, we can all agree that what the Chinese govt does is more or less what every government does. The only thing that differs is the extent. Although to be quite fair, this is an important point. But especially with the recent Republican administration, I really feel the US has lost a lot of moral high ground that we like to boast. I do dislike a lot of things the Chinese govt does, but I do feel they're headed in the right direction. And that in the end, the simple matter of technological advancement and citizens understanding more of the world will gradually draw it closer to western nations in terms of rights. I also believe there is some sort of double standard. Kind of like how as Rockets fans, we just generally dislike Jazz doings more than other teams. Sure, they deserve criticism, and they are dirty and runs against our general US morals, but there is definitely bias involved simply because they're communist bastards.
There is a curious fact. How to explain that no Nobel Peace Prize was never assigned to any hero of anti-colonial struggles and anti-imperialist worldwide, for example India's Gandhi, who was totally against violence in the struggle for India's independence? The only explanation is that the Nobel Peace Prize is an ideological tool of imperialism to weaken the country led by whoever does not kowtow to the western powers. The nature of this explains that it was born of a bad mind weapon used to dominate the Third World in the nineteenth and twentieth century. The Nobel Peace is born in the country that still practice so-called "freedom of expression" which is only "free" under the axiom that Western civilization is superior to other civilizations of mankind who, over many millennia, committed ever fewer crimes against humanity. Let's not forget that last year the prize was awarded to a U.S. president involved in two imperialist wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Well, that's a petty game played not so trickily according to today's standard.
You are right. The Chinese government does have some basic things messed up. But, as you said, they are going in the right direction, and they are doing it gradually... and more importantly, smartly! The thing is, one has to understand things from the Chinese leadership's point of view.... if you have 1.4 billion mouths to feed, 1.4 billion jobs to provide, 1.4 billion people to care for, man, that is one huge ship to maneuver. If one wants to maneuver a ship of this size, it needs to be maneuvered slowly and steadily. It does not have the maneuverability or the agility of a speedboat or even a midsized boat. The Chinese ship CAN'T be maneuvered like a speedboat or even a midsized boat. Otherwise, its gonna be another Russia X3 when it jumped head-on from Communism to democracy - a total collapse of economy, a near collapse of society, and a breakup of the country. The people yapping constantly for China to immediately adopt democracy do not understand this. Also, see what is happening in the US now with its everyman-for-himself type democracy. Gridlock. Nothing can be done. The Chinese want to develop their own system of democracy that will, hopefully, have as few weaknesses as possible.....
This is pure speculation though. Democracy and freedom isn't a threat to growth, far from it. India as nearly as large a population and is growing just as fast, the only difference between the two nations is that China had a 30 year head start in opening up its economy. I don't think China has to become more democratic. But it certainly would do well to provide greater freedom for her people and play more fair in the world arena. You can't say hey, "we are 1.4 billion people, we are going to throw our weight around and smush our neighbors" and then expect your neighbors not to complain. The U.S. is used to this criticism, there's a lot of anger and resistance to what the u.s. does, and that's a good thing. Do you know why the U.S. doesn't engage in more wars and bully more nations? Because the people in the country don't like it and can vote the gov't out of power. It keeps the gov't in check. And China would do well to have a people that can vote out the scumbags who are totally polluting China's environment. Maybe that's a cost of development and progress, but I beg to differ. This isn't about nationalism here, it's about a chinese gov't that is belligerent and willing to oppress it's own people to maintain power.
funny guy, very cute way of twisting facts around. china's "donations" to africa are in exchange for blood by the way. They are raping the country of resources far worse than the U.S. ever did to Latin America. It's seems that you defend China's actions by saying the U.s. did the same. The u.s. is taking apart their nuclear arnesal, while china builds hers up. The u.s. won't go to war with china because it's insane to do so, but china has drawn up war plans against the u.s. China has invaded an independent country - India. India was not the aggressor, it was china who sent troops all over into India and took Indian territory. it's China that invaded Tibet and killed many Tibetans. It's China that supplied military support and been involved in wars across the continent, and is poliferating nuclear arms around. We are going nowhere, it seems you buy into the propaganda that comes from the Communist sources you chose to believe.
While I'm not a big fan of the Nobel Peace Prize- Nelson Mandela Yassar Arafat Wangari Muta Desmond Tutu
we all choose to believe what we will. like->"The u.s. won't go to war with china because it's insane to do so, but china has drawn up war plans against the u.s." ??? or->"It's China that supplied military support and been involved in wars across the continent, and is poliferating nuclear arms around." interesting, since America has two active wars on the continent, one of which is technically "closed"-but which was illegal anyways. or->"china's "donations" to africa are in exchange for blood by the way. They are raping the country of resources far worse than the U.S. ever did to Latin America." dunno, haven't quite seen Batista handing a nation over to China or the Chinese involved in suppressing popular uprisings within African nations. you might want to reevaluate this statement before we get into Kissinger's dirty deeds that said, China has some crap it needs to fix. I think we all know that. but some people need to get off their high horses.
Well said. I do think that the Nobel Committee gave the award to Liu to poke the CCP but that is no way comparable to the Opium Wars and I agree with the guy from the Berkeley Asian Society. (Probably not surprising since I am a Cal alum.. ) If you have a link to his comments I would be interested in seeing it. The PRC is at a delicate stage in its development and I think the "victim culture" that you see being pushed by the CCP is primarily for internal consumption to maintain faith in the government in the face of uncertainties as the PRC moves into being a superpower.
