I know, Deng was sitting around one day reading Wealth of Nations and figured it all out a couple hundred years after the fact. Western capital, technology, business practices, investment, open markets, etc. had nothing to do with China's new economy.
Deng was always more of a pragmatic, "free market" guy. He was almost "purged"in the 60s by Mao for his non-revolutionary ideas of managing the economy. I don't think anyone is saying foreign investment and markets had nothing to with China's rise. But to attribute China's rise to American "pressuring" is inaccurate. It was Mao's death which opened the door.
Alright. I guess we just differ on how we view US's power in today's world. I think you very well may be correct. I HOPE you're more right than me. We'll see. Sorry, misinterpreted your original post then.
Actually I'm not looking at it as an adversarial relationship. It's the US and many of its people who do so. And that's the core of my argument. When has the US ever viewed China in a positive manner? The "friendliness" China feels towards the US is based on US's power, not true respect. Because they've never been shown respect from the US. US transgressions in Tibet, Taiwan, and human rights interferes with China's DOMESTIC policies. Whereas China's transgressions in Africa or the Middle East interferes with US FOREIGN policies. I see a big difference between the two. If you can still debate about this, then I have no response. Mainly because we'd have an inherent lack of understanding of each other's view point. In which case further debate would not be worthwhile. We'll just have to agree to disagree.
Missleading picture. Taiwan is not ruled by PRC but is a part of China. There is no "two Chinas", or "one China, one Taiwan".
I find it somewhat ironic that you are saying your aren't looking at it as an adversarial relationship but then are complaining about lack of respect from the US. The US has showed a lot of respect to the PRC by normalizing relations with them and continuing to extend favorable trading status. I think these things are in the US's longterm interests but consider that there has been a lot of resistance to both of those historically but Administrations of both parties have continued to extend them. In regard to tensions keep in mind in the last 50 years the US has had all sorts of tensions and disagreements with even some of our closes allies. The US opposed France and the UK in the Security Council over the Suez crisis and has criticized EU policy's along with pressured the EU's position regarding whether Turkey should be admitted. Keep in mind the EU views membership as an internal affair yet here is the US pressuring some of its staunches allies. And again as I noted the US has also criticized some of its closest allies in regard to what they consider domestic issues. Outside of Europe the US has criticized Japan over their fiscal policies and South Korea over human rights. In return some of the US staunchest European allies have publically criticized the US over domestic policies such as the death penalty. Yes we do have a lack of understanding. You seem to be asking for somesort of exception. That basically the US should somehow behave differently to the PRC than it does to pretty much every other country. As I said before the US and the PRC have some interests that are in conflict but the same goes for pretty much every country. Your call for respect from the US is essentially because you are viewing the US as an adversary when the US relationship with the PRC isn't necessarily more adversarial than it was other countries.
Move Over China: Beijing Sells Whopping $34.2 Billion Treasuries In December As Japan Becomes Largest Official Holder Of US Debt Article Link Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/16/2010 09:29 -0500 Gradually we are getting confirmation that Chinese "posturing" about offloading US debt is all too real. The most recent TIC data confirmed the Treasury's greatest nightmare: China is now dumping US bonds. In December China sold $34.2 billion of debt ($38.8 billion in Bills sold offset by $4.6 billion in Bonds purchased), lowering its total holdings $755.4 billion, the lowest since February 2009, and for the first time in many years relinquishing the top US debt holder spot to Japan, which bought $11.5 billion (mostly in Bonds, selling $1.4 billion Bills) bringing its total to $768.8 billion. Also, very oddly, the surge in UK holding continues, providing yet another clue as to the identity if the "direct bidder" - as we first assumed, these are merely UK centers transacting primarily on behalf of China as well as hedge funds, which are accumulating US debt under the radar. UK holdings increased from $230.7 billion to $302.5 billion in December: a stunning $70 billion increase in a two month span. Yet, with the identity of the UK-based buyers a secret, it really could be anyone... Anyone with very deep pockets. Look at the comments under this article. They run the gamut from the profound and interesting to the massive tin foil hat conspiracy theory.
Well it seems adversarial: Two Chinese Schools Said to Be Tied to Online Attacks http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/technology/19china.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&src=ig By JOHN MARKOFF and DAVID BARBOZA SAN FRANCISCO — A series of online attacks on Google and dozens of other American corporations have been traced to computers at two educational institutions in China, including one with close ties to the Chinese military, say people involved in the investigation. They also said the attacks, aimed at stealing trade secrets and computer codes and capturing e-mail of Chinese human rights activists, may have begun as early as April, months earlier than previously believed. Google announced on Jan. 12 that it and other companies had been subjected to sophisticated attacks that probably came from China. Computer security experts, including investigators from the National Security Agency, have been working since then to pinpoint the source of the attacks. Until recently, the trail had led only to servers in Taiwan. If supported by further investigation, the findings raise as many questions as they answer, including the possibility that some of the attacks came from China but not necessarily from the Chinese government, or even from Chinese sources. Tracing the attacks further back, to an elite Chinese university and a vocational school, is a breakthrough in a difficult task. Evidence acquired by a United States military contractor that faced the same attacks as Google has even led investigators to suspect a link to a specific computer science class, taught by a Ukrainian professor at the vocational school. The revelations were shared by the contractor at a meeting of computer security specialists. The Chinese schools involved are Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang Vocational School, according to several people with knowledge of the investigation who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the inquiry. Jiaotong has one of China’s top computer science programs. Just a few weeks ago its students won an international computer programming competition organized by I.B.M. — the “Battle of the Brains” — beating out Stanford and other top-flight universities. Lanxiang, in east China’s Shandong Province, is a huge vocational school that was established with military support and trains some computer scientists for the military. The school’s computer network is operated by a company with close ties to Baidu, the dominant search engine in China and a competitor of Google. Within the computer security industry and the Obama administration, analysts differ over how to interpret the finding that the intrusions appear to come from schools instead of Chinese military installations or government agencies. Some analysts have privately circulated a document asserting that the vocational school is being used as camouflage for government operations. But other computer industry executives and former government officials said it was possible that the schools were cover for a “false flag” intelligence operation being run by a third country. Some have also speculated that the hacking could be a giant example of criminal industrial espionage, aimed at stealing intellectual property from American technology firms. Independent researchers who monitor Chinese information warfare caution that the Chinese have adopted a highly distributed approach to online espionage, making it almost impossible to prove where an attack originated. “We have to understand that they have a different model for computer network exploit operations,” said James C. Mulvenon, a Chinese military specialist and a director at the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis in Washington. Rather than tightly compartmentalizing online espionage within agencies as the United States does, he said, the Chinese government often involves volunteer “patriotic hackers” to support its policies. Spokesmen for the Chinese schools said they had not heard that American investigators had traced the Google attacks to their campuses. If it is true, “We’ll alert related departments and start our own investigation,” said Liu Yuxiang, head of the propaganda department of the party committee at Jiaotong University in Shanghai. But when asked about the possibility, a leading professor in Jiaotong’s School of Information Security Engineering said in a telephone interview: “I’m not surprised. Actually students hacking into foreign Web sites is quite normal.” The professor, who teaches Web security, asked not to be named for fear of reprisal. “I believe there’s two kinds of situations,” the professor continued. “One is it’s a completely individual act of wrongdoing, done by one or two geek students in the school who are just keen on experimenting with their hacking skills learned from the school, since the sources in the school and network are so limited. Or it could be that one of the university’s I.P. addresses was hijacked by others, which frequently happens.” At Lanxiang Vocational, officials said they had not heard about any possible link to the school and declined to say if a Ukrainian professor taught computer science there. A man named Mr. Shao, who said he was dean of the computer science department at Lanxiang but refused to give his first name, said, “I think it’s impossible for our students to hack Google or other U.S. companies because they are just high school graduates and not at an advanced level. Also, because our school adopts close management, outsiders cannot easily come into our school.” Mr. Shao acknowledged that every year four or five students from his computer science department were recruited into the military. Google’s decision to step forward and challenge China over the intrusions has created a highly sensitive issue for the United States government. Shortly after the company went public with its accusations, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton challenged the Chinese in a speech on Internet censors, suggesting that the country’s efforts to control open access to the Internet were in effect an information-age Berlin Wall. A report on Chinese online warfare prepared for the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission in October 2009 by Northrop Grumman identified six regions in China with military efforts to engage in such attacks. Jinan, site of the vocational school, was one of the regions. Executives at Google have said little about the intrusions and would not comment for this article. But the company has contacted computer security specialists to confirm what has been reported by other targeted companies: access to the companies’ servers was gained by exploiting a previously unknown flaw in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Web browser. Forensic analysis is yielding new details of how the intruders took advantage of the flaw to gain access to internal corporate servers. They did this by using a clever technique — called man-in-the-mailbox — to exploit the natural trust shared by people who work together in organizations. After taking over one computer, intruders insert into an e-mail conversation a message containing a digital attachment carrying malware that is highly likely to be opened by the second victim. The attached malware makes it possible for the intruders to take over the target computer. John Markoff reported from San Francisco and David Barboza from Shanghai. Bao Beibei and Chen Xiaoduan in Shanghai contributed research.
Obviously you have not seen the "Whole Country is Red" stamp, in which the self-realization caused by the GPCR caused the PRC to drop their sham claims to the ROC:
I figured out this China deal while watching Tiger's interview. A godless, totalitarian, corporatocracy really doesn't have any accountability or even any recognized set of ethics. Basically they can pursue any course of action, just any course, with no measure of correctness or failure. As long as they can keep the people from storming the Forbidden Palace they are golden. It's like Enron on steroids.
No, it goes to accountability. Religious people feel accountable to their deity. Democratically elected leaders are acountable to their voters as informed by a free press. Publicly held corporations are accountable by their shereholders. In theory at least. So, where is the accountability in a totalitarian corporatocracy? How would the people even have the information to make any evaluations when all information is a function of the state? It is just a theoretical question for the pro-PRC posters
:grin: Yeah, many public funded China centers are shams that extort money out of taxpayer's pocket b/c China can be figured out through Tiger's news. You must wonder HTH those china experts can call themselves having a job.
It made me think about accountability, ethics and where we derive our moral set. I well aware that the family, community, and country impart a moral code within the PRC but what I want to find out is how breeches in that code are held accountable within a system where there is no freedom of information or elections. We hear of the egregious cases that result in execution but it seems like entrenched party members could commit serious levels of ethics violations and as long as they held the favor of the party member above them they could get away with it forever. Enlighten me, how is the system policed when there is no one outside the system? Who stands for the general public interest instead of self interest.
I am not a pro-PRC poster, but this accountability issue in China is not as bad as you thought. CCP has had a tradition of democracy within the party. In theory too, CCP members can voice themselves about any matter or any party member in a party convention, just like a shareholder, a voter, or religious person( I don't get this though, religion provides accountability? Or is it just trauma to scare people?). And of course there is internal affair sort of ministers acting like independent prosecutors supposedly to catch corrupted officials. Apart from lack of media monitoring, I really don't think govt's accountability is that much of a problem or any worse than a democracy in China. If things get bad, Chinese officials, at any level, too get fired. You have corrupted badazzes running show doling out bad stuff at many levels here too. I don't think any of us has that magical accountability power to impeach it if it doesn't get public angry. Anybody who has either worked or interned in any government offices can attest to it.
This is much larger issue than just China. Religious people say it all the time with respect to atheists in the USA. "Oh! You all must be evil and immoral since you don't have God looking over your shoulder." As soon as I see a suicide bomber hijack an airplane or bomb an abortion clinic clutching a copy of "On the Origin of Species" then we can talk. Quite frankly, it is pretty bigoted to think that people can't be moral without being beholden to your great sky daddy. Though I can hardly single you out as it seems to be a universal Christian viewpoint. However much I disagree with them, the Rulers of China are very much trying to to what they believe is in the best interest of China. Which, of course, is more than we can say for Ken Lay, who, as it turns out, was a pretty regular sight at First Methodist here in Houston as he was raping both Enron's shareholders and their customers. And if you want to know about the established several-thousand-year-old Chinese philosophy on what becomes of selfish rulers, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_of_Heaven [rquoter] The idea of the Mandate of Heaven was developed by the Zhou as an ideology of legitimation, and it continues to serve this function. By emphasizing the unity of the Chinese nation into pre-historic times, the concept legitimates the rule of a single centralised state and implicitly relegates any other potential power holders (both historical and contemporary) to positions of subordination or illegitimacy. Although the archaeological record shows clearly that multiple cultures and kingdoms existed in the area that was to become China, Chinese archaeologists continue to date all bronze age sites to the Xia, Shang or Zhou, implying that the territory controlled today belonged to the ancestors of the current Chinese state. In Chinese schools today the concept is not taught explicitly, but by tracing the origins of the Chinese state to the Xia, Shang and Zhou, rather than emphasizing the diversity of the actual archaeological record, the Chinese education system continues to promote the idea of the Mandate of Heaven. Thus the concept continues to exert enormous influence. [/rquoter]
Not much external policing outside the system, but that doesn't mean there is no accountability in China. At the very top, there is a long-standing motivation to leave legacy in history book as good leaders. This trickles down. I suppose lack of accountability leads to corruption and abuse of power, but you see these problems are as prevalent in countries with external policing functions, India, Philippine, as in China. Is there more or less accountability in those countries? The external limits don't seem to slow down corruptions there. Lack of media monitoring however is a big problem in China.
