“A Peaceful Rise”?

This posting was inspired by Peter Navarro’s Death by China, a really eye opening book about the various ways China is “killing” the worldwide competition both physically through their poisoned food and cheap goods that many Americans and others buy from Wal-Mart and other discount retailers and economically through questionable trade practices like artificial currency and so called technological exchanges with American corporations blinded by the pursuit of more greenbacks undercutting American technological advantages. Other sections lay out in frightening detail the enormous rise in Chinese military and espionage capabilities and how these Chinese advances threaten not just its’ neighbors but eventually the United States. Final sections talk about how China kills its’ own people and what the U.S. can do to prevent our own “Death by China.” One of the best books I’ve read this year, try and pick it up from a library or retailer like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.

What I wanted to talk about today is the notion of China’s Peaceful Rise. Call me jaded and cynical, but I’m not buying it…when one considers the shoddy manor in which China produces their goods with poison paints and chemicals that sicken and kill our children and pets and the provocative actions they’ve taken towards their East Asian neighbors, how can anyone consider such a rise peaceful when there’s a pile of dead bodies and ruined lives indicating it isn’t. China has also begun to make inroads within Africa and Latin America taking their natural resources and then shipping the finished goods back to Africa as one might a colony. Indeed these are not the actions of a peaceful riser. When I thought about writing this post, I expected to roundly condemn China for such practices…until I considered history.

Throughout history, none of the Western powers are beneath contempt…Brittan, France, and Germany along with Japan annexed large swaths of foreign territory to themselves most notably in Africa and Asia. Many of these civilizations treated native populations as slave labor and propagated the infamous noble savage myth. They further pitted native tribes in Africa against each other to divide the masses and maintain their tight control leaving many African nations ill prepared for independence. It is widely accepted that these colonial memories played a pivotal role in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, in which over a million Tutsis’ and Hutus’ were killed.

I’m no China apologist and reject such melamine laced pet food and toys coated in lead paint as much as the next person, but before we act like many of the tactics China employs during its’ rise to world superpower status are the most revolting activities we’ve ever seen, I merely ask everyone to look at history.