Chinamerica Threat Roundup 4

Welcome to the latest Chinamerica Roundup! This is a collection of news, analysis, and blogging pertaining to China as an emerging military threat with growing influence in a socialist Latin America.

The index to all related posts is here.

This week's roundup is, mercifully for me, comparatively short. The most interesting developments took place in Venezuela and in China's own back yard, where North Korea did some sabre-rattling.

(1) North Korea

I regard North Korea as China's "loose cannon." I find it very hard to believe either that (a) China could not, if it wanted to, stop North Korea's nuke program in its tracks, or (b) our leaders insist on counting on them to keep North Korea in line.

This week, I discussed, among other things, North Korea's recent missile launch. Remember the six-party talks? I didn't think so.

Part of our way of "dealing with" North Korea has been to attempt to get its neighbors more involved via the "six-nation" talks. These have been stalled since last June -- damn close to a year! A couple more "stalls" like that and a North Korean missile launch will be something to worry about. Of course, it could be now, if intelligence is wrong. Curiously, though, while our media will happily crow about the WMD evidence being wrong in Iraq, there is zero skepticism about this particular intelligence estimate.

I would add to this the following: This is in China's own back yard. The fact that China has failed to get North Korea to the table is in and of itself very revealing. Apparently, the Chi-Comms aren't all that worried about North Korea launching anything their way. But I'm definitely of the minority view, as this article shows.

Bush's less urgent attitude toward the North relies to a large degree on China, which prefers the current "nuclear ambiguity" but would come down hard on the North if it had a bomb [Talk about wishful delusional thinking! -- ed] , knowing the US might attack. Chinese spies provide a canary-in-the-coal-mine alert for Bush. So far they're telling South Korea and others that North Korea is far from having a bomb.

I would point out that the reason China likes "nuclear ambiguity" is that any kind of ambiguity makes it harder for us to act in the region. How do we plan for anything if we have doubts about something like that? If this is true, Bush is playing into China's hands on this.

RealClear Politics has an editorial on Operation Paul Bunyan, a bit of Cold War brinksmanship that the author, James J. Na, thinks we should repeat. This episode occurred after the North Koreans attacked a work detail sent to chop down a tree in the DMZ, brutally killing two Americans.

President Gerard Ford, after much consultation, authorized Operation Paul Bunyan in response. On August 21st, US and South Korean vehicles carrying engineers entered the JSA and began to cut down the forty-foot tree with chain saws while a group of North Korean soldiers watched. The new work detail was escorted by US-South Korean military personnel including South Korean special forces. Outside the DMZ, they were in turn supported by a sizable force of tanks, artillery and additional infantry. In the air, an array of attack helicopters, fighter aircraft and B-52 bombers provided overwatch. A naval carrier task force was also mobilized to respond to any North Korean attempt to interfere with the work.

The tree fell.

North Korean communications monitored by US forces at the time showed that North Korean leaders were greatly alarmed by such an overwhelming display of force and resolve. The North Korean representative to the JSA quickly requested a meeting and conveyed an extraordinary personal message from the "Great Leader" that the incident was "regretful." Subsequently, North Korea also finally agreed to an earlier American proposal to divide the JSA into mutually exclusive zones.

Unless the "tree" we "chop down" is the entire infrastructure currently being used to build atomic bombs, I couldn't more strongly disagree. As for what I think we should do instead, I think I've just answered that question.

On the subject of North Korea, I also blogged a Christopher Hitchens article about the fact that, essentially, North Korea is a large concentration camp.

(2) International Relations: Taiwan and China

Here's an excerpt from my take on the farcical idea of the Taiwanese helping China pretend it is not aggressive.

Chinese Nationalist Lien "Neville Chamberlain" Chan, upon hearing that China intended to annex Taiwan and had aimed numerous missiles at his native land, concluded that Chinese President Hu Jintao had invited him for afternoon tea. He immediately dropped everything, booked a flight to Beijing, and rushed to the presidential palace. Hu, a man known to hate surprises, nevertheless greeted his unannounced visitor warmly. "I was very impressed with the way he snapped to, clicked his heels together, and saluted me when we first met." Hu said. "Such men can be quite useful. Our party has always accommodated men like Lien. Of course I will honor his request to make 'How high?' the provincial motto of Taiwan."

That was my reaction to the news that Lien Chan, a Taiwanese opposition leader had gone to China and held closed-door talks with its president. As if this wasn't bad enough, the Taiwanese president then invited his Chinese counterpart over to Taiwan for a cup of afternoon appeasement. The Chinese President refused the invitation!

China reacted coolly to an invitation today by Taiwan's leader for President Hu Jintao to visit the island, rejecting any official contact until the Taiwanese ruling party drops a clause in its constitution calling for formal independence.

The Economist has a more in-depth article about this that takes an optimistic view: that these talks could help ordinary Chinese become more desirous of political change. Nevertheless, the article acknowledges the following.

[E]ven if Mr Lien's meeting with Mr Hu proves fruitless, the KMT leader may at least have done some good by his comments to a group of Peking University students, broadcast live across the mainland, in effect urging the Communist Party to embrace democratic reforms. “The entire speed and scale of political reform on the mainland still have considerable room for improvement,” Mr Lien said. Though the Communist Party has in recent years allowed some limited elections at local level, all potential challenges to its authority have been ruthlessly put down since the Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-democracy student campaigners in 1989.

In the near future, I think that this thaw in relations between the two countries is highly unlikely to change anything in China. And I share the Gaijin Biker's cynicism towards the idea of reunification.

Yet despite the cautionary example of Hong Kong, Lien is all too happy to cozy up to China, appearing to trust its promises of virtual autonomy for Taiwan, even as it threatens the island with a grauitously hostile "anti-secession law". It's difficult to see him as anything but a traitor, a coward, or a fool.

(3) Two Looks Inside China

Via Arts & Letters Daily is an interesting review of two Chinese novels. Early on is an interesting snapshot of the marketplace of ideas -- at least in bookstores -- within China: "Bookstores, the Times reports, are bustling, but nearly half the purchases consist of textbooks and half the translations are of American books." This may sound hopeful, even if some of the American books are censored, but the other shoe drops near the end of the article, where we see how the work of Mo Yan, one of the novelists, is received:

Mo Yan’s portrait of Chinese history has met ire on the mainland. Goldblatt quotes one critic as calling the novel “a sycophantic, shameless work that turns history upside down, fabricates lies, and glorifies the Japanese fascists and the Landlord Restoration Corps.” The Japanese forces, whose invasion is the principal event of “Red Sorghum,” are relatively shadowy in this novel; but even a Western reader insensitive to the fine points of the civil conflict that placed Mao in power must notice that in this book Communist programs and propaganda are played mostly for laughs, and that the most praiseworthy men, the Sima brothers, are associated with the old, bourgeois regime and the Nationalist Army. Mo Yan’s fate is to operate on the edge of official constraints; the novel, nearly a half-million words long as first published in 1996 in China, has undergone trimming and rearrangement right up to this translation, based upon “a further shortened, computer-generated manuscript supplied by the author.” Semi-capitalist China will not replay the censorship game by the same rules as were hammered out in the Soviet Union, but free spirits in China are still short of enjoying free speech.

This comes as little surprise. Might we get another idea of how things are in China? I have not had time to do anything but skim the following (very l-o-n-g) article, but the answer would appear to be "yes."

In TIA Daily, to consider one point, Robert Tracinski has been discussing his concept of the "Metaphysics of 'Normal Life'." In short, America has been showing the world by example for the past 50 years what life can be like, establishing a new idea of "normal" around the world. (A result is that people more easily become rebellious under regimes that prevent them from enjoying this kind of life.) This new idea of "normal" seems to have gotten through however imperfectly to the Chinese youth gathered for a concert shown on page 3.

The article discusses the hugeness of China in terms of the economic potential it has and the potential for trouble it could cause the United States. I'm linking to the article here for my own purposes, but it appears to be worth a full read.

Two Updates:

The General reports on China's censorship of the internet and makes the following trenchant comment on government ownership of the internet

I personally find this all the more frightening in light of the recent clamoring for free internet access in various cities throughout the US. The government being the owner of the internet is the first step on the road to government control over what content is “appropriate” and what is beyond the pale. And as the internet continues to become all the more ubiquitous, it’s only a matter of time before a politician calls for FCC oversight of the internet.

Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin reports that Pat Oliphant will be the first American cartoonist published in China by a Chinese-language newspaper. Her thought?

An interesting choice. Oliphant's way of criticizing our leaders, you'll recall, includes drawing Secretary of State Condi Rice as a buck-toothed, thick-lipped, dark-skinned parrot. Think he'll be as brutal now towards China's leaders in the pages of the Beijing Youth Daily?

My thought: I don't see Cox and Forkum gaining a toehold any time soon.

(4) South America

In Mexico, the legal barriers to running in the upcoming presidential race have been removed for leftist and would-be Chavez protege, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The charges against him, which some have likened in seriousness to a traffic ticket, have been dropped.

Last week, we saw Hugo Chavez giving out free copies of Don Quixote, his idea of a guide to life, to the people of Venezuela. This week, we saw him put his ideas into practice to tilt at the biggest windmill of them all: the American people! (HT: Blair)

"I have not returned, nor do I think about returning again, until the people of the United States liberate that nation," said Chavez, saying that Americans are "oppressed" by their government and U.S. media.

I have a question for Hugo "Don Quixote" Chavez: What is a nation, if not its people? Is he blaming us for not having liberated ourselves? We're "oppressed," but Venezuela's great champion of freedom won't help us out? This crap doesn't even make sense! Now I have a request for El Loco: If you want to insult me and my country, at least be coherent about it.

But it looks like Chavez may have his hands full "liberating" his own people. He recently had to send in troops to keep his oil workers -- vital to his ability to give handouts to millions -- on the job.

There are other murky developments, particularly in the signs of political turmoil noted here but one thing is certain: angry oil workers with their fingers on the production buttons are a major threat to Hugo Chavez, whose only existing political support now is in his ability to buy off shantytowns with his social programs. He can satisfy them or he can satisfy the oilers but apparently he can't do both. Perhaps he cannot even do either. This may be big trouble brewing for Hugo Chavez.

But would a popular revolt result in a free Venezuela? The odds look long if we consider this Miami Herald editorial on the "decivilization" of Latin America. From the article (via RealClear Politics):

This situation has a name: decivilization. Slowly, Latin America decivilizes itself; it regresses toward chaos. Governments lose the capacity to exert authority. Societies feel unprotected. Criminals are in charge, sometimes on their own, others in association with corrupt policemen. Crimes go unpunished. Judges do not judge with equity. Parliamentarians don't legislate using common sense. The rule of law and the delicate institutional fabric of the republics simply dissolve in the face of society's generalized impotence

This touches on what I fear is the essential difference between the various revolts in other parts of the world and those in South America.

-- CAV

Updates

5-6-05: Corrected a typo and two formatting errors. Added two links concerning media in China.
5-13-05: Corrected location of a hypertext anchor.