Chinamerican Threat Roundup 2

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 huge roundup will be the biggest one for a long time. While I certainly hope my readers find it useful, this is also my way of taking notes. In that context, the size of this roundup at least partly reflects the fact that I'm still catching up. In the future, time considerations alone -- if nothing else -- will dictate much smaller roundups or less frequent ones.

(1) Winds of Change Roundup on China

Via Glenn Reynolds, is this excellent roundup on China at Winds of Change. Were I to sum this one up in one phrase, it would be, "Just the facts, ma'am." This is not to say that there is no analysis. However, the analysis presented does not much consider the role of ideas in the current situation. For that, we must turn to other sources. This roundup is long, but well worth a full read. I will mention a few points I found interesting.

Joe Katzman points out a form of confiscation being raised to an art form by the Chi-Comms: The theft, by failure to protect intellectual property rights, of proprietry information.

Non-enforcement of intellectual property laws also provides Chinese manufacturers with an effective subsidy, as credulous companies invest only to find their technologies appropriated by local Chinese businesses. All this is changing social patterns, and leading to China's economic rise as economic Marxism is gradually abandoned by China's elites.

The threat posed by China is complex and growing. This threat needs to be fought on multiple levels. One of them might be to make the practice of intellectual property theft by the Chinese more widely-known so there will be fewer "credulous companies" around to get ripped off. Intellectual property is a major asset and this behavior could be turned to our advantage if we appeal to the interests of such companies. If you know you might get mugged in a dark alley, you walk down a better-lit path.

Shortly after making the above point, Katzman shows that the demographic picture of China points to a future with a great potential for instability. He also notes the risk inherent in the cultivation, by the Chinese government, of mass protests.

[I]f this is the game being played by the Communist Party, it's an especially dangerous long-term choice. As we've seen elsewhere, China's careful cultivation of rage is only a harmless distraction for so long. Eventually, people start demanding that you ante up - and in a "face" culture, that could easily force the regime into an uncomfortable corner.

Taken together with the demographic picture, this is bad news for the Reds.

From a geopolitical perspective, the need for access to natural resources, including food, explains some of China's recent behavior, like its naval buildup.

Note, too, that there are other energy sources beyond the Middle East - oil and resource-rich Siberia to China's north, for instance, and Central Asia to its West. Africa's Gulf of Guinea is becoming an increasingly-important oil source, and the continent as a whole is exceedingly rich in industrial minerals. China has not been idle on any of these fronts, though these moves draw little attention.

If you want to understand Chinese diplomacy, start paying attention to its moves in these regions. (Around this point, Katzman points to a really good pair of articles at the Belmont Club.)

China's big geopolitical weakness is, of course, geography. Though it will be dependent on naval lines of supply for many of the its future resource, including food, China is ringed by satellite powers that are well positioned to choke that access. Belmont Club's Big Trouble in Little China drives that point home with solid analysis and interesting facts, including this GlobalSecurity.org shipping map.

Katzman then moves on to discuss the military dimension. He very strongly recommends (and provides links to) Thomas J. Christensen's "Posing Problems Without Catching Up: China's Rise and the Challenge for American Security," and has this to say.

Let me repeat - outstanding. Great sourcing, combined with solid understanding of how international relations works, produces clear-eyed logic that lays out options and what ifs. His explanation of why China doesn't have to achieve parity with the USA is especially worth your attention. When you're done reading him you will be a smarter observer of international relations, with a better understanding of the possible strategies states can pursue, an improved grasp the connections between military capabilities and geo-political power, and a better feel for how the U.S. - China situation could spiral into conflict against their mutual wishes.

After reading this, I went to get the PDF, which is 23 pages long if you omit its extensive bibliography. His link to the PDF is bad, but a good link appears with the "Google HTML" link. With India serving as a possible counterweight to China in the region, the differing strategies they employ for military procurement are bad news for the U.S.

[M]any Chinese programs start from existing blueprints of proven weapons from other countries, or involve foreign buys with technology transfers and limited local manufacturing. This is an intelligent approach, and one that they've taken in other fields as well: Hummers built under license, SU-30 fighters built under license, FC-1/J-17 program with Pakistan for an F-16 lookalike, J-10 fighter program using Israel's Lavi as a starting point and then modifying very heavily, Type 52C "AEGIS-like" desroyers using radar systems from the Ukraine, etc. Contrast this with India's "all domestic" approaches, which have usually ended in delivery of substandard equipment or even outright program failures.

As a blogger, I do lots of excerpting, but even with all I've pulled out of this article, I've just barely scratched its surface. This is the best all-around picture of the circumstances faced by the Chinese.

Almost missing is a consideration of how ideas might go into the equation, although this does not go completely unremarked. Earlier in the article, Katzman notes the following socioeconomic dilemma facing the leadership: "And what about the double-edge sword of information technologies - so necessary, but so potentially subversive?" I would add that this problem will become worse should China conquer and attempt to integrate Taiwan, whose people have much more access to and familiarity with IT, and the subversive ideas.

Nevertheless, I have to agree with Katzman's closing sentiment.

All of these forces are building as we watch. To what end? That is surely the correct question. But as China's military capabiltiies grow along with its internal stresses, the number of answers grows, too.

Always in motion, the future is.

(2) Articles on China at Capitalism Magazine

As a complement to the above roundup on China, I would direct my readers to this article at Capitalism Magazine, which urges the Bush administration to start paying attention to what China is doing.

While the Bush administration continues to push and celebrate significant successes for democracy in the Middle East, China is on an opposing mission in Asia, where it continues to block the spread of freedom.

This article specifically addresses China's attempts to weaken our alliance with Australia, and mentions China's other regional machinations. In addition, there is an extensive list of other articles about China in the sidebar. These article focus more on the role of ideas in this story, and more on what we should do about China.

(3) Sino-Japanese Tensions

The mounting tensions between China and Japan continue to generate lots of news and commentary. Joe Gandelman discusses (and provides links to related posts) the "new Ice Age in China-Japan relations. " Gandelman quotes both an anti-Japan activist and the Japanese Foreign Ministry to the effect that the Chinese government, which will not apologize to Japan, is behind the protests.

"The Chinese government has never done anything for which it has to apologize to the Japanese people," Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing told his visiting Japanese counterpart, Nobutaka Machimura.

Riding Sun considers an offer by a still-unapologetic Chinese government to compensate some Japanese reataurants for property damage. Isn't the offer an admission of guilt? As the Gaijin Biker puts it, "Nice, but an apology would be better. And conducting diplomacy through traditional means, rather than by stage-managing violent protests, would be best of all."

Returning to Joe Gandelman again, he cites extensively from a China-based blog on the "mixed signals" given out by the Reds to the Chinese people concerning the protests. (But if the signals are "mixed," where are the tanks?) He ends by -- surprise -- urging the Bush administration to address this issue.

[Peter Brooks, former deputy assistant secretary of defense] writes that "China's belligerence may well force Tokyo and Taipei into each other's embrace, forming a "virtual alliance" against Beijing. This won't settle well with China at all, which considers Taiwan a "renegade province." His advice: the U.S. needs to talk to China and underscore that it stands behind its Japanese ally.

That would be a good start, anyway. On the subject of America's possible role in this conflict, Larry Kudlow writes that American and Japanese pressure to let the yuan float isn't making China any less belligerent.

The U.S., however, isn’t helping matters by threatening to launch a currency- and trade-protection war against China. The U.S., Japan, and the rest of the G-7 nations are putting the heat on China to revalue, or “up-value,” the yuan and end its peg to the U.S. dollar. This is allegedly to correct global trade imbalances and stop “cheap” Chinese exports from flooding U.S. and European markets. But any meaningful currency adjustment would have to be a yuan revaluation of at least 25 percent. That would require significant tightening of Chinese monetary policy, which, in turn, would cause a big slowdown in Chinese economic growth.

He doesn't like this, but what if the anti-Japanese protests turn ugly for the Chi Comms (See 5 below.)? Something like this could further destabilize the Chinese regime, hastening its collapse....

See also the item at the very end of this post.

(4) About Those Textbooks

I will detour briefly to point out an interesting Washington Post piece, "China's Selective Memory," about textbooks and the textbook controversy. I like this point:

And if the 300,000 victims of the Nanjing Massacre are slighted in some Japanese textbooks, what of the 30 million Chinese who died in famines created by Mao Zedong's lunatic Great Leap Forward between 1958 and 1962? No mention in Chinese texts; didn't happen.

Well, you might say, how a nation treats its internal history is less relevant to its qualifications for the Security Council than whether it teaches its children honestly about its wars with other nations. A dubious proposition, but no matter; as the Times found in its review of textbooks, Chinese children do not learn of their nation's invasion of Tibet (1950) or aggression against Vietnam (1979). And they are taught that Japan was defeated in World War II by Chinese Communist guerrillas; Pearl Harbor, Iwo Jima and Midway don't figure in.

Well, if the Chinese government is so concerned with its "internal affairs," perhaps it could offer an apology to its own people, at least. This is, however, at best, second behind much more important business: Getting proof -- if we believe the Chinese Academy of Sciences anyway -- that the Great Wall is indeed visible from outer space.

(5) What Are They Protesting, Anyway?

But back to the protests. Despite their being government-sanctioned attempts to distract the Chinese people from the fact that their government is their biggest problem, some are saying that this tactic might backfire. Joe Gandelman, writing about how Sino-Japanese tensions are drawing the attention of the U.N. (What are they going to do? Fly their staffs out of Asia?), makes note of this possibility.

So as Annan steps in to try to become the equivilent of a diplomatic marriage counselor to these two bickering governments the question becomes: are we seeing what could ultimately prove to be the makings of a political boomerang in the form of nationalist demonstrations in China?

This is at the very end of the article. The good stuff, including extensive quotations from a good (but unavailable) Philippine Star article, starts about halfway through.

Via Glenn Reynolds comes this interesting chronology of developments in the protests.

The government is scrambling to defuse all the unrest unleashed by popular discontent over Japanese textbooks that downplay Japanese atrocities during World War II. It isn't easy. There are many groups in China, that are unhappy with the government, and are mobilizing to hold public demonstrations in the major cities. The government is rushing additional police and troops to cities most likely to be the scene of these demonstrations. One of the most touchy dissident groups are retired military officers and NCOs. The armed forces have shed several hundred thousand officers and troops in the last few years, as the size of the armed forces were reduced. But each year, over 40,000 officers and NCOs are retired on small pensions, and left to fend for themselves. These retirees believe they deserve better, and they are organizing. This is particularly frightening, as these retired warriors could provide professional advice for a mass rebellion.

I hope this is true. He also quotes from a Wall Street Journal article with the implication that there are now some demonstrations not about Japan.

As the market plumbs six-year lows, China's 60 million retail investors are an embittered lot -- sounding a jarring note amid the capitalist changes transforming China's economy. The government once touted the nation's two stock exchanges, started in 1990 and 1991, as founts of opportunity. But they have turned out to be full of rotten companies that relied on political connections to get listed. Regulators have had little success fighting rampant insider trading and poor disclosure.

For the ruling Communist Party, the rage of investors who have lost their nest eggs could be toxic. The party has long struggled to keep a lid on social unrest, especially among unemployed workers and overtaxed farmers. Now a big chunk of the middle class is angry, too.

I haven't seen the whole article, though, so I can't vouch for Reynolds's claim. But this is very interesting to hear when contrasted with China's recent explosive economic growth.

(6) Developments in Latin America

Though I discussed this from the angle of its relevance to American politics, this Houston Chronicle article shows how Hugo Chavez continues throttling dissent in his own country.

Print, radio and TV journalists worry about a new article in the penal code that allows up to five years in prison for causing panic by spreading false information. At a time when many Latin-American nations are repealing criminal penalties for disrespecting public officials, the new rules roughly double jail time for insulting Venezuela's president or other government figures.

Will Chavez gain an ally in Mexico after their next presidential election? Will Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leftist mayor of Mexico City, win the presidency in a vote or will Mexico be destabilized by pro-Lopez Obrador protests? Or can rule of law prevail in Mexico? I explored the Lopez Obrador affair earlier this week.

And speaking of alliances, the Miami Herald has an article on the "Chavez-'Banana Left' Alliance." The lead paragraphs note that just because South America has lots of socialist governments, they are not necessarily thrilled about Chavez's military buildup.

Military leaders in Brazil are uneasy about Hugo Chávez. It is not comfortable to coexist with a neighbor intent on creating a militia with a million armed men.

The most benign hypothesis is that the militia is actually an occupation force devoted only to throttling the Venezuelans and controlling and patrolling a national dictatorship more or less patterned after the Cuban model.

The most worrisome theory believes that, in addition to oppressing the Venezuelans, a military apparatus of that size will end up developing international operations against the neighboring countries.

This may be cause for cautious optimism. The leftist regimes in other parts of South America, at least according to this article, are fairly moderate by comparison.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's Workers Party recently declared its willingness to maintain fiscal austerity, control inflation and improve its relations with the world's financial center. It does not wish to be mistaken for chavismo.

In Chile, President Ricardo Lagos' Socialists, who today resemble Tony Blair more than Salvador Allende, also wish to distance themselves from the Venezuelan lieutenant colonel.

I hope that this part of the analysis is correct. Whether or not Bush confronts the rising threat posed by Chavez any time soon, we could stand for Chavez to have some enemies down there.

But there is this caveat. if you look at some of the further discussion of the "banana left," you might note that there's quite a bit of it, and on the rise, from Central America to Mexico. Even more bothersome, there is nary a mention of Mexico's biggest "banana left" player, Lopez Obrador. This makes me worry a little that the article might be on the polyanna-ish or disingenous side.

(7) Other Chinese Moves around the World

As mentioned at one point by Winds of Change, China might look to Africa for some of its natural resources. They are already in Zimbabwe, (and elsewhere in Africa) where they are propping up the regime of racist tyrant Robert Mugabe:

Last year, China stymied US efforts to levy sanctions on Sudan, which supplies nearly 5 percent of China's oil and where the US says genocide has occurred in its Darfur region. And as Zimbabwe becomes more isolated from the West, China has sent crates of T-shirts for ruling-party supporters who will vote in Thursday's parliamentary elections.

In addition, China or its businesses have reportedly:

" provided a radio-jamming device for a military base outside the capital, preventing independent stations from balancing state-controlled media during the election campaign;

" begun to deliver 12 fighter jets and 100 trucks to Zimbabwe's Army amid a Western arms embargo; and

" designed President Robert Mugabe's new 25-bedroom mansion, complete with helipad. The cobalt-blue tiles for its swooping roof, which echoes Beijing's Forbidden City, were a Chinese gift.

China is increasingly making its presence felt on the continent - from building roads in Kenya and Rwanda to increasing trade with Uganda and South Africa. But critics say its involvement in politics could help prop up questionable regimes, like Mr. Mugabe's increasingly autocratic 25-year reign.

Meanwhile, in North Korea (You know, the country everyone is hoping China will use its "leverage" against.), a nuclear reactor is closed, possibly so bomb-making material can be gathered from it.

While there is no way to know with any certainty why the reactor was shut down, it has been North Korea's main means of obtaining plutonium for weapons. The CIA has told Congress it estimates that in the last two years the country turned a stockpile of spent fuel from the same reactor into enough bomb-grade material for more than six nuclear weapons.

Short but chilling article, that one!

And, Oh, I'll put this here just because I'm sick of hearing China call Taiwan an "internal affair." My one-word reaction to its title: "Why?"

And it looks like China might want the pope's multinational organization to become known as the "Roman Cathay-lic Church."

That doesn't sound like a very good deal for the Vatican: Break off ties with Taiwan, where Catholicism is practiced freely by some 300,000 people, and defer to China, where only state-approved churches are permitted. Indeed, the Vatican recognizes Taiwan precisely because China's communist government expelled the Roman Catholic Church in 1951.

(8) China's New Allies, the French

And last, but not least, if all of the above didn't tell you China was up to no good, the fact that the French are cozying up to them would. Glenn Reynolds points to this piece in which the French throw their support behind China's anti-secession law. Instapundit quotes it:

During a state visit to China, French Premier Raffarin threw support behind a law allowing China to attack Taiwan and continued to push for a lift of the EU arms embargo.

At the outset of a three-day visit to China, French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said he supported Beijing's "anti-secession" law on Taiwan, and vowed to keep pushing for an end to an EU arms embargo that could open the door for Paris to sell weapons to the Asian giant.

Raffarin also signed or finalized major business deals with Beijing valued at around $3.2 billion (2.4 billion euros).

A Peter Brookes piece hints at what the French hope to sell to China.

Persistent rumors that the French will sell China Mirage fighters with advanced air-to-air missiles, and maritime patrol aircraft (if the E.U. arms embargo is lifted) has gotten Tokyo's (and Taipei's) rapt attention.

That article, by the way, also sheds some more light on the rivalry between China and Japan.

-- CAV

Updates

4-22-05: Added a hypertext anchor for North Korea nuke reference.
4-24-05: Corrected a few typos and formatting errors.
6-26-05: Added numeric hypertext anchors.