“China invaded Vietnam seventeen times. The US invaded Mexico only once, and look at how sensitive Mexicans are about that.”
— Vietnamese diplomat
Category: China – Foreign Policy
Boston School Punishes Exchange Student For Advocating Democracy In China
Chinese Meddling In Burma
How America Should Respond To Chinese Cyberspying
From Technology Review:
There’s still room for escalation. In the indictment they talk about the SOEs [state-owned enterprises] getting this stolen data but didn’t name them. But it’s pretty easy to figure out. These are massive, multibillion dollar companies in China. The next step could be to charge those SOEs. If you want to make an impact you go after the recipient of the information.
Orwellian Quote Of The Week
“Many people believe that a forced war would convince some countries of China’s sincerely peaceful intentions.”
— Chinese Communist Party newspaper, the Global Times
China Attacks Vietnam’s Ships, Steals Vietnam’s Resources: Taiwan Hardest Hit
Last week, China began constructing an oil rig within Vietnamese waters to steal crude from the third world nation. Vietnam responded by sending ships to the area, which were promptly attacked by Chinese vessels:
Chinese ships have been ramming into and firing water cannons at Vietnamese vessels trying to stop Beijing from putting an oil rig in the South China Sea, according to officials and video footage Wednesday, in a dangerous escalation of tensions over waters considered a global flashpoint.
Just today, Vietnamese mistakenly took out their frustration on Taiwanese factories:
Thousands of Vietnamese set fire to foreign factories and rampaged in industrial zones in the south of the country in an angry reaction to Chinese oil drilling in a part of the South China Sea claimed by Vietnam, officials said on Wednesday.
The brunt of Tuesday's violence, one of the worst breakdowns in Sino-Vietnamese relations since the neighbours fought a brief border war in 1979, appears to have been borne by Taiwanese firms in the zones in Binh Duong and Dong Nai provinces that were mistaken for Chinese-owned companies.
[…]
Gates were smashed and rioters set 15 factories on fire…
China cannot expect Vietnamese to respect Chinese property rights while the Chinese blithely violate theirs.
But it's a shame that this perfectly-understandable anger was taken out on the Taiwanese, though. Because (as readers of this blog are no doubt aware): Taiwanese are not Chinese.
In vain, Taiwanese companies themselves belatedly scrambled to communicate this elementary fact:
Some Taiwanese firms had spray-painted messages on the road and across their gates saying "We Support Vietnam" in an effort to distinguish themselves from Chinese enterprises.
Perhaps the current government of Taiwan might have alleviated the situation if had spent less time pretending to be China, and concentrated its efforts on sending the message that Taiwan is a completely different country altogether.
Without such efforts, Taiwan will always be unjustly blamed for the crimes of the Chinese. And the Taiwanese government will be forced to pay to evacuate its citizens whenever tempers erupt over cases of China's villainy.
As Aesop might've said:
Those who impersonate international outlaws are often mistaken for international outlaws.
UPDATE: You speak the truth, sir!
“We have to establish a distinct identity [from China],” Mr. [Antonio] Chiang said. “Or not only will this happen in Vietnam, but other countries, too.”
UPDATE (May 18/2014): Others see Taiwan's One China policy as a contributing factor.
Chinese Plotting To Steal Arctic Resources
"All your resources are belong to us." Deutsche Welle has the story on the Communist thieves of Zhongnanhai:
Five countries are considered “Arctic states” – Canada, the US, Russia, Norway and Denmark (along with Greenland and the Faeroe Islands). Finland, Sweden and Iceland are also members of the Arctic Council which deals with the future development of the North Pole region. China, Japan, South Korea and the European Union are trying to achieve permanent observer status.
[…]
"Countries closer to the Arctic, such as Iceland, Russia, Canada, and a few other European countries may tend to wish the Arctic were private or that they had priority to develop it," Cui Hongjian, head of the European department of the China Institute for International Studies, told reporters before Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to Europe. "But China insists that the Arctic belongs to everyone just like the moon."
Small wonder China finds itself hated by all its neighbors.
Hat tip: Instapundit
China Ponders Putin’s Georgian & Crimean Precedents
Is Vladimir Putin just about the world's greatest fool?
There is, however, one country with an imperial past and a renewed craving for empire that has territorial ambitions which make of it a threat to Russia, and that country is China…The majority of those who live there [Siberia] today are not Russian. Many of them are Chinese who have journeyed north in search of well-paid work; and China, which is just across the border from Siberia, is an economic juggernaut increasingly desperate for resources of the very sort that are found in abundance in Siberia.
Vladimir Putin should think hard about the precedent he is setting in the Crimea. The day may come when China does to Russia in Siberia what he is trying to do right now to the Ukraine in the Crimea. Putin's government piously states that its only concern is to protect the majority Russian population in the Crimea from the Tatars and the Ukrainians there. China, in time, will say the like about the Chinese in Siberia. And when that day comes, he will have alienated everyone of any significance who might otherwise have rallied to Russia's defense. [Emphasis added]
More on Putin's folly.
The Chinese Aren’t Threatening Europe
China has made a major diplomatic faux pas by illustrating its Moon Rover exhibit with a stock image of a nuclear mushroom cloud over Europe.
(Sinofascist dreams of nuclear holocaust. Image from TheWeek.com)
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Communist China Demands Britain Return Artifacts
From News.com.au:
One of the most popular questions [posed to British Prime Minister David Cameron on the Chinese Twitter copycat-site] was posted by a prominent Chinese think-tank, the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, which is headed by former vice-premier Zeng Peiyan and includes many top government officials and leading economists among its members.
"When will Britain return the illegally plundered artefacts?" the organisation asked, referring to 23,000 items in the British Museum which it says were looted by the British army.
Interesting question. While the Foreigner is not necessarily opposed to returning plundered artifacts, he does wonder when China will volunteer to return all the tribute it illegally plundered from foreign countries during its Imperial period.
To take but a single example:
Slaves from tributary countries were sent to Tang China by various groups: the Cambodians sent albinos, the Uyghurs sent Turkic Karluks, the Japanese sent Ainu, and Turkish and Tibetan girls were also sent to China.
Anyone care to monetize the value of all those slaves in 2013 dollars?