Little Laogai On The Zambesi

People's "Liberation" Army of Communist China throws Zimbabwe an economic lifeline instruments of repression…gets blood diamonds in return.

‘You can write 1,000 stories, and print them 1,000 times, but it won’t make any difference,’ smirked the [unnamed Zimbabwean] official. ‘We have all the diamonds, so we have all the weapons — and we will kill anyone who tries to take anything from us.’ 

During an hour-long ­conversation, the intelligence source…also admitted that, without the Chinese pact, the ruling junta would have been driven from power. ‘But now we have all the guns we need,’ he said.

Winning hearts and minds by exporting the North Korean model.  Someday this'll all end in tears for the Chinese.

H/t to Instapundit.

Cheese Commercials Which “Hurt The Feelings Of The Chinese People”

After Zhongnanhai watches these Panda's are jerks! ads, can a major diplomatic row between Beijing and Cairo be far behind?

(Those living in countries bordering China will probably see a LOT of subtext in these ads.)

UPDATE:  The original link, which has a larger player screen.

Drill, Baby, Drill?

Speculation that China may begin unilaterally drilling in a gas field, the ownership of which is disputed with Japan.  And that Japan may therefore follow suit.

All this is contingent on whether Beijing is lying or telling the truth about the purpose of some heavy equipment they've moved into the area — which it claims is simply for maintainence work.

UPDATE (Sep 19/10):  Starting to look like the Chinese Communist government was lying.  Aerial reconnaisance photos of the machinery appear to show that it's drilling equipment.

UPDATE #2:  Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara is quoted as saying, "Territorial disputes do not exist in this region."

In your dreams, pal.  Wherever China's borders lie, there's a dispute to be had.

UPDATE (Sep 20/10):  Rather than aping China's infantile behavior, Japan may instead take the case to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.  Good for them.

Pack Hunters

"You are an excellent tactician Captain. You let your second in command attack, while you sit and watch for weakness."

-Khan Noonien Singh, ST:TOS

Perhaps that's the only explanation I have for China's relatively mild reaction to the recent incident off the coast of Japan's Senkaku Islands.  I mean, think about it:  Japan arrests a P.R.C. fishing boat captain for violating Japanese waters, and what does Beijing do?

It blusters, dresses down the Japanese ambassador a few times, cancels a few underwater resource meetings, and sends a SINGLE fishery escort vessel.  (For good measure, it also leaves open the possibility that it "may not be able" to control anti-Japanese mob action.)

A relatively measured response, given that it's Communist China we're talking about.

Shortly thereafter though, Taiwan does a curious thing.  Remember, absolutely none of its mariners are cooling their heels in Japanese detention.  Yet despite this, President Ma Ying-jeou reacts far more militantly than the P.R.C., making the "independent" decision to dispatch not one, but twelve — 12! — coast guard ships to the Japanese islands.

Like the man said, the second-in-command plays the heavy.

While the boss sits back, watching for weakness.

Khan Noonien Singh (played by Ricardo Montalban). From Star Trek: The Original Series.

(Khan image from Zaphodsheads.spaces.live.com)

UPDATE:  The Chinese might be breaking their pledge not to drill in a disputed undersea gas field.  This, we don't know for sure, yet.

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Madman Ma Orders 12 Armed Taiwanese Ships To Violate Japanese Waters

Story at the Taipei Times.  The press in Taiwan is still mum though, on how much the irredentist president's gunboat diplomacy has cost the nation — not only in precious taxpayer NT dollars, but in squandered international credibility as well.

One need not speculate what world reaction would have been had Ma instead dispatched 12 Taiwanese coast guard vessels into CHINESE waters.  So that a "civilian" fishing boat could attempt to raise the Republic of China flag on P.R.C. soil.  Because the answer is clear:  the world would have regarded it as an outrageously dangerous provocation.

A very REAL provocation, quite unlike any of the phony "provocations" the previous Chen administration was accused of.

UPDATE:  Citing irrelevant history, Beijing's mouthpiece newspaper in Taiwan urges Japan to quietly give in to the divinely-ordained territorial encroachments of the KMT-Chinese Communist Party alliance. 

Saw THAT comin'…

UPDATE #2:  Japan's ambassador to China has reportedly informed the Chinese government that Beijing should "take the necessary measures to avoid a worsening of the situation."

Good for him.  I'm rooting for scrappy little Japan the way I used to for Taiwan.  (Before the KMT  surrendered body-and-soul to the Chinese Communist Empire, that is.)

Taiwan's former KMT chairman Lien Chan shakes hands with Chinese Communist dictator, Hu Jintao

(Hu Jintao & his "very special" KMT friend.  Image from Life Magazine.)

UPDATE #3:  Coming soon:  A Tiananmen Square near you.  Courtesy of Supreme Leader Ma Ying-jeou and the KMT Party.  Uppity Taiwanese, beware.

Taiwanese who protested against Chen Yunlin (Communist China's negotiator) beaten by KMT-controlled Taiwanese police

(Taiwanese victim of the Chinese Nationalist Party police-riot of 2008.  Image from the Taipei Times)

UPDATE #4:  Perhaps I was too hasty in dismissing the relevance of the history the China Post presented.  Because the Beijing - Taipei axis certainly seems busy manufacturing "incidents" and pretexts for war in 2010 the very same way Imperial Japan did in the 1930s…

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Give Chinese Ultranationalists An Inch, And They’ll Take An Isle

Japan prevents Taiwanese fishing boat under R.O.C. coast guard protection from laying claim to Japan's Senkaku Islands.

There's Taiwan's revanchist president, Ma Ying-jeou, still trying to stir the pot.  Not for him, the blessings of peace.  Or a once-a-year attempt to join the U.N. 

Instead, a once-a-year provocation of Japan (almost like clockwork) over a few specks in the ocean is more his style.

Funny though, how we never hear of Taiwanese fishing boats trying to lay claim to islands owned by the P.R.C.  No, just Japan.  That, despite the Chinese Nationalist Party's insistence that ALL of China belongs to the R.O.C…

Why is that, I wonder?

More On Sha Zhukang, China’s Top Diplomat

From 2007, in the archives of The Onion:

These special envoys, they've never seen anything like me. I'm a bona fide, high-ranking ambassador- and lady-killer. Give me just one meeting with the Brazilian Commission on Women's Rights, and I promise institutional sexism won't be the only thing they'll be moaning about all night.

 

More Senkaku Fallout

1)  China finds the excuse it needed to avoid signing a gas field treaty with Japan.

2)  What's your's is mine:  Beijing orders a Japanese coast guard ship to stop surveying — in Japan's own Exclusive Economic Zone.

3)  War & rumors of war:  Chinese dispatch quasi-military ship to the Senkaku islands.  At the same time a Hong Kong group will charter a Taiwanese fishing vessel to also make a trip to the Japanese-owned islands.  Convenient timing.

[That last story also mentions that Captain Ramboat's grandmother passed away in China during his incarceration for violating Japanese waters.  Which is sure to calm the passions of Chinese jingoists.]

4)  Taiwanese KMT legislator fans the flames: "“Without government support on both sides of the Strait, efforts by civilian associations of [Taiwan, China and Hong Kong] alone will not be enough and will be to no avail [for Taiwan to help seize the Senkaku Islands from Japan]."

Er, just what are the odds that that "civilian association" [Hong Kong's "Action Committee for Defending the Diaoyu Islands"] is actually a Chinese Communist Party front group?  Leading everybody down the garden path to war?