–CHINESE THREAT IS NOT “NEW”
Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 12:28 pm ©NO “NEWS” IN CHINESE
“DIPLOMATIC” THREATS
On January 31, 2010, the Washington Post ran an article which essentially expressed shock and horror at the supposedly new threat posed by Mainland China, presumably due to their leaders’ newfound sense of economic and military security. It struck me as I was reading the referenced piece, precipitated by the Chinese objection to the United States’ agreement to sell $6.4 Billion of military hardware to Formosa (Taiwan), that: 1.) no editor at the Post could possibly be over sixty years of age; or 2.) none of them ever took American History or World History during their college years. The lack of historical context in such a major newspaper was actually startling.
First, the fact that China poses a threat is nothing new at all. All persons who can remember the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon years will recall that there was constant tension between the People’s Republic of China (now just “China”) and the United States over the status of Formosa (Taiwan)–leading sometimes to military exercises by the Chinese in the Formosa Straights and the projection of the U.S. Seventh Fleet into or to points near those waters. These tensions had, of course, commenced immediately after Mao’s troops forced those of Chang Kai Shek onto that small island at the time of the Communist victory over Chang’s “Nationalists” in 1949.
Who can forget the Chinese shelling of Quemoy and Matsu in 1951 which was an attempt to intimidate the Formosan people and test the resolve of the Western powers? Or the occasional stationing of unusual numbers of troops and of missiles that could reach Formosa adjacent to the straits? The Chinese were a constant, major menace to world peace during the early years following Mao’s victory, and then later during both the Korean “Conflict” and the Viet Nam War.
The Mainland Chinese have always maintained that Formosa (Taiwan) was still a legal part of China and but a “recalcitrant province” that would not “toe the line.” Over all of these years although the United States has done business with and supported Formosa, or Taiwan, it has always stopped short of recognizing the “independence” of the island. It was President Nixon’s most dramatic and non-criminal “accomplishment” when he “opened” China to the rest of the world in the early 1970’s–and despite all that has happened and all of the human rights horrors we have seen that we would not have seen otherwise, it was seen at the time as a good political move. This is for the simple reason that even though China is even now at best “opaque”, at least what it does is no longer invisible, and we still have some idea of what is going on behind what we used to call the “Bamboo Curtain.”
Secondly, the United States has been more responsible than any other nation in the World in bringing China from the Seventeenth into the Twenty-First Century. United States businesses increased their own net incomes substantially by lowering U.S. labor costs and shipping jobs to China and other southeastern Asian nations beginning shortly after the “door” was opened and have thereby substantially depressed and weakened our labor force and manufacturing base. Sadly, self-serving subsequent Administrations of both parties have from time to time maintained that shipping jobs overseas was not a negative since we would simply “retrain” our labor to understand and operate computers and convert to a more relaxed “service economy,” rather than an industrial economy. The point of course, really the excuse, was that we would have the Chinese do the heavy lifting for us!! But, clearly, through it all the United States is the Nation most responsible for the development of China’s modern industrial base and enabling China to become a wide international “player” and military threat today.
To me, China is indeed scary. It probably is not now terribly important how it became so powerful both economically and militarily, but I personally cannot forget our continual political indifference to their progress over the years, combined with our emphasis upon prosperity and the bottom line to the exclusion of our safety and the threat the Chinese have seemingly posed to us during most of my lifetime.
There is an interesting, somewhat funny and clearly ironic anecdote this all brings back to mind. I moved to Rogers, Arkansas, in April 1997. One of my new friends took one afternoon to give me a guided tour of this medium-sized City in “booming” Northwest Arkansas, in his Ford F-150. During the tour at one point we went we went to the “Pinnacle Hills” subdivision, a gated community with homes starting at a square foot minimum of over four thousand square feet. Homes that were then selling for $400,000 were selling for over $1,000,000 before the housing bubble burst in 2007 and 2008, but with that occurrence affecting everything “real estate,” I truly have no current idea of relative values!
But the point is that when my friend stopped the F-150 on “Razorback Road” where it runs alongside the thirteenth fairway, he asked me to look out at all of those “giant” homes!!! He said he meant “the really big ones”….not just the little 4,000 sq. ft. relative “hovels.” I was then informed that after “Mr. Sam” (Walton for the uninitiated) died in 1992, many of the Wal-Mart senior executives (Rogers is “next door” to Wal-Mart’s International headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas,) started building those “mansions” out in Pinnacle Hills since they were for the first time in a situation where “Mr. Sam” would not rail at them for being overly pretentious. And, too, he said most of the “really big ones” were started within two years of Mr. Walton’s death.
The relevance? One of Mr. Sam’s most famous business tenets was that Wal-Mart would never buy and sell goods manufactured outside of the United States. That was back during the big “Buy American” campaigns of the 1980’s initiated in an attempt to save American jobs. I suggest that if one goes into any Wal-Mart today, or almost any retail outlet you can think of anywhere in the United States, at least seven or eight out of ten manufactured products one sees will have been made in other countries–half or more in China. I feel certain that “Mr. Sam” has turned over in his grave many, many times since he died because of the actions of both his Company and his Country in this regard and the effect such has had on the World economy.
Don Switzer
Rogers, Arkansas
(c) February 1, 2010
Tags: "Nationalists", $6.4 Billion, 1949, 2010, Arkansas, Bamboo Curtain, Bentonville, Buy American, Chang Kai Shek, Chinese military power threat, Communist China, eISENHOWER, Ford F-150, Formosa, Formosa Straits, housing bubble, Human rights, industrial base, island, January 31, Johnson, Kennedy, Korean Conflict, Mainland China, Mao, Mao Tse Tung, Matsu, Military hardware, Mr. Sam, Nixon, People's Republic of China, Pinnacle Hills, Quemoy, Rogers, Sam Walton, Service economy, Seventh Fleet, Southeastern Asia, Taiwan, Truman, U.S. Labor Costs, United States, Viet Nam, wal-mart, War, Washington Post
