Anyone even casually acquainted with me knows that one of my passions in life is Duke basketball (men's, of course). I mean, come on, the Duke logo is my Facebook profile pic for the better part of each winter. Well, you can imagine my delight this past week, as the seemingly endless, summertime, "no sports worth watching" doldrums (love baseball but can't watch it on TV...more spitting and genitalia adjusting than sport-specific actions during the three hours invested in viewing a game) wound down toward college football season, when ESPNU televised three of the Blue Devils' four-game "friendship" tour of Asia (I laughed at the conclusion of the third Chinese game when the announcer said, "Well, that concludes Duke's tour of Asia...join us as the Blue Devils travel to the United Arab Emirates for a game at 1:30 PM on Thursday"...uh-h-h-h...dude, the UAE is in Asia).
As I mentioned in my last post analyzing Duke's sweep of its three game set with China's junior national team, I was struck by an image of the two teams side by side at mid-court during a pre-game photo opp...those Chinese guys were freakin' huge! I mean, Duke has one of the biggest teams that we've had in years, with six players taller than 6'8", but it appeared to me that man for man, position by position the Chinese were taller, longer, bigger, thicker. And as the games themselves unfolded, even though my Dukies prevailed, of course, (whenever my wife asks if Duke won, my response is always, "We played?"), the games were very, very hard fought and competitive, at times more like football in their physical nature than hoops. In the sport of basketball, it seems evident that, in terms of physicality and skill, the Chinese, as well as much of the rest of the world as evidenced by Lithuania's victory over the USA in this summer's World University Games and by the increasingly high numbers of foreign players drafted by NBA teams over their U.S. collegiate counterparts, have closed the competition gap. In other words, the bloom is off the world's awe of us, as well as off our dominance of the game. Frankly, it also occurred to me while watching the often rugged first contest, this days before the brouhaha that erupted between Georgetown, on its own apparently, "not so much friendship" tour, and a Chinese club team, that if a fight were to break out the good guys (the Dukies, of course) might be in quite a pickle. From the video that I saw of the Georgetown brawl, the Hoyas seemed to be getting the worst of it, even before some chopstick-wielding, water bottle throwing Chinese fans got involved in the melee.
Anyway, to my point...watching and then reflecting upon China's obvious and somewhat troubling ascension in basketball served as a segue into my musing about the entire myriad of misgivings that I have about the "Big Red Machine" of modern geopolitics, about how much it has progressed from its humble, "radish communist" origins of the early century past, about its present position upon the greater world stage, and about its plans and aspirations for the future. As I did so, I began to reflect upon that which I already knew about China, as well as upon the numerous and often odious reports that I have heard and read about the Ginko Pinkos (I realize this is neither PC nor in compliance with "apology diplomacy", but then again, neither am I) in the news media in recent months and weeks.
Here's what I know. China has, by far, the largest population in the world, currently estimated at just a smidgen (as billions go) under seven billion people. Even with the globe's third largest population (keep in mind, old folks like me, that the USSR has been bye-bye for some time now, so we've bumped up in the rankings), the United States' sum stands at a relatively paltry 312 million. Now, even with my very limited mathematical skills, I can cipher that the Red Chinese outnumber us by about 22 to 1. History has been unkind to those facing these kinds of odds. While the Greeks certainly did themselves proud for a few days versus incredible odds at the Battle of Thermopylae, they ultimately were slaughtered. The South stretched the Civil War out for four years before succumbing to a 4 to 1 disadvantage (that is, after eliminating Southern slaves from the equation). In other words, in war, if it ever came to that with China, God forbid, this kind of disparity in human resources bodes poorly for those on the "1" side of such a ratio. Besides, Americans should recall, but probably don't, that while the "Chosin Few" valiantly fought their way through the bugle blowing, gong sounding Chinese throngs that encircled them as they pushed toward the Yalu River in late 1950 they were largely fighting for their survival and were subsequently evacuated as the entirety of UN (largely US) forces were completely driven from North Korea by the "yellow horde" early in the Korean War. Like I said, them's tough odds.
Other attributes of the no longer "sleeping dragon" serve as harbingers of our need for increased angst regarding China and its aspirations and goals for the future. In addition to its massive populus, China is also the third largest nation in the world in land area, in a virtual tie with the US for that slot, and like us is rich in natural resources. In addition, this behemoth of both natural and human resource riches is centrally managed by the second longest functioning Communist regime in existence. While communism admittedly has a poor track record of producing the kind of prosperity that leads to high rankings in standard of living for its practitioners, recent historical exemplars, such as the phoenix-like rise from the ashes of WWI and shackles of Versailles by Germany under Nazism and the relatively meteoric ascension from feudalism by both the former Soviet Union and post WW II China, clearly suggest that totalitarianism and centralization can be effective instruments for driving the rapid development of general economic, military, and geopolitical power. Unfortunately, totalitarianism also has a rather loathsome and unpropitious track record for meting out oppression, brutality, and terror upon its own people. In my mind, if a government can butcher its own with such wanton disregard and violence, it is wicked scary to imagine how they would treat foreigners who might obstruct the path to its achieving national and cultural greatness. What about the Chinese people themselves? I believe that the Chinese, like people everywhere, are a people of inherent goodness, possessing hopes and dreams for personal and family happiness and well-being. However, they are also a proud people, a people whose collective memory still aches from the humiliation of a century and a half of foreign intervention, invasion, and usurpation. Their government perpetuates the cumulative memory of this national shame by instilling in school children a rabid love of Chinese sovereignty and by indoctrinating them with a modernized spirit of the Boxers, the xenophobic, ultra-nationalist Chinese cult of the late 19th century which hated and rose up against foreign encroachment and colonialism in the motherland. In terms of their own aspirations for their nation, the Chinese people, much like Americans of the past, I am afraid, believe in striving for excellence. Their drive and determination might be well characterized through a couple of popular Confucianisms (while the Communists originally attempted to eradicate most traditional and competing dogma, they have selectively borrowed from Confucius for propaganda purposes in recent years, much the same as antebellum Southerners drew upon biblical scriptures to rationalize the institution of slavery): "It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop" and "Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart." It would seem that, with this kind of impetus, China is moving steadily, as does the ancient Huang He toward the Yellow Sea, toward reaching its destiny among the powers of the world.
Now, put aside for a moment, if you will, the fact that China holds about ten percent of the our national debt, making it our largest foreign creditor, a chilling actuality that candidate Obama lamented over while criticizing and blaming George Bush when he still was president in 2008 and that ironically served as a key bone of contention and concern in the recent debt ceiling debate which he helped to create (and then went largely MIA on during its climax). What other recent actions, developments, and events should serve as red flags regarding the looming threat to us posed by the Middle Kingdom? Try this little experiment, make a t-chart and then go around your house writing down household items in the left-hand column and the country where they were manufactured on the right. You will quickly understand where I am going with this. China's economy grew by a robust 10.3% last year while our own staggered along at comparatively anemic 2.83 % during 2010. Given that about 10% of all the world's consumers are Chinese, this is not a very reassuring trend in terms of our maintaining our status as the world's chief economic power. Another flare?...rare earth minerals. What the hell are those you might say? While I am not scientifically inclined either, I know that they are hard to mine elements that are critical components of an increasing number of the technological thingies that we use in everyday life. Well, China produces about 95 % of the world's rare earth minerals, and over the last few years, it has reduced exports of these precious and important elements by 40%, virtually holding these metals hostage in the face of a growing demand for them by the rest of the world. Need more? Back in May, the Chinese, working in cahoots with our friends, the Pakistanis, accessed our formerly secret and incredibly expensive stealth helicopter technology that was utilized, but unfortunately not completely destroyed, in the successful US raid which culminated in the assassination of Usama Bin Laden. As recently as this month, the "Blue Army," China's self-admitted, elite "cyber warfare" force suspected of repeated encroachments into computer networks around the world, including our own, in recent years, was accused of a recent series of hacks into the systems of over seventy organizations and governments, including that of the United Nations. That ain't all. Also earlier this month, the Chinese announced that their very first aircraft carrier was beginning sea trials, foreshadowing, perhaps, an all-out Chinese push to minimize, negate, and perhaps completely reverse one of the strategic, military advantages that the U.S. has held over the Chinese, its naval and air superiority, a move that could provide China with a gambit to eventually squeeze America out of its Far East presence altogether. And finally? The last straw? Just last week there was that whole playing the Blue Devils way too close in basketball thing...now that just hits too close to home!!!
Taken together, all of this leads me to the following conclusions. The Chinese want to excel...at everything. The Chinese want to dominate...everything and everyone...including us. In fact, the Chinese want to be us...not us necessarily, but where we have been, where we are...and perhaps more. Methinks that controversial commercial produced by the Citizens Against Government Waste in which a Chinese professor a few years down the road makes his students laugh when, regarding the decline of the US and other past empires in history, he observed, " "Of course, we owned most of their debt, so now they work for us" is probably not so far from reality. I think that the Chines are NOT our friends, and unfortunately, that guns rather than butter may eventually wind up being the unavoidable, bitter, and, perhaps, deadly tonic to settle our stomachs. The scary part of that proposition is that, given China's overwhelming numerical superiority and massive potential for economic growth, power, and influence (not to discount the historically poor track record of command economics over the long haul) MAD, or mutually assured destruction due to our both possessing nuclear arms, may not provide the deterrent to conflict with the Chinese that it did during the Cold War with the Soviet Union.
In my view, we face but a couple of choices regarding the Chinese. Choice one? Compete and compete hard at every turn and in every facet with the Chinese, as though our very national sovereignty and existence depends upon it, because it well may. I think, for instance, that our taking steps backwards militarily, whether it be negotiating nuclear arms agreements with the Russians or allowing the "Debt Dozen" to gut our military spending, is sheer folly, if not genocide (our own). I think that we must initiate massive "Made in America" initiatives to bring manufacturing and jobs back home. Our other course of action is to do nothing, to stick our heads in the sand, to continue to bow in deference to their leaders, and to continue to borrow willy-nilly from their coffers in effort to feed our own apparently insatiable susceptibility for spending.
If we choose this latter path of inaction, if we choose to remain complacent in the face of their scary growth and malevolent machinations, if we fall deeper into debt period, and especially to the Chinese, and if grow even softer than we have become already, then I fear that President Obama will get his wish...we will become just like the Europeans, geopolitical "has beens" and "wannabes", mere shells of our former great and proud selves. We will, as I have postulated previously, become China's lap dog, become like little Shih Tzus drooling upon the knees of the giant of the Far East, the superpower of the twenty-first century and beyond. Now, don't get me wrong...Shih Tsus are cute and all, but I don't want to be one. If I were a dog, if I could choose to be any dog I want, I would never choose to be anyone's neurotic, yapping, prissy little lap dog...not me...I prefer to be the big dog...and like that ancient Chinese proverb (just kidding) says,"You can run with the big dogs, or sit on the porch (or lap) and bark"...calling all Americans!..like we Georgia fans like to say, "Let the big dog eat"...'cause we don't speak wanna' speak no "whine-ese" here...Woof!...
As I mentioned in my last post analyzing Duke's sweep of its three game set with China's junior national team, I was struck by an image of the two teams side by side at mid-court during a pre-game photo opp...those Chinese guys were freakin' huge! I mean, Duke has one of the biggest teams that we've had in years, with six players taller than 6'8", but it appeared to me that man for man, position by position the Chinese were taller, longer, bigger, thicker. And as the games themselves unfolded, even though my Dukies prevailed, of course, (whenever my wife asks if Duke won, my response is always, "We played?"), the games were very, very hard fought and competitive, at times more like football in their physical nature than hoops. In the sport of basketball, it seems evident that, in terms of physicality and skill, the Chinese, as well as much of the rest of the world as evidenced by Lithuania's victory over the USA in this summer's World University Games and by the increasingly high numbers of foreign players drafted by NBA teams over their U.S. collegiate counterparts, have closed the competition gap. In other words, the bloom is off the world's awe of us, as well as off our dominance of the game. Frankly, it also occurred to me while watching the often rugged first contest, this days before the brouhaha that erupted between Georgetown, on its own apparently, "not so much friendship" tour, and a Chinese club team, that if a fight were to break out the good guys (the Dukies, of course) might be in quite a pickle. From the video that I saw of the Georgetown brawl, the Hoyas seemed to be getting the worst of it, even before some chopstick-wielding, water bottle throwing Chinese fans got involved in the melee.
Anyway, to my point...watching and then reflecting upon China's obvious and somewhat troubling ascension in basketball served as a segue into my musing about the entire myriad of misgivings that I have about the "Big Red Machine" of modern geopolitics, about how much it has progressed from its humble, "radish communist" origins of the early century past, about its present position upon the greater world stage, and about its plans and aspirations for the future. As I did so, I began to reflect upon that which I already knew about China, as well as upon the numerous and often odious reports that I have heard and read about the Ginko Pinkos (I realize this is neither PC nor in compliance with "apology diplomacy", but then again, neither am I) in the news media in recent months and weeks.
Here's what I know. China has, by far, the largest population in the world, currently estimated at just a smidgen (as billions go) under seven billion people. Even with the globe's third largest population (keep in mind, old folks like me, that the USSR has been bye-bye for some time now, so we've bumped up in the rankings), the United States' sum stands at a relatively paltry 312 million. Now, even with my very limited mathematical skills, I can cipher that the Red Chinese outnumber us by about 22 to 1. History has been unkind to those facing these kinds of odds. While the Greeks certainly did themselves proud for a few days versus incredible odds at the Battle of Thermopylae, they ultimately were slaughtered. The South stretched the Civil War out for four years before succumbing to a 4 to 1 disadvantage (that is, after eliminating Southern slaves from the equation). In other words, in war, if it ever came to that with China, God forbid, this kind of disparity in human resources bodes poorly for those on the "1" side of such a ratio. Besides, Americans should recall, but probably don't, that while the "Chosin Few" valiantly fought their way through the bugle blowing, gong sounding Chinese throngs that encircled them as they pushed toward the Yalu River in late 1950 they were largely fighting for their survival and were subsequently evacuated as the entirety of UN (largely US) forces were completely driven from North Korea by the "yellow horde" early in the Korean War. Like I said, them's tough odds.
Other attributes of the no longer "sleeping dragon" serve as harbingers of our need for increased angst regarding China and its aspirations and goals for the future. In addition to its massive populus, China is also the third largest nation in the world in land area, in a virtual tie with the US for that slot, and like us is rich in natural resources. In addition, this behemoth of both natural and human resource riches is centrally managed by the second longest functioning Communist regime in existence. While communism admittedly has a poor track record of producing the kind of prosperity that leads to high rankings in standard of living for its practitioners, recent historical exemplars, such as the phoenix-like rise from the ashes of WWI and shackles of Versailles by Germany under Nazism and the relatively meteoric ascension from feudalism by both the former Soviet Union and post WW II China, clearly suggest that totalitarianism and centralization can be effective instruments for driving the rapid development of general economic, military, and geopolitical power. Unfortunately, totalitarianism also has a rather loathsome and unpropitious track record for meting out oppression, brutality, and terror upon its own people. In my mind, if a government can butcher its own with such wanton disregard and violence, it is wicked scary to imagine how they would treat foreigners who might obstruct the path to its achieving national and cultural greatness. What about the Chinese people themselves? I believe that the Chinese, like people everywhere, are a people of inherent goodness, possessing hopes and dreams for personal and family happiness and well-being. However, they are also a proud people, a people whose collective memory still aches from the humiliation of a century and a half of foreign intervention, invasion, and usurpation. Their government perpetuates the cumulative memory of this national shame by instilling in school children a rabid love of Chinese sovereignty and by indoctrinating them with a modernized spirit of the Boxers, the xenophobic, ultra-nationalist Chinese cult of the late 19th century which hated and rose up against foreign encroachment and colonialism in the motherland. In terms of their own aspirations for their nation, the Chinese people, much like Americans of the past, I am afraid, believe in striving for excellence. Their drive and determination might be well characterized through a couple of popular Confucianisms (while the Communists originally attempted to eradicate most traditional and competing dogma, they have selectively borrowed from Confucius for propaganda purposes in recent years, much the same as antebellum Southerners drew upon biblical scriptures to rationalize the institution of slavery): "It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop" and "Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart." It would seem that, with this kind of impetus, China is moving steadily, as does the ancient Huang He toward the Yellow Sea, toward reaching its destiny among the powers of the world.
Now, put aside for a moment, if you will, the fact that China holds about ten percent of the our national debt, making it our largest foreign creditor, a chilling actuality that candidate Obama lamented over while criticizing and blaming George Bush when he still was president in 2008 and that ironically served as a key bone of contention and concern in the recent debt ceiling debate which he helped to create (and then went largely MIA on during its climax). What other recent actions, developments, and events should serve as red flags regarding the looming threat to us posed by the Middle Kingdom? Try this little experiment, make a t-chart and then go around your house writing down household items in the left-hand column and the country where they were manufactured on the right. You will quickly understand where I am going with this. China's economy grew by a robust 10.3% last year while our own staggered along at comparatively anemic 2.83 % during 2010. Given that about 10% of all the world's consumers are Chinese, this is not a very reassuring trend in terms of our maintaining our status as the world's chief economic power. Another flare?...rare earth minerals. What the hell are those you might say? While I am not scientifically inclined either, I know that they are hard to mine elements that are critical components of an increasing number of the technological thingies that we use in everyday life. Well, China produces about 95 % of the world's rare earth minerals, and over the last few years, it has reduced exports of these precious and important elements by 40%, virtually holding these metals hostage in the face of a growing demand for them by the rest of the world. Need more? Back in May, the Chinese, working in cahoots with our friends, the Pakistanis, accessed our formerly secret and incredibly expensive stealth helicopter technology that was utilized, but unfortunately not completely destroyed, in the successful US raid which culminated in the assassination of Usama Bin Laden. As recently as this month, the "Blue Army," China's self-admitted, elite "cyber warfare" force suspected of repeated encroachments into computer networks around the world, including our own, in recent years, was accused of a recent series of hacks into the systems of over seventy organizations and governments, including that of the United Nations. That ain't all. Also earlier this month, the Chinese announced that their very first aircraft carrier was beginning sea trials, foreshadowing, perhaps, an all-out Chinese push to minimize, negate, and perhaps completely reverse one of the strategic, military advantages that the U.S. has held over the Chinese, its naval and air superiority, a move that could provide China with a gambit to eventually squeeze America out of its Far East presence altogether. And finally? The last straw? Just last week there was that whole playing the Blue Devils way too close in basketball thing...now that just hits too close to home!!!
Taken together, all of this leads me to the following conclusions. The Chinese want to excel...at everything. The Chinese want to dominate...everything and everyone...including us. In fact, the Chinese want to be us...not us necessarily, but where we have been, where we are...and perhaps more. Methinks that controversial commercial produced by the Citizens Against Government Waste in which a Chinese professor a few years down the road makes his students laugh when, regarding the decline of the US and other past empires in history, he observed, " "Of course, we owned most of their debt, so now they work for us" is probably not so far from reality. I think that the Chines are NOT our friends, and unfortunately, that guns rather than butter may eventually wind up being the unavoidable, bitter, and, perhaps, deadly tonic to settle our stomachs. The scary part of that proposition is that, given China's overwhelming numerical superiority and massive potential for economic growth, power, and influence (not to discount the historically poor track record of command economics over the long haul) MAD, or mutually assured destruction due to our both possessing nuclear arms, may not provide the deterrent to conflict with the Chinese that it did during the Cold War with the Soviet Union.
In my view, we face but a couple of choices regarding the Chinese. Choice one? Compete and compete hard at every turn and in every facet with the Chinese, as though our very national sovereignty and existence depends upon it, because it well may. I think, for instance, that our taking steps backwards militarily, whether it be negotiating nuclear arms agreements with the Russians or allowing the "Debt Dozen" to gut our military spending, is sheer folly, if not genocide (our own). I think that we must initiate massive "Made in America" initiatives to bring manufacturing and jobs back home. Our other course of action is to do nothing, to stick our heads in the sand, to continue to bow in deference to their leaders, and to continue to borrow willy-nilly from their coffers in effort to feed our own apparently insatiable susceptibility for spending.
If we choose this latter path of inaction, if we choose to remain complacent in the face of their scary growth and malevolent machinations, if we fall deeper into debt period, and especially to the Chinese, and if grow even softer than we have become already, then I fear that President Obama will get his wish...we will become just like the Europeans, geopolitical "has beens" and "wannabes", mere shells of our former great and proud selves. We will, as I have postulated previously, become China's lap dog, become like little Shih Tzus drooling upon the knees of the giant of the Far East, the superpower of the twenty-first century and beyond. Now, don't get me wrong...Shih Tsus are cute and all, but I don't want to be one. If I were a dog, if I could choose to be any dog I want, I would never choose to be anyone's neurotic, yapping, prissy little lap dog...not me...I prefer to be the big dog...and like that ancient Chinese proverb (just kidding) says,"You can run with the big dogs, or sit on the porch (or lap) and bark"...calling all Americans!..like we Georgia fans like to say, "Let the big dog eat"...'cause we don't speak wanna' speak no "whine-ese" here...Woof!...
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