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Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

rshowalter - 08:29pm Apr 22, 2001 EST (#2524 of 2526)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

The intellectuals and reporters of THE NEW YORK TIMES often do stunningly good and creative work

(everything Emily Eakin puts out, for instance)

and an old China hand and ace reporter did a fine piece, that ought to change American thinking, in today's THE WEEK IN REVIEW

"FRUITS OF DEMOCRACY Guess Who's a Chinese Nationalist Now? by NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/22/weekinreview/22KRIS.html

It has a fine picture caption:

In Shanghai, a headline reads: "The Unites States Acts Wildly in Asia." Many Chinese would agree.

The article explains a major set of facts:

" As China has become more open in recent years, allowing citizens to tap out their thoughts in Internet chat rooms or even call them in to talk radio shows, public opinion has come to matter more. Ultimately, this may make China more complex, nationalistic and obdurate. Think of France, cubed.

. . . . . .

" This growing Chinese nationalism did not arise by accident. In the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown on the student democracy movement, Chinese leaders consciously cultivated nationalism as a new glue to unite the country. Communism was discredited, so President Jiang Zemin and others used the education system and the propaganda apparatus to nurture a prickly national pride and suspicion of the outside world. As He Xin, a commentator with close ties to hard-liners, said at the time: "The new unifying force in China is patriotism."

" Wu Jiaxiang, a former senior official who was imprisoned after Tiananmen and now lives in Boston, puts it differently. "Chinese nationalism is something that the Communist Party started after Tiananmen," he said. "They use nationalism to replace Communism. They invented it. There was some in the 1980's, but it has become much stronger since the 1990's."

" The upshot was that the government toned down its propaganda about the virtues of socialism — which nobody believed anyway, . . . . . — and focused on warnings about the duplicitous and predatory West. Those warnings fell on fertile ground, partly because China has been pushed around, plundered and carved up by one country after another, ever since Britain went to war with China in 1839, in part to force it to buy opium.

. . . .

" Nationalism is very dangerous for the Communist Party," said Mr. Wu, the former senior official. "Because after you've created it, it grows stronger and stronger on its own until it is difficult to control."

But at the same time, China isn't a militarily expansionist nation at all.

If only the US military and government generally had the word about this.

rshowalter - 08:30pm Apr 22, 2001 EST (#2525 of 2526)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

The situation Kristof reports makes nonsense out of a great deal of our Asia policy (such as it is.) And the new facts are very promising for future peace, and reasonable discord for trading purposes.

(Who says we have to love each other?)

CHINA HAS ALREADY DONE AWAY WITH THE OLD CHINESE COMMUNIST SYSTEM -- AND SHE NEEDS TO EXPLAIN IT, AND RATIONALIZE THE DECISION MADE, FOR HERSELF INTERNALLY, AND FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD.

A very good, very common pattern for successful human sociotechnical function is as follows:

"Get scared .... take a good look ..... get organized ..... fix it .... recount so all concerned are "reading from the same page ...... go on to other things."

Now, the Chinese have taken the first three steps completely and competently (though, for a complex sociotechnical system, these steps are ongoing in many different interactions of detail.) They are well along in the job of fixing the problems of their communist past. But they have not finished with the fixing, nor recounted what they've done in consistent, beautiful ways, that they and we can understand.

If they did, essentially all reasons for military tension between China and the rest of the world would cease, and reintegration of Taiwan, in the ways that matter to the people involved, should follow in due course.

rshowalter - 08:37pm Apr 22, 2001 EST (#2526 of 2526)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

lunarchick 4/22/01 7:41pm

China could get farther along in this direction if she gave more clear thought to the aesthetics of her actions and press reports. When she fabricates and slants news, it is ugly and gets in the way of progress.

It also tends to dishonor her, and she cares very much about, is very prickly about, her sense of honor.

I once suggested that Putin's people might learn a lot, if they could get guidance and suggestions - not to defer to, but to consider, from the Queen of England, and the Privy Council -- on what, in the long pull, is beautiful, and what ugly, for a great nation.

The Chinese might have some things to learn by doing the same thing. If China could be more beautiful on her own terms, and in terms of others -- all involved would be happier, and there would be more harmony, prosperity, and peace.

When China tries to shame the United States, as she sometimes has reason to want to do, she could do so more effectivly if she cleaned up her own act.

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