For years, American officials have claimed the US wants China “to succeed and prosper”. A declassified document reveals that on the contrary, US policy was to “implement a defence strategy capable of … denying China sustained air and sea dominance”.
On January 12, in a revelation reminiscent of the Pentagon Papers, the outgoing Trump administration declassified and released its 2018 national-security document detailing the US strategy for the Indo-Pacific region.
The Pentagon Papers and this latest document were released to influence government policy. The unauthorised release of the former was intended to reverse American policy in Vietnam, while the unusually early release of the Indo-Pacific strategy document appeared to be designed to constrain the policy options of the Biden administration.
Both documents revealed that the US government had systematically lied to Congress and the American people regarding its Asia policy. Ironically, both big lies – 50 years apart – were cover for the same US objective: to contain China.
The document was prepared to meet a congressional requirement to submit a declassified China strategy to lawmakers.
While the US strategy for the Indo-Pacific region is unlikely to survive the Biden administration’s probably more conciliatory, multilateral approach, make no mistake. The ultimate objective will remain the same: maintenance of US primacy in Asia by constraining and containing China.
“Containment” in this context means obstructing China’s rise. The strategy is based on the theory that the US needs a weak China to continue its hegemony in Asia. It is to be accomplished by “establishing military, economic and diplomatic ties with countries adjacent to China’s borders, frustrating China’s own attempt at alliance building and economic partnerships, and the utilization of tariffs, sanctions and lawfare”.
These are all elements of the present US policy – and have been for some time. But for years, American foreign-policy officials and echoing pundits claimed the US was not trying to contain China and that it wanted China “to succeed and prosper”.
This and similar sentiments were the consistent rhetoric of Barack Obama’s administration, including from Obama himself. Anyone suggesting otherwise – including China itself – was berated by US officials and empathetic pundits.
A chief promoter of this strategy, Trump’s secretary of state Mike Pompeo, declared that the Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy was a vision for the region “of free, fair and reciprocal trade, open investment environments, good governance, and freedom of the seas”. It excluded no country and was “open to all who wish to prosper in a free and open future”.
However, the newly released document reveals that on the contrary, the US intent was to “devise and implement a defence strategy capable of … denying China sustained air and sea dominance inside the ‘first island chain’ in a conflict; defending the first island chain nations including Taiwan; and dominating all domains outside the first island chain.”
In other words, the US intends to contain China to maintain its hegemony in the region, including, in particular, in the East China and South China Seas. This explains the more aggressive behaviour there by the US in the Trump era.
The duplicity also involved false statements to friends and partners. At the August 2019 ASEAN-US summit, Pompeo solemnly declared, “Look, we don’t ever ask any Indo-Pacific nations to choose between countries. Our engagement in this region has not been and will not be a zero-sum exercise.” That has now also been revealed to be false.
The document says the strategy has as a goal making the US India’s “preferred partner on security issues”. The US would try to achieve this goal by pushing and pulling India away from its non-aligned status – in China’s eyes if not those of the world.
The document also sees Southeast Asia as an accomplice in Washington’s China-containment policy. It urges the US to “promote and reinforce Southeast Asia and ASEAN’s central role in the region’s security architecture, and encourage it to speak with one voice on key issues”.
That may sound benign, but it is not when it is a key component of the United States’ China-containment strategy. From this document, it is clear that US policy toward Southeast Asia is contingent on the US relationship with China.
Even worse than the lies, the policy was apparently formulated based on cultural bias. In May 2019, the State Department’s director of policy and planning at the time, Kiron Skinner, said US competition with China would be especially bitter because “it’s the first time that we will have a great power competitor that is not Caucasian”.
She also said the US struggle with China was uniquely “a fight with a really different civilization and a different ideology”.
These inaccurate slips of the tongue (the US opponent in World War II, Japan, was certainly a different civilization and ideology) revealed that some in the Trump administration believed the US and China are engaged in a “clash of civilizations”.
In Skinner’s view, China was a “fundamental threat” and there was no hope for cooperation – only a “struggle for domination and thus survival”. Such thinking only plays into the worst scenarios of China’s hardliners and thus could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So now the US has revealed its true intentions toward China and that some observers of US-China relations were right all along. To many, this was just another episode of American duplicity, hypocrisy and inconsistency. Its future avowed foreign-policy positions will be considered in this light.
This is an edited version of an article first published in the Asia Times; 28 January 2021.
Mark J. Valencia is an internationally known maritime policy analyst focused on Asia and currently Adjunct Senior Scholar at the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, Haikou, China. He is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the Huayang Institute for Maritime Cooperation and Ocean Governance, Sanya , China.
Comments
17 responses to “Forked tongues: US duplicity on China revealed”
USA released the tsunami weapon to extract oil in Indonesia. They discovered clathrates and nearly lost the USSN San Francisco. But they doubled down on it and thus we got Fukushima. Two attacks on civilian populations, one while there was a ceasefire.
The USA cannot be trusted.
By revealing this weapon, China got to issue a threat against the USA and to advise Burma, sorry, Myanmar, to move its capital.
The big news is that 5,000 tons of ANFO can produce an earthquake of 6 to 6.3. All that is necessary is to drop these large bombs onto clathrates. Aim them, 3 required, and any city is a target. Most coastal cities are part of the West. How will the USA protect itself?
Those who live off of the USA have taken note and are moving on, elsewhere.
I have always appreciated and enjoyed Professor Valencia’s evidence based contributions and astute analysis. It seem to me that in the race to the top of the economic ranking, the US realises that it is losing the competition to China. The only other option it can use to impede the progress of China is to start a conflict in which it hopes to set China back – this is as far as the logic of the hawks go without factoring the terrible consequences of the contingencies. There is one factor that lays bare the intention of the US; and that is in the fact that the US is among the NFU (No First Use) countries in its nuclear arms policy. They want to reserve the right to use nuclear weapons on any country that dares to challenge its supremacy.
China, on the other hand is known to have consistently called upon the US to sign a bilateral treaty on NFU which it has repeatedly refused. China, from all available reports, has a policy of keeping its nuclear arsenal small. Taking these factors into consideration, we have a picture of China using self-restrain to limit the proliferation of this evil weapon; and has opted instead for trade to improve the lives of its people
and for enhanced cooperation between nations – especially with poorer nations so that they too can improve the lot of their people. This may not have anything to do with altruism but much to do in promoting a mutually beneficial arrangements.
What I cannot avoid seeing is a dying US empire in a quandary about what it sees, in a Trumpian manner, as the theft of its world supremacy. In trying to recover what it sees as its rightful place in the world, it will send its navy, airforce and troops to the Pacific/South China Sea much in the same way as Trump sends his supporters to the capital to create havoc for the legitimate winner of the election/contest. The situation is not an encouraging one (except for the hawks in Australia who, to use a quintessentially Aussie expression, are “thick as two planks”). If the US loses a couple of warships and aircraft carriers to China, there is nothing to stop it from initiating a nuclear war. In which case, the hawks here and the US will have their armageddon moment.
To me, it is regretful that such an improvident attitude of the US towards China is not moderated by Australia which is a unique position to do so as a trusted ally. We should advice them against such foolhardy attitudes and opt instead for cooperation. Instead, we willingly join in the fray whenever we could to aggravate the dangerous situation. The threat of war is not as remote as many complacent people would like to think. I have always felt that war could well arise as a result of an accident. It has happened before in the Taiwan Straits; and fortunately for all, it did not escalate into a full scale one. For this I quote Edward Luce, an American journalist and writer in his book “The threat of Western Liberalism” (2017; published by Abacus):
“Trump’s response was instant: ‘America will not back down!’ Hours later China’s surface-to-air missile defence system shot down a US fighter plane that strayed into Chinese airspace. Trump did not wait for the report. He ordered an instant salvo of punitive missile strikes on China’s naval base on Hainan Island. Within an hour a Chinese nuclear submarine had torpedoed the USS John McCain. The world’s two most powerful country were on the cusp of nuclear war. Another escalation would have tipped it.” (Luce, 2017, p.152).
I have read press reports about an incident involving an American plane being shot down for straying into Chinese air space but was surprised by the US attack on Hainan Island and the torpedoing of the USS John McCain. Such an incident can occur again if the US continues to exert its assertiveness in the SCS, encouraged by the hawks in Australia. I do not see our present set of leaders as independent thinkers but blind followers of the US, a kind of devotion premised on “faith” . The maxim is that if you keep wanting war, you will eventually have it. Unfortunately, an immoderate government and MSM will drag the rest of us, the peace-loving people of Australia, into a conflict in which no one wins.
“China, from all available reports, has a policy of keeping its nuclear
arsenal small. Taking these factors into consideration, we have a
picture of China using self-restrain to limit the proliferation of this
evil weapon; and has opted instead for trade to improve the lives of its
people
and for enhanced cooperation between nations.”
I just can’t agree, TL. You don’t need thousands of nuclear weapons to be a threat. Godfree has gloated on this website time and again that China could destroy every US city within an hour and that its naval forces are vastly superior to the US. I don’t know whether he is right on the latter claim; on the former I am pretty sure he is right, just as the US could destroy every Chinese city. And I trust China’s promise not to make a first strike as much as I trust its promises on trade. Ie, not at all. Nor do I trust the US in the slightest. I still do not expect active war between the two. But if China manages a sustained superiority it will exploit it, as great powers have traditionally done throughout the ages. I don’t know how big chess is in China, but one of the maxims the Chinese definitely understand is that a threat is better than acting on it. No need for war.
If you are concerned about a US plane straying into Chinese air space why are you not concerned about deliberate Chinese provocations, time and again, into Taiwanese air space? I am sure you are not one of the contemptible people who are happy to see up to 25 million Taiwanese slaughtered to satisfy Xi’s ego about Taiwan being part of China. It is a free and democratic nation with a right to self-determination. And you have admitted in the past that there is responsibility on both sides in the tensions between the US and China, but your criticism seems exclusively retained for the former.
Barney, Taiwan is another one of those problems created for others by the US. Korea would not have been a divided nation if not for American interference. How it would turn out if it were left to sort its problems out for itself is a moot question. Vietnam would have been a divided country if the Americans had not capitulated. The emotions invested in Vietnam by the majority of Vietnamese over the unity of their country must have been so strong that that a tiny underdeveloped country could fight so ferociously. I sense that the situation is the same for the Chinese people on both sides of the divide.
I would like to remind the readers again that Taiwan existed only because of the US. When the Nationalist and the Communist fought for control, Chiang Kai Shek lost and fled to Taiwan before the communist under Mao Tse-tung could stage the coup de grace. The Americans protected him . Consequently, hoping that a day will come, with American support, when he could take back the whole of China made Taiwan claim for a long time that China was part of the Republic of China (Taiwan). For this very reason, until the UN recognised mainland China, both the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the People’s Republic of China (mainland China) claimed the other entity as its own.
Very few people who are not Chinese really understand the level of emotion generated by the issue. To the Chinese mind, Taiwan is part of China and vice-versa. Even the greatest of recent heroes of the Chinese people, Zheng Chenggong, who Westerners call “Coxinga,” and who fought to re-established the Ming Dynasty had his military base in Taiwan. By the way, Zheng Chenggong has the same surname as me because Ti is Zheng in Mandarin. We claim the same ancestry. That was the reason my grandfather (he passed away before I was born) was said to be very proud of Coxinga. He was also said to be very proud of Ching Kai Shek. Because Taiwan is an island just opposite the Province of Fujian from where my ancestors emigrated, they speak the same dialect as my family, Hokkien. The majority of the Taiwanese people are Hokkien people.
Another level of complication was generated by the Song sisters. One of the younger of the sisters, Song Mei-Ling was the wife of Ching Kai Shek. She was extremely effective in winning American support for Chiang’s cause. On the other hand, the older sister, Song Qingling stayed behind in China and did great social work for the people. She was highly revered and became at one time (1981?) the Honorary Chairperson of the People’s Republic of China.
Therefore, the issue is a very complicated and sensitive one. I, personally, would not discuss the Taiwan issue with any other Chinese person on either side of the divide. I don’t think that it is my place to take sides on a tragedy that is so profoundly painful to the Chinese people. I doubt many people outside of “Chinese-sphere” can fully appreciate the problem. A real understanding of the issue requires a sensitivity that is rare among humankind. However, one can sense the anger of China and Taiwan whenever the reunification question is mentioned.
Tl, thank you for your thoughtful response. I’m sure you are right that I fail to understand all sorts of nuances – in my latest reply to George, below, I outline the response I have had from Chinese friends who raise it (I do not, like you) – but in the end I cannot think it right that a nation should be annexed against its people’s will. I thought it was wrong in the Crimea, and would be wrong here. To me, it’s as though Australia decided that New Zealand should be a state of Australia and said accept it by 2049 or we invade. I know this parallel works only to a small degree, but that degree is telling.
Yes indeed, the annexation of Crimea against its people’s will (annexed to the Ukraine in 1991) was a great wrong, only corrected in 2014 when its people were given the opportunity to vote freely in a referendum. Their choice, by a huge margin, was secession from the Ukraine and re-incorporation into the Russian Federation.
“How it would turn out if it were left to sort its problems out for itself is a moot question.”
It isn’t a moot point, the likelihood is that a one Korea would be just like NK is now, there is reason to believe otherwise.
There is no evidence to support your claim that most Taiwanese came form Hokkien.
Using fusion weapons does not mean using Uranium or Plutonium. Those metals are used to trigger the Tritium to fuse and explode into a force of neutrons.
There has been, for some time, another trigger: anti matter. Now collected by XB37 and also from colliders. These are the famous neutron bombs.
All ya need is tritium, and Iran will provide it in return for uranium.
So you see, they aren’t dirty bombs, now …. isn’t progress grand?
Want a demo? Look at the Lebanon explsion but only the videos where the brown cloud is small. AN lacks FO and does not explode, it merely burns.
TLT, would not China have a plan in place that accounted for an aggressive US even when it was behaving appropriately?
How China is going to unfold as an equal world power is an unknown and the US would be derelict to not take that into account, just as China would be, not to do so for the US, or any country that had potential to threaten it economically or militarily.
Btw, forget Trump, hopefully he’s history!
The ‘Ugly American’ revisits us again.
Having come across the above titled book (1958), and film (1963), I’m absolutely shocked by how similar US actions happening today compare with what went on in SE Asia in the 1950s leading to America’s involvement in Vietnam. This was a war that killed three million Vietnamese people, and saw more bombs dropped on the tiny country than during the entirety of WWII. Let’s not even discuss Agent Orange. Now the US is doing the same thing directly with China, it appears it has not learned a single thing since the early 1950s. In my view it is also having the same effect in that much of SE Asia, the South Pacific, and Melanesia is turning more towards China than the US and Australia once again.
The book is fiction, and set in an invented province of Thailand, but what is reflected is an accurate picture and based on fact. The title of the book was a play on words after Graham Greene’s ‘The Quiet American,’ a tome about what became Operation Phoenix and the CIA’s involvement in false flag operations in Vietnam. Greene’s book points out that fake terrorist bombings planted by the CIA were taking place in Saigon and the US who controlled the radio airwaves used these opportunities to blame those known as the “Vietcong”. It also pointed out that American exceptionalism was the tool used to support US in the righteousness of their actions, oblivious to the understanding of Vietnamese culture and the horrors inflicted on the people themselves. It was all about stopping “commies” but that never involved any analysis of why the people came to see the US as imperialist oppressors (similar to other imperialist nations), and how they could envisage that communism might be the answer for the majority within the poorest demographic in their country.
The writers of the ‘Ugly American’, William Lederer, and Eugene Burdick, had both served in the US military including service in WWII and the SE Asian region, and they met during the build up to the Vietnam War.
The reason they wrote the book, which is considered a classic of the cold war, was to make a statement about how, if Americans at the time had bothered to understand the language and culture, and the motivations of the people, rather than practicing tin-eared blind exceptionalism, they could have made far greater progress, instead of smashing the region with bombs and absurd geopolitical aims. US behaviour within the foreign service was detached from the country, lazy, and enjoying of the partitioned and superior lifestyles that white people characteristically lived in S.E. Asia at the time.
Some further similarities with today:
1) “The Soviet launching of Sputnik into orbit in 1957 gave the Soviets a huge technological and propaganda victory and sparked a crisis of confidence in the United States and worries about falling behind technologically and militarily”(1). Compare this with US concerns today that the Chinese may have exceeded US knowledge in several areas. Particularly in hybrid electronic warfare and electronic communications – its the real reason in my opinion why they blocked Huawei. Some reports from the Sino region say that the Chinese have developed jamming technology that could override military aircraft control.
2) “In the Middle East, the U.S. feared the spread of Communism starting in Egypt and attempted to secure the region’s most populous and politically powerful country for the West by guarantees of funding for construction of the Aswan Dam, but it was eventually the Soviets who prevailed. Soviet diplomatic and political successes in the Third World left the West worried about losing one country after another to Communism” (1). Compare this with renewed US paranoia that China is planning to take over the world, particularly within the Asia Pacific region, and is also involved with development projects within third world countries and developing nations.
3) American geopolitics still follows the exceptionalist model. No effort has been made to understand Chinese culture or its language, as it is in Australia, and the notion is that it is a bogeyman has been rekindled. Yellow peril and neo-McCarthyism flourish.
4) The US only understands the world’ s people through its own culture and behaviour as does Australia. This is obvious here now that we are so strongly connected to the same geopolitical aims that we clearly resemble the 51st State. No matter what China, the CCP, or Xi Jinping say, it is always seen as lies and that China can never be trusted. China is not allowed a point of view, and if it offers one it is castigated for it. In fact last week after Xi Jinping gave his talk at Davos, repeating the same aims he always has – multilateralism, peaceful development, win-win trade, and working together as an international community – he was accused of being a master of doublespeak by the Sydney Morning Herald. Doublespeak? I think that drew a very long bow, and it is abusive to all that China and Chinese people represent. Chinese are liars, we are not, and we are on God’s side. We also are exceptional these days.
But thanks to Mark Valencia we see that the US accuses China of what it actually is:
A grandmaster of duplicity.
Because the US knows how it secretly behaves, it makes the mistake of accusing everyone else of doing exactly the same things.
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ugly_American
George, I wonder why you are so willing to trust Xi? It is one thing to detest the US, as you clearly do, which is entirely your prerogative, but obviously that doesn’t make China trustworthy. I think it is naive to take Xi’s speech at face value, especially when he talks of not using trade as a weapon and decrying bullies. It is astounding that you see no irony in this. Really, I suggest, you should be wary of both.
This is how Foreign Policy summed up Xi’s speech, in my view pretty accurately:
How to Read Xi Jinping’s Speech at Davos
In his speech at this year’s virtual World Economic Forum—normally hosted in Davos, Switzerland—on Monday, Chinese President Xi Jinping followed the usual posturing on the global stage: saying that China opposed ideological confrontation and a so-called new cold war—that “the strong should not bully the weak.”
These remarks are hypocritical. While Beijing tells the world it opposes a new cold war, it is running anti-foreigner campaigns at home, cracking down on foreign ideologies, threatening smaller countries that don’t follow its demands, building up its military presence in disputed areas, sending flights over Taiwan, and asserting that its thought-crime laws have global scope. What China really opposes is anyone else acting in response to its aggressive moves.
Notably, Xi went after sanctions and supply chain decoupling in particular. That is in part because the Davos audience can be gullible when it comes to economic globalization. (Many lapped up Xi’s 2017 speech on the topic.) But as China tries to size up the Biden administration, the renewed emphasis indicates just how worried it is about the prospect of decoupling.
Reasonably, China is trying to build up its own internal supply chains and reduce its dependence on foreign technology, such as its supply of semiconductors from Taiwan. Decoupling proposals pushed by the technology industry have quickly gathered steam in Washington, posing a threat to China’s main source of global influence: the size of its market.
The eagerness of U.S. companies to work with China in the 2000s was a huge boost. Absent the Trumpism factor, that some of them are now having second thoughts is a serious threat.
Barney, once again you are unable to comment directly on any of the historical points I make in fairly extensive argument. What you do again is to enforce your simple view that China is the duplicitous and non-trustable one, and America and Australia are the honest ones.
When I see Australian main stream newspapers accuse America and its presidents of Orwellian double speak, allow China a fair right of reply without being castigated for doing so, omit important information in order to make China look always like the aggressor (especially over Taiwan and SC Sea), treat Chinese as intelligent and highly capable equals, show respect for Chinese sovereignty and the Chinese people’s right to choose their own form of governance, and that we and America also clean up our acts with human rights abuses, then I might believe you.
The claims Valencia makes here are quite obvious to anyone who is aware of the events within our region including SE Asia and the Pacific. Our attitude to our neighbours, our cuts to foreign aid, our tin ears when it comes to climate change facing Pacific islanders, our indifference to the pandemic affecting Indonesia, our pig headedness when it comes to Chinese vaccines that work very well and can be stored at room temperatures and are cheap, our increasingly absurd levels of allegiance to the US, our willingness to inflict economic disaster on ourselves because we cast off our largest trading partner due to zero diplomacy – the one that gave us so much prosperity as a nation since the 1970s – our own forms of Australian exceptionalism, and misplaced unannounced right wing Christian righteousness on the part of the current federal government, are all matters that have brought us into this position. And mainly since Trump came into office, even though ‘containment of China’ has been the name of the American game for years.
You may think we are winning, but it is quite clear that Pompeo’s recent trip to SE Asia to talk up regime change was a complete failure. Even conservative US diplomatic commentators like Chas Freeman who have a great depth of understanding of Chinese matters and are highly fluent in Chinese language say this is a folly. Effective diplomacy is the only sane course, then we can make other comments. Rejecting China does nothing, just as rejecting the need for mediation or conflict resolution does nothing to save relationships between people in general.
Of course China does many things that we can criticise it for, but it will never work if we are hypocrites. China knows exactly what is going on. As far as I am concerned all that you argue for by default, is a war with China, and that is where Australia and America take us to a point of playing very dangerous games in the Sino region and we do that by politically interfering in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and carrying out war games on China’s front door. What is also very clear is that China has become far more nationalistic, and has produced far more military hawks as a result of being rejected by Trump’s abusive and racist rhetoric. What I don’t understand is why you as a Christian don’t see that you are indirectly lobbying for a war by your permanent rejection of China’s point of view, and your inability to see where this could end up. That’s also how it is within main stream media.
You have called me a China apologist before, but what is can see is that even though you say you are critical of America, you show no ability to see it in the context of being an aggressor in this situation as well, and as Valencia points out, quite worthy of being called ‘duplicitous’. In other words a purveyor of doublespeak itself, and what American Indians claimed many years ago, “men who speak with forked tongues”. That’s before 11 million of them had perished.
It may surprise you to know I have several American friends here in Australia who agree with my views – they saw it with Vietnam themselves. I am not against American people per se, it is American foreign policy and hypocrisy that stinks.
But George, I explicitly agreed that the US is duplicitous and untrustworthy. Not just in my post above,but many times on this website. But America’s wickedness is an article of faith on this website, so there is not the same need to argue for that. So I utterly reject your first paragraph in your reply: you are not reading what I write. Nor have I EVER suggested that I want or favour war – here you are not failing to read what I write but being quite dishonest. I must have posted at least 20 times that I do not want war, that no one could win such a war, and it would devastate the region and possibly the world. So please stop misrepresenting me on this. What I am hoping is that a middle ground is possible between war and craven kowtowing.
There has been plenty of mainstream media criticism of the US, especially in the Trump era. I agree with you that there has not been enough, but there has been plenty. I’m not sure that the Chinese people have chosen their own form of government – it’s been a hell of a long time since any of them were asked, and the CCP is certainly not about to do so. I’d need you to spell out more what you mean by respecting Chinese sovereignty – does that include threats to take Taiwan by force or enslaving a million Uighurs? And I can’t believe you are serious in suggesting that China is not being aggressive towards Taiwan. Really? What would constitute aggression, in your view, if direct threats and constant invasions of airspace are entirely justifiable?
I don’t think we are winning. Not at all. I think we are losing, and will pay quite a price. But I’d rather do that and remain Australian, not a far-flung province of China.
I entirely accept that you are not against American people, just government policy. That is exactly my position with China. It may interest you to know that I have Chinese friends who are deeply suspicious of the CCP and worry about its influence in Australia. Most of my Chinese friends here, though, would rather not talk about it because it is difficult and embarrassing, and makes them look conflicted, and one has to respect that.
Finally, I don’t want to reject China. It would be far better to get on with China and have a healthy trade. We simply disagree on what accepting China means. I don’t believe it means supine acquiescence to every demand and handing over our national sovereignty. And, as things stand, with China wanting to make Australia an object lesson pour encourager les autres, nothing less will do. But surrendering to bullies doesn’t work. They just want more. So China has to give a little too, which is what most of the posters here will never acknowledge – all the fault is Australian. In my view, though plenty of the fault is Australian, to say we are the only ones at fault is just asinine. So, just as I am shouting against the wind on this website, so you are shouting against the wind among wider society, most of whom apparently believe as I do.
“There has been plenty of mainstream media criticism of the US, especially in the Trump era.”
Yes, but virtually none about Trump’s abusive and racist approach to China. The MS media have been pushing the US view all along, and any Chinese point of view is either besmirched or omitted. They never tell us about the US presence in the area, their wargames, and the proximity of US bases, unless there is a freedom of navigation exercise. It is very clear that Pompeo has been attempting to provoke China by showing far too much diplomatic support for Taiwan as a separate country, and talking regime change. Meanwhile the US still supports the One China Policy. I’m glad if you agree they are duplicitous. That means we cannot trust them either.
A case in point has been just in the last few days when the Chinese flew their planes around Taiwan. It’ s been cooking up for some time if you are aware of the Chinese opinion reflected in their news sources. Maybe not to your liking or even mine, but this is mainly due to Pompeo’s meddling in Taiwanese affairs where he has been trying to cause as many problems for Biden’s new administration. It got very, very close to conflict.
Tell me, if Chiang Kai-shek took back possession of Taiwan from the Japanese who had held it since 1895, as the US’s preferred leader of China, then when he lost the civil war post WWII, which country was it a part of?
“Nor have I EVER suggested that I want or favour war”.
No, but your frequent inability to even want to understand the Chinese position is by default (that is what I say) is not helping. That doesn’t require any kowtowing, or giving into Chinese demands, but supporting the notion that diplomacy and fair play is needed on both sides and the only way forward is if we want solve this problem without warfare.
“I agree with you that there has not been enough, but there has been plenty. I’m not sure that the Chinese people have chosen their own form of government”.
I suggest you listen to Chas Freeman (easy to google), he says many polls have been conducted in China that demonstrate the Chinese people actually do strongly support their government. He also says that these polls were conducted in ways that were reliable and not the product of duress. He has more than 50 years experience in US foreign affairs and China. He was chosen as Nixon’s interpreter when he went to China it goes back that far
In any case, after the Qing Dynasty, and every other dynasty before that, what they have now is far better than many periods before. Let’ s note they never had democracy, and attempts to instate it via Sun Yat-sen failed. Chiang Kai-shek became very unpopular in China and the great bulk of people stayed in China after he lost the civil war.
“I don’t believe it means supine acquiescence to every demand and handing over our national sovereignty.”
Neither do I, so that is a bit of an exaggeration, I could say dishonest but I will not. I have only ever argued for a better understanding of China and not the perpetual anti-China nonsense we read in the newspapers where anything China does is bad. Also if our government is serious about foreign interference, then why not level that at all countries who seek to control our sovereignty, and with human rights do the same.
The immediate question that comes to my mind after reading this article is what level of knowledge did the Australian Government have of the United States’ 2018 national security strategy?
Has the US misled the Australian Government on its policy towards China? Or is the Australian Government supportive of this policy?
I for one would like to know the answer to these rather important questions.
There is not necessarily a contradiction in wanting China to flourish economically (which after all increases prospects of trade to mutual benefit) but not to allow it dominance militarily to the great detriment of nations in the region such as Japan and Vietnam. That has been the US policy towards Japan more or less since WWII, and it has worked there well enough.
“A chief promoter of this strategy, Trump’s secretary of state Mike Pompeo, declared that the Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy was a vision for the region “of free, fair and reciprocal trade, open investment environments, good governance, and freedom of the seas”. It excluded no country and was “open to all who wish to prosper in a free and open future”.”
This statement sounds suspiciously like the announcements accompanying the launch of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreed to last November.
It seems China got there first.
The unipolar world with the U.S. as global hegemon is a vision fading in the world’s rear view mirror. Biden is simply the front for recycled mischief makers. By its intransigence, The U.S. is making itself irrelevant.
This is not to suggest that the U.S.’s remaining economic and military might is negligible. Regionally, Taiwan remains the flashpoint.