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Jewish World Review April 6, 2001 / 13 Nissan, 5761
James Lileks
One gets the sense that the Chinese government is dead cold sober and
wide awake.
The shooting down of an American plane has created something new and
dangerous in American politics: Instant China Experts. Pundit and
talking-heads now have a set of opinions you'll be hearing for a while,
delivered with scowly gravitas. Here they are:
#1. "We have a new Cold War." Media figures love this argument, because
the magazine cover and TV graphics just write themselves. Few people today
know what the old Cold War really was, or how it was meant, but it sounds
scary. Then again, might it counteract Global Warming? Do they cancel each
other out? In any case, the pundits will announce that it's Bushs' fault.
Three months in office, and he hasn't yet handed over Taiwan - clearly, he's
set the US on a provocative course.
#2: "China is an emerging power, flexing its muscles." Really! You
don't say. And this just happened since January, apparently. During eight
years of the Clinton administration, China was a powerless principality -
sort of like Monaco, with a billion people on bikes - and now it's a big
hungry dragon. It's like one of those little novelty sponges to keep baby
amused during bathtime: Just add a Republican Administration, and it grows
twenty times bigger.
#3: "We're seeing the emergence of the hard-line element in the Chinese
Communist government." Supposedly, the Red Army has been asserting itself,
pushing aside the kinder, gentler Communists. The old guard, the softies,
remembers well the excesses of Mao, and believe it's best to kill less than
10 million people a year - otherwise, it's tough to get the harvest in.
These new bold hard-liners, though, they'd kill 11 million a year and think
nothing of it.
It'll be hard for the anti-American left to have the same romantic
attachment to China as they did towards Russia. Old mother Russia was so
soulful in that Slavic sort of way, what with the haunting balalaika and the
hissing samovar and all those charming, urbane spies we saw in the movies.
Besides, they suffered so horribly under that evil man with the famous
moustache. What - Stalin? Oh, well, yes, him too.
The hard left loved the USSR; to them it was a counterweight to gross,
meaty, beer-breathed American whee-ha imperialism. The Soviets had the
right idea, after all - central planning, command economies that made things
people needed, not things they wanted. Of course, it ended up doing neither,
and the fact that the USSR was a murderous empire with its claw clamped on
the necks of millions bothered its apologists in the West not a jot. Reagan
was the problem, not the heirs of Marx.
As oppressive Red regimes go, China's harder to love. Yes, economic
modernization has meant more freedom - someone who's been gagged and beaten
is "more free" when his jailers let him take off the gag and say "ouch." But
he can't say it too loudly, or get together with two other people to say
ouch. Only an idiot would call China as bad as before - but there's not a
freedom the Chinese people have been granted that couldn't be snatched away
tomorrow.
So what should the US do? It's an article of faith on the left that the
very act of asserting national interest is unnecessarily provocative. The
left will accuse Bush of starting an arms race to benefit fat cat
contributors - as if the only way to respond to China is to sit very still
and hope our breathing doesn't annoy them. Missile defense? Heavens no. Aid
to lonely Taiwan? Oh my stars, no.
It's spring; you might need a new umbrella. You can get one just like
Neville Chamberlain waved around - and chances are it was made by the
Chinese. As an Ironic Symbol, it's not the same as selling them the rope to
hang us by. But close
03/26/01: You've been warned
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