The Sleeping Dragon

I am always cautious of predictions, particularly when they come to the Middle Kingdom. Such an ancient place has a resilient tendency to amaze.

However, I am not so reticent to make predictions about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Their days have been and are numbered. Theirs is a discredited and forgotten ideology that is in many ways being daily chipped away by Western liberalism (little "l"). What concerns me, as it has since 1989, is what happens when the CCP starts to crumble. We have seen a slow, painful decline of the party with a simultaneous rise in world affairs.

There will be a power grab, a desperate act to divert attention from the true plight of the people (all of the people, not just the elite and the wealthy in the halls of power). This is evident from 6 June 1989 (Tianenmen Square) onward. When threatened the party leadership responds unflinchingly with violence. They have never had any problem massacring their own people in the name of Communism (always the problem with Communist ideologies). Mao did it. Deng did it. Hu will likely do it too.

I'm reminded of the stories in 1996, while I was living in the Middle Kingdom, of the massacre of Buddhist monks in Western China and of the Uighurs in Xinjiang province. Today one only has to do a simple internet search to find the many reports out of China, on a nearly daily basis, of some type of social unrest that is spreading like the bird flu throughout the countryside.

Don't get me wrong. I think the CCP leadership is bumbling and naive. They discount the power of their own people to counter the selfishness and vulgar disregard the Party has for "the people".

And the countryside is where the CCP has to worry most. While peasants flood into the cities of China's prosperous coasts, they are putting pressure on the CCP to provide opportunities (and minor freedoms) given to citizens of the cities. Normally Beijing throws them a bone of say democratic control over their locality or of an old party-owned factory. It's all a game though, a waiting game, an end game by which the party leadership is coldly calculating how to get out on top.

The CCP has been lobbing missiles and "accidentally" entering the Taiwan Straits (outside the territorial waters of the the PRC) for years now. The frequency and brashness of these incursions has been increasing though. Now with the Washington Times report (entry below) that the CCP's gotten the attention of the Pentagon comes cause for new concern. Add this to the very real machinations on the world stage with CNOOC's bid this week for Unocal oil and we've got serious problems at hand. Add into this already volatile mix the tinder-box that is North Korea and the abyss that is Russia and we should have a serious concern about future Sino-US relations. Combine all of these tell-tale signs and we see the classic set-up of a regime that is about to make a move.

In short, what we need is a bold foreign policy about China and not just a Bush family mantra of killing the party with capitalism (read: buying the Party off with economic concessions while the people suffer). We need a foreign policy that addresses the real threats of a potential war to protect Taiwan and the many unstable players (North Korea, Russia, et al) that could play into that nightmarish equation. The Bush Administration could start by outright blocking the CNOOC offer for national security reasons.

In a new strategic policy shift, I'm not talking about an Iraq-style regime change: that would be suicidal. But we can return to efforts to encourage democracy and undermine the CCP's efforts to stave it off. We can start by reversing the Bush Sr. deceivingly-benign policy of ignoring their human rights abuses. (They make Abu Graib look like a picnic in Central Park.) Turn up the heat and watch the CCP leadership sweat. Make efforts to force transparency and accountability for their actions. When the CCP says they have religious freedom, hold them accountable. When they say they have freedom of speech, make them prove it.

One subversive strategy might be pulled from the pages of the Cold War playbook, the Reagan chapter: ally ourselves with the Vatican to foment change through the illegal and underground Church in China that has a very vibrant and secret presence there. Continue by strengthening old alliances with the Dalai Lama and the Free Tibet movement (alliances Nixon broke off when he "normalized" relations with the PRC). Forge new alliances with the Western Muslim sects that have long been oppressed by Beijing and with new groups such as the brutalized Falun Gong (a very large, vocal, and powerful force in China today).

My point is there are many ways to go about avoiding what we are currently doing, which is plainly nothing. We can do something, and we should. I truly believe in the ability of the Chinese people to stand up for themselves and to make the right choice towards the democracy they were promised, at the end of imperial rule, and never received. But they are not likely to get such a democracy or avert war if we sit idly by. We either get our hands dirty now, or we see them bloodied later.

Chinese Plans

According to a defector, China is merely biding its time until the day it is strong enough to attack Taiwan (and by extension the US), an event probably precipitated by large-scale social unrest that can be defused by the war. The same defector reiterates how much the US is China's primary enemy (specifically the Chinese Communist Party), and how obsessed they are with eventually "striking back".

Worry. Talk like this makes Iraq's problems look silly in comparison. The only nation in the world that I am aware of that is spending money as fast as we are to improve our armed forces is China -- and they have approximately 700M more souls to throw into the line of fire than we do.

 "The United States is considered by the Chinese Communist Party as the largest enemy, the major strategic rival," Mr. Chen told The Washington Times in a telephone interview from Australia, where he is in hiding after breaking with Beijing in May.
    All Chinese government officials are ordered to gather information about the United States, "no matter how trivial," he said. "The United States occupies a unique place in China's diplomacy," Mr. Chen said.

...On China's military buildup, Mr. Chen said Beijing is following the strategy of former leader Deng Xiaoping, who urged China to "bide our time, build our capabilities" -- military as well as economic and political. "What that means is that when the day is mature, the Chinese government will strike back," he said. Mr. Chen said the danger of a war over Taiwan is growing.
    "That is possible as Chinese society is getting more unstable," he said. "Once any serious civil disobedience occurs, the government may call for a war across the Taiwan Strait to gather [political] strength from people."

Chinese Spies

In Australia, two former members of the Chinese intelligence network have applied for asylum. They say that the Chinese government has at least 1000 spies in Australia alone, many of whom work outside of diplomatic cover to infiltrate dissident anti-Communist Chinese groups. If Australia has 1000 spies, how many more, prey tell, does the US have?

Education Demands

Among Muslims in southern Thailand, there is a belief that the central government ignores them, mistreats them and generally doesn't like them. Thus the best hope for the beleagured Muslims is to succceed from Thailand and form a country governed by the righteous justice of the Koran and Sunna: a southern Thai-style Taliban, but with more curry and less facial hair.

While this feeling may not be wholly accurate, the central government there has hardly inspired confidence in its ability to get its message across to the Muslims there (witness the government's ill-fated attempt to drop 100,000 paper birds of peace on its southern-most province, a paper-cut nightmare for anyone unlucky enough to be under the C-130 when it flew overhead). In any case, it is strange that now, presumably for the world-wide attention such acts bring, some Muslim fanatics (crazy sons a'bitches in the vernacular of my youth) are cutting off people's heads to protest the lack of the Thai government's attention on the Muslims' education demands.

In the latest attack, a clothes salesman from northern Thailand was sitting in a coffee shop in the south of the country when some disgruntled Muslims (who probably have low self-esteem, according to Oprah and the latest CNN-USA TODAY-GALLUP poll of adults who give a damn about these things) came in, shot him twice, then cut off his head in front of the other coffee imbibers [Check please! -- ed]. They drove off on a motorcycle -- still clutching the head -- before chucking it on the side of the road some distance away from the crime scene.

If cutting off the heads of innocent people doesn't show the government that you are serious about education reform, that no child should be left behind, then I don't know what does. 

Oh, and last week in Brazil, during a prison riot, some inmates cut off the heads of five of their erstwhile brethren, before hiking them up on pikes over the wall for the onlookers to see. What in the name of Zawahiri is going on here? Is decapitation the new Black?

Syria's Role in Iraq's Insurgency

Great article from the Washington Post today.

A few good quotes (and a nice piece of investigative journalism):

Their goal [the Syrian Jihadis], he said, is restoration of the Islamic caliphate, the system that governed Muslims before the rise of nation states. Abu Ibrahim said he regarded Afghanistan during the Taliban rule as one of the few true Islamic governments since the time of Muhammad.

"The Koran is a constitution, a law to govern the world," he said.

...Jihad was being allowed into the open. Abu Ibrahim said Syrian security officials and presidential advisers attended festivals, one of which was called "The People of Sham Will Now Defeat the Jews and Kill Them All." Money poured in from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries.

..."Young men are fighting with zeal and passion," Abu Ibrahim said. "There are Saudi officers, Syrians, Iraqis. But not those who fought for Saddam. The man who is leading it for the most part is Zarqawi."

Bolivian Protests

Does anyone else find it odd that Bolivian peasants, miners and union activists are willing to strike (violently and repeatedly) over the rate of taxation that foreign firms must pay on extracted natural gas? What about the nationalization of the entire Bolivian oil and gas industry?

I find it very strange that people would leave their jobs, villages, towns and families to go to the capital city (La Paz) for the second time in as many years, defy police, and violently agitate to overthrow the government without some external force being the primary cause of the unrest.

It seems more likely that external nations or organizations (Cuba and Columbia's FARC, for examples of each type) would organize such unrest than that the somewhat wonkish topic of taxation rates on gas would rouse peasants from their farms to bring down the government -- twice.

The brewing civil war in Bolivia may be an externally-driven affair. If so, the winner of the spoils may be the group that can either seize control of the government or take advantage of the instability for long enough to maximize its time in the country. Remnants of Peru's Shining Path? I don't really have a feel for the trends among the radical groups active there, but I can forsee a potentially failed state on the horizon.

Any New Republicans wish to speculate?

Not Forgotten

The blog, that is. I had a death in the family that required flying back to the Cajun land of my birth. That was followed by a ton of personal affairs, including helping my neighbours pack their U-Haul for the move to the Big H.

We at NR wish them well. The Commies (real ones) there are a bit frightening.

Anyway, I'm not linking to anything right now, just letting you know that all is well.

Yesterday I bought Freakonomics and First In, a story about the first CIA team into Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. I dove into First In and am roughly half way through. Updates to follow.

Oh, and sorry to Tigerhawk's beloved state..