A rchive Date
[ 13-01-2004 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ China ]
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[http://www.canoe.com/Columnists/kaufmann.html
Dangerous illusion
Communist China poses threat greater than old Soviet Union
By BILL KAUFMANN -- Calgary Sun
January 13, 2004
"If you do not realize you are fighting a war, you are losing that war" -- Author D.G. McGuire
HOUSTON -- Go to any mass-merchandising store in the U.S. or Canada and you will see shelves stocked with an array of goods from electronic products to clothing produced in Communist China. It's a free trade phenomena that's now starting to worry a lot of people as North American manufacturing jobs disappear to low-wage nations, China being the chief beneficiary (or culprit).
Even President George W. Bush, a free trade advocate, has now started to complain Beijing is keeping its currency artificially low so as to undercut other manufacturers.
Now a colleague of mine, D.J. McGuire, who lives in a suburb of Washington, D.C., has published a book that should raise alarms about not only Communist China's trade policies, but the overhaul of its political and military agenda.
In Dragon in the Dark (1stBooks, $29.50 US, ISBN: 1-4140-1821-5), McGuire carefully details in almost 300 pages how that country is aiding the international terrorist movement as a way to advance its own ambitions to overtake the western democracies and be the world's most dominant power.
McGuire, who holds a master's degree in economics from Georgetown University and a bachelor's degree in economics from the prestigious College of William and Mary, and works for a U.S. defence department contractor, carefully crafts a scenario detailing Communist China's links to anti-western or dangerous regimes such as Saddam Hussein's Iraq (now neutralized), Iran, Libya, Pakistan, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, and Sudan and to terrorist groups such as al-Qaida, al-Fatah and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Military, financial and covert political support are given to these entities, even as communist China pretends to be friends with the West and builds even deeper relationships with us. The West, he insists, is suffering from a dangerous illusion about Communist China, seeing it both as an ally, and a nation its leaders are quietly turning into a more democratic and liberal state. It's all a sham, he insists.
He labels the current situation 'Cold War II', representing the shift from Cold War I, in which the Soviet Union tried to defeat the West, to a new offensive in which Communist China will support its client states and the terrorist brigades to advance its own aims against the West while overtly pretending to be our friend. Meanwhile, we ignore our true Chinese ally, democratic Taiwan.
We are told not to embarrass China's leaders by mentioning the slaughter of students in Tiananmen Square, even as Beijing continues to enslave tiny Tibet and repress its own Muslim population in Sinkiang.
Indeed, Beijing even uses its crackdown on the benign Muslim population in that province as a charade to the West to pretend it is on our side against radical Islamic terrorism. That the Muslims in Sinkiang are no more a terrorist threat than the victimized people of Tibet is a moot point. Told, too, to ignore the corruption endemic within the Communist party hierarchy, and the forfeiture of the most basic human rights held by western democratic nations.
Unions are meant to serve the state, not the workers. Crackdowns on religions, such as Falun Gong, are justified on the basis of state security. How a movement based on peace and tolerance can be blacklisted as a menace shows again the real nature of the Communist state.
The fraudulent justice system is not to be raised, nor that in recent years China has sentenced to death or murdered more men and women than the rest of the world combined.
George Orwell could write a sequel to 1984 based on the double-talk of Beijing's leaders as reflected in their actions.
In a very real way, McGuire documents how the Communist Chinese threat to the western world is more frightening than that of the Soviet Union. We never really trusted Moscow, even though we signed peace agreements with it, because we were always aware of the real aims of the Kremlin leaders. The evidence of their perfidy was everywhere. But somehow we ignore the evidence of Beijing's treachery.
This surely is a chilling work, and as McGuire weaves his way through a labyrinth of deception and deceit, it reminds me somewhat of the book, followed by the movie, The Manchurian Candidate, by Richard Condon, in which the Red Chinese almost get their own dupe elected president of the U.S.
McGuire is right, Cold War II is upon us. And unless we quickly recognize the enemy, we may well lose this battle.
Letters to the editor should be sent to callet@calgarysun.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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