IS GEORGE BUSH PLANNING COLD WAR II AGAINST CHINA?
By Jack A. Smith
It’s time someone informed the corporate bigwigs who own the anti-union Gannett media conglomerate, which controls our regional daily newspaper--the Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) Journal--that the Cold War is over and we don’t want it back again.
In a May 23 editorial, written at a time when the Bush administration is planning to redirect the focus of its formidable military might to Asia (meaning China) the newspaper jingoistically commended President Bush “for standing up to the bullies who rule China,” an act the paper gleefully suggested has “the communist leaders of China...seething.”
The deeds for which Bush was congratulated included his meeting in Washington May 23 with the Dalai Lama (the Buddhist religious figure who functions as the political leader of Tibetan exiles in India) and his authorization of a simultaneous visit to New York City by President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan to confer with a delegation of Congressional leaders. Heretofore, adhering to understandings regarding the territorial integrity of China explicit in the Washington-Beijing rapprochement of the 1970s, the Dalai Lama was never accorded an “official” meeting in the White House and Taiwanese leaders were not allowed to discourse “formally” with political leaders in the U.S.
According to the Poughkeepsie Journal editorial, which could have been penned a half-century ago with minor updating, “Leaders in Beijing have repeatedly insisted that Tibet and Taiwan are China’s own ‘internal affairs,’ and America has no business interfering. Internal Affairs? Hardly.”
“Hardly?” The overwhelming majority of nations in the world, including the U.S., regard Taiwan and Tibet as part of China, regardless of Gannett’s revanchist innuendos. Even the Dalai Lama is realistic enough to seek autonomy, not independence. The Chinese government is entirely correct to speak of its internal affairs. The Journal also appears dismayed that in China’s view, the U.S. “has no business interfering,” as though the Gannett empire was oblivious to the fact that Washington has been interfering provocatively in China’s affairs almost continuously since the end of World War 2--and under Bush is clearly concocting further imperial adventures.
The newspaper declared that “Taiwan became independent during the 1949 communist revolution.” This is not true. Taiwan remains a province of China, with which it has been associated for over a thousand years. Taiwan never even sought independence from China after the corrupt and reactionary Nationalist Party and its 2 million-strong army--which lost the civil war against the communists in 1949--escaped to the island and established a dictatorship backed by U.S. money and military strength. Indeed, throughout their long reign, the Nationalists considered themselves the rulers of all China from their Pentagon-protected island redoubt 100 miles from the mainland and continued to occupy China’s UN seat until the 1970s. (At the height of the Cold War years, a political mentality not entirely alien to that informing the Journal editorial was demanding that Washington “unleash” Nationalist dictator Chiang Kai-shek to conquer China proper.) Even in more recent years, after pluralism replaced the Nationalist iron rule in the early 1990s, the Taipei government has not declared independence and shares increasing economic ties with Beijing. There is a minority element of politicians in Taiwan who entertain ideas of secession from China, but they have so far been held in check. The Beijing government seeks a reconciliation with Taiwan based on the principal of “one country, two systems,” that is, the Chinese type of “market communism” for the mainland and capitalism with considerable autonomy for the island and its 24 million inhabitants.
Regarding Tibet, Gannett maintains it “was forcibly annexed in 1950” and that “the heel of Chinese rule has led to 1.2 million Tibetans dying.” There has never been any proof to support this allegation about deaths, which has been spread by the well-financed Tibet exile movement. The CIA, incidentally, was deeply involved in establishing and maintaining the exile government in the 1950s and 1960s, as part of its anti-China obsession. The Dalai Lama admitted recently that he was on the CIA’s payroll throughout the 1960s.
China has exercised a loose sovereignty in Tibet for 600 years. (See “The Making of Modern Tibet,” by SUNY system professor A. Tom Grunfeld, published in 1996 by M. E. Sharpe.) At the time of the Chinese revolution in 1949, over 90% of the people in Tibet were poor, landless serfs ruled by a feudal theocracy which kept them in bondage, illiteracy and superstition. Another 5% more were actual slaves to the ruling elite. Everything of value in the country was owned by about 100 noble families and the abbots of an equal number of big monasteries. The Dalai Lama was essentially the pawn of this small, powerful ruling class, which now constitutes the backbone of the exile movement. There were no public schools, except for feudal monasteries where a handful of young boys studied religious chants. Total enrollment in the old-style private schools was 600 students. Education for women was as unheard of as female equality. There was no health care at all for the masses. Social services barely existed. The country was virtually without roads.
A decade after the Chinese revolution, Tibetan serfdom and slavery was outlawed, rule by the feudal lords and abbots was terminated (thus ending theocratic government), schools and medical facilities were constructed and made available to everyone, roads were built, and women obtained equal rights. The territory is still poor, as is most of China, but in recent years there has been considerable economic growth in Tibet. Beijing reports that 97.3% of the Tibetan people now live above the regional Asian subsistance poverty line, evidently a higher proportion than in the rest of China.
The situation in Tibet is not without complexity and contradiction. China has made mistakes in relation to Tibet resulting from the left-right political struggles within the Communist Party that impacted the entire country, but overall the lot of the working people of Tibet has improved markedly as a consequence of the Chinese revolution.
Even though the Journal cautioned the White House to avoid going “so far as to break diplomatic relations” and to clarify the meaning of its evolving China policy, the overall emphasis of the Gannett line was to agree with the far right’s critique of China and to support the Bush administration’s exacerbation of tensions and moves to resurrect elements of the Cold War in its relations with the world’s most populous country.
The two visits which so thrilled the Gannett media empire--and even the spy plane incident or the bombing of Beijing’ embassy in Belgrade--are relative trifles compared to the Bush administration’s developing military posture toward China. In addition to its intention to construct a missile defense system, which is primarily aimed at China no matter what other pretexts are given, the administration is in the midst of a policy realignment “that would redirect the focus of American military planning from Europe to Asia,” according to the May 16 New York Times. The Times continued: “A confidential Pentagon strategy review has cast the Pacific as the most important region for military planners and calls for the development of new long-range arms to counter China’s military power.” Evidently, ghosts of the old “China Lobby” accompanied Bush into the White House and Donald Rumsfeld into the Defense Department.
In an extremely important article the same day as the Times account, an official analysis in Beijing’s People’s Daily declared that “The United States has conducted a strategic [military] adjustment directed against China, which regards China as a main source of threat and as the principal opponent [of] the U.S.” The commentary acknowledged “this is really something unexpected” and admitted “we underestimated U.S. strategic intentions...and underestimated the possibility that we would face a grim situation.” The article concluded that “we must consider our countermeasures...in terms of the worst possibility.”
The Beijing government does not casually make announcements of this caliber to the 1.4 billion inhabitants of China. The Chinese leadership is deeply concerned about the Bush administration’s revival of Cold War military policies and it views the Pentagon’s developing new war strategy with alarm.
Hopefully, peace forces and the left in our country will surmount over 50 years of anti-China propaganda--from the White House to this week’s Poughkeepsie Journal--and take steps to restrain the Bush administration from declaring Cold War II, with China substituting for the USSR.