"It's
been two hundred years since the Chinese have felt as powerful as they do today.
…Every year, China's influence will grow, while America's declines. How far
this transformation will go, no one can today predict."
The Opium Wars: A nineteenth century cartoon showing Europeans carving up China. The Chinese have never forgiven the way the West, and primarily Great Britain, forced China to open its markets by getting Chinese addicted to opium.
For years, America has been
arming Taiwan to protect it from possible aggression from the People’s Republic
of China. And for years, mainland Chinese have been protesting - but never as vigorously
as now. The threat of imposing sanctions on American companies and suspending
cooperation on key international issues is a serious challenge to the Barack
Obama Administration.
His attempts to begin a deep
and intimate dialog with Beijing can now be called a failure. This was already
clear in recent weeks, as the Chinese torpedoed the attempt to reach an
international climate pact in Copenhagen -and when the Americans chose to consider Chinese aggression on the Internet
so dangerous that it deserved a strong riposte from Hillary Clinton. Along the
Washington - Beijing line, a cold breeze blew.
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
Perhaps, however, it couldn't
have happened otherwise. Perhaps such friction would have come sooner or later
- simply inevitable whenever a new power begins to dislodge the old. And this
is exactly what's happening: Chinese influence in the Far East and many other regions
of the world has begun to undermine the domination of the current superpower.
For decades, the Chinese preferred not to challenge America, being dependent on
her economically and to a great degree, politically. Militarily, it has in no
way been a match for the United States. This state of affairs has begun to change,
and Chinese behavior is changing accordingly, which should surprise no one. It's
been two hundred years since the Chinese have felt as powerful as they do today.
This doesn't mean that the
two countries are doomed to go to war, pulling the rest of the world along with
them. Today, America and China are so closely linked economically that a
conflict wouldn't suit either party. A more likely scenario is this: the great tectonic
plates of geopolitics will continue to shift slowly, accompanied by further shocks
and suspense. Every year, China's influence will grow, while America's declines.
How far this transformation will go, no one can today predict.
