C 19 - When it's all over...

For when it's all over - hopefully this time next year. I had added a visit to this to my bucket list - my great uncle's war grave.

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Strong article in the DT by Ian Duncan Smith saying China we must stop this project Kow Tow to china and their awful regime so hopefully we and the Americans will start to get heavy with them.
They own practically all of Africa and all the precious metals they have in the ground, used in all our electronics.
Appalling.

 

The thoughts of the UK getting heavy with any nation and market the size of China is laughable. They may have an awful regime, but many in the UK would describe IDS as the architect of his own scheme to grind some people down. The company that is supposed to supply the NHS with PPE, was contracted out to a German company, who sold it on to an American company, who have now sold it on again to a French company. The UK has been more than happy to sell anything on that it can, so not much different to African countries who also need the money.

 

The African view of China is different to our Sinophobic one Scully. China has a reputation amomg African countries for being an actor that respects other cultures and states. This view is widely held by many African heads of state. The Western media also wrongly portrays China as a predatory actor in Africa - whereas over two thirds of China's investment in Africa is in infrastructure, construction, electricity production, manufacturing and finance. China's share in extractive investments, in the form of eg. mining, is lower than that of the USA or Europe. Also Chinese help does not have the same strings attached which the same help from the USA would have, nor is their relationship to China tarred by the same colonial memories as that which exists with the European powers. After having suffered as a result of Western exploitation for centuries they have turned elsewhere, and I can't say that I blame them.

 

Hang on..... Nostradamus predicted this

 

It is just the overall impression of a lack of respect for life, human, animal, environmental, in China that really irks me. It does not seem to be limited to the CP but to the ordinary people themselves. Thinking back I have never been befriended by someone of Chinese ethnicity: Malay, Thai, Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi, Afro-Caribbean, Mauritian, Polynesian.... but never Chinese. Not even during years at college and University. Mrs Fez can remember one only, and she had to think about that. It is what it is, I suppose.

 

I think that China's biggest problem is that it's too big Fez ! With a population of 1.34 billion and 100 cities with over a million inhabitants - could any government other than the one they have actually rule over this ? It is also a multi national state composed of 56 ethnic groups - so to speak about 'the Chinese' in this way does not get us very far.

 

Sadly I have first hand knowledge of what the totalitarian Han Chinese regime has done to minorities. I have seen the scars on monks and nuns and talked with them first hand, I have visited monasteries razed to the ground in Tibet, seen films of Chinese border guards shooting dead Tibetan families fleeing their own country over Himalayan passes.
Then there are the Muslim Uighurs.
Then there is the treatment of their 'dissident' civilians.

It is not one country and should never have been.

Cowardly regimes in the rest of the world cow tow to the god of trade and money and human rights are brushed away.....

 

I am not trying to 'champion' China Yorkie - but the crimes you have listed are, by no means, limited to China but could describe any other of the major World powers including the USA, who we kowtow to the whole time. The Chinese have, at least, respected the sovereignty of other nations outside of their borders in a way few other World powers have - compare this to the USA who have invaded over 60 countries since World War 2. The Chinese do not interfere in the politics of other countries in this way. Whatever people may say about this country they have lifted over 850 million people out of poverty (World Bank estimate) over the last 30 years. There is no other regime which has managed such a thing - and this is why Africa looks to China more than it does to Europe or the USA. I am not trying to whitewash the regime there, though it is a million miles better than the system which preceded it. Maybe China should never have been one country - but it was not the Communist Party which made it this size - they took over pre existing borders, but have not over stepped these. I do not think it is constructive to use this crisis as a stick to beat them over the head with - where do you stop on this ? The first German cases came from Italy, and were probably a result of the fact that the disease had existed for several weeks there before being diagnosed as such - the first cases in Poland and Sweden can be linked to the Cologne carnival, which should never have happened. So, in the end, everybody can blame everybody else - but this gets us no closer to a solution. I don't like living in a World in which we have outsourced so many necessary products to China - not because it is China, but because we need control over our own necessary resources..

 

Absolutely. When I talk about "the Chinese" I'm talking about Chinese, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan passport holders or descendants thereof. The only ones I've been acquainted with are from various restaurants and takeaways I've frequented and my dissertation tutor at University. It's a bit like defining British though on a much bigger scale.