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There's a curious map about which countries support the PR China in regard to its oppression of the Muslim Uighur minority in the West of China:
It is curious that multiple Muslim countries appear to support China in its oppression of its Muslim minority. The Chinese influence or perceived bonds to China must be strong if the map is correct.
There's another and very similar map about support for China regarding its South China Sea territorial dispute, but it didn't withstand scrutiny:
I didn't do the research to check the former map's accuracy, for the latter map already has the key takeaway: There's no non-"Western" support for arbitration. I interpret this as most poor countries not being in favour of fair international law approaches to conflicts when the PRC is involved. This interpretation may be to far-reaching, but I am not aware of any evidence to the contrary.
I wrote repeatedly that the Western World is only a stalwart proponent of international law when it's about enforcing its will, and habitually ignoring international law and even its own treaties when they restrict the West in its bullying (a.k.a. "cruise missile diplomacy").
That would leave a terribly small quantity of true supporters of international law. Switzerland, Liechtenstein ... anyone else?
Aside from the IL angle, I read a really strong position of the Chinese (relative) newcomer great power in the "Third World" and "Second World" in these graphics and this fits to what else I saw over the years. It appears that the West isn't just failing to ward off Chinese efforts to secure its access to African raw materials; it's failing to look attractive. We've got too much baggage, and may even look like the inferior future customer and investor market.
This doesn't quite fit to the self-image of Europeans, Americans and Japanese who tend to think that their way of life is the best or very close to being the best.
It appears that the West needs a grand strategy change in foreign policy. Instead, it's playing petty games in Syria and elsewhere and brings lots of useless politicians into positions of great power.
S O
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ReplyDeleteThe Hui are essentially Muslim Han Chinese. So there may be a racism background to the Uighurs' persecution. This shouldn't relieve foreign Muslim countries, which are definitely not ethnic Han.
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DeleteThe West has been Economically & Socially decaying for 50 years, its Military capacity is sufficient for self defense. (excluding the US Military - beating up the third world)
ReplyDeleteeconomic decay - disproven by statistics. There's structural change in economies, but that's not decay.
Deletesocial decay - only in fantasyland. Crime rates improved greatly, and other metrics look fine as well. There are issues, but no general social decay.
military capacity sufficient for self defence - any more than that is a waste of resources and a symptom of decadence and stupidity
Im not sure that countries voting with China is evidence that the United States is losing influence to it. It could be that because of China's aggressive nature and disregard for international law, nations suspect that China will be more likely to punish them if they do not vote for their interests than the US would be. Also, they may view an alliance with China as more beneficial because they do not have any restrictions on selling weapons to dictatorships. The biggest recipients of Chinese arms since the 1980s have been Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Mynammar, North Korea, and Thailand. All of these countries are dictatorships or were at a time in the last 30 years. The US doesn't always care about morality when it comes to arms sales either, such as in the case of Egypt or Saudia Arabia, but it does sometimes.
ReplyDeleteNext 50 years; yankland will fall, china will rise, europe will act as the midddleman. Second power to yankland transformed into second power to china.
ReplyDeleteThe yanks aint going to change, and they aint going to fight. Theyre just going to decay under their own weight and get locked onto their island.
Europe should not waste capital or blood fighting against this shift. Play both sides against the middle, take the highest ground it can. Swap one usurious, blood thirsty super power for another.
Might be technology has changed the basis on which global power operates by then. Might be better? Spending the limited amount of uncommitted power that europe has on fighting it will just leave 'us' in a worse position.
Resist the yanks, resist the chinese. Manage the transition.
Easy!!!!
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DeleteGermany's export emphasis is huge, still its export to the giant markets of the U.S. and PRC is only about 3% GDP each. That's not much of a dependence. Russia is 15% GDP dependent on fossil fuel exports by comparison.
DeleteLikewise, trade dependence with emerging giant markets is likely going to be small. Germany mostly trades with Europe and most of its imports could be substituted for.
The drop of life expectation in the U.S. is limited to rural (conservative) areas. It's not even a national phenomenon and no sign of a general Western decline. It's a symptom of the supposed "heartland" actually being crap economically and poorly governed rather than being a model to follow into the future.
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ReplyDeleteOr perhaps many of the Muslim countries on that list have far fiercer police states and much more restrictive control of religion (appreciating Islam's enormous political potential) and therefore both cannot criticise China without being terrible hypocrites, or possibly sympathise with their security measures in reining in extremist Jihadism, which also poses a threat to their own polities / current political equilibrium / civil population.
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