3:25PM
Comment upgrade: What does China want?
Wednesday, July 12, 2006 at 3:25PM Here's a comment upgraded to post:
I apologize that this is slightly off topic. I have a question that has been lingering on my mind recently. When Dr. Barnett writes (regularly!) about the how the U.S. should engage (connect with) China more completely and ask/use THEM to help resolve the N. Korea matter I find myself in complete agreement. Now, I happen to read a LOT of blogs written from, in and about China. Lately many of them (especially the excellent albeit unsettling China Confidential (I have no affiliation with them)) have been writing that China does not WANT to help. That they are using the situation to keep the US preoccupied, distracted etc.Tom's reply:I guess my questions are:
1) Does Dr. Barnett agree with this assessment? and
2) Assuming it is true, what should the US being doing?Thank you. Always enjoy the blog
It is true. It's because they feel Bush Admin basically seeks to contain them (also correct). So for now, this path unlikely.This admin just not up for a different relationship with China. It wants China's help on NK, but offers nothing in return.
(Note: TMLutas had a comment over there, too.)
Reader Comments (8)
I have a follow-up question for Dr. Barnett--if the Bush administration is a lost cause on China, who would be a good candidate for President that would seek to engage, rather than contain China?
hmmm..."china confidential" takes a rather biased view, often with selective facts and tones. i wouldn't call it 'excellent', and would try to google more around the issue he talks about, and note the facts he omited.
but i agree with Tom's reply. in addition, China is probably totally lost about how to deal with NK at this moment (IMO it should do what it needs to do regardless what US told it to do or whether japan has messed thing up, i.e. reduce aid to NK, at least for a little while.)
I think that Rumsfeld's cautious opening of military exchanges with the PRC back in October of last year were an opening that will save the next administration trouble. They can expand on a previous administration effort far more easily than create a new initiative and Rumsfeld has all the right friends in GOP circles that any opening that he sanctions is going to be accepted (here's an article at the time). What's interesting is that the US presented the opening as a welcome relief, that they'd wanted to do it for some time but were hung up on the PRC side. Where that comes from, I don't know. Perhaps some of those opaque, internal PRC factions.
North Korea, like all hard gap communist nations, is gangrenous. It's rot, it will spread, and the only question of real importance is how much you will lose in the necessary amputation. Pouring aid in to try to stem the spread is simply not going to work over the long haul.
see this "FAQ" on china and NK
http://www.cfr.org/publication/11097/
"Pouring aid in to try to stem the spread is simply not going to work over the long haul. "
I agree with TM Lutas. I would even think the Chinese leaders know this. The problem with them is they do not have a better option, and they just want to delay the collapse, buy time, and hope for (and perhaps encourage) reform from within.
"...the only question of real importance is how much you will lose in the necessary amputation."
Well, maybe, also, who pays for the surgery.
I think both China and South Korea want the other party to do most of the clean-up job. There are legitimate reasons for either one to be stuck as the primary cleaner-upper.
It is like two guys who have this psycho neighbor, who yells nutty threats out the window, and shoots his shotgun out the attic window from time to time, whose yard is a heap of garbage, stinking up the neighborhood, that just gets worse and worse. Other neighbors farther away are always saying, "you two need to do something about that guy, he's a freaking menace!" And one rich neighbor who lives down the end of the block has a really, really bad relationship with the nutty guy, and the two of them threaten to blow each other up from time to time.
Key fact: There is no police department, DHS, county sheriff, state troopers, whatever. It's self-help.
So Korea and China are standing on the sidewalk. "You go in there and get him out, you put him in there and have been supporting him all these years, and by the way, this mess is your job to clean up!" "No way, that guys is your cousin, he'll listen to you because you are both nuts, and anyway it's your mess, YOU clean it up."
Lexington,
you reminded me of this series of parodies
http://users.livejournal.com/kim_jong_il__/
the site isn;t easy to netvogate, but i have a selection for you to enjoy.
http://sun-bin.blogspot.com/2006/07/teenage-mutant-kim-jong-il.html
now it has been revealed the person behind china confidential is closely realted to Fa-Lun-Gong cult.
he (pseudonym(?) andre pachter) now writes frequently on Epoch Times (the free sheet filled with plain lies) now
http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/6-7-18/44024.html
http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/6-7-13/43887.html
http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/6-7-26/44282.html