dreamdancer 0 #1 January 24, 2011 the war drums start to beat... QuoteIs China now where Germany was in 1900? Possibly. There are certainly hints of menace from some quarters in Beijing. Defence minister Liang Guanglie said over New Year that China’s armed forces are “pushing forward preparations for military conflict in every strategic direction”. Professor Huang Jing from Singapore’s Lee Kwan Yew School and a former adviser to China’s Army, said Beijing is losing its grip on the colonels. “The young officers are taking control of strategy and it is like young officers in Japan in the 1930s. This is very dangerous. They are on a collision course with a US-dominated system,” he said. Yet nothing is foreordained. Which is why it was so unsettling to learn that most of the leadership of the US Congress declined to attend the state banquet at the White House for Chinese President Hu Jintao, including the House Speaker. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Mr Hu a “dictator”. Is this a remotely apposite term for a self-effacing man of Confucian leanings, whose father was a victim of the Cultural Revolution, who fights a daily struggle against his own hotheads at home, and who will hand over power in an orderly transition next year? Or for premier Wen Jiabao, who visited students in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, narrowly surviving the “insubordination purge” that followed? These leaders may be wrong in their assessment of how much democracy China can handle without flying out of control, but despots they are not. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8277143/Appeasement-is-the-proper-policy-towards-Confucian-China.htmlstay away from moving propellers - they bite blue skies from thai sky adventures good solid response-provoking keyboarding Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
