Opinion | Forget China's human rights—it's just a smokescreen for American ethical wrongs and global domination

By Philip Yeung, a university teacher

PKY480@gmail.com

The US has a love-hate relationship with China. It's love when China was weak, but undiluted hate when it is strong. Right now, it's deep into the hate cycle, thanks to Trump's toxic presidency.

This relationship needs detoxification.

Vietnam, communist and an ex-enemy, is being coddled as a counterweight to China.

By geography, Europe and NATO should have no quarrel with China. But both are extending their tentacles eastwards, courtesy of the US.

The global village, presided over by a bully, is in trouble.

America can't stomach China's increasing assertiveness—ignoring that it's correlated to heightened US hostility.

Trump was defeated but Trumpism is alive and well. Biden campaigned as the un-Trump, but he governs in his shadow.

With its internal turmoil, America needs an external scapegoat. For a while, it was the Muslims. Now, China is sharing the honors with Russia.

Given China's unimpeachable international behavior, America can only attack its "values". Ideology is a cheap strategy for painting China as a pariah.

China is at peace with itself and its neighbors, but the US is itching for fights. The aggressor is pretending to be the peace protector, while pacific China is treated like a leper. How is this fair?

China blames US "cold war mentality". But the bald truth is, it's about America's fear of losing its top-dog status. To protect it, America preaches "rule-based global order" while repeatedly trashing the rule book.

Its allies are too weak to defy America or restrain its excesses; when America says jump, they say where.

Even if China were to become a carbon-copy of American-style "democracy", US hostility will persist. Japan swallowed American values hook, line and sinker, but it was brought to its knees when America perceived it as an economic threat in the 1980's.

Trump is right. The US seeks global domination. Woe betide any country that stands in its way.

So, forget China's human rights. It is a red herring. If a resurrected sage like Confucius were to rule China, it would still be in America's cross-hairs. For the US to look good, China must look bad.

With its endemic gun violence, industrial-scale lying and war-mongering, America should have long been red-carded as a rule-breaking player.

Technological competition ought to be a level playing field. But America plays dirty, smearing Huawei, elbowing it out of pole position in the technology race, aided and abetted by Britain and Canada.

Membership in anti-China alliances has only one requirement: fear of China. Thankfully, mad-dog Scott Morrison has been kenneled. Let's see if Albanese's bite is worse than Morrison's bark.

No alliance lasts forever. US allies should ask themselves two questions: Is the alliance in their national interests? Is it in the interests of humanity? Anti-China clubs are neither.

When military threat is non-existent, why seek collective security? Besides, you are just a geopolitical expediency. Any country posing a challenge to America will face its fury. As accessories to its "America-first" strategy, allies are expendable.

China doesn't hanker after world domination---the only major power in history without an imperial appetite or agenda. It has invaded no country nor annexed an inch of foreign territory. Peace is in China's DNA.

India harbors imperial ambitions, having gobbled up Portuguese Goa and the Kingdom of Sikkim, wiping both off the map.

Why has China militarized its South Sea islands? It's sheer survival. Without it, China is defenceless against America's encirclement and the choking of its flow of commerce through these vital sea lanes. Bulking up its military muscle is warranted to ward off American bullying, not for territorial ambitions, as China has none.

America's "China strategy" is tiresome "containment", except China is too big to be containable. If it's successfully contained, we all pay dearly.

Yes, America had a 3-0 perfect record in toppling Imperial Japan, Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany. So, why not China too?

This "Sick Man of East Asia" didn't have two pennies to rub together 30 years ago, just a pair of nuclear pants. This old country has somehow discovered its fountain of youth, rejuvenating and reinventing itself, wiping out poverty, cleaning up corruption, chipping away at monopolies and finding its sea legs in technology. It has only one signal failure: men's football. Otherwise, it gets what it eyeballs.

For over two decades, Hong Kong was the freest city on earth. But bad faith actors refused to honor the agreement. Local misrule, failure of decolonization and foreign subversion pushed it to the brink of chaos and collapse. It became the thin end of a 3-ton wedge: Hong Kong-Taiwan-Xinjiang. That's why the US is poised to end its "strategic ambiguity" over Taiwan.

As for Xinjiang, isn't it weird that there's not a syllable of disapproval from Muslim countries? Their silence is deafening and telling.

A Harvard study reports that China enjoys 93% support from its people, trusting their government to do the right thing. America commits one strategic miscalculation: China's 1.4 billion citizens are at one with their leaders. America can't win.

China thinks in decades. A lady entrepreneur who's got rich making and marketing luxury goods confessed that China's anti-corruption drive has eaten into her profits, as the back-door dealings using lavish gifts dry up. But she willingly accepts this financial sacrifice in exchange for transparency and a fairer society.

Next to failed states like bankrupt Sri Lanka, and drug-ravaged Columbia, humming China should be the darling of the developing world.

Measured by the metrics of good governance, China is an island of sanity in a sea of madness—a unique experiment in effective governance. Let China be China.

China owes its unity to poverty eradication and raw memories of its humiliation by foreign powers. That's why in the Ukraine war, many Chinese don't repudiate Russia, not because they approve of its invasion, but because they know that China will be America's next target, if Russia loses the war. America has little street credibility to question Chinese neutrality.

China, however, does have an Achilles' heel: Its clumsy storytelling wins few friends in the West. There is a clash between the flashy, swashbuckling Western style and the correct and stiff Chinese way. The West favors corkscrew thinking; China is a straight player with linear thinking.

Divided by culture, both are talking at cross purposes. Without US meddling, there's hope allies might one day tell right from wrong, and see the parameters of China's promise. As for ugly Americans with sharp elbows, China should just tell them to take a long walk on a short pier.

 

The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.

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