Opinion | America’s incurable China complex
By Philip Yeung, university teacher
PKY480@gmail.com
Let me be blunt. America is sick in the head and the heart, and the world is paying for its mental illness. But how do you convince the world of America’s pathology when it carries a big economic stick and nuclear daggers? Thanks to Trump, we now live in the post-truth world, where black is white, and white is black. With the US as the world’s self-appointed moral policeman, China becomes its biggest victim.
America has a China complex. It began by behaving neurotically towards China. Then it descended into paranoia and from there it is only a short hop to insanity. It is rapidly falling into fascism or semi-fascism, to borrow Biden’s carefully chosen words in describing his own country. Its twice-impeached former president Trump is now under multiple criminal investigations, and yet the uglier his deeds, the stronger his appeal to Trump cultists. He now has the Republican Party in his back pocket. His lackeys in congress threaten riots and bloodshed in the streets if Trump is prosecuted for breaking national security laws and stealing top-secret documents. This is a man who owns the ridiculous record of 3500 lawsuits over his lifetime---unheard of for a leader of a nation, paying hush money to a prostitute, and stiffing his contractors big and small. Trump is right when he boasted that if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue, he would not lose any votes. Welcome to the land of the lawless leader with a stranglehold on what was once the party of Lincoln. In short, Trump the liar-in-chief is above the law. So much for the moral purity of China’s chief accuser.
America the law-breaker has appointed itself the world prosecutor.
China, by contrast, is busy minding its own business, staying purposeful, and peaceful unless repeatedly provoked. Yet day after day, year after year, America keeps bleating about China’s human rights abuses and crazy allegations of crimes against humanity.
The lunatic is running the asylum. The big lie is now sold as the truth. It’s time to put America on the couch.
As the presumptive global overlord, the US is a serial aggressor, accustomed to bombing its enemies into submission. No deeds are too foul for its nefarious ends. Remember Iraq or Libya? Remember the blatant kidnap of Panama’s maximum leader? America lives, and will likely die, by the laws of the jungle. Other animals meekly play by its rules.
China is too big to be gobbled up or subjugated. So America wheels out a different strategy, slamming the door shut on China on multiple fronts, weaponizing everything—from sanctions, trade tariffs and technology embargo, and orchestrating a misinformation campaign about human rights abuses, cheered on by its kowtowing allies to play its never-ending game of encirclement. America stops at nothing to checkmate the Chinese. It is the trouble-maker supreme.
Since joining the UN, China has been a model member state—everything is done by the book. America can only gun for China’s soft underbelly: Hong Kong, the world’s most open city crawling with hundreds of US operatives to stir up disaffected locals. Its openness makes it a strategically rich target. Its immediate pay-off is turning Taiwan against peaceful reunification. With pictures of riot control, allegations of suppression in Xinjiang have found legs. Exploiting 23 years of unfettered freedom, anti-Beijing elements whipped up street violence, trashing the city, until Beijing has to step in to restore order. For that, it is accused of trampling rights and freedoms. Its unrest is comparable to US Capitol riots, except it lasted over 9 bloody months of anarchy. But unlike Washington, no one died from police action.
Hong Kong-Taiwan-Xinjiang--it is a brilliant triple jump. A slick and sickening display of US Machiavellian disinformation and distortion.
China, sane as a saint, has now become a C-word, a rogue nation, while the serial rule-breaker is sitting pretty and holier-than-thou. The US encirclement policy has unbottled an old evil—Japan, whose former evil empire had slaughtered tens of millions and left a trail of destruction across Asia, is now busy rearming itself, with America’s approval. Soon, you can kiss peace in the region goodbye.
The Taiwan tensions are US-manufactured. Until it pivoted to the Pacific, there was peace and consensus across the strait. Following Pelosi’s highly provocative visit to Taipei, America has announced that it will sell US $1.1 billion’s worth of lethal weapons to Taiwan. All this is calculated to ignite a civil war to make China keel over.
The world is paying for America’s reckless folly to keep its top dog status. It is no longer the force for good.
This sheer nonsense about oppression of the Chinese people is taken as gospel truth in the West, but it is belied by a recent poll, in which 67% of the Chinese are upset that the world doesn’t give China the respect it deserves. Oppression, what oppression? Fully 93% of those surveyed told Harvard poll-takers that they trust their government, a figure unattainable by any Western government. You can call China a 99-1 nation when it comes to national unity.
China’s accuser, the US, is a 50-50 extremist nation, poised for civil war. As one US commentator says, if Trump doesn’t win, there will be big trouble. But if Trump wins, the trouble is bigger still. Asian-Americans are in a mad dash to buy up guns to protect themselves in frightening numbers after over 3000 of them had died by hate crimes between 2015 and 2019. Republican state legislators have been busy enacting laws that suppress voting by color people. China has become a convenient US domestic distraction. We should all be very worried. The only comforting thought is that China is exercising extreme restraint, against unbearable provocations. No Western ally has stepped forward to question America’s sanity, as it pushes the world to the edge of another cataclysmic conflict.
Once the savior of the world, America is now a sick arsonist. But who will bell the cat? And who will administer the therapy it needs?
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
Read more articles by Philip Yeung:
Opinion | "China is not Our Enemy"
Opinion | Warning to Pelosi: It's not too late to pull back from the brink
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