Foundinchina.com

That’s not my headline.

It belongs to an short article by Spiegel Online about Beijing’s less than humble, increasingly confrontational, and vocally intolerant manner in the wake of growing global power:

While some in the US think they can manage China’s ascent to a global power, China is dreaming of “arranging” America’s decline. And in this context the West should bid farewell to its cherished notion that China’s economic progress will lead to political liberalization and turn it into a responsible partner on the world stage. The reverse is likely to be the case.

Beijing is currently playing the provocative troublemaker, both at the climate conference in Copenhagen in December and in the UN Security Council, where it is likely to stand alone in resisting a new round of tough sanctions against Iran.

China thinks it can afford to behave in this way. In Africa and Asia, Beijing’s authoritarianism is regarded as a successful model worth copying.

At home, the Communist Party is intensifying its brutal methods. It allowed an apparently mentally unstable British drug smuggler to be executed, and Liu Xiaobo, a respected civil rights activist who only exercised his right to free speech, was sentenced to an outrageous 11 years in jail.

The Germans can spot the warning signs. They’ve been there before.

http://www.orientaloutpost.com/

Have a healthy and happy one, everybody.

*******************

If you’re a Chinese citizen with a free mind and a tendency to speak it, health and happiness are out of the question, of course.

*******************

I’ll be thinking of them and their families tonight.

Time reports that the EU are considering appeasing China with a lifting of the arms embargo that has existed since the CCP got a bit trigger happy with their own youth a couple of decades ago. They should seriously think again. Why? For the answer one need look no further than this excerpt from the Time report (my bold):

The weapons ban has certainly not prevented China from becoming a military power — its annual defense budget officially stands at $70 billion, although the Pentagon believes the real figure to be twice as high. Rather, Beijing sees the embargo as outdated and insulting, considering the other nations currently subject to an E.U. arms ban are all pariah states — Congo, North Korea, Iran, Burma, Somalia, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

And which country do these ‘pariah states’ - together with their despotic leaders – turn to for their arms?

Exactly.

And that’s reason enough to lock in the embargo indefinitely, because ultimately EU arms sold to China (or wonderfully accurate copies thereof) will end up in the hands of those very states that Beijing finds it so offensive to be linked with.

Update

China’s next rogue state nurturing project: Sri Lanka