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Posted May 22, 2001
Rogue Nation(s)
I read the article "An American in China" by Sascha Matuszak. While his article did have some good points, he failed to make objective assessment on CCP (Chinese Communist Party). He ignored the fact that it is CCP who has been aggressively building military force in the past 2 years, rather than using the money to improve peasants' life in China. It is CCP who constantly threats Taiwan by force and points 200+ missiles toward Taiwan. He confused the "cause" and "result". It is China's government that is intending to cause a war. I agree with Bush's description of China as a "rogue country".
~ C. Lin, Taiwan
[Sascha Matuszak replies:]
Thanks for the letter. I tried to point out the plight of the peasants in the article but I did not make the government's role in perpetuating their plight clear enough.
As for who wants a war, I truly believe China is in no position to do anything but talk. The government must put forth the image that they are capable of defense, even though a war would destroy China's hopes of being anything other than a Third World nation for years to come. China may be a rogue country, but so is the U.S.
Tatalski Vs. Matuszak
[Regarding "An American in China" by Sascha Matuszak:]
Tom Tatalski: …If you believe that the Chinese do not have global expansion and domination in their nature, how do you explain their rabid opposition to Taiwan?
Sascha Matuszak: Taiwan is a province of China, very recently occupied by a military force that was defeated in a civil war.
TT: If the people on the mainland realized just how good it is outside the squalor of their pathetic xenophobic country…
SM: They do.
TT: …they would overthrow the morally bankrupt communist gangsters that run their country. Do you really think the United States wants to invade China? And if we did do you realize that living conditions would surely improve, mainly because it would be impossible to make more of a mess of their backward country than the communists have already.
SM: Improve for whom? The hundreds of millions of Chinese who would die defending their country?
TT: …Surely even the morons that run China can realize that they stand no chance against the United States, so if they want an arms race bring it on.
SM: You and yours are the only ones who want an arms race.
"Brian" Vs. Bevin Chu
[Regarding Bevin Chu's "The Real China Threat":]
Brian: …I agreed with Mr. Chu's point that the U.S. should avoid entangling itself in an Asian war over Taiwan.
Bevin Chu: Since "Brian" agrees with me on this crucial point, I am frankly delighted and could simply stop right here, as I have little more to say to him. Antiwar.com is an anti-interventionist website. Anti-intervention is its reason for being, its be all and end all. Antiwar.com is not Amnesty International. Antiwar.com is not Human Rights Watch.
Brian: Mr. Chu does rather adroitly avoid acknowledging that a majority of Taiwanese have no desire to reunify with mainland China as it currently exists.
BC: "As it currently exists." The overwhelming majority demands eventual reunification when the time and conditions are ripe, and furthermore they are dead set against independence. I have been living here in Taipei since 1992, and I know exactly how people here feel. See my earlier pieces on Taiwan independence.
Brian: I also think he whitewashes the P.R.C.'s atrocious human rights record – an odd thing for a libertarian…to do. China still routinely imprisons…dissidents, religious leaders, scholars, and accused "spies".
BC: I have aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces on the mainland. I dare say I care more about their well-being than William Kristol and Robert Kagan. With Cheney, Rumsfeld, Armitage and Wolfowitz in power I'm a damned sight more concerned about 17,000 to 21,000 US nukes raining down on their heads if Dubya does "whatever it takes" than I am about any of them getting arrested for political or religious dissent.
Brian: I congratulate China on its economic reforms which many of us would not have believed possible. It's great that the tax rate is so low but it doesn't do you much good if you're sitting in jail for daring to read something from the Internet that the authorities deem "anti-state". …Political reform is not something to be sneered at. China may never be a western style democracy but its abuse of human freedom should be acknowledged and condemned.
BC: China is China. America is America. Americans should condemn the American government's abuses. Chinese should condemn the Chinese government's abuses. Each nation's citizens are responsible for their own government's wrongdoing, not for foreign governments' wrongdoing.
Brian: I'm all for avoiding war and passionately opposed to covering up obvious truths. It seems to me that a true libertarian who opposes violations of freedom on American soil would hold other nations to the same standard. No war, no intervention – but tell the damn truth!
BC: I typically refuse to discuss China's internal affairs with other Americans. To even broach the subject implies in principle that distant foreigners are somehow obligated to conform to arrogant and presumptuous Beltway interventionist expectations of what is "acceptable behavior."
Chinese don't need or want Americans to "bear the white man's burden." They know from historical experience that to do so amounts to an invitation to foreign political elites posturing as altruist do-gooders to abuse the rights of Chinese in their own land.
As long as China doesn't commit aggression against American sovereignty and territory, e.g., launch an invasion of Pearl Harbor, what happens inside China is none of America's business.
China is 5,000 years old. The Chinese overthrew dozens of "unacceptable" regimes long before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, long before Columbus even landed in the Caribbean. If the Chinese don't like the government they have in Beijing, they will do something about it when and if they see fit.