China again
Talking to a teacher recently, an ex barrister/solicitor type, who looked stunned when I mentioned Chinese espionage agents operating in Australia.
“Says who?” he asked, intimating I had totally lost the plot or worse, was into anti ALP conspiracies..
“Why on earth would they want to spy on us?” He asked as if I couldn’t see the Chinese were an amiable lot and only wanted the best for everybody.
Mmm…well let me count the ways. We are a favoured client of the US and thus have state of the art military hardware and software…we are good at software ourselves…..we trade with China and they look for any advantage…they are a communist state thus paranoid and the list goes on. Here’s a couple more articles on the Chinese spying in Australia
I didn’t feel up to having a long conversation with someone that naive so didn’t pursue the matter but it is an indication of a lack of worldliness amongst our academia.
In Britain intelligence chiefs have warned that China might have gained the capability to shut down the country by crippling its telecommunications and utilities.
Intelligence officials have told ministers of their fear that equipment in a new communications network installed by Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant, for BT, the main British telco, could be used to halt critical services such as power, food and water supplies. Huawei was allegedly founded with significant funding from the Chinese state. Its head is Ren Zhengfei, a former director of an arm of the three-million-strong People’s Liberation Army responsible for telecommunications research.It could be something-nothing…it could be a real threat. The point is – don’t trust them. We should deal with them by all means, sell and buy, have deep and meaningful conversations with them but keep in the back of our minds where they come from and what they have done. David Burchell opines on Rudd’s recent meeting with Australia’s new-found friend, the CPC’s chief censor, Li Changchun.
Who is this unknown Chinese bureaucrat to whom we have accorded so many of the trappings of a royal visit, and who our political and business leaders seem so eager to propitiate? Li, who formally speaking is nothing more than an ordinary politburo member, is routinely referred to as the propaganda head of the CPC. And yet this sells him short. For his helium-like ascent through the ranks of the CPC has had less to do with disseminating favourable stories than suppressing unwelcome ones. He is, in effect, the party’s chief censor. In particular his brief is to suppress what remains of the liberal-minded opposition within the CPC.Li has talks with a number of influential Australians;
… with acting Governor-General Marie Bashir at Government House in Sydney, with Environment and Arts Minister Peter Garrett, with Seven Network owner Kerry Stokes, and with ABC chairman Maurice Newman and general manager Mark Scott, the last of whom was photographed, looking a little uneasy, conducting Li around the set of The Gruen Transfer. According to the Xinhua report, Scott agreed to “provide a full range of views” about China for the ABC’s audience, a statement Chinese citizens were doubtless expected to interpret as a reference to Tibet.and the Australian people are told nothing about the propaganda visit Whitlam started this ALP love affair with the Chinese and went there in indecent haste as Chinese equipped North Vietnam divisions invaded the South. While the bodies of our battle dead lay in recent graves, most probably killed by bullets supplied by China, Whitlam dines with their leaders. Matched, of course by his one time deputy Cairns visiting the USSR, the other supplier of weapons designed to kill Aussie diggers, while he was President of the Australia-USSR Society. Busy boy Jim – he was also involved in organizing the Moratoriums to show his moral support for North Vietnam as well arranging collections at Australian Universities to help fund them. Is it any wonder I don’t like the Left.
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Kev
Couple of points….
“they are a communist state”
You could make a strong argument that they’re not. I’m not aware of any communes in the PRC, and I’m sure Marx & Lenin would be spinning in their graves if they visited the industrial heartland now and observed the entrepreneurial activity. Communism is now irrelevant to modern Chinese society.
Their government is totalitarian – no question – but we need to be clear on what aspect of their national value system we object to.
“what they have done”
Apart from Korea, Tibet and an abortive invasion of Vietnam in 1979, their record of military adventurism pales in comparison to those of others, including our allies. If you read Chinese history, you’ll note that they have always been more obsessed with their own internal security than they’ve been a threat to other countries. They remember 10 million Chinese civilian deaths during WW2.
If we assume that China is a threat purely because of its ideological stance, we are indeed naïve. There are more important issues to be concerned about, most of them economic. Their foreign policy has always been pragmatic. They have a few billion mouths to feed, and they are a long way from being a culturally united state. This is the main factor driving their so far successful experiment in totalitarian centralism. If we seek to understand modern China, rather than to dig up the discredited shibboleths of the past, we might manage the relationship in such a way that our grandchildren will benefit. To clearly understand the Chinese we need to examine Taoism which seeks a pragmatic comprehension of the true nature of the world we live in. This pragmatism is reflected in modern Chinese institutions.
“Whitlam started this ALP love affair with the Chinese and went there in indecent haste as Chinese equipped North Vietnam divisions invaded the South”
I think back to our Vietnam commitment, when we were led to believe that the North Vietnamese were fighting a proxy war for the Chinese communists.
I also remember that it took only 4 years after the fall of Saigon for these “allies” to be fighting a brief but intense border war. Call me naïve (I’m a teacher after all) but something doesn’t add up here.
You could make a strong argument that they’re not [communist] Maybe, but not with the Chinese. They may have moved away from communes but still maintain all the other trappings of communism. One Party status, obscuration of facts that don’t reflect Utopia, suppression of opinion and minorities, control of the media, international influence for nefarious gains, etc.
WW2 deaths. Interestingly the figures vary greatly from site to site but the highest number I could find was 12 million and the least 5000,000 (Admitted to by communists) Doesn’t matter as they don’t stress over the loss of mere millions.
“what they have done” Apart from Korea, Tibet and an abortive invasion of Vietnam in 1979
Well apart from their arming, financing, training and directing untold wars in Africa not much at all.
Oh, and this list;
Wars of the PRC, since 1949
1950 Chinese occupation of Tibet
1950-53 Korean War
1954 Tibetan Rebellion
1954-55 First Taiwan Straits Crisis
1956 Sino-Burmese border War
1958 Second Taiwan Straits Crisis
1959 Tibetan Rebellion
1960 Chinese incursions into Indian territory
1962 Sino-Indian War
1969 Sino-Soviet border clash
1979-80 Sino-Vietnamese War
Just check the worlds supply of AK 47s and 54s for Chicom markings to see how peaceful they are.
I think back to our Vietnam commitment, when we were led to believe that the North Vietnamese were fighting a proxy war for the Chinese communists
The Vietnam War we fought was a major part of the cold war with the field of battle simply chosen as Vietnam. Financial and Military support from the USSR and China matched the FWMF in dollars and guns and one of the major reasons we didn’t win the war outright was that LBJ didn’t want to risk China (and the USSR) literally attacking with divisions as China had proven eager to do in Korea.
China and Vietnam have been fighting for centuries but they sure cuddled up when the West went into Vietnam – common enemy and all that.
And they are possibly still at it. The BBC reports the Brits are complaining about Chinese arms turning up in Afghanistan.
Note to self: must ask 7RAR diggers in Afghanistan with whom I am in email contact whether captured weapons are *Chicom. (*of Chinese Communist origin)
The discredited shibboleths of the past that weren’t actually discredited may be in the present tense as well.
We do need to deal with them; I agree they have internal problems and I wish them all the success that only a capitalist economy can deliver but my rose coloured glasses were left on the battlefields of my youth and we still need to keep the sentries deployed.
Kev
Comparisons are odious, but a comparison with the US does reinforce the point that the Chinese are more inclined historically to be inward looking than expansionist.
The list of US military deployments in the same period exceeds China’s by a factor of at least four.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military_history_events#1945-1949
In addition, the Chinese incursions are universally directed at bordering states, whilst those of the US range from Asia to South America to the Middle East.
To argue that supplying weapons is an indicator of expansionist intent is also fallacious. It is more an indicator of the possession of an active armament industry. I remember VC toting M16s in SVN. That didn’t mean they were sponsored by the Yanks.
I’d also ague that we did not lose in Vietnam – we created a level of security in the province that we were responsible for that was the envy of other parts of the country. The trouble is that when I say “we” I mean “Australian”.
To this day, the Vietnamese who remember the war make the same distinction.
The Vietnamese had fought long and hard against a variety of foreigners. They saw the Chinese as just that in 1979.
To bring this issue into the current context, in Afghanistan we need to put ideology on a shelf and turn it into an exercise in stabilization and civil reconstruction, or the same will occur there.
I don’t want to see any more diggers zapped in the name of alliance maintenance. We need to be there because it supports national security. For that to happen we need to lock the ideologues in a dark room somewhere until it’s over.
Read some of Kilcullen’s work (he’s the Australian adviser wrote the book on counter insurgency and when asked to comment on Iraq, said “The biggest stupid idea was to invade Iraq in the first place.”) He nevertheless went on to successfully advise Petraeus on the surge, and to rescue the US from the ideologues that got them into the enormous stuffup that it became.
Pity he wasn’t around in 1970.
He talks about “Prevent, Protect, Build, Hand-Off”. Shock and awe has no place – except perhaps in Hollywood.
To quote him –
“Afghanistan is an independent sovereign state: why would it tolerate an approach that treated its territory as little more than a launch pad for strikes against Al Qa’ida, while doing little to alleviate poverty, institute the rule of law or improve health and education? What would be in it for Afghanistan?”
See – http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2009/02/crunch-time-in-afghanistanpaki/
Further to Kev’s response to 1735099:
1. I read a summation by a former ASIO agent (he didn’t commit any details that would see him break secrecy) detailing through into the 80’s the extensive operations of the Chinese Communist Party-Government through its agencies, supplying comunist elements throughout Asia to the North of Australia. Listed agents of influence inside Australia serving the aims of the Chinese Communist Party (he detailed the same for USSR aligned elements). This has not ceased, and their activities stretches out into Pacific Islands.
Some elements in Australian co-operating with Stalinist regimes include, amusingly teachers Unions, as well as a cadre of treacherous Leftists, begining with inside the Uniting Church. The trwacherous Left have bored into the other Churches, though the Catholic Chuch, because of celibacy, has seen them constrain themselves to mainly lay associations.
2. The Red Party holds South East Asia is it’s ‘sphere of influence’, as in, it is theirs, including Australia. To this, they have their variation on the old Japanese ‘Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere’. This also encompasses the Pacific. Oh yes, the Chinese Communist Party is ‘expansionist’.
3. Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Kerry committed treason, should have been tried for it, as well as other offences in supplying the Red Army with top US military secrets in return for funding of the US Democrats Party.
3. The Chinese Communist Party is prepared to engage in war against the US, though they regarded the Clinton Administration as serving their ends and take the same view of the Obama Democrats administration. Mao murdered 10s of millions of Chinese with his economic ‘plans’ and reduced many more to the condition of savagery. The Chinese Communist Party is prepared to ‘sacrifice’ not 10s of millions of Chinese but hundreds of millions in a war against the West. Should there be a war, they will use their nuclear arsenal against the West.
4. To Kev’s remark, “They may have moved away from communes but still maintain all the other trappings of communism…” I have Chinese acquaintances who lived through the horrors under Mao to the present age of what 1735099 considers now an ‘enlightened’ regime tending to greater benevolence. 1735099, you are wrong. These acquaintances know what to fear, and it includes the Communist Party today.
Over time, if genuine free market exchange continues, it is possible the regime will alter. There are problems with this, in the West:
Rudd and Obama blame the recession on free markets. This is false. It was central banks’ monetary expansion. However, these two illiterates are using the false assertion as cause to overthrow free markets. What this means is, sooner or later, also property rights, the ground of free markets, of freedom, as upheld through Common Law, which for decades has been whittled away by imposition of ‘regulation.
5. The economic ‘policies’ of Rudd and Obama spell out one thing only, disaster for Australians and Americans, and will cripple the capacity to maintain effective armed forces. Carbon taxation will cause great misery and render Australia and America irrecoverably defenceless.
The Chinese Communist Party is counting on such destructive administrations to save them ‘work’ in achieving their ‘expansionist’ aims. But it is not simply expansionism, it is as the ‘Co-prosperity’ plan should indicate, about power, brute power and control over neighbouring countries and islands. The Communist Party sees principled Presidential administations as a barrier to their aims, but not Democrat administrations.
When I look at Rudd’s ‘foreign policy’, I tremble. Taken with ruinous ‘economic policies’, the Rudd Cabinet could bring greater disaster to Australians – i genuinely dread the implications of Rudd’s ‘foriegn policies’, but they, no doubt, are good news to the Chinese Communist Party.
Replying to Douglas Bignell –
In the interests of healthy debate, I’ll look at each of your points in turn –
I read a summation ……
Such a summation (and you’ve quoted an unverifiable source) would not surprise anyone – given that ASIO agents are paid to identify networks. It is equally as unsurprising to understand that most democracies employ similar networks. The fact that they are working for the PRC makes them no more or less sinister. ASIO has a track record of the same kind of activity. See – Chapter 19, ‘Australia’s Spies and Their Secrets’ (David McKnight, Allen & Unwin, 1994).
Some elements in Australian co-operating …….
This is a very strange assertion, particularly as it refers to the Catholic Church and celibacy. I’d be interested in your interpretation of the activities of Father Peter Kennedy in this context – I assume he’s celibate. Suffice it to say you’re drawing a very long bow – and you need to offer some evidence. Incidentally, as a member of the Queensland Teachers’ Union since 1968, (including – strangely enough, the period I was in 7RAR), I’ve seen slight evidence of this particular group supporting “Stalinist regimes”. I think I can recall a few of the more radical around 1968 making money by selling “Support the NLF” stickers, but we regarded them as a bit of a joke.
The Red Party holds South East Asia ……
Again, an assertion. What’s the evidence? To follow your logic to its conclusion, we should equally be suspicious of the Japanese. They, at least, had a track record of expansionism for some time prior to WW2.
3. Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Kerry committed treason…….
Evidence please – and it would have to be backed up by reliable primary sources, not unverifiable extracts from the blogosphere. You can accuse anyone of anything, and I fail to see the relevance of this to concerns about China.
3. The Chinese Communist Party is ……
Mao was a tyrant, but he’s been gone a long time. The current administration has shown nothing in its recent behaviour to suggest that they follow his line. Their obsession is the maintenance of national stability, not war with the West. It’s in their interest to cooperate. They need us as much as we need them. I’m also sure there would be a preparedness on the part of (for example) India or Pakistan to use their nuclear arsenal if they judged it necessary. I’d be much more concerned about Pakistan than China.
To Kev’s remark, “They may have moved away from communes but still maintain all the other trappings of communism…” I have Chinese acquaintances who lived through the horrors under Mao to the present age of what 1735099 considers now an ‘enlightened’ …….
Show me where I described the current regime as “enlightened”, unless you equate pragmatism with enlightenment. Your acquaintances probably have similar memories to some Vietnamese I know who fear the Americans. Strong memories – I’m sure – but the world has changed.
Over time, if genuine free market exchange continues, it is possible the regime will alter. There are problems with this………
Now this is a completely different tangent. I can’t agree with you that financial stimulus packages equate with overthrowing the free market. The alternative is to allow a total collapse and take the risk of dealing with the social unrest that would most likely follow. That’s when we’d need the defensive capacity you talk about.
The economic ‘policies’ of Rudd and Obama……….
These stimulus policies are backed by some of the best economic brains in the world. I doubt that the IMF and the OECD are part of a leftist plot. They differ in percentage of GDP so far (US – 3%, Germany – 1.5%, France – 1.5%, UK – 1% , Japan 1% , China 14%). Most likely, these amounts will increase by the time it’s over. It’s unusual to see such a consensus across such a diverse range of administrations and political viewpoints. Maybe just once, economic pragmatism has overcome ideology.
In the long run, there’s a far better chance of my grandchildren living out a secure and prosperous future if we look for what unites rather than what divides. We should have learned this as a consequence of the aftermath of the Great Depression.
$500 million a week ‘borrowed’ from the Chinese government to pay for Rudd’s so called stimulus package. Pink bats and a lick of paint, what vision the little toad has.
Between insulting a RAAF steward (again) and making an absolute fool of himself with his comments in London Rudd has put this country into another near bottomless pit of Labor debt.
Whilst he’s away ‘kowtowing’ and back slapping his best friends in Brazil (another flippant insult) Australia’s Secretary for …. well Australia is already planning a third round of un-funded spending.
17 whatever actually seems to think the long discredited IMF knows WTF it’s doing.
How short the memories of the daft old left are – a few years ago they were out in the streets calling for the IMF to be abolished and its ludicrous amount of 3rd world debt to be written off.
Whilst your at it 17 old ‘comrade’, tell us again how an evil conservative shunned you all those years ago – you haven’t repeated that one for a while.
Peter Whatever
I’ll provide a useful summary of your post – it will save time for those trying to identify exactly what is you’re on about….
25 words (more or less) of gratutuious abuse of the PM.
50 words (more or less) of regurgitation of MSM beat-ups.
30 words (more of less) of abuse of the ” old left” – whoever they are.
25 words (more or less) of personal abuse.
Really enlightening stuff.
17 – what was that about the conservative again?
Go on, you know you want to…
Peter W
Perseveration……
Poor 17, it is a difficult condition to manage as evidenced by his perseverating about SVN or 7RAR.
I bin away for a while, good to see some debate going on.
I’d like to contibute but I know nuthin’ about this stuff.
Cheers
Cav
BTW, my number three son has joined the Army and he is now with 8/9 RAR. He is off to Timor In January, subject to change of course, and they are on 4 hours notice – so anything could happen.
I gather that the Army is fairly well stretched now.
what information is on vanetim era marine corps dog tags?I have my father’s dog tags from when he served in the Marines in the Vietnam war era. I believe under his name and initials is his age and then birthday but I am not positive as the day is off by two days from the birthday I thought he had. Now the soldiers ssn is used but as this number is only 7 long it cannot be that. Can anyone tell me what that number is for sure?