How about some of these lines from the Chinese ambassador to the UN in Geneva…
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Sha’s a blowhard, but that is the party line of a party with clear views on the value of a human life.
Didn’t know the Chinese government had such little regard for the value of human life.
As the man says, China’s population is quite large. It could use some thinning.
That would be much, much better.
I hate that statistic he quoted on US military spending. Yeah, our budget is large, but we pay our prople more than $2 a month, try to provide the best benefits and modern facilities and have very expensive toys to maintain. Now if we did a comparison on the number of actual rifleman, you would see a big difference, in favor of the Chinese.
Oh, lets not forget the US is a bit more open about actual spending versus hiding it under line items such as Ice Cream Research.
>Now if we did a comparison on the number of actual rifleman,
> you would see a big difference, in favor of the Chinese.
Yeah, but if you compare the productivity of those soldiers, the balance tips back in the US’s favor.
Not sure why one would think China’s population could use “thinning.” Unless we are moving back to Social Darwinism.
Because unlimited population growth is not good. A fact recognized in many ways by the ChiComs themselves.
Stopping unlimited growth (very good) is not the same thing as thinning (considerably more death involved).
Too many Chinese?
““Man,” said the Ghost, “if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child. Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!””
Then the Chinese need to sit back, shut up, and not threaten to sacrifice Chinese lives over islands.
Hmmm…on the one hand, pseudo-philosophic poesy and references to God.
On the other, teeming overpopulation, mass environmental degradation having worldwide effects, and a nuclear-armed nationalistic xenophobic government overseeing it all.
Guess you’re not a fan of Dickens, Dogbertt.
Ah yes, the Ghost and the Insect. Snatch the pebble from my hand, Grasshopper
Save for the bit about overpopulation, the rest of the sentence describes the US.
Not accurately, it doesn’t.
Yeah, the mass environmental degradation situation has been getting much better in the USA for years…
Puerile sarcasm aside, it’s nothing compared to China.
A boycott of made-in-China crap would be in order, although I know it ain’t gonna happen….
This is the same China who has declared a “fight to the death” with the exiled Dali Lama.
I suppose my man was packing a gun and they just had to fight back . . .
SK should go on and develop the bomb since they have such a “peacefully rising” neighbor as China. It just might help.
China is a dirt poor country. Yet, some party leaders and their families, including far distant cousins, have become millionaires in Beizing.
Would street merchants and factory workers who are barely getting by leave these pigs alone? Soon, they will rise up to kill condo-dwellers.
Knowing this, the Chinese government has to start a war. A war is the only solution in this case.
Only decision left for China is whether to go after Taiwan or to attack Japan.
If America insists on defending Taiwan while withdrawing from Japan, the target will be Japan. And, using NK, China can claim non-involvement, at least in the initial phase of the war.
I heard the little speech on the radio yesterday. Apparently, it was part of a BBC interview — so he gets to vent some spleen without directly confronting the US. Let’s see if he has the balls to actually say something like that to an American representative. I doubt it. I have to agree with his sentiment, though. And I am an American (and a vet, too.)
On the whole population thing, I remember learning that China had a population of ~350-400 million around 1650. The Ming Dynasty saw a population explosion and this explosion contributed to its later instability. Somewhere else, I remember learning that the total global population around 1650 was around 500 million. So, if you were alive in the early 1600s, you were most likely Chinese. Ever since then, while China’s population has grown, its percentage of the human race has actually declined. Maybe the rest of the world needs to get a handle on its unbridled, unregulated reproduction.
Also, the Chinese decided to go after the Tibetian refugee site “tibtec.org” and start DOS attacks upon it since this is “a fight to the death” with the Dali Lama.
I will really try and buy everything I can that is not made in China, even if it is more money; anything so as not to support these arrogant slime bags.
and “Chinese officials intensified a crackdown on defense lawyers today, the latest sign that Communist Party leaders are determined to stamp out legal challenges to their authority. . . While the Chinese leadership is eager to create the impression that it is building an impartial legal system, the latest actions suggest that at least some powerful officials want to curtail the growing use of lawsuits to contest abuses of power, human rights violations, land seizures and official corruption.”
The emotion shown says more than the words. This is someone picked to be a diplomat on the world stage, and she can’t control her emotions at the mention of what really isn’t much said on the US side. It is a possible window into the kind of Chinese nationalism the society is building up.
It reminded me of a Chinese graduate student in the US. Everytime, and I mean 95% of the time or more, something would be said in the class that was remotely critical of China, he would blurt out, “Stupid American scholars.” Occasionally, he would expand on this when he was really pissed and say that all these scholars who were mentioned in class who said this or that about China didn’t know shit about anything in China and should just shut up.
No kidding! Expat websites with content critical of China get spammed mostly by overseas Chinese, often students or staff at Western universities, since the sites are often not accessible in China. There is one spammer at the Peking Duck who sounds like she has been indoctrinated, countering criticisms of China with “so do you” arguments referring to past events unfamiliar to many Americans. Either she is a paid propaganda agent or she has been brainwashed by one. Loud, constant, heavy criticism of China will provoke a natural defensive reaction from even reasonable, open-minded, aware Chinese. ‘My country right or wrong” nationalists are not limited to China. They are found in abundance in Korea, the US, and many other countries.
BTW, Sha is a “he” not a “she.” Perhaps people are confusing him with Health Minister Wu Yi, who participated in trade negotiations with US while she was trade minister.
If the US applies its China-Taiwan logic to its own history then the Federal Government should have let the South secede back in 1860.
How so? The official policy of the US government is the “One China” policy (under the urging of Beijing, of course). While I’m sure that there are people in government here who support actual secession of Taiwan, the official line is that it would be unacceptible. Really, the situation between Taiwan and China is slightly more akin to the situation between South and North Korea than the situation between the USA and CSA. The governments of both Taiwan and China claim to be the legitimate government of the entire country. As far as I know, the CSA never claimed that its government was the rightful and proper government of the United States — they actually set out to be their own country, while Taiwan hasn’t (even though that’s more or less the practical result).
And if you still claim that the United States’s actions and logic concerning Taiwan are contradicted by those concerning the CSA before and during the Civil War — so what? Taiwan is a friendly government, the CSA was a hostile one — America protects its own interests.
To be fair to bluejives (someone has to), China often tries to use that bogus analogy when explaining its need to use force to reunite Taiwan with the PRC.
And the history of how the government was set up in Taiwan and what was happening in the mainland makes any serious comparison a waste of time…
Usual suspects. Predictable retorts.
I’m of the opinion that certain sectors which drives America’s foreign policy goes out of its way to unnecessarily provoke China into becoming an enemy. I also seriously doubt that this is in America’s best interests, nor the world.
Also, I have no doubts that China has many internal problems. But guess what? America has many deep problems too. Maybe America should care more about America’s problems, for once?
And I do not tolerate mindless China-bashing.
“I’m of the opinion that certain sectors which drives America’s foreign policy goes out of its way to unnecessarily provoke China into becoming an enemy. I also seriously doubt that this is in America’s best interests, nor the world.”
“Certain sectors” that “drives America’s foreign policy”? If you mean “the Jews”, just come out and say it, Bluejives.
I was actually fortunate enough to catch this interview on BBC World Service radio tonight. Sha got really vehement in the interview (more so than is conveyed in the article), beyond just saying that the US should shut up about China’s military spending. He also mentioned that there isn’t a single Chinese soldier engaged in a war anywhere and that China was “basically a peace-loving nation” that rarely throughout its history (compared to Europe, at least) engaged in wars. He also mentioned that China’s military buildup was for defensive and deterrent purposes only. It’s just too bad that there doesn’t seem to be a transcript of the interview online — the ’shut up’ part of it was obviously the most sensationalized part, but it was actually quite interesting beyond that.
The Chinese ambassador is correct. Most Chinese and non-Chinese defenders of the PRC claim that China has not fought a war since its founding, dismissing the invasion of Tibet as legitimate recovery of Chinese land and the wars with India, Vietnam, and Russia as defensive border skirmishes; even if one rejects these rationalizations, it is still true that the US military has been much more active, indeed, aggressive on the world stage than China during the post-war period. To understand the ambassador’s comments, try to look at the US and its use of military power from Korea to Vietnam to covert participation in civil wars and regime change in Central and South America and Africa to the Middle East through Chinese eyes. It is rather cheeky for the US, which has fought three non-defensive overseas wars, two against Iraq and one against Yugoslavia, in the last 15 years, to talk about the China threat.
Hmmm….I think I see a pattern here.
“Usual suspects. Predictable retorts.”
Yup. And the usual Bluejives response: avoid filling up the huge problems in your previous argument by dodging them - then throw up a strawman like “And I do not tolerate mindless China-bashing.”
Rather than trying to counter the arguments against your previous statement by explaining how the situation with Taiwan is so much like the American Civil War - rather than addressing what we have said pointing out how such a comparison is fatally flawed, you quietly abandon ship to throw up equally non-substanative crap.
Let the Japanese kick China’s ass again!
–Remort
That will not happen “Remort”. Such a militarization effort would not occur in Japan — not at such a level needed. It is very disingenuous of Sha to claim “that China’s military buildup was for defensive and deterrent purposes only.” Just who do they suppose would ever attack them? Certainly not the U.S., who would not dare since the result would be an ecomomic backlash of epic proportions. I only wonder if China’s military build-up is more for use at home, against dangerous monks like the Dali Lama (fight to the death) and irrate farmers and lawyers.
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