RUSSIA & CHINA :

THE APPROACHING CONFLICT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“A new critical work…” Dr Jim Saleam, Australia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Dr K R Bolton FCIS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONTENTS

Abstract

 

Introduction

 

Salisbury’s Thesis

            Sino-Soviet Discord

            1950 Sino-Soviet Treaty

            Sino-Soviet Border Clashes

 

Chinese Territorial Ambitions

            Invasion of Vietnam

            China’s War with India

 

Approaching Conflict

            Central Asia and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

            Russian Far East

            Treaty with Mongolia Aimed at Russia

 

Scenarios for War

            Water Wars

 

Sino-American confrontation unlikely

            Carter’s Trilateral Administration Develops Ties with China

            US-China Economic Symbiosis

 

Russia: Between East & West

 

Conclusion: Prospects for New Zealand

 

Appendix I: Coming War in Asia

Appendix II : Russia sets scene for new Cuban crisis

Appendix II: China, NZ pledge further army exchanges

Appendix III: Wellington Power Grid Under Chinese Military Front-man

Appendix IV: Asians in NZ to outnumber Maori – report

 

Works Cited

 

© 2008

Renaissance Press

P O Box 1627

Paraparaumu Beach

Kapiti 5252

New Zealand

 

Note: This is the text only version of an illustrated self-published book available from the author for $20.00. Reviews, comments, critiques and publication offers welcome. Send to:

vindex@clear.net.nz

 

ABSTRACT

The seeming rapport in recent years between Russia and China is one of the foundations of the post-Cold War world. Yet Russo-China friendship is an aberration of history. This monograph examines whether the Sino-Russian accord is based on secure and enduring foundations, or whether it is a very temporary alliance of convenience that will erupt sooner rather than later into conflict and expanding conflagration throughout Asia.

 

The question is set in the context of the larger stream of history covering centuries of conflict. The so-called “treaty of friendship” between the USSR and Maoist China, two supposedly fraternal communist super-powers, is considered as the means by which Soviet Russia kept China in a subservient, colonial position. Even under the duration of that “fraternal friendship” border conflicts resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Russian and Chinese soldiers in border disputes, the shelling of Chinese territory and the desire of the USSR to launch a pre-emptive strike on China to thwart the emergence of a nuclear power; with the termination of the Soviet-China treaty dramatically signalled by China’s invasion of Vietnam.  China’s past inclination to resort to invasion backgrounds the current suspicion between the two newfound “friends” amidst China’s growing incursions into traditional Russian spheres of influences, and even within the Russian Far East.

 

Scenarios for future conflict are examined, particularly what will emerge as major contentions over water resources, both between Russia and China and further afield. Rivalry over oil resources will pale in comparison to the question of water. Also examined is the recent historical relationship between China and the USA, often cited as rivals over spheres of strategic interest. It is contended that the relationship between the two has been cordial, despite occasional political public stances on the world stage by leaders of both nations. In particular the USA and china have entered into a symbiotic economic relationship and conflict would result in economic collapse. Conversely, the newfound “friendship” between Russia and China is not based on any such symbiosis.

 

This subject is of vital importance to New Zealand – and Australia – as the country has been set on a course for the past several decades of merging with Asia, and more specifically with China. The entire region is beset by the prospect of scenarios for disaster. China’s economy itself is fundamentally very fragile and could implode, which bodes ill for New Zealand, having hitched its wagon to China’s star. The New Zealand-China Free Trade Agreement, the first such agreement with China, was signed in April 2008 and passed into law by Parliament on the night of July 24. Amidst the jubilation over the prospect of vastly increased New Zealand exports to China, most New Zealanders remain oblivious as to the dangers, because New Zealand’s business and political leaders are ignorant as to some inexorable laws of history. The question is not one of “racism” or anti-Chinese sentiment, but is one of identity and survival at its most basic level.

 

Finally, this is written from the perspective of Realpolitik, a method of analysis based on hard Fact rather than wishful thinking or personal inclination.

 

Note: This monograph has been written at the very time when in July 2008 Russia and China are reported to have signed an agreement over disputed border territories. Again it is Russia making the concessions and appeasing China, allowing China to further consolidate its growing military and technological strength. The present agreement, set against the historical context outlined herein, does not diminish the prospect of future conflict.[1]

 

INTRODUCTION

One of the primary geo-political shifts in recent years has been the rapport that has seemingly developed between two historic enemies, Russia and China. The discord between the two powers goes back to the centuries long duration of the Mongol occupation of Russian territory, and subsequent annexation of Chinese territory by Imperial Russia.  This historic conflict was not mitigated by the triumph of communism in China, despite the proclaimed aim of world proletarian solidarity.

            However, in recent years Russia and China have developed trade and diplomatic relations. Most significantly, Russia has been China’s main supplier of arms (followed by Israel). Chinese and Russian leaders sought accord in the face of what they consider US global hegemony following the collapse of the Soviet bloc.

It is the thesis of this paper that the accord between Russia and China will not hold, any more than the “fraternal relations” between the two when both were nominally “communist”.

            There will eventually be conflict between Russia and China over land and resources. As shown in other articles, Asia is replete with potential crises over land and resources, many of which could erupt into regional conflagration[2].

            The relationship between China and Russia is full of meaning for New Zealand, not least because we’ve been tied economically to China, and more broadly because we are being pushed into an “Asian bloc”.

In the 1960s, when Chinese “communists” dissolved their “fraternal relations” with the USSR and resorted to the old ethnic rivalries, American journalist Harrison Salisbury wrote a prophetic book on geopolitics The Coming War Between Russia & China.[3] Salisbury’s predictions seem to have been proven wrong in recent years with the new Sino-Russian accord, yet developments now indicate that his predictions are unfolding, and precisely at the time he foretold they would – the 21^st Century. Now another book, although not subscribing to the view of a war, is being published that nonetheless shows the rising tensions between Russia and China; Axis of Convenience: Moscow, Beijing and the New Geopolitics, by diplomat Bobo Lo.[4]

           

 

SALISBURY’S THESIS

This writer has long held that a Russo-Chinese accord would not hold, but rather there would be conflict with the possibility of war:

“The split between Russia and China over communist ideology is a mere façade, and practically irrelevant. The real split is historically and racially based. We can trace the Russo-Chinese split back to 1229 when the Mongol ‘Golden Horde’ of Genghis Khan invaded Russia. The Mongols ruled Russia for 250 years. Even as late as the 18^th C. Mongols still ruled the Lower Volga and the Crimea. This centuries long Mongol rule has resulted in an ingrained… fear of Eastern conquest.”[5]

           

 

Harrison Salisbury states:

“The Russian makes no distinction between the people of the East. He does not distinguish between the Mongols who ravished his land 600 years ago and the masses of China whom he believes are standing just beyond the lower hills of Asia ready to attack again. No Russian finds it unusual to hate the Chinese. He does not apologise when he says ‘little yellow bastards”.

           

SINO-SOVIET DISCORD

Stalin backed Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalists. The primary Soviet goal was a united front between Chiang and Mao to fight the Japanese, while recognising Chiang as the leader of China. Mao put up a pretence at fighting the Japanese and claiming to be able to work with Chiang. Salisbury remarks that Stalin always preferred Chiang to Mao, whom he regarded as a “Trotskyite”.  During World War II Chiang was the focus of Soviet support, not the Reds under Mao. In 1945 the Russians prepared to evacuate Manchuria, but stayed until 1946 at the request of Chiang in order to thwart a Maoist takeover. The Soviet ambassador was only withdrawn from Chiang’s entourage on Oct. 2 1949, the day after Mao announced his Government in Peking. Russia’s continuing support for Chiang at the ambassadorial level, right up until the formation of the Communist regime was a grudge that Mao forever carried.

            Even under the Sino-Soviet alliance of 1950 the military equipment from the USSR was second rate and expensive. In 1957 Mao took a delegation to Moscow and asked for nuclear warheads, but was rebuffed.

 

1950 Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance

Mao’s dreams of establishing China as a superpower rested on the assumption that it would be built up with Russian largesse. This was not the case. Rather the 1950 Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance that served as the basis of Russo-Chinese relations for thirty years was humiliating and debilitating. It was one moreover which was the primary cause for China’s invasion of Vietnam in 1979, as will be considered below.

            Mao could have cultivated friendship with the USA, which was favourable towards a Maoist takeover. Gen. George Marshall for e.g. was antagonistic towards Chiang and did not view the Chinese communists as having Soviet support. Marshall told Chiang that US assistance would halt if Nationalist forces continued pursuing the Red Army into northern Manchuria in 1946 at a time when such an offensive could have finished Mao. This gave Mao a strong base from which to gather his strength and finally defeat Chiang.

            As Chang and Halliday point out in their definitive biography on Mao this US assistance to Mao, and betrayal of Chiang was decisive. [6]

            Conversely, as surprising as it might seem – superficially – aid from Stalin to Mao was extracted at a very high price; the prelude to the humiliating Sino-Soviet treaty. This was not at all a matter of communist solidarity, but of the ancient animosity existing between Russia and China, whatever the ideological facade. In return for Russian aid, Red China was committed to repaying with food on such terms as to create famine. In Yenan, for e.g. 10,000 peasants died of starvation. It was a prelude to the future “Great Famine”, again the price of assistance from Russia.[7]

             Mao was determined to establish China as a super-power, but he was badly mistaken if he thought he could secure his ambitions with Russian help. Nonetheless he courted Stalin by flagrantly repudiating American and other Western relations, although his aggressive action caused Stalin alarm.  Chang and Halliday write: “It is widely though that it was the US that refused to recognise Mao’s China. In fact, Mao went out of his way to make recognition impossible by engaging in overtly hostile acts.”[8]

            It is only recently that the secret annexes to the 1950 Sino-Soviet Treaty have become known. The $US300 million loan was spread over five years.  Stalin approved 50 large industrial projects, a lot fewer than Mao intended.

            Mao paid a high price in return. Manchuria and Xinjiang were to be recognised as Soviet spheres of influence, with exclusive Russian access to their industrial, financial and commercial activities. “As these two huge regions were the main areas with known rich and exploitable mineral resources, Mao was effectively signing away most of China’s tradable assets.”

            Mao referred to the two regions among his inner circle as Russian ‘colonies’. This was to be a permanent sore point with China’s leadership. In 1989 China’s leader Deng told Russian leader Gorbachev that,

“Of all the foreign powers that invaded, bullied and enslaved China since the Opium War (in 1842), Japan inflicted the greatest damage; but in the end the country that got the most benefit out of China was Tsarist Russia, including the Soviet Union during a certain period…”

           

Chang and Halliday remark: “Deng was certainly referring to this treaty.”[9]

            The ironically named ‘friendship treaty’ established virtual Russian colonial status over China. The Chinese had to pay huge salaries to Soviet technicians in China, in addition to extensive benefits to them and their families. Compensation had to be paid to Russian enterprises for the loss of the technicians working in China. The clause that Mao particularly sought to conceal was that which placed Russians employed in China outside of Chinese jurisdiction. The Chinese communists had always railed against this status imposed on China by the imperial powers during the 19^th Century as ‘imperialist humiliation.’ [10]

Now the old imperialism had returned under Soviet ‘fraternity’

            During the years 1953-54 Mao embarked on a so-called “Superpower Programme”  that was again to wreak havoc especially on the peasantry. The Chinese were told that the equipment from the USSR was ‘Soviet aid’, implying a gift.  But everything had to be paid for, mainly in food. [11]

            Halliday and Chang state that China has only 7% of the world’s arable land but 22% of the world’s population, in underlining the seriousness of the Russian terms on China. However, that is something also which should be kept in mind in regard to present and future developments.

            China’s repudiation of the Treaty was aggressively signalled by its invasion of Vietnam in 1979 as a direct challenge to the USSR. However, major border clashes and loss of life among Chinese and Russian troops occurred even during the years that the ‘friendship’ Treaty was operative.

 

SINO-SOVIET BORDER CLASHES

            Sino-Soviet discord through the late 1960s was the result of contention over the status of Outer Mongolia and of numerous territorial disputes along the Sino-Soviet border. These conflicts had festered beneath the surface of Russo-Chinese relations for over a century, since Czarist Russia forced China to sign a series of treaties ceding vast territories. Mao’s China considered the USSR as a continuation of Czarist Russia.

 

 

According to S. C. M. Paine:

"For China, the physical territorial losses were enormous: an area exceeding that of the United States east of the Mississippi River officially became Russian territory or, in the case of Outer Mongolia, a Soviet protectorate."[12]

 

            The USSR never had any desire to assist China to superpower status. The Soviet policy towards China was to secure a united front between Chiang and Mao to fight the Japanese. The supposed treaty of friendship between Mao’s China and the USSR signed in 1950 was one of Chinese subjugation. The Chinese soon turned their attention to securing the return of areas regarded as having been stolen by Imperial Russia.

            Salisbury states that in 1952 a college textbook was published, A Short History of Modern China, which includes a map depicting China with 19^th C. borders, designating 19 regions ‘lost to a European power.’ These stretch from India to Indo-China. Five other regions were taken by Russia, in addition to Mongolia and Tibet being incorporated into China. Ten years later China moved on its claims with confrontations on the borders of India, Outer Mongolia and Russia.

            In 1964 A Concise Geography of China was published. This shows China’s borders being settled with all neighbours, except for Russia. Frontiers between Sinkiang and Kazakhstan, and along the Amur and Ussuri rivers are designated “undefined national boundary”.

            In 1964 Mao told a delegation of Japanese socialists.

“There are too many places occupied by the Soviet Union. About 100 years ago, the area to the east of Lake Baikal became Russian territory and since then Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Kamchatka and other areas have become Soviet territory. We have not yet presented our account for this list.”

           

In 1960 there were 400 border clashed between Russian and Chinese troops, in 1962 more than 5000, in 1963 more than 4000.

            The biggest clash came on 2 March 1969, when Chinese forces attacked Russian troops on the disputed uninhabited island of Zhenbao (Damansky in Russian) in the Ussuri River.  The incident was contrived by Mao as a show of defiance. A Chinese elite unit ambushed Soviet troops, killing 32. The Russians responded on the night of 14-15 March, brining up heavy artillery and tanks, and firing missiles 20 kms into China. Around 60 Russian and 800 Chinese were killed during the engagement. A CIA aerial photograph showed the Chinese side had been shelled so extensively as to look like a pot-marked moon landscape.

            Mao was taken aback by the massive Russian response and worried over a Soviet invasion.

            On 13 August the Russians attack at the Kazakhstan-Xinjiang border, surrounding and destroying Chinese troops deep inside China. Mao hurriedly ordered earth defences to be constructed should the Russians drive for Peking. [13]

            At this time, the Russians intended to drive home their offensive to the point of nuclear attack, but were rebuffed by the USA when approval was sought. The journalist Victor Louis, associated with the KGB and Moscow’s emissary to Taiwan, stated that Russia intended bombing China’s nuclear test site and setting up an alternative leadership structure to take over China.[14]

            The revelations of a top Nixon aide go further:

            Pres. Nixon’s chief of staff H R Haldeman reveals in The Ends of Power that for years the Russians had been warning the US that China mustn’t be allowed to build a nuclear capacity. In 1969 the Russians approached the USA for a joint strike against China. Nixon rejected the Russians, but was informed that they intended to proceed anyway. He warned Russia that the USA and China shared common world interests, and sent 1300 airborne nuclear weapons to Russian cities. The Russians backed down. [15]

            The thesis of Salisbury was that a food-population crisis, which is periodic throughout China’s history, would result in China’s seeking living space and resources in Russia. Salisbury states China will not sit back and starve with the lands of Russia beckoning. “They will – and must – fight.”

            In 1979 the Soviet publication Soviet-Chinese Relations – What Happened in the 60’s, stated in a realistic manner the real causes for the Russo-Chinese conflict behind the facade of ideological rift:

“The more distant goal was to call in question and, if possible, challenge the legality of the existing borders between the USSR and China, and thus to substantiate Mao’s statement, made during a meeting with Japans socialists in 1964, about ‘the seizure of 1.5 million sq. kilometres of Chinese territory by Russia’… In analysing the Maoists’ stand on the territorial questions, one should turn to China’s history and consider the expansionist aspirations of the Chinese emperors and the chauvinistic claims of the Chinese nationalists who dreamed of the return of the ‘golden age’ of the Chinese empire when many of China’s neighbours were mere vassals… It is crystal clear that in pressing their territorial claims the Maoists pursue far-reaching expansionist aims which can be summed up as Great Han Hegemony…”

 

`Far from the USSR having been a benevolent father figure in siring a communist offspring that would achieve Super-Power status with Russia arms and technology, and stand side-by-side with the USSR in confronting the imperialist powers and bringing communism to the world, China had been relegated to the status of a colony. The bitterness endured long past Mao’s demise.

            Towards the end of his life, Mao changed tactics and sought an alliance with the USA, which the American ruling and business elites had long sought. The USSR became the common threat that would be contained by a Washington-Peking Axis. Despite the apparent thawing of the ‘cold war’ between Russia and China initiated recently by Putin, the main focus for China’s power comes from a symbiotic economic relationship between the USA and China. This will be considered further.

 

CHINA’S TERRITORIAL AMBITIONS

            China’s expansionary aims are not necessitated by the demand for ‘living space’ or lebensraum in the conventional sense, at least not for the moment, although Salisbury raised the prospect in the advent of a food/population crisis.

            China, as we’ve seen, has been expanding economically and this has resulted in the movement of Chinese nationals following economic penetration. The advance has been peaceful and subtle, relatively, as in the case of the Russian Far East.

            However, Bobo Lo’s contention as to the peaceful economic expansion of China notwithstanding, China has in the years since Mao shown itself ready for shooting wars over strategic territory and even as shows of force towards its neighbours.

            Despite the proclamations and treaties aimed at showing China’s ‘good neighbourliness’ towards Russia, Central Asia and India, China stubbornly continues to raise the question of disputed borders in an ominous manner. This seems to be contrary to Bobo Lo’s theory that China will adhere to a peaceful road of economic expansion. It shows rather that something psychotic remains in the mentality of the post-Mao leadership.

 

INVASION OF VIETNAM

            China invaded Vietnam in 1979 as a grand gesture for the repudiation of the debilitating and ironically named Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance, which was due for renewal. Clause number six of the Treaty stated that if neither signatory announced their intention to terminate the treaty during its final year, the alliance would automatically be extended for another five years.  As we have seen, the Treaty was designed not to secure Superpower status for China, nor even as a friendly alignment between two supposedly fraternal communist states, but to maintain a position of subjugation and outright humiliation. The Chinese regarded the Treaty as maintaining Russian “hegemony” (sic) over China.

Moreover, the tensions that occurred between Russian and China, including the border clashes resulting in hundreds of deaths and the threat of nuclear confrontation, happened when the friendship treaty was operative. Bruce Elleman states:

“One should recall that on February 14, 1950 Beijing and Moscow signed a 30-year treaty that included secret protocols supporting the USSR’s role as leader of the world communist movement. When Moscow later refused to renegotiate Sino-Soviet territorial disputes, this led to Sino-Soviet border clashes, most importantly during the late 1960s.

“Western scholars have all too often overlooked that even during this period of Sino-Soviet tensions, the 1950 Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance remained fully in force throughout this entire period of unrest. From Beijing’s viewpoint at least, the 1950 Sino-Soviet treaty was a major instrument through which Moscow had tried to exert its “hegemony” over China.

“Moscow was clearly concerned with what might happen when the Sino-Soviet treaty reached its 30-year term. Beginning in 1969, the USSR frequently urged China to replace the 1950 treaty with a new agreement. During 1978, Soviet forces were increased along the Sino-Soviet and Sino-Mongolian borders. Moscow also sought to force Beijing to come to terms by intensifying diplomatic relations with Hanoi, signing a twenty-five year defense treaty with Vietnam on November 3, 1978.”[16] [Emphasis added].

 

China’s invasion of Vietnam in 1979 was therefore intended as a direct provocation to the USSR, which had signed a defence treaty with Vietnam in 1978, itself aimed at China. This Soviet-Vietnamese alliance made Vietnam the "linchpin" in the USSR's "drive to contain China."[17]

The rift between China and Vietnam became apparent when thousands of ethnic Chinese began to flee Vietnam during 1978. Territorial disputes over the Spratly Islands, and Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia increased Sino-Vietnamese tensions.

            Elleman states that far from China having faced a defeat in Vietnam because of its quick withdrawal, the invasion was aimed at:

1.      Defying the USSR, which had signed a defence treaty with Vietnam, showing the Russians up as so-called “paper polar bears”; thereby

2.       Repudiating the Russo-Chinese supposed accord which had been nothing but an encumbrance and was due for renewal at precisely the time of the invasion:

“Instead of backing down, however, China announced its intention to invade Vietnam on February 15, 1979, the very first day that it could legally terminate the 1950 Sino-Soviet Treaty and it attacked three days later. When Moscow did not intervene, Beijing publicly proclaimed that the USSR had broken its numerous promises to assist Vietnam. The USSR's failure to support Vietnam emboldened China to announce on April 3, 1979 that it intended to terminate the 1950 Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance.”

“…After only three weeks of fighting, China withdrew and disputes over the Sino-Vietnamese border remained unresolved. To most outsiders, China's military action thus appeared to be a failure. But, if the real goal behind China's attack was to expose Soviet assurances of military support to Vietnam as a fraud, then the USSR's refusal to intervene effectively terminated the Soviet-Vietnamese defense treaty. Thus, Beijing did achieve a clear strategic victory by breaking the Soviet encirclement and by eliminating Moscow's threat of a two-front war.” [Emphasis added]. [18]

 

China threatened Russia with war if Russia went to Vietnam’s aid: Meanwhile, the Chinese had developed an alliance with the USA, which threatened the USSR at two fronts.

“To prevent Soviet intervention on Vietnam's behalf, Deng warned Moscow the next day that China was prepared for a full-scale war against the USSR; in preparation for this conflict, China put all of her troops along the Sino-Soviet border on an emergency war alert, set up a new military command in Xinjiang, and even evacuated an estimated 300,000 civilians from the Sino-Soviet border.” [19]

 

China had witnessed a lack of will on the part of Russia, buttressed by the Politburo’s failure to act in Poland against Solidarity. [20]

 

ONGOING AGGRESSION

            China’s imperial ambitions towards Vietnam go back to 208 BC when a Chinese general, Trieu Da proclaimed himself emperor of much of the country. In 111BC Vietnam was annexed by the Han and became the district of Giao-chi. Over centuries of resistance some measure of independence was achieved, but Vietnam continued to pay tribute to China. The Mongols were successfully repelled during the 12^th C., the Vietnamese being the only people to do so, attesting to their tenacity. The Chinese occupied the country 1407. Liberation was accomplished in 1428 after several decades of further resistance. China attacked in 1788 by was repelled.

In 1909 China tried to claim the Paracel islands, the start of a series of aggressive moves that continue to the present. In 1956 the Chinese navy took part of the Paracels, with a further invasion in 1974. In 1984 China set up the Hainan administrative area to control the Paracel and Spratly archipelagos.  In 1988 Chinese and Vietnamese ships clashed over Johnson Reef. In 1992 there were further incursions into Spratly. The Chinese enter into contract with the US Crestone Energy Corp. in 1994 for the exploration of oil around Spratly. 2000 Vietnam makes concessions to China over the territorial waters off Tonkin Bay. During 2004 there were over 1000 Chinese incursions into Vietnamese waters, with 80 Vietnamese fishermen being detained in December. Oil drilling in Vietnamese waters in 2005; that year the Chinese navy fires at Vietnamese fishermen in Vietnamese waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. In 2007 Chinese fire on Vietnamese fishermen off the Paracels. The Chinese navy conduct exercises in the area. The Chinese Government ratifies a plan to build Sansha, a large city to serve as the axis for merging three archipelagos, including the Paracels and Spratly under Chinese control.

            The continuing aggression towards Vietnam by China to the present day indicates that China’s ‘good neighbour’ treaties with Russia, Central Asia and India are expedient masquerades which will drop should China no longer be able to achieve its objectives by diplomatic and subtle means. China covets Vietnam’s oil and gas reserves, just as it does the resources of Central Asia and Western Siberia. Vietnam provides the present-day example of how China reacts when its geo-political aims cannot be fulfilled other than through war and military coercion. China’s actions towards Vietnam provide further indications that Bobo Lo errs in thinking the Chinese too pragmatic and rational to ever resort to military action with Russia again.

 

CHINA’S WAR WITH INDIA

            China’s border disputes with India during the period of 1960-62 left 3000 Indians dead.

            Bill Emmott, former editor of The Economist, and a member of the elite think-tank the Trilateral Commission[21] states of the conflict:

“In 1962 China and India fought a border war that humiliated India and left an enduring legacy of bitterness and suspicion. Both countries are now increasing their military spending and trying to modernise their armed forces. The border dispute remains unresolved. China claims an entire Indian state, Arunachal Pradesh, which borders southern Tibet and is roughly the size of Portugal. India claims that China is occupying 15,000 square miles of what is rightfully India – in Aksai Chin, an almost uninhabited plateau high in the Himalayas.”[22]

 

The Chinese are not about to let the disputed areas rest, and again here is a lesson if it is thought that China has repudiated its claims against Russian territory.

“On the face of it the two sides have since made progress. A border crossing was opened to trade in 2006 for the first time since the war. That year, however, the Chinese ambassador to Delhi caused outrage by publicly emphasising that China claims the whole of Arunachal Pradesh.

Ten months ago a “confidence-building” visit to China by more than 100 Indian officials had to be cancelled after China acted in a typically provocative way: it refused to grant a visa to a member of the Indian delegation from Arunachal Pradesh on the grounds that he was Chinese and did not need one.”[23] [Emphasis added].

 

So far from the Chinese leadership being too pragmatic and rational to resort to war, China has continued to use force even after the demise of Mao. Additionally, China has continued to maintain its claims over disputed territory with its neighbours, including Russia, Vietnam, India, has invaded Tibet, and has displaced Russian influence in Mongolia and is doing likewise in central Asia and in the border areas inside Russia herself. As will be considered below, should one or more of a number of crises emerge in regard to resources, there is little confidence to expect that China will not resort to war, or oblige a military response from Russia to protect its own resources from Chinese control.

 

APPROACHING CONFLICT

            A recent feature in The Sydney Morning Herald[24] based on Bobo Lo’s assessments shows that the old conflicts between Russia and China are already resurfacing despite the trade relations and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation:

“…. Russia is erecting legal and illicit barriers to Chinese trade in a climate of rising paranoia summed up in the Pravda headline: "Chinese immigrants to conquer Russia".

Russia's anxiety trades partly on an old fear that Chinese hordes are itching to take back the resource-rich and under-populated regions of Siberia that Russia annexed from Qing Dynasty China.

"The Russians are spooked by the idea you have 110 million people in just three northern Chinese provinces and 6 to 7 million people in the Russian Far East," says Bobo Lo, author of the forthcoming Axis Of Convenience: Moscow, Beijing And The New Geopolitics. "They feel no matter how sweet the political relationship, nature abhors a vacuum and therefore as soon as China feels brave or confident enough to move into the Far East, it will."

Many Chinese traders in Siberia have had to return to China because of new visa requirements and a law that bars non-Russians from making cash transactions in Russian marketplaces.

For their part, Chinese authorities have enforced tough passport requirements on traders who had previously travelled freely across the border. They have also booted thousands of Russians out of northern China as part of an over-zealous security campaign that is driving foreigners out of the country ahead of the Olympics….

…Oil volumes fell last year but defence sales crashed, prompting analysts to speculate that China's People's Liberation Army no longer relies on Russian technology. Russia once supplied the bulk of Chinese industrial machinery but now the long lines of excavators, trucks and machinery are all heading the other way.

China is meanwhile increasing its dominance of almost every sector of the Siberian consumer goods market. Two years ago the mayor of Vladivostok made the hyperbolic claim that all of the port city's retail trade and half of its trade in services were controlled by Chinese.

For all the fuss about a Russian-China axis against Islamic separatists and US missile shields, the relationship is constrained by Russian insecurity and Chinese insensitivity. It is just one example of how China's ascendancy is provoking fear and resentment throughout the world and particularly in its immediate neighbours, where the impact is most intense.” [Emphasis added].

 

The present Russian policy seeks to offset American world hegemony, while declining to regard a ‘multi-polar world’ in which China is one of three world powers, despite the development of relations between Russia and China at Putin’s initiative. An article in The National Interest, a mouthpiece of the misnamed “neo-conservative” coterie that is one of the major power factors in the USA states of the Sino-Russian relationship:

“PUTIN'S APPROACH toward Asia is heavily influenced by his concerns about the viability of the Russian Far East and Siberia. Early in his presidency, Putin dropped the multipolar view of China as a potential ally in an America-balancing exercise. In 2000, Russia signed a formal treaty of friendship with China and soon afterward acted to transform the Shanghai Forum into a regional security organization. But Putin clearly saw the dangers of too close an embrace with Russia's giant Asian neighbor. The Kremlin certainly wants to keep a generally friendly relationship with China and to develop greater economic ties with it. At the same time, it is becoming more worried about the prospect of Chinese migrants settling on the Russian side of the border, thus changing the entire ethnic composition of the region and putting its Russian identity in question. Russia's demographic decline--to the tune of just under a million citizens a year--is a constant theme in Putin's pronouncements. The Russian president is desperately looking for ways to balance against a possibly gathering Chinese threat.”[25] [Emphasis added].

 

China is presently taking over the Russian Far East by stealth, through commerce. Tensions are arising, and one day will erupt. Where will the USA stand? Other states in Asia will be drawn into to such a conflict. India is traditionally aligned to Russia, Pakistan to China. New Zealand cannot survive by being embroiled in Asia.

 

CENTRAL ASIA & SHANGHAI COOPERATION ORGANIZATION

            A Voice of America analysis[26] of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization provides some relevant background to Sino-Russian relations, and alludes to the potential areas of strain and discord.

            The basis of the Sino-Russian accord, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) formed in 1996, was first known as the "Shanghai Five," bringing together Russia, China and three Central Asian states: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, the three countries sharing borders with Russia or China or both. In 2001 the regional arrangement formally became the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Bobo Lo says Beijing is the driving force behind the SCO. He says being part of SCO allows China to expand its influence in Central Asia. He states that being part of a regional co-operation organisation allows China to portray itself as a responsible good neighbour allowing Beijing to expand its influence without suspicion”

"The SCO really is China's baby. The SCO allows China to do in Central Asia what it probably wouldn't be able to do at the bilateral level because if China is just dealing with Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan, then the smaller state is going to be spooked. But if it's in a sort of a nice pan-regional context, then China can paint itself as a good regional citizen, as a good international citizen and the Central Asians will feel less threatened by them," says Lo. "So the Chinese see the SCO as a way of sanitizing their entry into the region." [27][Emphasis added throughout].

 

De Nesnera writes that although Russia and China are presently in accord over wishing to minimise US influence in Central Asia, both continue to have their own ambitions that are even now coming under strain:

“At the same time, many analysts say Russia still sees itself as the dominant power in the region. Robert Legvold from Columbia University says that for the time being, Beijing and Moscow are deferential to each other.”

 

Prof. Legvold is quoted as stating:

"In the most important respect, China is deferential to Russia by not really challenging Russia's historically primary role in the area. But because of the dynamism and strength and size of the economy, inevitably the shadow of the Chinese economy in Central Asia is growing and being felt by the Russians," says Legvold. "And there is an uneasiness in Russia about the sheer magnitude of growing Chinese economic influence in the area."[28] [Emphasis added].

 

Bobo Lo indicates that the present Sino-Russian agreement regarding the countering of the US presence in Central Asia is not going to obliterate the historical roles both see themselves playing as the dominant power in the region:

“Bobo Lo from the Center for European Reform says that while Beijing and Moscow agree on the need to limit the U.S. presence in Central Asia, they disagree on one key element. "They have very different visions of what a post-American world order and particularly regional order in Central Asia would look like. Russia really wants, in a way, to return to the old status quo. Now it knows it cannot be the old Soviet Union again, so it's not going to try that. But it still sees itself as the leading power in the region. It has a sort of a sense of historical, strategic entitlement," says Lo. "The Chinese, however, think they have just as much right to be in the region. So they are actively, really actively, pushing their political, security and, above all, economic interests in the region.”[29]

 

Bobo Lo concludes: “And Russia and China, in many respects, are direct competitors."

            De Nesnera concludes that analysts will be watching to see what extent the Russian and Chinese rivalry manifests in Central Asia: “Most analysts say it will be fascinating to see in the years ahead the extent of Moscow and Beijing's competition in Central Asia…”

Bobo Lo in an interview with a Russian think tank called Open Democracy explained his perspective on Sino-Russian relations, which provides further insight. [30] The interview began with the statement: “The China threat looms large in the Russian imagination, but is not justified by the facts suggests Bobo Lo, writing for openDemocracy's new collaboration on Russia and the world.”

Regardless as to whether the Russian suspicion of the Chinese is justified or not, it is the perception that matters, and that perception is based on ages-old animosity and the present day grab for resources which, as previously alluded to, could initially become manifest in Central Asia, a pivotal region in geo-politics, and one in which the USA and the omnipresent George Soros[31] have also been particularly active.

            Bobo Lo alludes to the goodwill between Russian and China that was initiated by Putin. However he adds several areas of frustration for the Chinese, one of particular long term significance as to Russian attitudes being that: “Beijing was also frustrated that the Kremlin cancelled an agreement to build an oil pipeline to China in favour of a Japanese-backed route to the Pacific Ocean.”

Bobo Lo does not see this as a long-term problem for Russo-Chinese relations, yet states very significantly that this is because China realises that Russia regards itself as a European, rather than as an Asian power.

This Chinese realisation, based on understanding historical and geo-political realities, must have a significant impact on Russo-Chinese relations, as it did in the past, even when both nominally shared ideological commitments under communism. Lo states:

“…Chinese have few illusions about Russia. They know that normatively, historically and strategically it is overwhelmingly Western-centric. That doesn't mean pro-Western, just that Russia looks to the West for its main strategic points of reference. Russia is a European civilisation. Most of its population lives in the European part of Russia. The centres of political and economic power have been always there. Even under the Soviet Union the Far East was a European outpost, not part of Asia.”  [Emphasis added].

 

Lo it must be pointed out does NOT believe there will be a military confrontation between Russia and China, contrary to Salisbury, but does nonetheless definitively state the underlying tension between the two:

“You can argue that Russia should have a more balanced foreign policy. But people are what they are. The Russian elite's interests are in the West. They want a good relationship with China. But this is not the main game and won't be in the future - not if Russia can help it.” [Emphasis added].

 

Lo is asked: “Traditionally, the Russians have felt acutely threatened by China. Is that diminishing in the light of the new economic opportunities opening up in the Russian Far East? “

Here Lo repudiates the thesis that there will be Russo-Chinese military conflict and the threat of invasion, but rather states that the rivalry will take the form of geo-political and realpolitikal manoeuvring:

“The real threat is this: China's rise will lead to Russia's steady marginalisation from regional and global decision making. The Chinese do not intend to invade Russia militarily, because they would lose. The consequences would be too horrific to be contemplated. They are not going to fill the Russian Far East with lots of Chinese. Those northern regions have always been considered a barbarian outland. …”[Emphasis added].

 

Yet Lo does not deny the demographics that could see China’s excess population seeking lebensraum at Russian expense, as China’s population expands and Russia’s declines. While analysts such as Lo look in rationalistic terms, they cannot deny that it is perception that is of significance, that rational factors are not as significant to historical dynamics as the irrational, the instinctual:

“The reality is that there are 110 million people in northern China (this is the most common figure, but it is probably more) compared to fewer than 7 million Russians east of Lake Baikal. More generally, we are speaking about a total population of 1.3 billion and rising as against one of 142 million and falling. This clearly plays on the Russian mind.

“If you ask Russians how they view the Chinese, well, they view them much more favourably than a few years ago. China now is number one among countries with whom Russia is said to have friendly relations. On the other hand, if you asked people whether they are in favour of Chinese workers coming in to alleviate Russia's labour shortage, they would say absolutely not. If you asked them whether they minded having a Chinese neighbour, the answer would be predictable. At the street level, attitudes towards the Chinese remain unreconstructed.

 

As Lo himself has stated, as quoted previously, the Russian xenophobia in regard to China is not just confined to ‘street level’; the Russian elite see Russia as European, and it is such factors that make history.

Attention is now turned to the crucial role of Central Asia in the coming conflict between Russia and China:

“The Chinese game in Central Asia

“Russia and China have very different objectives in Central Asia. Russia wants to reassert its regional leadership there. China, however, wants to be one of three strategic principals in the region, along with the United States and Russia. Moscow and Beijing are keen to douse any notion of Sino-Russian rivalry in Central Asia. But this rivalry exists.

China has done nothing in Central Asia for two hundred years and is keen to get back in the game. But it wants to do this in such way that it doesn't offend others, particularly key states such as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. How, then, to package its re-entry so that others do not combine to stop it? The answer is to act under the cloak of pan-regionalism. Here the Shanghai Cooperation Agreement fits in beautifully. It makes China look like a good regional citizen. “ [Emphasis added].

 

As Lo states there are rival objectives between Russia and China in Central Asia. China is using the Shanghai agreement as a means of penetrating the region peacefully, without causing suspicion as to motives. Note also that China is comfortable with an American presence in Central Asia. This is very different from the Russian attitude. This would seem to go back to the historical relationships between Russia, China and the USA. Despite popular misconceptions, the US policy has traditionally been to utilise China as a bulwark to contain Russia, as indicated by the threat to Russia during the Nixon administration, when Russia wanted US support for a pre-emptive strike against China before she became a nuclear power. As indicated previously, the US administrations were friendlier, as paradoxical as it might seem – superficially – to Mao than was Russia. Contrary to the pro-Chiang, anti-Mao attitude of Stalin, the US State Department was very pro-Maoist in its orientation, culminating in the ‘normalisation’ of relations with China in the 1970s, fronted by Henry Kissinger, and at the behest of the Rockefeller banking and oil dynasty. The Rockefeller family has always had a close interest in China, and it was Rockefeller interests who were the first into China. From what Lo states, it seems that again China and the USA are in accord in wanting to contain Russia, this time in Central Asia.

            Lo continues by describing the contending nature of two pacts, that of Shanghai, and that of the CSTO, which is fundamentally an anti-China alliance:

“The Russians understand the Chinese game, so they're lukewarm about the SCO. The SCO does for China what the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) does for Russia. The CSTO, which Russia established in 2002, has one crowning virtue from Moscow's point of view: China is not a member. The CSTO helps Russia to reassert its influence in Central Asia. The SCO and CSTO are effectively competing organizations.” [Emphasis added].

 

Of particular significance to New Zealand is that according to Lo, China’s primary concern are the Asia-Pacific region, and the control of its sea-lanes to oil sources.

“China's main interest is not Central Asia, but the United States and the Asia-Pacific region. Its major objective in Central Asia is peace and stability. To achieve this, it is developing its connections with regional elites. … A quiet Central Asia helps to hose down separatist sentiments in China. We are not talking about Tibet here so much as the Uighurs in the far western province of Xinjiang. “

 

Elsewhere Lo states that China’s military outlook is presently being directed at our region:

“…But the thrust of their military planning is towards the south, not the north. They've focused on acquiring Kilo submarines, Sovremennyy destroyers. In theory, these might lead not only to the recovery of Taiwan, but also enable the Chinese to protect the sea-lanes through which 80% of their oil imports pass, and to project power in the South China Sea and the Pacific.” [Emphasis added].

 

Lo states that stability is the principal aim of the Chinese in Central Asia. It appears that Lo is underestimating the potential for direct confrontation between Russia and China, on the assumption that that stability in Central Asia will endure indefinitely, aggravated by a myriad of sources for conflict throughout the entire Asia-Pacific region. Lo states that the apparent Sino-Russia accord of the present is uneasy. He states that China seeks to develop “new sources” for energy in Central Asia. It seems reasonable then to ask whether there will be direct conflict between Russia and China in that region over the question of resources and Chinese incursions presently being undertaken by subtle means?

“From the Chinese point of view, greater economic interdependence creates a more stable environment, and energy is the spearhead of this. China worries about the security of sea-lanes. Currently, it gets about 50% of its oil from the Middle East, another 25% from Africa, and the rest from various other countries. It would like to diversify, not just globally but also at the regional level. The Chinese have found it very difficult to develop an energy relationship with the Russians, and they are therefore looking to develop new sources in Central Asia - which is why energy ties with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are so important.” [Emphasis added].

 

Later Lo reiterates that he does not believe that there will be military confrontation between Russia and China, and alludes to Russian paranoia. Again this assumes that the insatiability of China in regard to resources, and the potential for major crises in the entire region, will not develop beyond economic rivalry and subtle demographic shifts to actual military conflict. We have already seen border conflicts between Russia and China during the 1960s and 70s over ancient land disputes, at a time when both supposedly shared a common ideology, and both supposedly stood against the capitalist world. These appearances were deceptive. History rose above ideology.

“The obsession with the security of the Russian Far East reflects paranoia, not reality. The RFE scarcely features on the list of Chinese military priorities.

“More generally, Beijing understands that the best way of becoming the next global superpower is through peaceful means. If it resorted to armed action, it could lose badly and that might bring about the collapse of the communist regime. The risks are enormous.

“People have a somewhat hysterical view of the Chinese. But actually they're quite pragmatic. They do want to engage, not because they are "nice", but because constructive engagement is the most effective way to achieve their objectives.”

 

There will come a time when “constructive engagement” and “peaceful means” will fail.

Lo states the fundamental reasons for division rather than accord between Russians and Chinese, both in terms of economics and of innate psychological or ethnic differences, as well as the commonality between Russia and Europe as distinct from Russia and China:

“…First, the Russians like doing business with people they know. They have done gas deals with various European countries since 1967. By contrast, they have little understanding of how the Chinese operate. Second, there is the issue of price. The Europeans pay top dollar, whereas the Chinese are always looking for a discount. Third, most of the deposits are in western Siberia, much closer to Europe than to China. Fourth, the pipeline network is overwhelmingly directed towards Europe.

Russia needs to develop new oil and gas pipelines. But its focus is still very much on satisfying the needs of the expanding European market. That's where the money is. Incidentally, oil and gas make up 60% of Russia's total exports and more than half of federal budget revenue. Moscow does not have an alternative market just sitting there. Russia and Europe need each other….

 

            Despite rejecting an notion of a coming war between Russia and China as per Salisbury, Lo definitively states that there will be tension arising between Russia and China as the latter seeks to extend its influence into Central Asia. He also sees Russia in alliance with Europe:

“The fact that China has a much more dynamic economy than Russia will, in time, lead to growing tension between them. For example, the Russians will not take kindly to the Chinese becoming increasingly influential in Central Asia. However, such tensions will fall short of confrontation. I think the Russians will react to China's rise by gravitating towards the West - in ten years or so, maybe earlier. It will be interesting to see how the leadership in Beijing responds to this. Beijing is smart enough not to overreact but some kind of froideur in its relations with Russia will be unavoidable.”

“In my forthcoming book I call their relationship an ‘axis of convenience'. Both countries have become closer because of selected common interests, rather than ideas. But interests change.” [Emphasis added].

 

RUSSIAN FAR EAST: ECONOMIC & DEMOGRAPHIC EXPANSION

            As seen from the above China is pursuing its goals in Central Asia under a facade of “good neighbourliness”. The same strategies are being pursued in the Russian Far East. Despite the apparent accord between Russia and China, from the high level diplomacy and trade, to commerce of Chinese traders crowding out the markets of the Russian Far East, Putin, the architect of Russo-Chinese relations, does not hide his concern about China.

            Putin has warned for years about the demographic expansion of China relative to the demographic decline of Russia:

“President Vladimir V. Putin warned last year that the spread of Asian influence in the Russian Far East placed Russia’s very existence at stake. “If we don’t make concrete efforts,” he said, “the future local population will speak Japanese, Chinese or Korean.”[32]

 

Local authorities also express such concerns:

“What we see in the Russian Far East is the peaceful and slow colonization of all Russian territories in the area by the Chinese,” said Alexei D. Bogaturov, the deputy director of the Institute of U.S.A. and Canada Studies here. “We have a grave problem, I think.”[33]

 

New York Times correspondent Michael Wines, writing from Zabaikalsk a town in the Russian Far East sharing a border with  China and Mongolia, writes of the Chinese encroachment:

“For a lesson in 21^st-century geopolitics, come to this border town, until just a few years ago an outpost for Russian infantry awaiting a Chinese invasion.

Russian gun emplacements are crumbling now but the invasion is under way anyway: Chinese built the town’s few new apartments, China Telecom connects the cellular phones, and Chinese traders hire busloads of jobless Russians to tote Chinese-made clothes and electronics through the Chinese-built border crossing. Maybe 1,000 of the 11,000 or so residents are Chinese, too.

“The inescapable impression, here and elsewhere in the region, is of a land clinging tightly to its essential Russianness—and slowly losing its grip. Along a stretch of Russian borderland as big as Western Europe, demographics, economics and, for the first time, history are all working against Moscow.” [Emphasis added].

 

Wines states that the collapse of the Soviet Union ended the subsidies the state had provided for the Far East, and the ergonomic collapse has been offset by China, worrying even those Russians – up to Putin – who had sought a Russo-Chinese accord to counterbalance the USA:

“When Communism collapsed, so did the subsidies. The military all but disappeared, too, leaving a wreckage of near ghost towns behind. China has filled the vacuum. From Vladivostok to Zabaikalsk, Russians are coming to depend on the Chinese for everything from buildings to bananas to boomboxes. And that is unsettling even to the architects of the Sino-Russian reconciliation.”

…Mr. Putin’s fear is that Chinese economic expansion will crowd out Russian commerce and political power unless Moscow repopulates and rebuilds this ravaged region first. But precious few Russians want to move here, and money for rebuilding is scarce.” [Emphasis added].

 

In a brilliant strategy of psychological warfare aimed at wooing Russians into embracing Chinese overlordship, the Chinese have built a model city, albeit one that does not reflect the reality of the Chinese peasant. Wines writes:

“For Zabaikalsk residents, paradise begins 50 yards across the border, past abandoned Russian tanks and rusted barb-wire fences. There the Chinese have built a gleaming free-trade center, a small city of hotels, freight-forwarding offices, wholesale stores and pagodas.

On the horizon, 10 minutes down a freshly paved highway in China, is the city of Manzhouli. Ten years ago a Chinese version of Zabaikalsk, it is today a staging area for Russian trade—a forest of skyscrapers and cafes “where even the street sweepers have cellular phones,” one Russian said enviously. “It’s a beautiful city. I wish ours was like that,” said a Russian woman who would identify herself only as Valentina.”

 

RUSSIAN FAR EAST: CHINA’S LEBENSRAUM

What more glaring admission can there be that China has designs on Russian territory that have not diminished since the Sino-Russian friendship treaty, but rather have received new impetus via the supposed Sino-Russian rapport? The lands and oil of the Russian Far East beckon. Chinese farmers presently rent and cultivate land in the Russian Far East due to the shortage of land in China.

In the Primorsky Krai[34] region some 30,000 Chinese have permanent residence. The region is a disputed territory, with rich land that was not cultivated until the arrival of Russians in the beginning of the 17^th Century. Treaties in 1858 and 1860 moved the Russian border south to the Amur and Ussuri Rivers (which were to become sites of conflict during the 1960s and 70s) giving Russia possession of the region.

Primorsky Krai's economy is the most successful in the Russian Far East.

Food production is the most important sector, particulartly fish processing. The annual catch constitutes one half of the Russian Far East total. Agriculture is important, and includes the production of rice, milk, eggs, and vegetables.Grain, soybeans, potatoes, and vegetables are the prime elements in agriculture.. The breeding of livestock, especially sheep, is well developed. The timber industry has an annual yield of about 3 million cubic meters and is the second largest in the Russian Far East.

Machine manufacturing is the second most important element of the economy, and half of the output is to service the fishing industry and shipyards.. The construction materials industry supplies the whole Russian Far East.

The region generates more electricity than any other Russian Far East administrative division.

The defence industry is also important; with naval vessels and military aircraft production.

The railway infrastructure is twice the Russian average, and is connetced with China and North Korea

The coastal location makes the region an important maritime trade and defence route into the Pacific. Primorsky Krai-based shipping companies provide 80% of marine shipping services in the Russian Far East.[35]

Primorsky Krai is the largest coal producer in the Russian Far East. Among the other minerals found here are: tin, tungsten, lead, zinc, silver, gold, fluorspar ore (containing rare minerals such as beryllium, lithium, tantalum and niobium), and Russia’s largest supply of boron ore (boron being used in textiles, aerospace materials, smelting, control of fission in nuclear reactors, rocket fuels, jet engines, and hundreds of others uses)[36].[37]

As the Russian Far East becomes increasing reliant on Chinese investment, as the Chinese population expands and the Russian declines, a future food-population crisis in China could see the Russian Far East as China’s lebensraum to be taken by force. The Russian Maritime Region, Primorsky Krai is a rich prize in both land and minerals. Tibet was invaded, colonised and turned into a “special economic zone” by China for the control of the many mineral resources there and the water sources for much of Asia. In any one of a number of crises scenarios that could afflict China and Asia generally, the Russian Far East would be irresistible.

 

TREATY WITH MONGOLIA AIMED AT RUSSIA

            China sees Mongolia as an integral part of its territory, despite present declarations about “good neighbourliness”. Mongolia has long been coveted by China. Mongolia’s historic relations with Russia have been to offset China.

            China has in recent years displaced Russia in Mongolia, which was previously a Soviet protectorate. China is pursuing its integration of Mongolia via diplomatic means. The friendship treaty with Mongolia can only be interpreted as being aimed specifically at Russia.

China underlines the strategic importance of Mongolia for both itself and Russia: “As China’s important neighbor to its north, and situated between China and Russia, Mongolia enjoys a unique geographic position. …”

            The Chinese Foreign Ministry describes the relations between China and Mongolia when the latter was under the Soviet umbrella as having suffered “ups and downs”:

“In 1962, both sides signed Sino-Mongolian Treaty on Friendship and Mutual Assistance, and in 1962, signed Boundary Treaty. In mid and late 1960s, their relations suffered ups and downs. In 1970s, the two countries restored to exchange of ambassadors. In 1980s, their relations saw gradual improvement.

In 1987, China and Mongolia restored scientific and technological exchanges suspended for more than the previous 20 years, and signed 1987-1988 Plan for Scientific and Technological Cooperation.” [Emphasis added].

 

The Ministry’s statement on Mongolia has details about the cultural, economic and educational relations between the two, but merely mentions in passing ‘development in the military area’.

“In 1989, their state and ruling party (Chinese communist Party and Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party) were relations normalized. Since then, their friendly relations and cooperation have consolidated and developed in such areas as the political, economic, cultural, educational and military. In 1990, China and Mongolia issued a joint communiqué, revised Sino-Mongolian Treaty on Friendship and Mutual Assistance in 1994, and signed Friendship and Cooperation Treaty between China and Mongolia based on the previous treaty. … China is now Mongolia’s largest trading partner and investor. Both sides share identical or similar views on many issues in international affairs, support each other and enjoy fruitful cooperation.”[38] [Emphasis added].

 

The Soviet control of Mongolia was secured under the humiliating 1950 Sino-Soviet treaty.

            Elleman states that Soviet control of Mongolia was one of the ongoing contentions between Russia and China.

“On February 15, 1950, Mao also grudgingly agreed to recognize the "independent status" of the MPR. This admission was a far cry from recognizing Mongolia's complete independence from China, however, since Mao firmly believed that the Soviet government had earlier promised to return Mongolia to China. Based on Mao's later complaints, Mao must have received assurances from Stalin that Mongolia's status, as well as the exact location of the Sino-Mongolian and Sino-Soviet borders would be discussed at future meetings. Thus, it was Moscow's refusal to open negotiations with Beijing eventually led to border clashes during the 1950s and 1960s. Although the Sino-Mongolian border was resolved in 1962, Mao publicly denounced Soviet encroachments on Chinese territory and he protested Soviet control of Mongolia: "[T]he Soviet Union, under the pretext of assuring the independence of Mongolia, actually placed the country under its domination."[39][Emphasis added].

 

Mongolia has been contentious between Russia and China even after Mao’s death and decades after the 1960s border clashes. In 1978 the Chinese were still demanding Russia’s withdrawal from Mongolia, despite the wishes of Mongolia herself for the protection accorded by Russia:

“Finally, on 26 March 1978, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanded that Moscow, in addition to recognizing the existence of "disputed areas" along the Sino-Soviet border, must completely withdraw Soviet troops from the MPR[40], as well as pulling them back from along the entire Sino-Soviet border.”[41]

 

The USSR responded by increasing Russian defences along the disputed borders, while Mongolia reiterated its friendship with Russia and hostility towards China:

“In response to China's demands, Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, visited Siberia during early April 1978, and announced that new, more advanced equipment had been provided to missile units stationed along the Sino-Soviet border. These new weapons, Brezhnev announced, would be instrumental in "securing ourselves and our socialist friends against possible aggression, whatever the source." Soon afterwards, on 12 April 1978, Ulan Bator also publicly protested Beijing's demands, stating that additional Soviet troops had been stationed along the Sino-Mongolia border at Mongolia's request in order to offset increased Chinese troop concentrations to the south of the border.[42] [Emphasis added].

 

China has been pursuing the old, one could say ancient, policies in regard to her neighbours through the new strategy of economic subversion, from which is now proceeding a silent invasion of Chinese, populating Russian territory and displacing Russia in Mongolia through Chinese economic clout. This is the same strategy that China is using throughout the South Pacific, extending its influence over the small but strategically situated island nations through aid and economic development, followed by the opening or buying of port facilities.[43]

            Mongolia, like Tibet, is mineral rich. Its wealth includes: coal, copper, molybdenum, iron, phosphates, tin, nickel, zinc, wolfram, fluorspar, gold, uranium, and petroleum. Mongolia is a rich prize; one that has been lost to Russia.

 

 

SCENARIOS FOR WAR

WATER WARS

            Bobo Lo’s insightful perspective of the coming divergence of interest between Russia and China nonetheless underestimates the potential for a shooting war between the two. Water is an increasingly worrisome resource throughout the world, no less so in Asia and Russia.

            As water sources become scarce or polluted, water will become a source of conflict no less than oil. Indeed, it seems reasonable to contend that water will be a resource even more desperately sought after than oil, since it is one of the most fundamental elements for the survival of life.

            Of major concern are Chinese attempts to dam or redirect the southward flow of river waters from the Tibetan plateau, where major rivers originate, including the Indus, the Mekong, the Yangtze, the Yellow, the Salween, the Brahmaputra, the Karnali and the Sutlej. Among Asia’s mighty rivers, only the Ganges starts from the Indian side of the Himalayas.[44]

            However, into this scenario are China’s similar moves in regard to the designs it has on the waterways of Central Asia and of Russia. We are beginning to see China’s intransigence and aggressive intent even now in regard to control of water resources.

            The article below is worth studying in detail. It shows that China regards large regions of Central Asia as Chinese territory. It is published by a well-informed think tank on the region of the former USSR:[45] Yermukanov writes [Our emphasises throughout]:

“Over the last decade Kazakhstan and China have conducted a wide range of talks on the environmental safety of shared rivers and the use of joint water resources. Beijing took every occasion to deny on official levels that China was building dams in the Irtysh River, which is shared by China, Russia, and Kazakhstan, to divert water for irrigation purposes. The government of Kazakhstan is well aware that China faces a hard dilemma struggling to cope with growing water demands in its rapidly developing western provinces while having to respect previously reached international agreements on the Irtysh and Ili Rivers.”

 

While Bobo Lo states that China has entered the Shanghai accord with Russia and Central Asian republics to secure its aims while appearing to be a ‘good neighbour’, Yermukanov reports that China has shown its aggressive hand in its determination to secure the water resources of Central Asia and Russia:

“Patience ran out when Beijing started construction of a canal linking the Black Irtysh with the Karamai River on Chinese territory, dramatically lowering the water level in the river. China's water-management policy threatens to drastically reduce crop production in the environmentally vulnerable regions of East Kazakhstan, Pavlodar, and Karaganda.”

 

As for Russia, Yermukanov explains the ominous implications: “Such a move could also cause a severe drought in Russia's wheat-growing Omsk region.”

Yermukanov states that local Russian authorities are in disagreement in regard to the practicability of negotiations with China. However, it would seem reasonable to conclude that those who are holding out the prospect of negotiated settlements are merely verbalising hopes rather than likelihoods:

“Last November, in a desperate attempt to prevent an environmental disaster, the governor of Omsk region, Leonid Polezhayev, ordered 10 billion roubles to be allocated for the construction of a huge water reservoir to accumulate floodwaters for industrial use. He argued that a political solution to the Irtysh River dispute was not feasible, since the Chinese did not wish to negotiate. However, Amirkhan Kenshimov, deputy chairman of the Water Resources Committee of Kazakhstan's Ministry of Agriculture, announced that China had expressed a readiness to resume talks on the division of the Irtysh and Ili water resources. …(Izvestiya Kazakhstan, February 14).

 

Yermukanov cites the pessimism of Sinologists in regard to China’s willingness to negotiate other than for the purpose of stalling: “Experts familiar with the state of affairs on the Chinese side are less optimistic about Beijing's resolve to solve the problem of water resources in the Irtysh-Ili basin without dragging out the talks endlessly.”

China has already began giant projects on both the Ili and Irtysh Rivers, in what appears to be a disregard for the ‘good neighbourliness’ and the aim of maintaining stability in Central Asia that Bobo Lo contends is putting brakes on open conflict between China and its Russian and Central Asian neighbours. He states that the Kazakhstan Government is not even fully aware of the situation:

“Many in the government are apparently not aware of the fact that last year China opened a hydroelectric power station that consumes 15% of the Ili River's water resources. Environmentalists warn that in the next few years China will build additional hydroelectric power installations along the Irtysh and Ili Rivers; 65 hydroelectric power stations have already been built. Among the installations not revealed to the Kazakh government delegation is the Kapshagay (a hydroelectric power station in Kazakhstan carries the same name) water reservoir, with the enormous capacity of 380 million cubic meters. China is planning to build another 13 reservoirs in the coming years (Novoye pokolenie, February 10). “

 

Yermukanov refers to the industrialisation of northwestern China polluting Lake Balkhash, and the increased food production in Xingjiang Uighur. He points to Chinese mismanagement, and to the refusal of China to sign an agreement on shared water resources.

“The forced industrial development of north-western China is likely to pollute Lake Balkhash in Kazakhstan with chemicals and fertilizers, as the Ili River feeds the lake. The increase of paddy fields in Xingjiang Uighur Autonomous Region has already led to the depletion of the Irtysh and Ili Rivers. According to the latest data, as a result of mismanagement the annual loss of water in the Chinese section of the Ili River basin makes up 4.4 cubic kilometres, which equals 15% of the whole water resources of the river. That reduces substantially the amount of water inflow into Lake Balkhash. The root cause of the problem is that until now China had not signed the international convention on trans-border waters. …”

 

Yermukanov ominously points to the ethnic dynamics of the region, which he states could lead to violence. The Chinese are changing the demographics of the region with Chinese ethnic incursions, in the name of peaceful commerce. Yermukanov also reveals that China has territorial designs on Kazakhstan. While Bobo Lo maintains that China is too pragmatic and has too much to lose to continue pressing its territorial claims on Russia as it did under Mao, its present designs on Kazakh lands give pause to thought in regard to whether it has indeed forgone its ambitions in regard to Russia:

“The accelerated development of Xingjiang Uighur Autonomous Region is increasingly alarming the Kazakh government. Border areas in southern regions have already become an incongruous melting pot of dozens of ethnic groups. The water shortages in this densely populated area could lead to a violent outbreak of interethnic conflict. Another worry is that, despite the signing of border agreements between Kazakhstan and China, Beijing did not abandon altogether territorial claims on some southern regions of Kazakhstan. Some years ago a Kazakh Foreign Ministry delegation was surprised to see the former capital, Almaty; Balkhash; and other areas of south Kazakhstan marked as parts of China on a map in Beijing's central museum. The Foreign Ministry of Kazakhstan filed an official protest, and the Chinese promised to correct the mistake. But the school text on Xingjiang history lists the same parts of Kazakhstan as Chinese territory (Zhas Qazaq, February 3).”

 

In contradistinction to Bobo Lo’s references to China’s façade of ‘good neighbourliness’ Yermukanov states that China has held such principles ‘in contempt’ in regard to the life-and-death survival issue of water resources. He points out that Russia has yet to initiate a common front with Central Asia in regard to China. However, this must eventuate as China’s continuing encroachments on Central Asian water sources will directly and significantly impact on Russia.

“Beijing's current adamant attitude on the issues of trans-border rivers clearly reflects China's manifest contempt for the principles of good-neighborly relations. Given the lack of interaction between Russia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, Astana has no alternative to drawn-out, yet fruitless, talks with China on this issue of vital importance.”

 

The crucial issue of water resources is a factor that Bobo Lo, for all his perceptiveness, seems to have overlooked, and one that has significant potential for armed conflict.

 

 

SINO-US CONFRONTATION UNLIKELY

            “There are some who, for varying reasons, would appease Red China. They are blind to history's clear lesson, for history teaches with unmistakable emphasis that appeasement but begets new and bloodier war. It points to no single instance where this end has justified that means, where appeasement has led to more than a sham peace. Like blackmail, it lays the basis for new and successively greater demands until, as in blackmail, violence becomes the only other alternative.” [46]

–Gen. Douglas MacArthur, 1951.

 

What of the US factor in Asian and Sino-Russian affairs? Will the USA step in and confront China, which is often seen as a geo-political rival in its ambition to secure ports and waterways around the world? Would the USA confront China in a showdown over Taiwan? Would the USA, perhaps in alliance with Russia, confront Chinese incursions into Central Asia?

            Any confrontation between the USA and China is unlikely. In a confrontation between Russia and China the USA will not intervene against China any more than the USA was willing to assist Russia in preventing China’s gaining nuclear capabilities.

            The US attitude is unlikely to have changed from 1982 when US National Security Adviser William Clark told Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser that Australia “would be expected to cope alone with any local or regional conflict.” The exception would be if the USSR were supporting an aggressive state. But China was regarded as an ally against Russia.[47] In 1983 Paul Wolfowitz, more latterly US Deputy Secretary of Defence and president of the World Bank, when US Assistant Secretary for East Asia and Pacific Affairs, told Chinese Premier Zhao that the US “welcomed China’s increasing and stabilising influence in the region, which he described as one of the more dramatic recent shifts in power play in south-east Asia.”[48]

            Over the course of several decades since 1983, the role of China has certainly been far more “dramatic”.

            The same business and political elites that governed the USA back then, are still running things. Their outlook towards China has been friendly since the deposing the Chiang. As paradoxical as it appears, the USA was as insistent that Chiang deal with the Communists, as Stalin was in regard to Mao compromising with Chiang.[49] As we have seen, it was Mao who rebuffed the USA in favour of a debilitating treaty with the USSR.

            When Mao dramatically repudiated the 1950 ‘friendship treaty’ with Russia, signalled by the invasion of Vietnam, he sought an alliance with the USA. This was the culmination of a long-desired aim of political and business elites in the USA, particularly those associated with the Rockefeller banking and oil dynasty.

            Chang and Halliday state that Mao had sought an alliance with the USA as far back as 1953, when Stalin died. However, the Korean War had made such a relationship impossible to sell to the American people. In 1969 President Nixon expressed interest in pursuing relations with China.[50]

            It was at Korea that the USA was directly confronted by China. The reaction was a telegram from the Joint Chiefs of Staff advising Gen. MacArthur to prepare to evacuate and leave the peninsula to the Communists. As the document shows, the USA was well aware that China had directly entered the conflict.[51]

            MacArthur considered the American policy “defeatist” and made four recommendations:

“(1) Blockade the coast of China; (2) destroy through naval gunfire and air bombardment China's industrial capacity to wage war; (3) secure reinforcements from the Nationalist Chinese garrison in Formosa to strengthen our position in Korea if we decided to continue the fight for that peninsula; and (4) release existing restrictions upon the Formosa garrison for diversionary action against vulnerable areas of the Chinese mainland.”[52]

 

Pres. Truman responded to MacArthur’s opposition regarding a “no-win” policy – a policy that was to be repeated in Vietnam – by dismissing the popular military commander in 1951. Much has changed since that time, but the changes make a direct confrontation between the USA and China even less likely: China is now dealing from a position of strength far beyond its capabilities in 1950, and in particular the economies of China and the USA are now in symbiosis, a matter that will be further discussed. Any military confrontation would have repercussions more far-reaching globally that McArthur’s recommendations in 1950.

To return to the rapport that was established between the USA and China in 1970, what is notable is that Nixon’s primary adviser was Dr Henry Kissinger, a protégée of the Rockefeller family. The Rockefeller dynasty has had a keen interest in China since the 1920s. In 1956 John D Rockefeller founded the Asia Society, a high-level think tank of politicians, diplomats and business leaders, to promote economic relations with Asia.[53][54]

The importance of Kissinger for the Rockefeller family is indicated by the introduction he was given by ambassador Richard Holbrooke to the 50^th anniversary gala banquet of the Asia Society honouring the Rockefellers:

“To discuss the Rockefeller Legacy, not just John D. Rockefeller III, but the whole family, there really was only one person who could do it, and that was Henry Kissinger. Henry has been a friend of the Rockefeller family as you all know, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, David Rockefeller, and the rest of the family, so many of whom are here tonight, for fifty years. He also has a very strong and deep connection to Asia. We all know that he was the main architect of the historic opening to China, which has resulted in so many positive achievements, and remains one of the most complicated, if not the most complicated, bilateral relationship we have in the world. Henry has been very gracious to join us tonight, and I have no other duty here except to invite to the stage former Secretary of State, Nobel Peace Prize winner, our friend, Asia Society’s friend, Henry Kissinger.”[55] [Emphasis added].

 

Kissinger, despite being outside of Government service, remains deeply influential in State, business and diplomatic circles as head of Kissinger Associates, his private advisory service, and retains his connection with high level think tanks such as the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg conferences, and as seen, the Asia Society.

 However Mao, posturing as the pre-eminent anti-American champion before the Third World, in an ideological conflict with the USSR had to be as cautious as his American counterparts in selling the idea of what would amount to a Sino-American alliance. The alliance began at the lowest level; American and Chinese ping-pong[56], in what was to be called ‘ping pong diplomacy.’

            Kissinger made his first trip to China in 1972 to plan a visit from Nixon. The Americans offered as a preliminary goodwill gesture the abandonment of Taiwan and official recognition of Red China. The US also offered to get China into the UN. Additionally, the US would provide China with information on all its dealings with Russia. Kissinger also told the Chinese that the US would be withdrawing from South Vietnam[57], and that American troops would soon be pulled out of South Korea. China was not asked for any concessions.[58]

            In 1973 Kissinger assured Mao that the US would come to China’s assistance if attacked by Russia. [59]

The groundwork was also laid for the technological and industrial build up of China, and therefore the establishment of the military strength that Mao had failed to achieve via the USSR.  On 6 July Kissinger told Mao’s envoy:

“I have talked to the French Foreign Minister about our interest in strengthening the PRC [People’s Republic of China]. We will do what we can to encourage our allies to speed up requests they receive from you on items for Chinese defense.

“In particular you have asked for some Rolls-Royce technology. Under existing regulations we have to oppose this, but we have worked out a procedure with the British where they will go ahead anyway. We will take a formal position in opposition, but only that. Don’t be confused by what we do publicly…”[60] [Emphasis added].

 

Kissinger’s last sentence is a key to understanding world history and politics: “Don’t be confused by what we do publicly.” It is the manner by which high politics works behind the scenes, and has little to do with what is given out be the news media for public consumption.

            The building of China into a military and economic super-power courtesy of Western big business, headed by the Rockefeller dynasty, was to be delayed a few years by the Watergate Scandal which forced Nixon from office, and resumed under the Trilateralist-dominated Carter Administration.

 

CARTER’S TRILATERALIST ADMINISTRATION DEVELOPS TIES WITH CHINA

            This writer has outlined the development of relations between the USA in the context of a growing military and diplomatic offensive in the South Pacific. In the Menace of China in the Pacific[61] I describe the continuation of US-China relations under the Carter Administration, in the aftermath of the Nixon-Kissinger regime. The Rockefeller influence, in this instance via the Trilateral Commission, remained:

“The “normalisation of relations” between the USA and China came in 1978 under the Carter Administration. Pres. Carter’s was a Trilateral regime.

Previous groundwork had been undertaken during the Nixon Administration through the so-called “Ping Pong diplomacy” of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger…

After Kissinger had made the preliminary arrangements, Pres. Nixon travelled to China in 1972.

In 1973 David Rockefeller went to China… [and] waxed lyrical about the Mao regime writing: “The social experiment in China under Chairman Mao’s leadership is one of the most important and successful in human history...”[62]

David Rockefeller’s Standard Oil obtained exclusive rights to China’s oil exploration; his Chase Manhattan Bank to industrial finance.

When in 1978 Taiwan was dumped and diplomatic relations formally established under the Carter Trilateralist regime Leonard Woodcock, an early member of the Trilateral Commission, became first US Ambassador to China. Apart from the Rockefeller interests, other early globalist corporations whose chief executives were Trilateralists included: Coca Cola, given the soft drink monopoly (J Paul Austin, a backer of Carter), Boeing Aircraft (T A Wilson), and Mitsui Petro-Cehmical (Yoshizo Ikeda). …

Japanese Trilateralists were also heavily involved with early dealings in China. Mitsubishi (whose chairman Chujiro Funjino was chairman of the Japanese Trilateral Commission Executive Committee) got the contract to modernise the Shanghai shipyards, the largest in China. Hitachi Ltd. (president Hirokichi Yoshiyama) got a $100,000,000 contract to supply equipment for the Paoshan steelworks and to expand the Hungchi Shipyards. Nippon Steel (Yoshihiro Inayama) was involved with constructing a giant steel plant near Shanghai.[63].

 

 US-CHINESE ECONOMIES SYMBIOTIC

            The most compelling reason that confrontation between the USA and China is unlikely is that the economies of the two are symbiotic, which cannot be said in regard to the relationship between China and Russia or Russia and the USA.

Dr . Niall Ferguson states: “…Since April 2002 the central banks of China and Hong Kong have bought 96 billion dollars of US government securities.”

This means that, “the US is reliant on the central bank of the People’s Republic of China for the financing of about 4% per year of its federal borrowing.”

Ferguson mentions the “growing interdependence” between the economies of the USA and China:

“Far from being strategic rivals, these two empires have the air of economic partners. The only question is which of the two is the more dependent, which, to be precise, stands to lose more in the event of a crisis in their amicable relationship, now over thirty years old….”[64]

 

Today global business in China is such that China Business World has over 1000 listings of US companies just in Beijing and Shanghai

             When in 2006 the US Labour organisation AFL-CIO petitioned the Bush Administration to place economic restrictions on China in regard to China’s labour laws, this was directly opposed by a united front of big business associations. Their letter to Pres Bush is instructive in regard to the continuing pro-China attitude prevalent among influential business identities. Among the 14 signatories are: Business Round Table, Emergency Committee for American Trade, National Foreign Trade Council, US Council for International Business, US Chamber of Commerce, US-China Business Council.[65] They call on Bush to reject the AFL-CIO petition to the Office of the US Trade Representative. The attitude of one of their number Thomas J Donohue CEO of the US Chamber of Commerce, was stated before a 2004 conference of the Asia Society: “The China genie is out of the bottle, and there’s no putting him back—nor would we want to even if we could.” ”[66]

            One of the most interesting personalities of the US (globalist) elite whose activities are intrinsically bound up with China is Nicholas Rockefeller. He is of particular interest because in 2006 he unsuccessfully attempted to recruit award winning Hollywood director and documentary filmmaker Aaron Russo to the Council on Foreign Relations, with the promise of being part of an elite that rules what he calls “the serfs”.[67] His revelations about how the globalists seek world control, including the aim of microchipping the entire population of the world’s “serfs” caused embarrassment to the global elite when Russo exposed the discussions publicly. This description of Nicholas Rockefeller by the Rockefeller dynasty’s Asia Society indicates how important Nicholas in to the global business hierarchy:

“Nicholas Rockefeller is vice chairman and chief legal officer of the RockVest Group of Investors and is involved in various banking and commercial projects in China and worldwide.

He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Institute of Strategic Studies, the Advisory Board of RAND, the Corporate Advisory Board of the Pacific Council on International Relations, the Board of the Western Justice Center Foundation, and the Central China Development Council and has served as a participant in the World Economic Forum and the Aspen Institute. He also serves as a director of the Pacific Rim Cultural Foundation, and is a member of the boards of visitors of the law schools of the University of Oregon and of Pepperdine University.

Nicholas’ China practice includes transactions with China’s largest banks, energy companies, communications entities and real estate enterprises as well as with China’s principal cities and leading provinces. He was chosen as a board member of the Central China Construction and Development Commission and as a director of the Xiwai International School of Shanghai International University. He has appeared numerous times on CCTV and other China media.”[68] [Emphasis added].

 

It seems that the business elite in the USA is intrinsically bound up with the interests of China’s economic expansion. It can be said that trade relations and investment by US corporations in Nazi Germany did not prevent war between the two, or that the blood kinships between the royal families of Europe did not prevent World Wart I. Therefore, the economic symbiosis presently existing between the USA and China is not necessarily sufficient per se to prevent the possibility of future confrontation between the USA and China.

            The factors are quite different on several levels. There is no powerful lobby with a vested interest in war with China. Despite certain business contacts with Nazi Germany[69], the Third Reich was fundamentally at odds with the international banking and trade system, with its policies of state credit and barter[70]. China on the other hand is an intrinsic, indeed pivotal, part of the world economic system. There is no entangling treaty or alliance system that would see the USA confronting China in support of any other country. As we have seen, the USA will not confront China over Taiwan. China’s control over Tibet has made the country a ‘special economic zone’, which allows global business to exploit Tibet’s mineral wealth; so there is a convergence of interest there.

            The USA sees Russia as a potential threat to what the Russians call its “world hegemony”. As cited previously, China is willing to see the USA share its sphere of influence in Central Asia, whereas the Russians are adverse. Even now, without any real strategic threat, the USA challenges Russia by deploying missiles directed towards the Russian frontier, in Russia’s former spheres of influence in Eastern Europe. Poland and the Czech Republic became members of NATO in 1999. In 2008 Russia stated that US plans to deploy missiles and radar systems in the two former Warsaw Pact states is a threat to Russian security.[71] The USA will attempt to retain and bolster its influence over Europe and the Middle East, which will challenge Russian interests. The USA, particularly after the Vietnam debacle, will continue to surrender its position in Asia and the Pacific region militarily, but will seek to retain its influence economically in tandem with China. Strategically, Russia must perceive itself as being encircles by the USA and China in previous Russian spheres; the USA with its missile deployment in Eastern Europe, and China with its alliance with Mongolia.

The war in Kosovo against the Serbs was also a direct challenge to Russia’s traditional sphere of influence, and one that secured mineral rich Kosovo for global business privatisation. As with the subtle informal alliances between the USA and China during the 1970s aimed at the USSR, any future world power alliance is likely to be between the USA and China vis-à-vis Russia. The present friendship treaty between Russia and China is a temporary aberration that will not endure, any more than the treaty between the USSR and Maoist China was based on a real accord of interests.

 

 

RUSSIA: BETWEEN EAST & WEST

            The Russian “folk soul” is neither Eastern nor Western[72], yet since the time of Peter the Great Russia has sought cultural impetus from the West. For a brief time under Bolshevism, Western technology was pressed into the service of Oriental despotism, and the USSR saw its world mission as the liberation of Africa and the Orient from the West. Yet even while still nominally “communist” the USSR soon found itself confronted by Chinese rivalry militarily on its own borders and further afield (Vietnam) and ideologically throughout the world.[73]

            Russia is caught between East and West. When confronted by the East, Russia plays a vanguard role for Europe. An e.g. was the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. However this was also an e.g. of the USA sabotaging Russia.[74]

            The inevitable impress of geo-politics on the relations between Russia and China prompted the popular Gaullist scholar and journalist Dr Peter Scholl-Latour to write:

“…Despite her commitment to back the ideological crackpots and charlatans in the Third World, Moscow will inevitably end up leading the white vanguard of Europe in Central Asia, Siberia and the Far East. As de Gaulle once prophesied, ‘the Russians will find out one day they are whites too.” [75]

 

            Today the ideological commitments are gone, and what remains is a temporary pragmatic alliance between Russia and China, which is only serving to provide time while both try and build their economic and military structures while remaining inherently suspicious of each other.

            The British scholar C Northcote Parkinson[76] was of the opinion that between the USA and Russia the “major burden of defence” of the ‘West’ would fall upon the latter. He quoted a 1912 work by Lancelot Lawton as an e.g. of how early this had been perceived, Lawton writing that, “Russia, whose frontiers lie athwart Manchuria, Mongolia, Turkistan, Persia, Afghanistan, Afghanistan and Turkey, has been singled out by Nature to be the protecting bulwark of Western civilisation. Her peasantry are awakening at a time when the borders of Asia, too, are bestirring themselves.”[77]

            Lawton stated that Russia must develop and populate the Far East and Siberia. Today we see the incursions of China into the region, and the disquiet expressed by the Russians.  Lawton viewed Russian territory in the Far East as an outpost of ‘Western Civilisation’, and believed the West was fortunate that the Russians had not been corrupted into decadence, still possessing the sturdy stock of peasants and soldiers who could stem the tide of aggression from Asia. [78]

            Parkinson alludes to the belief in Victorian Britain that Russia was an ‘Asian power’, and among more recent observers that Russia had gone to the ‘Asian camp’ when it became communist. However, Parkinson – rightly as history shows – saw the USSR as still substantially being part of Europe, despite pragmatic policies that might turn to Asia temporarily. He observed that although the Soviet Union might proclaim itself ‘Asian’ as part of a strategy, “But words cannot alter facts”. He cites the Russian aggressiveness in the Far East, and in being foremost among he European Powers in suppressing the 1900 Boxer Rebellion[79], something that continued to perturb the Chinese in Mao’s time, which, as cited previously, considered the USSR as a European imperialistic continuation of Czarist Russia.

            Parkinson concludes that, “As against China, [Russia] is the new Byzantium. The Russians have no more reason than the Byzantines to sacrifice themselves in defence of the West. But what else can they do? The alternative is to see the Chinese at Irkutsk, at Krzsnoyarsk, at Omsk, or Magnitogorsk…”[80] This is precisely the scenario unfolding today.

           

 

CONCLUSION: PROSPECTS FOR NZ

            Where stands New Zealand (and Australia) in this situation? In April 2008 New Zealand was the first ‘Western’ state to sign a Free Trade Agreement with China. The negotiations had been ongoing for several years, but the idea of New Zealand as ‘part of Asia’ and as needing to enter into an Asian bloc, have been floated for the past several decades. [81] Over the past few years New Zealanders have been sold the idea that New Zealand needs to be aligned to China economically for the sake of peace and prosperity. What New Zealand has entered into is the prospect of facing a region fraught with approaching war, famine, overpopulation, environmental degradation, and pestilence. So far from being an unstoppable juggernaut, China’s economy can implode and New Zealand will fall with it. China will turn to aggression, especially in regard to securing water resources that will devastate South East Asia; and to other aggressive scenarios in Central Asia and the Russian Far East.

            New Zealanders naively see the Free Trade Agreement as merely a means of gaining export markets and cheap imports. The Chinese see such agreements as more far-reaching. Already the Wellington power grid has been sold to a Chinese company headed by a front man for the Chinese military. Most ominously, New Zealand and China are developing military relations, and meetings have been held at high level, although only reported by the Chinese media, while New Zealanders remain oblivious.[82]

            As a matter of sheer survival, New Zealand should get out of Asia, and specifically eschew China, develop relations with the small Pacific nations, and focus on creating a new power bloc in the South Pacific with Australia.

 

APPENDIX I

The Coming War in Asia

As NZ officially became a part of the Chinese orbit and was pushed further into the Asia quagmire with the signing of the China Free Trade Agreement on April 7 2008, there was an almost universal hurrah from sundry Big Business, media and political interests. China is a rising star that might one day become a falling star, and when it crashes to earth there will be widespread devastation. Of the many problems facing Asia, water is a major concern and the Chinese plans to dam the source of much of Asia’s water source that begins in Tibet could mean major regional military confrontations, including between the two most populated nations –both nuclearised – China and India, whose territorial disputes have still not been resolved. The following article shows that China is planning to dam the headwaters of much of the water source for India and the rest of S. Asia, which it controls from Tibet.

            The second article reports on a 2007 conference, the Asia-Pacific Water Summit, where UN Sec. Gen. Ban K-moon addresses the concern that water supply is going to be a major source of potential war for the region. A war between India and China could also involve numerous other Asian states and escalate into a region-wide conflict, as states seek to resolve long-time border disputes, such as those that exist between India and China, India and Pakistan, and Russia and China; with a myriad of ethnic rivalries also extending into Russia surface amidst the turmoil.

           

China aims for bigger share of South Asia’s water lifeline

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY,

Japan Times, Tuesday, June 26, 2007

NEW DELHI — Sharpening Asian competition over energy resources, driven in part by high growth rates in gross domestic product and in part by mercantilist attempts to lock up supplies, has obscured another danger:

Water shortages in much of Asia are beginning to threaten rapid economic modernization, prompting the building of upstream projects on international rivers. If water geopolitics were to spur interstate tensions through reduced water flows to neighboring states, the Asian renaissance could stall.

Water has emerged as a key issue that could determine whether Asia is headed toward mutually beneficial cooperation or deleterious interstate competition. No country could influence that direction more than China, which controls the Tibetan plateau — the source of most major rivers of Asia.

Tibet’s vast glaciers and high altitude have endowed it with the world’s greatest river systems. Its river waters are a lifeline to the world’s two most-populous states — China and India — as well as to Bangladesh, Myanmar, Bhutan, Nepal, Cambodia, Pakistan, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.  These countries make up 47 percent of the global population.

Yet Asia is a water-deficient continent. Although home to more than half of the human population, Asia has less fresh water — 3,920 cubic meters per person — than any continent besides Antarctica.

The looming struggle over water resources in Asia has been underscored by the spread of irrigated farming, water-intensive industries (from steel to paper making) and a growing middle class seeking high water-consuming comforts like washing machines and dishwashers.  Household water consumption in Asia is rising rapidly, according to a 2006 U.N. report, but such is the water paucity that not many Asians can aspire to the lifestyle of Americans, who daily use 400 liters per person, or more than 2.5 times the average in Asia.

The specter of water wars in Asia is also being highlighted by climate change and environmental degradation in the form of shrinking forests and swamps, which foster a cycle of chronic flooding and droughts through the depletion of nature’s water storage and absorption cover.  The Himalayan snow melt that feeds Asia’s great rivers could be damagingly accelerated by global warming.

While intrastate water-sharing disputes have become rife in several Asian countries — from India and Pakistan to Southeast Asia and China — it is the potential interstate conflict over river-water resources that should be of greater concern. This concern arises from Chinese attempts to dam or redirect the southward flow of river waters from the Tibetan plateau, where major rivers originate, including the Indus, the Mekong, the Yangtze, the Yellow, the Salween, the Brahmaputra, the Karnali and the Sutlej. Among Asia’s mighty rivers, only the Ganges starts from the Indian side of the Himalayas.

The lopsided availability of water within some nations (abundant in some areas but deficient in others) has given rise to grand ideas — from linking rivers in India to diverting the fast-flowing Brahmaputra northward to feed the arid areas in the Chinese heartland.

As water woes have been aggravated in its north due to environmentally unsustainable intensive farming, China has increasingly turned its attention to the bounteous water reserves that the Tibetan plateau holds. It has dammed rivers, not just to produce hydropower but also to channel waters for irrigation and other purposes, and is currently toying with massive interbasin and inter-river water-transfer projects.

After building two dams upstream, China is building at least three more on the Mekong, inflaming passions in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. Several Chinese projects in west-central Tibet bearing on river-water flows into India, but Beijing is loath to share information.

Following flash floods in India’s northern Himachal Pradesh state, however, China agreed in 2005 to supply New Delhi data on any abnormal rise or fall in the upstream level of the Sutlej River, on which it has built a barrage. Discussions are on to persuade it to share flood-control data during the monsoon season on two Brahmaputra tributaries, Lohit and Parlung Zangbo, as it has done since 2002 on the Brahmaputra River, which it has dammed at several places upstream.

The 10 major watersheds formed by the Himalayas and Tibetan highlands spread out river waters far and wide in Asia. Control over the 2.5 million-square-km Tibetan plateau gives China tremendous leverage, besides access to vast natural resources. Having extensively contaminated its own major rivers through unbridled industrialization, China now threatens the ecological viability of river systems tied to South and Southeast Asia in its bid to meet its thirst for water and energy.

Tibet, which existed independently up to 1950, comprises approximately one-fourth of China’s land mass today, having given Han society, for the first time in history, a contiguous frontier with India, Myanmar, Bhutan and Nepal.

Tibet traditionally encompassed the regions of the central plateau, Kham and Amdo. After annexing Tibet, China separated Amdo (the present Dalai Lama’s birthplace) as the new Qinghai province, made the central plateau and eastern Kham the Tibet Autonomous Region, and merged the remaining parts of Tibet into the Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan and Gansu.

The traditional Tibet is not just a distinct cultural entity but also a natural plateau, the future of whose water reserves is tied to ecological conservation. As China’s hunger for primary commodities has grown, so too has its exploitation of Tibet’s resources. And as water woes have intensified in several major Chinese cities, a group of ex-officials have championed the northward rerouting of the waters of the Brahmaputra in a book enlighteningly titled “Tibet’s Waters Will Save China.”

Large hydro projects and reckless exploitation of mineral resources already threaten Tibet’s fragile ecosystems, with ore tailings beginning to contaminate water sources. Unmindful of the environmental impact of such activities in pristine areas, China has now embarked on constructing a 108-km paved road to Mount Everest, located along the Tibet-Nepal frontier. This highway is part of China’s plan to reinforce its claims on Tibet by taking the Olympic torch to the peak of the world’s tallest mountain before the 2008 Beijing Games.

As in the past, no country is going to be more affected by Chinese plans and projects in Tibet than India. The new $ 6.2 billion Gormu-Lhasa railway, for example, has significantly augmented China’s rapid military-deployment capability against India just when Beijing is becoming increasingly assertive in its claims on Indian territories.  This hardline stance, in the midst of intense negotiations to resolve the 4,057-km Indo-Tibetan border, is no less incongruous than Beijing’s disinclination to set up, as agreed during its president’s state visit to New Delhi last November, a joint expert-level mechanism on interstate river waters.

Contrast China’s reluctance to establish a mechanism intended for mere “interaction and cooperation” on hydrological data with New Delhi’s consideration toward downstream Pakistan, reflected both in the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (which reserves 56 percent of the catchment flow for Pakistan) and the more recent acceptance of World Bank arbitration over the Baglihar Dam project in Indian Kashmir.

No Indian project has sought to reroute or diminish trans-border water flows, yet Pakistan insists on a say in the structural design of projects upstream in India. New Delhi permits Pakistani officials to inspect such projects. By contrast, Beijing drags its feet on setting up an innocuous interaction mechanism. Would China, under any arrangement, let Indian officials inspect its projects in Tibet or accept, if a dispute arose, third-party adjudication?

If anything, China seems intent on aggressively pursuing projects and employing water as a weapon. The idea of a Great South-North Water Transfer Project diverting river waters cascading from the Tibetan highlands has the backing of President Hu Jintao, a hydrologist who made his name through a brutal martial-law crackdown in Tibet in 1989. In crushing protesters at Tiananmen Square two months later, Deng Xiaoping actually borrowed a leaf from Hu’s Tibet book.

The Chinese ambition to channel the Brahmaputra waters to the parched Yellow River has been whetted by what Beijing touts as its engineering feat in building the giant $ 25 billion Three Gorges Dam project, which has officially displaced a staggering 1.2 million citizens. While China’s water resources minister told a Hong Kong University meeting last October that, in his personal opinion, the idea to divert waters seems not viable, the director of the Yellow River Water Conservancy Committee said publicly that the mega-plan enjoys official sanction and may begin by 2010.

The Brahmaputra (Yarlung Tsangpo to Tibetans) originates near Mount Kailash and, before entering India, flows eastward in Tibet for 2,200 km at an average height of 4,000 meters, making it the world’s highest major river. When two other tributaries merge with it, the Brahmaputra becomes as wide as 10 km in India before flowing into Bangladesh.

The first phase of China’s South-North Project calls for building 300 km of tunnels and channels to draw waters from the Jinsha, Yalong and Dadu rivers, on the eastern rim of the Tibetan plateau. Only in the second phase would the Brahmaputra waters be directed northward. In fact, Beijing has identified the bend where the Brahmaputra forms the world’s longest and deepest canyon just before entering India as holding the largest untapped reserves for meeting its water and energy needs.

While some doubts do persist in Beijing over the economic feasibility of channeling Tibetan waters northward, the mammoth diversion of the Brahmaputra could begin as water shortages become more acute in the Chinese mainland and the current $ 1.2 trillion foreign-exchange hoard brims over. The mega-rerouting would constitute the declaration of a water war on lower-riparian India and Bangladesh.

Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the privately funded Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, is the author, most recently, of “Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan”.

 

 

 

Appendix II

 

Russia sets scene for new Cuban crisis

 

 

 

 

 

APPENDIX III

China, New Zealand pledge to further army exchanges

www.chinaview.cn 2008-07-04 18:54:22

BEIJING, July 4 (Xinhua) -- China and New Zealand vowed here on Friday to further army exchanges to push forward military relations between the two countries.

The Chinese armed forces advocate expanding contact and substantial cooperation with their New Zealand counterparts to upgrade military relations in the long run," said Chen Bingde, chief of the General Staff of the Chinese People's Liberation Army.

During a meeting with New Zealand army chief Louis Gardiner, Chen hailed the relationship between China and New Zealand, saying it conformed to the fundamental interest of the two countries and peoples and contributed to regional peace and prosperity.

Gardiner said the military ties between New Zealand and China had maintained sustainable development and cooperation kept improving, adding that New Zealand would continue to enhance cooperation and exchanges with China and its military.

 

 

APPENDIX IV

Wellington Power Grid Under Chinese Military Front-man

“Non-Strategic” Asset Controlled by China

Wellington’s electricity network has been sold to Asia’s richest man, Li Ka-Shing. His company Cheung Kong Infrastructure bought the Wellington power grid from Vector for $785 million.  Many have wondered why the Government has allowed Wellington’s power grid, which covers the Wellington Central Business District, Porirua, and the Hutt Valley to be sold to China, after refusing to allow a minority stake by Canadian investors in Auckland Airport on the basis that it’s a “strategic asset”. Prime Minister Helen Clark has stated that the Wellington power network does not involve “sensitive land” (sic), although nobody seems to know what she means, and she hasn’t explained herself.

This “non-strategic” (sic) asset will theoretically allow a company intimately connected with the Chinese State to control the literal lifelines not only of Wellington commerce and technology, but, the Government itself, Security Intelligence HQ, defense, government departments, etc., etc.

One has a right to ask whether this is insanity, or whether it is calculated treason? Mr L Ka-shing operates on behalf of the Chinese military and intelligence. His role through the companies he runs is to acquire strategic assets for China throughout the world. Two years ago his Hutchison Whampoa Co. tried to buy the Port of Lyttelton, but this bid was rebuffed locally. Whampoa specializes in acquiring strategic port facilities around the world, and the presence of Chinese military personnel thereafter becomes a feature. Mr Li is transparently a major player in China’s global geo-political strategies.  This involves far more than just money and investments. He serves as an adviser to CITIC, the State investment corporation. His holdings include interests in 55 countries, and include telecommunications, airlines, ports and property. He has large stakes in Australia.

The following is extracted from my book The Menace of China in the Pacific, dealing with Chairman  Li Ka-shing:

 

“A HOME BASE IN EVERY OCEAN”

            …The following report shows the extent of China’s naval operations, under the cloak of global business, and in partnership with Western corporations.

 

·        BAHAMAS

Chinese Company Completes World's Largest Port in Bahamas

Christopher Ruddy and Stephan Archer

Bahamas – The same Chinese company that recently took operational control of the Panama Canal is currently completing construction of the largest container port in the world in Freeport, Bahamas – just 60 miles from Florida.

Several U.S. military experts say that the activities of Hutchison Whampoa Limited, a Hong Kong-based conglomerate, in both Panama and the Bahamas, pose a significant risk to U.S. national security.

Officials for Hutchison Whampoa have heatedly denied any links with the Red Chinese government, but several established connections – including new evidence uncovered by NewsMax.com – suggest the Chinese government has a keen interest in the company's activities.

One port facility that has captured the interest of the Chinese government is Hutchison Whampoa's sprawling port facility in the tourist destination of Freeport on Grand Bahama Island.

 

Strategically Located Near U.S. East Coast

According to the company's Web site, the port is located at one of the most strategic spots in the world because "Freeport is the closest offshore port to the east coast of the United States, at the cross-roads of routes between Europe and the Americas and through the Panama Canal."

In 1995, Hutchison Whampoa entered into a 50-50 partnership with the Grand Bahama Development Company, a privately owned Bahamian company, to develop and expand the small Freeport facility that had catered to cruise ships.

Since then, Hutchison has helped dredge and expand the port, making it capable of handling the largest container ships on the high seas….

The company has ambitious plans to create the largest air cargo facility on land adjacent to the port. Hutchison has a 50 percent stake in the Grand Bahama Airport Company, which owns one of the largest airport runways in the world – more than 11,000 feet long. According to Powers, the runway is capable of handling the world's largest cargo and military aircraft.

On 800 acres of wooded land adjacent to the airport, Hutchison plans to create the Grand Bahama Sea-Air Business Center – a center that could potentially allow for 8 million square feet in warehouse space.

 

Communist China Ties Disturbing

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and former U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger have expressed concerns about Hutchison's influence over the Panama Canal.

Lott has described the Hong Kong firm as "an arm of the People's Liberation Army."

Hutchison Whampoa's chairman, Li Ka-Shing, is also a board member of CITIC – the China International Trust and Investment Corporation. U.S. intelligence sources have described the firm as a front for China's governmental State Council.

Congressman Dana Rohrbacher, R-Calif., has stated that CITIC has been used as a front company by China's military to acquire technology for weapons development.

 

Closely Tied to Beijing Rulers

A recently declassified report by the United States Southern Command's Joint Intelligence Center, prepared in October 1999 and obtained by the government watchdog Judicial Watch, said that "Hutchison Whampoa's owner, Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-Shing, has extensive business ties in Beijing and has compelling financial reasons to maintain a good relationship with China's leadership."

The military intelligence report also warns that "Hutchison containerized shipping facilities in the Panama Canal, as well as the Bahamas, could provide a conduit for illegal shipments of technology or prohibited items from the West to the PRC, or facilitate the movement of arms and other prohibited items into the Americas."

Despite the strong claims made by Hutchison that China has no interest in their Bahamian port, evidence suggests otherwise.

A review of the visitor's log by NewsMax.com at the company's main office in Freeport shows that Chinese government officials have been frequent visitors to the port facility.

According to the log, China's ambassador to the Bahamas, M A Shuxue, has visited the port facility at least a half dozen times in the past few years. He has also accompanied groups of Chinese government officials. On other occasions Chinese governmental or commercial representatives have also paid visits without the presence of Ambassador Shuxue.

 

Chinese Hold Frequent-Visitor Record

The visitor logbook indicates Chinese officials have visited the port more often than officials from any other country, including the United States.

The logbook also shows that on June 2, 1999, the Cuban ambassador, Lazaro Cabeza, also paid a visit to the facility. Cuba is a strong ally of China's.

"If they have no connection to Hutchison and the port, if they are not interested in this company, why is China sending its ambassador there?" asks retired Admiral Thomas Moorer. "Why are other Chinese officials showing up there? Why is Castro's ambassador going there?"

Moorer, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also served as former commander in chief of the Pacific and Atlantic Fleets.

"Of course the Chinese military sees the benefit of having a base, a future base, so close to the United States," Moorer said, adding, "What China is trying to do is get a kind of maritime position worldwide, and they need a home base – so to speak – in every ocean."

 

They Even Wanted Long Beach

"Not only are the Chinese in the Bahamas, they're in Panama and the Spratly Islands right off the Philippines. They tried to get Long Beach," Moorer said.

"There's no question about the fact in my mind that the Chinese military forces are affiliated with Mr. Li, who in turn runs Hutchison Whampoa," added Moorer.

Moorer said while the port facilities appear harmless today, they could be used as a staging ground by the Chinese at some future point if hostilities were to arise in the Korean peninsula or over Taiwan….[83]

 

·        PANAMA CANAL

"Major ports on both ends of the canal are now under the control of a Hong Kong-based company – Hutchison Whampoa – which has close ties to the Chinese government and is partly owned by the Chinese communist regime – China Resources Enterprises – which is a known front for Chinese military intelligence." [California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher].

Rohrabacher revealed that American companies bid for the contract won by the Chinese firm and showed that they actually outbid the Chinese but were still denied the contract in what the U.S. State Department called a "highly irregular process." It was arranged by the passage by the Panamanian legislature on Jan. 16, 1997 of Law No. 5, which, according to Adm. Thomas Moorer, gave Hutchison-Whampoa – and, therefore, China – exclusive concessions including:

* Responsibility for hiring new pilots for the canal. Pilots have complete control of all ships passing through the canal. They determine which ships may go through and when.

* Control of the port of Balboa on the Pacific end of the canal and the port of Cristobal on the Atlantic end. In addition to these critical anchorages, Hutchison was granted a monopoly on the Pacific side with its takeover of Rodman Naval Base, a U.S.-built, deep-draft port facility capable of handling, supplying, refueling, and repairing just about any warship.

* Control of the order of ships utilizing the entrance of the canal on the Pacific side, and even authority to deny ships access on either side if they are deemed to be interfering with Hutchison’s business. This is in direct violation of the 1977 Panama Canal Treaty, which guarantees expeditious passage for the United States Navy.

* The right to transfer "contract rights" to any third party – i.e., any company or nation. This means Hutchison could transfer rights to China, Russia, Cuba, Iraq, Syria, Libya, or corporate fronts for the Russian mafia or Colombian drug cartels.

* Control of certain public roads, such as Diablo Road, allowing access to strategic areas of the canal to be cut off.

* Control of U.S. Air Station Albrook and Telfers Island.[84]

 

            Western capitalism and China are co-dependent. A crisis for one will have far-reaching consequences for the other.

            With New Zealand being placed in increasing economic dependency on China and with the large number of Chinese migrants being drawn here, what will New Zealand’s position be when China confronts a crisis of economics, disease and famine?

            It is sheer folly to think that New Zealand will be able to turn to our “traditional ally”, the USA, for assistance. This antiquated thinking derives from America’s role in the war against Japan. The scenario of future Chinese aggression in this region is quite different to that of Japan’s aggression during the 1940s. In particular, the USA is itself enmeshed economically with China, and the US has nothing to gain by confronting China. Indeed, in the event of a confrontation with Russia, the USA will welcome the situation.

 

ADDENDUM

            It is significant to note that according to a report in The Dominion Post (C1, April 29, 08) Vector took its advise on its selling options from Goldman Sachs. This international New York banking firm is a major player among the globalist elite that aims to create a new world order. It so happens that Goldman Sachs has a relationship with Red China stretching back to the 1970s. It was thus one of the first of the major capitalists to get into China. The company has “strategic partnerships” with Chinese banks such as the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. In 2004 it became the first international bank to be permitted to arrange equity and bond deals in China. They are also associated with Mr Li’s Hutchison Whampoa. What a sham! [85]

 

 

APPENDIX V

Asians in NZ to outnumber Maori - report

Tuesday, 08 July 2008

As New Zealand continues to build its economic ties with Asia, the number of Asians living here will continue to increase and will eventually overtake the Maori population, according to a new report.

The Asia New Zealand Foundation study, Asians in New Zealand: Implications of a Changing Demography, found that the closer economic ties would have a profound effect on New Zealand's population.

For the past 20 years, successive New Zealand governments, the business community, and the education sector have all been working to position New Zealand as an active participant in Asia.

An integral part of the relationship has been the opening up of New Zealand to immigration of talent, capital and visitors from Asia, said researchers Richard Bedford and Elsie Ho, of Waikato University's Population Studies Centre.

The signing of the free trade agreement with China in April, the first such bilateral agreement to be achieved by a Western country, was a clear sign of the importance New Zealand government and business interests placed on strengthening ties with the region, the report said.

As a result, the number of Asian people wanting to live in New Zealand would continue to increase, as it had over the past 20 years.

Taking into account a number of projections of immigration flows, birth rates and outward migration, the researchers concluded that New Zealand's population would continue to become more Asian beyond 2026 and that Asians would eventually outnumber Maori.

As the New Zealand-born Asian population increased, larger shares of the Asian population would be of mixed ethnicities and counted in more than one population, the report said.

According to the 2006 census, Asians in New Zealand numbered 354,552 (9.2 percent of the population), and Maori 565,329 (14.6 percent).

Under "mid-range" projections, Statistics New Zealand sees the Asian population reaching 790,000 by 2026, still marginally behind the Maori population on an estimated 820,000. NZPA

 

 

 

 

 

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Further Reading:

The Menace of China in the Pacific, K R Bolton, Renaissance Press, $15.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ISBN 978-0-473-13905-6