COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN
"China’s clout
has few limits. Shouldn’t we be worried about its new Silk Road?'
I can't believe anyone sincere wrote this.
The attitudes embedded suggest to me disinformation from
America or one of its subsidiaries.
There are several highly objectionable ideas here.
First, the Silk Road is the greatest, most intelligent
project underway anywhere on the planet. It does nothing but expand human
possibilities. Speaking negatively about it is a form of Luddism.
Two, the world's economy is on weak legs. Any project which
offers some new blood transfused is more than welcome. And please note that the
poor state of the world economy is largely the work of one country’s recent
past, and it isn’t China.
Three, the tone about China is a watered-down version of the
Cold War. Why should anyone be concerned about China doing what it can do to
expand opportunity and growth?
The world’s economy, as any decently educated economist can
tell you, grows best with few barriers and each state making the best use of
opportunities. America’s entire range of policies right now work against those
principles, but it isn’t just economics that are worrying about the US.
I’m immensely more worried about the United States, which
right now is fighting war or threatening additional war on half a dozen fronts,
than I am about China. The current attitudes of America’s ruling establishment
are a clear and present danger to us all.
Just compare America’s versus China’s attitudes towards the
current deliberately-stoked up Korean crisis. China talks and counsels patience
and diplomacy.
America has propelled us for no good reason into the whole
thing, criticizing China every step of the way and even threatening China.
What relatively few people appreciate is that the United
States – after killing 2 to 3 million North Koreans in the early 1950s with
carpet bombing (see: https://theintercept.com/2017/05/03/why-do-north-koreans-hate-us-one-reason-they-remember-the-korean-war/
) – it has always refused to establish any kind of normal relationship. It
won’t agree to a peace treaty. It won’t recognize the country. It will not even
talk directly to the North Koreans.
It maintains a large well-equipped army on its southern
border. It keeps thermonuclear weapons ready in Guam. It conducts numberless highly
threatening war games and drills near the country. It subverts the intentions
of any new South Korean government such as the current one, with a man who
spoke very reasonably when elected, to establish new talks and ties.
The US has carried on like this for nearly three-quarters of
a century. It is literally insane and very dangerous.
Today the US is deliberately diminishing everyone’s economic
opportunities with its aggressive treatment of Russia, its effort to impose its
laws on others, and its rejecting ore rewriting free-trade agreements
everywhere. It tries only to steal jobs through a form of trade war.
By comparison, China is an open society for international opportunities.
