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A view of ChinaI have been very critical of the USA and of my own country, Australia. I have been criticised because I have not written similar pages on other countries that have equally bad, or perhaps worse governments. The reason I have concentrated so much on the USA is because the government of my country (both major parties are equally bad on this point) follows and supports the USA government in almost all its excesses. The reason I concentrate on the government of Australia is obviously because it is the government of my country.In this page I pick on one of the other of the great countries of the world, China. In several years up to 2022, under the premiership of Xi Jinping, China has become increasingly repressive and aggressive. Xi Jinping seems to be a power crazed despot like Vladimir Putin. Contact: David K. Clarke – © |
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Freedom of speech and informationThe freedom to say and read anything is a great and important freedom. It is highly questionable that any government has the right to limit what a citizen can read or say. In particular, what right does the illegitimate Chinese government have to decide what the citizens of China read?
It is very unlikely that the Chinese government will allow the Chinese people to read this page. They will deny their people that right.
The Chinese GovernmentThe present Chinese Government was not elected by the people of China and therefore is not a legitimate government. It has forced itself on the people of China. China has never had a government that had the mandate of the Chinese people.Western governments criticise the governments of nations like Burma, Fiji, and Zimbabwe because they do not represent the people of their respective countries; those same Western governments rarely criticise China because they do not want to offend such an important trading partner.
TibetAll indications are that the people of Tibet do not want to be ruled by China. Why should they not have the right to self-determination? The essence of democracy is that a people have the right to be ruled by the government of their choice.
I have written more on the subject of
secession elsewhere on this site.
Taiwan, Ukraine (and Iraq)The Russian invasion of Ukraine is relevant to the Chinese relationship with Taiwan. Xi Jinping has claimed the right to invade Taiwan. It seems likely that he would force his rule on Taiwan if he believed that the West would not retaliate in Taiwan's defence.The Russian invasion of Ukraine also has similarities to the illegal and disastrous invasion of Iraq under George W. Bush (of the USA), Tony Blair (of Britain) and John Howard (of Australia). The people of Taiwan don't want to be ruled from China any more than the people of Ukraine want to be ruled by Russia or the people of Hong Kong ruled by China. All three peoples have a right to self determination. All people have the right to the government of their choice. The people of China will be no better off if Taiwan is forced under Xi Jinping's yoke, and the Taiwanese people will be far worse off. Xi Jinping is only interested in gaining more power for himself; "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely", and Xi Jinping has something close to absolute power in China. The Chinese people (and the Russian and the Hong Kong people) have the right to free speech, a free press and a say in their own government, but the government of Xi Jinping is only interested in power and control. The way the Russian invasion of Ukraine is bogged down, with Russia suffering heavy troop and equipment losses and huge costs and international repercussions, should be a warning to Xi Jinping over Taiwan. China may find conquering Taiwan no easier that Putin is finding conquering Ukraine.
Addition, March 2023It has been announced that Xi Jinping is to visit Vladimir Putin in Moscow (President Putin can not visit many countries himself without being arrested for war crimes.) It is hoped in some circles that President Xi will condemn Putin's invasion of Ukraine, but of course he can't, he wants to do exactly the same to Taiwan as Putin is doing to Ukraine.
China's treatment of the Uighur minorityOver a number of years and continuing up to the time of writing of this section the Chinese government has treated this predominantly Muslim minority very harshly.
Rather than me trying to detail this case of man's inhumanity to man I suggest reading about it on the Internet. You might start with the BBC News, "The Uighurs and the Chinese state: A long history of discord".
Nuclear test deathsForty tests of nuclear weapons were carried out in Xinjiang province between 1964 and 1996 at the Lop Nur site. Research published by Japanese physicist Jun Takada in his book, Chinese Nuclear Tests (Iryokagakusha, 2009) includes an estimate of the probable number of deaths among the Uygur population: 194 000, from acute radiation exposure. He estimates that another 1.2 million would have received doses of radiation high enough to induce leukaemia, solid cancers and foetal damage. He also stated that "My estimate is a conservative minimum."If Takada's estimates are correct, and they should not be accepted without confirmation from other researchers, this was a terrible 'crime against humanity' committed by the Chinese government against the Uygur people. If true it probably should be considered to be genocide.
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The China of 2020
Government without a mandate from the peopleXi Jinping holds both the largely ceremonial post of President and the much more powerful position of General Secretary of the Communist Party. In 2018 he was declared President for Life; whether this is meaningful is questionable, but clearly putting so much power into the hands of a single man who is not elected by the people of China is not justifiable democratically or in any other way.AgressionChina has been using its power and wealth to claim islands in the South China Sea that it has very questionable right to, at the expense of neighbouring countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines. It has even built artificial islands in order to try to justify its claims. The Chinese government seems to be strongly of the view that "might is right".Covid-19 pandemicThe Covid pandemic that spread around the world in early 2020 came from China. It seems very likely that it came from an animal that was sold in one of the 'wet markets' in Wuhan, the capital city of the Chinese province of Hubei.At the time of writing this section, the pandemic virus had infected more than four million people world-wide and killed at least 280,000. A number of governments, including that of my own country Australia, have very reasonably called for a wide-ranging investigation into the source of the pandemic. The Chinese government has opposed this. China and AustraliaEarly in 2020 Australia banned Chinese company Huawei from supplying 5G communication technology to Australia because of perceived close links between Huawei and the Chinese government. Australia has opposed China's power grabs in the South China Sea, and as mentioned above, Australia has very reasonably called for an investigation into the origins of COVID-19.China has responded with trade sanctions against Australia. This is not the behaviour of a responsible member of the world community, it is more the behaviour of a spoiled child in a kindergarten playground spat. One would have to wonder how much this behaviour is for domestic consumption. Is the Chinese government so concerned about dissatisfaction at home that they are trying to direct the Chinese people's angst against external bodies? While the Chinese economy was growing quickly the Chinese people might have been willing to overlook the lack of civil rights, but with the Chinese economy shrinking 9.8 per cent in the March 2020 quarter the Chinese people might be becoming restive. |
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Could the Chinese government make Chinese manufactured cars inoperable if there was a war between the West and China?
I would think that in future, if not now, car companies will be periodically automatically updating the software in their cars. Wouldn’t it be easy for them to update in such a way that the car would not be useable? This would advantage China in a war situation. Thousands of cars in the nations that China was at war with would suddenly become useless. Whole fleets of cars owned or leased by businesses and government would suddenly be lumps of useless metal and plastic. Having written a number of computer programs in the past I would suspect that correcting the vehicles' software would be a major task and could not be done quickly.
Presumably China would be able to direct the attack at selected countries. While the people running the Chinese car companies might not want to do this - plainly it would greatly harm their reputations - they are all under the thumb of the authoritarian and totalitarian Chinese government. Considering the increasing aggression we are seeing from President Xi Jinping, his expansionism in the South China Sea, his threats against Taiwan and more recently the Chinese spy flights over North America, it seems to me that this possibility should at least be taken very seriously - and so far as I can see, it is not.
When a perceived danger is in the future, such as climate change and the possibility of Chinese EVs becoming inoperable in a war, it seems to be human nature to tend to ignore it, or at least put immediate wants and needs ahead of it.
In China's favour
EnergyChina is burning huge amounts of fossil fuels, it is often said that China is effectively building a new coal-fired power station each week. However, China's per-capita rate of greenhouse gas production is a fraction of that of nations like Australia and the USA and there is much to be said in favour of China in the renewable energy area.The energy generation industrial development in China was summarised in at article written by James Purtill and posted on 2024/07/16. The article was titled "China is installing the wind and solar equivalent of five large nuclear power stations per week". Quoting some of the other points made in the ABC article:
Solar thermal in ChinaBack in the early years of the twenty-first century China was by far the most advanced nation in the use of solar thermal energy; International Energy Agency (IEA) figures for 2004 showed that China had 43 400 MWth (megawatt thermal) installed; the second nation was Japan with 5 400 MWth.However, it has been reported that the rate of construction of solar thermal energy has tended to decline since then.
Electric vehiclesAccording to an article in Statista China was producing EVs and plug-in hybrid EVs at a rate greater than the next five nations (Germany, USA, Japan, France and South Korea) combined.The one child policyChina has often been criticised for this. In my view, not only is the criticism unfair and ill-informed, but China should be congratulated for the one child policy.China is overpopulated, many of the world's countries are overpopulated, the world itself is overpopulated; if the world had half it current population then the climate change problem would be half as bad as it is; many other problems would be much less severe as well. China took on the very difficult overpopulation problem in what was probably about the most humane way that it could. Many other countries have just ignored the population problem because it was seen as too hard. Perhaps this is one of the advantages of a non-democratic government. China's one child policy has lead to an ageing population and this has caused economic problems. But sooner or later the world must face up to excessive populations or we will be seeing environmental collapse with disastrous consequences. |
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