14/3/2018 Western Illusions about China


              Western people seem to have illusions about China. First of all, most of them cannot distinguish China from Japan. China is a country that lacks freedom of speech and law governance. Many people there are extremely poor.
Japanese civilization is quite different from Chinese civilization, as is discussed in Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Japan is a country that has highest levels of freedom of speech and law governance. Equality prevails in most aspects of Japanese society.
              The western illusions about China have led some countries to have close relationships with it. Germany is one of them and supplied it with weapons and staff when Japan had the Tripartite Pact with Germany and fought with China. Today’s Germany seems still very friendly to it.
USA also employed unwise policies toward China. It supplied China with weapons and staff around WWII to fight with Japan. But it fought with the Communist China in the Korean War. In the 1970s USA invited the Communist China to the international community by opening its market and offering the position of a permanent member of the Security Council. Now China is again its enemy. How inconsistent the US diplomatic policies have been!
Franklin Roosevelt had extremely distorted images of China and Japan. He liked Chinese because his grandfather made a fortune by opium trade there. In contrast, he hated Japanese and wanted to eliminate them from the earth. This was one of the basic causes of the ‘Pacific War.’ The dirty business of opium trade by his grandfather was an indirect cause of the war. Personal emotions change world history.
USA has used China to check Japan’s power. It has feared Japan most in the world because it knew her strength during the war and she has the right to retaliate against it with A-bombs. USA has been extremely eager to prevent Japan from possessing A-bombs. Japan is not a childish country, but USA is considering that Japan will behave as it would under the same circumstances.
It is believed that China will soon exceed USA in economic and military strength. The illusions that the USA cherished about China have brought about this dangerous reality.

Comments and questions are welcome.
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