Monks and China Rising
By ROGER COHEN
New York Times
Seldom has a country’s rise been as smooth as China’s in recent years. Bush-bashing has left the world with scant surplus indignation to devote to Beijing’s backing for many of the planet’s ugliest regimes, including those in Sudan, Zimbabwe, Iran and Cuba.
Talk of “harmony” — the buzzword favored by President Hu Jintao — and “no strings attached” assistance has been the camouflage for China’s readiness to get in bed with thugs from central casting who can provide the oil, gas and raw materials that fuel the furious growth critical to preserving one-party rule.
Hu’s harmony is mostly hogwash. But who cares? The global thirst for China’s business, and for alternative power centers to Washington, has given the slogan a free ride.
China is not in the business of exporting war, development models or moral and political blueprints. It wants stability for its upward glide. Democracy comes in a distant second to growth, if at all. The tarnishing of the “D-word” in Iraq has suited China fine.
What suits China less is saffron-robed Buddhist monks in neighboring Myanmar — the former Burma — confronting the guns of a military junta that began its rule in 1988 with the massacre of 3,000 protesters and has not wavered in its corrupt brutality since.
The Burmese troubles are troubling to China for several reasons. They are on its doorstep. They come in a country transformed in recent years into a virtual client state, where the Chinese are building roads, burning forests, backing gas projects and dreaming of long-coveted access to the Indian Ocean.
(Continued here.)
New York Times
Seldom has a country’s rise been as smooth as China’s in recent years. Bush-bashing has left the world with scant surplus indignation to devote to Beijing’s backing for many of the planet’s ugliest regimes, including those in Sudan, Zimbabwe, Iran and Cuba.
Talk of “harmony” — the buzzword favored by President Hu Jintao — and “no strings attached” assistance has been the camouflage for China’s readiness to get in bed with thugs from central casting who can provide the oil, gas and raw materials that fuel the furious growth critical to preserving one-party rule.
Hu’s harmony is mostly hogwash. But who cares? The global thirst for China’s business, and for alternative power centers to Washington, has given the slogan a free ride.
China is not in the business of exporting war, development models or moral and political blueprints. It wants stability for its upward glide. Democracy comes in a distant second to growth, if at all. The tarnishing of the “D-word” in Iraq has suited China fine.
What suits China less is saffron-robed Buddhist monks in neighboring Myanmar — the former Burma — confronting the guns of a military junta that began its rule in 1988 with the massacre of 3,000 protesters and has not wavered in its corrupt brutality since.
The Burmese troubles are troubling to China for several reasons. They are on its doorstep. They come in a country transformed in recent years into a virtual client state, where the Chinese are building roads, burning forests, backing gas projects and dreaming of long-coveted access to the Indian Ocean.
(Continued here.)
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