As you may recall one of my favorite books is former Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten's East and West. Patten was not a welcome guest in Beijing during his years in Asia and the reason was quite simply that he managed to stand up to Beijing, regardless of the consequences:

Patten's most provocative chapter is on China. He contends that the West should treat it like any other country and refuse to kowtow to a regime that is ''at the end of an era.'' There is no correlation between bending to Beijing and benefiting economically, he says.

It is a lesson that is hardly ever practiced, so deep is the fear to miss out on the economic frenzy that is China. Yet, in breaking with his predecessor's record of leaving Canadian citizens to their own devices in foreign prisons and in taking Patten's clear advice to heart, Stephen Harper has created another unusual benchmark. And note that Harper is pursuing the human rights of someone that can hardly be classified as an average Canadian: Huseyin Celi holds dual citizenship and is, according to the Chinese, a terror suspect.

Smart and sound.

So who were we to think that communist regimes firing on their own subjects desperate to leave their country was a thing of the distant past? Consider this:

Chinese troops fired on about 70 people near the country's mountain frontier with Nepal, and one of them died, Chinese state media said on Thursday, partly confirming earlier reports but defending the shooting.

The official Xinhua news agency said the people were attempting to cross illegally from Tibet into Nepal on September 30 when a squad of Chinese border guards discovered them.

The troops tried to persuade the people to return home, but they "refused and attacked the soldiers", the report said.

Fleeing Tibetans attacking armed PLA forces? There are no creative limits to Beijing-crafted spin. Thankfully, there were witnesses around whose presence may have forced Chinese authorities to acknowledge these shootings:

While information was initially slow, more and more climbers have come forward in the last few days. An American climber reported to ExWeb, "Without warning, shots rang out. Over, and over and over. The line of people started to run uphill – they were at 19,000ft. 2 people were down, and they weren't getting up." A British climber told Save Tibet that climbers "could see Chinese soldiers quite close to Advance Base Camp kneeling, taking aim and shooting, again and again, at the group, who were completely defenceless."

The free world has all but forgotten Tibet, and many of us share some of the blame in looking past this occupied nation in the rush to welcome China to the world economy. I know I did. Like the mountaineers that day, we should all keep our eyes more open.

With another news conference Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad further upped the ante, defying the world on Iran’s insistence to increase its nuclear capabilities. It may be worthwhile to note that we’ve been here before and, no, I am not talking about the bungled attempt to desist North Korea from going nuclear. In the early 1960s a deep and definitive rift between China and the Soviet Union opened up the possibility for the US to neutralize China which was on the verge of detonating its first atomic weapon.

The National Security archives provide a trove of documents on America’s stance during the 1960-64 period, and they reveal quite clearly that John F. Kennedy did at a number of instances seriously contemplate pre-emptive action against China. It is of course impossible to establish what would have happened if Kennedy would not have been assassinated, but Lyndon Johnson, probably aware of the Cold War realities and the uncertain state of the Soviet-China relationship, moved in the other direction:

During the fall of 1963 Policy Planning Council staffer Robert Johnson established himself as the national security bureaucracy's chief analyst on the Chinese nuclear problem. Although President Kennedy and his advisers had given momentum to thinking about using force against Chinese nuclear facilities, Johnson tried to push official thinking in another direction: to consider the possibility that for a variety of reasons, a nuclear China would not be as ominous or act as recklessly as some had feared.

[ … ]

Prepared against the background of a possibly imminent Chinese nuclear test, Robert Johnson again considers both pre-emptive action and alternative responses to the PRC's nuclear weapons program. It notes "very and long-lasting political costs" associated with a pre-emptive strike. It also explores options, in the absence of pre-emptive action, for reducing the likelihood of proliferation as well as the potentially adverse political-psychological impact of a Chinese test on its neighbors.

It is hard to compare present day Iran to 1960s China, but it would seem that at every turn attempts to halt nuclear proliferation beyond the two original superpowers have failed. It was believed at the time that India for instance could be prevented from becoming a nuclear power, nations like Pakistan and North Korea weren’t even considered as ever acquiring the lethal technology.

The Soviet angle and the political impact prevented the elimination of Mao’s nuclear adventures; today other geo-political considerations have replaced the Cold War constraints. It prompts the conclusion that barring a miracle, Iran will become a nuclear force within the foreseeable future. Better start preparing for that.

China detonated its first bomb on October 16, 1964 in the Gobi Desert.

Michelle Malkin has the video link of the incident that played itself out on the White House South Lawn this morning and it neatly captures my core argument about China. They are a crucial partner for the West and we should work with them on a host of issues, but it doesn’t mean we should be quiet about certain things. It’s a fine balance and not an easy one to navigate, but there is simply no other option. Bush said it as follows during the ceremony with President Hu:

As the relationship between our two nations grows and matures, we can be candid about our disagreements. I'll continue to discuss with President Hu the importance of respecting human rights and freedoms of the Chinese people. China has become successful because the Chinese people are experience the freedom to buy, and to sell, and to produce -- and China can grow even more successful by allowing the Chinese people the freedom to assemble, to speak freely, and to worship.

No free markets can exist in any successful manner for long without a free flow of information and the rule of law. That truth will eventually catch up with Hu, but it will not be until China's economic engine runs out of steam that he will be forced to consider it.

Yesterday Lu Decheng arrived in Canada following some behind-the-scenes diplomacy by its new conservative government. Lu was part of the group of three that defaced the portrait of Mao at Tiananmen Square more than sixteen years ago:

Mr. Lu was one of three boyhood friends who travelled from Hunan province to the mass student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

The trio decided to make their own protest by hurling egg shells filled with coloured dye at Chairman Mao's huge portrait. But students quickly corralled the three young men and turned them over to police.

All were treated far more severely than any of the student protesters, receiving prison sentences from 16 years to life for "counter-revolutionary" activities.

A few few months ago I reported on the release of Yu Dongye whose life was destroyed after years of imprisonment and abuse.

If you're interested in the antics of the man whose revered status was stained by the paint, do take the time to read Mao : The Unknown Story, a riveting biography.

Some of you have criticized me for being too lenient when it comes to China. Well, to show you my heart is still in the right place I will draw some attention to the case of Hao Wu, a Chinese-American filmmaker and blogger who in late February was detained by the Beijing division of China’s State Security Bureau. Hao was working on a documentary on underground Christian movements in China and shortly before his arrest met with with a congregation of a Christian church not recognized by the Chinese government.

There is a dedicated and daily updated blog on the case run by Hao's sister Nina and Rebecca MacKinnon. Although it's not always very clear what a blogging campaign can achieve, the least we can do is try and give Hao Wu's case as much publicity as we can. And at the same be reminded that there are many others being detained in China for speaking up or working on media projects that are pereceived by the CCP as subversive.

This is Hao's blog: Beijing or Bust.

What is one of the most fundamental differences between the US and Chinese economies? Savings.

At the moment I am reading Mao : The Unknown Story which even after all that we've learned about communism and its depraved despots still is a revealing read. The question is how many copies have made it into mainland China and to what extent it will influence a rethink of the Chairman. Well, he may no longer find himself on Chinese banknotes:

Delegates to an advisory body to China's parliament have proposed that Deng Xiaoping, architect of the nation's economic reforms, and Sun Yat-sen, father of the revolution that toppled the last emperor in 1911, should grace the new bills, state media reported on Monday.

It may be a small gesture, but it is a siginificant move in the ongoing process of China rewriting its own history.

The pessimists see a China as an unstoppable economic miracle that will become the next superpower and militarily challenge US hegemony, the optimists see China as an unstoppable economic miracle that will become a future US partner in a new Pacific age.

I definitely veer towards the latter, but will concede that we need a healthy dose of realism here. A realist will argue that China is a useful example of reforming a communist nation by unleashing huge economic potential first while considering democratic reform as a secondary, more gradual, item on the wish list. At the same the realist will take a very sobering view of what is currently shrouded by the incessant growth numbers and success stories that we are asked to take at face value. That is The Dark Side of China’s Rise, as outlined by Minxin Pei. Key excerpt:

China has already paid a heavy price for the flaws of its political system and the corruption it has spawned. Its new leaders, though aware of the depth of the decay, are taking only modest steps to correct it. For the moment, China’s strong economic fundamentals and the boundless energy of its people have concealed and offset its poor governance, but they will carry China only so far. Someday soon, we will know whether such a flawed system can pass a stress test: a severe economic shock, political upheaval, a public health crisis, or an ecological catastrophe. China may be rising, but no one really knows whether it can fly.

And therefore it is in our strategic interest to help China along when it encounters its various stress tests, which given our previous experiences with emerging tigers will initially be economic ones. Minxin Pei’s observations by the way contain a kernel of hope for the pessimists: China is not nearly as strong or as threatening as some try to make it out to be.

I've been getting quite a bit of mail inquiring about my positive stance on China as a long-term partner for the US in bringing about world stability. It will be the subject of a longer piece down the road, promise, but suffice it to say that I am not as blind to some of the more unpleasant tidings coming out of the Middle Kingdom as some of you may think.

Today, one of the last imprisoned Tiananmen activists, Yu Dongye, was released from prison, destroyed for life for having had the temerity to deface the portrait of Chairman Mao with paint-filled eggs seventeen years ago:

His mother, Wu Pinghua, said the former journalist, now 38, is a broken and mentally-deranged man. She told The Times: "Yu Dongyue can do nothing for himself so when he comes home I will care for him."

Mrs Wu said that she last saw her son a year ago. "He looked at me through the glass but didn’t recognise me. He pushed the phone aside and wouldn’t talk to me and just mumbled in some foreign language. He never called me ‘Ma’."

For daring to deface the portrait of a man still revered in China as the architect of its liberation from feudalism and colonialism, Mr Yu spent two years in solitary confinement, and was subjected to electric shocks and brutal beatings.

Once he was left standing in the sun, tied to a post, for days. A friend said that when he was transferred to a prison hospital after a mental breakdown in 1992, other prisoners were ordered to take care of him, but beat him at will.

His mother described scars on his face and hands and said she planned to take him to a hospital for a checkup. "He hasn’t come home for 17 years. I’m very happy ... but he’s mentally ill and it will be a burden to take care of him."

Stories like this one are extraordinarily depressing and underline that it is not just the Muslim world that has a very hard time accepting that mocking and questioning the sainthood status accorded to some is what free and inquiring minds normally do. And there are many ways to do so: draw a cartoon, throw an egg, express your doubts, write on your blog.

Apart from the terrible and heartbreaking human suffering, this case presents yet more evidence of China's deep insecurity over its past and by extension over its immediate future as a polity under communist party rule. Yes, it has been seventeen years since Yu was arrested, but there can be little doubt that anyone replicating his brave actions today will suffer a very different fate.

Former Hong Kong Governor and EU-Commissioner Chris Patten is back with a new book called Cousins and Strangers and it is getting mixed reviews. The book is a mixture of assessing the situation in the world today and where Patten believes the various key players, in particular Europe and America, should be moving:

In Cousins and Strangers, Chris Patten, one of Europe’s most distinguished statesmen, scrutinizes the final years of the twentieth century and how the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 fundamentally changed the nature of this Western alliance. Today, the threat of terrorism, economic competition from Asia, and a seemingly unbridgeable cultural divide have strained the alliance to a moment of reckoning. Patten argues that America’s status as the only superpower must be reined in, but he also warns Europe against too ardently challenging U.S. leadership. He questions whether Britain needs to choose between bolstering its “special relationship” with the United States and forging a greater role in a united Europe.

Patten’s ambiguous relationship with America has been most notable in his sharp rejection of Bush and the invasion of Iraq which he considered to be an aberration in America’s recent history as a benevolent superpower. And although that may put Patten on the wrong side of some of the neo-con right, he understands quite clearly where tomorrow’s threats are coming from. They will come from failed states rather than successful states, as he argued in a must-hear interview on CBC radio yesterday. As an example he cites the explosive situation in Pakistan as a key example of hazardous instability and he contrasts it with China, a more stable and successful state.

It is here that Patten provides some incisive views and he is at his best in my opinion when he discusses China, and to some extent India. Rather than branding the resurgent Middle Kingdom as the next global military threat – something which the Pentagon’s Quarterly Defense Review attempted to do last week – Patten sees the nation as a partner of the West in bringing peace and prosperity to the world. As discussed here before, I believe that is the only rational position to take, but that doesn’t mean that we should always kowtow to Beijing in order to have meeting of minds. On the contrary, and Patten himself can rightfully claim to be one of the few Western leaders to have stood up against the Chinese leadership, which he argues has always been quite respectful to him despite their past altercations. They have “much more sophistication than those who wish to curry favor with them”, and that is probably a sound piece of advice for anyone engaging the Chinese leadership.

Patten’s wish for Britain to play a bigger role in a more integrated Europe and for the US to revert to some sort of pre-9/11 magnanimous multilateral player may not be based in today’s political reality. Even a post-Bush era will be subject to the shifts that occurred during his tenure in the White House, something Patten conveniently discounts. His assessment of the origins of jihadist terror, well we can equally open them up to debate. But, if we want to map our way into the future and define our relationship with newly emerging economic superpowers such as China and India, then Patten’s superb ability to articulate the threats and opportunities is extremely useful. In that, he probably stands alone among his European contemporaries. But then, he is no longer bound by an electorate and can freely speak his mind.

There isn’t too much well-written analysis around when it comes to China but Niall Ferguson's piece in the Telegraph yesterday is one of them. In it he indirectly supports the claim that free-market capitalist growth and an overseeing illiberal state are incompatible and thus in the longer run, not sustainable. That’s also why we shouldn’t fear China as an economic or political adversary. As argued I've argued here before, it’s an opportunity to be embraced at various levels.

Related Posts:

An Opportunity, Not a Threat
The Long Road to Democracy
China's Journey
The Visit that Validated

The transripts of Hugh Hewitt interviewing Mark Steyn always make for a good read. In today's edition Steyn qualifies the Roberts confirmation hearings as a farce, expresses hope that Bush will not resort to spending big in the Katrina disaster zone - which he did - and interestingly, China.

While Steyn's views on Roberts and Bush are useful, what piqued my interest was that he did not succumb to the "China is the next superpower, and our next enemy" line that you will find almost anywhere these days, especially is some conservative circles. I've been planning to write a longer piece about the issue in light of the Hu tour, but then I did that only two months ago.

There has been a lot of excitement in the blogosphere about China and it all started a few weeks back with this article in the Washington Times which kicked off with the following ominous paragraph:

China is building its military forces faster than U.S. intelligence and military analysts expected, prompting fears that Beijing will attack Taiwan in the next two years, according to Pentagon officials.

The article went on to discuss the Chinese military build-up and the increasing likelihood of a military conflict with the US. Regular Peaktalk readers will know that I have always been deeply skeptical of those looking to cast China as our next big enemy, especially at a time when it seems that we’ve already found one in the form of radical Islam. There are, and there continue to be, good reasons for this position. With regards to Taiwan, China has always been testing the waters – literally – and the recent saber rattling is no different although the fact that US forces are stretched thin may have emboldened some Beijing-based adventurists. Going to war over Taiwan could potentially invite a third world war and it is unlikely that China will pursue such a route as it would have a devastating impact on its nascent and successful economy. The reason for it is simple as the US would have no problems obliterating the People's Liberation Army (PLA) whose power continues to be vastly overrated.

The belligerent tone of the article - pushing the idea of such an armed conflict – bothered me, but towards the end common sense sets in. China’s military build-up is far likelier driven by the need for regional muscle in order to help secure its voracious appetite for natural resources. While Taiwan is a plum prize for any Chinese leader, if you’re sitting in Zhongnanhai your immediate worry is how to keep 1.3 billion people happy and fed. Economic necessities drive China’s power play most of all as it is crucial in keeping the Communist Party in power as any serious economic deterioration would immediately eat away at its legitimacy.

That brings me to Max Boot who this week in the LA Times (via Our Way of Life) sets out that China is not pursuing a conventional war but something a PLA study coined “Unrestricted Warfare”:

Their different approaches include financial warfare (subverting banking systems and stock markets), drug warfare (attacking the fabric of society by flooding it with illicit drugs), psychological and media warfare (manipulating perceptions to break down enemy will), international law warfare (blocking enemy actions using multinational organizations), resource warfare (seizing control of vital natural resources), even ecological warfare (creating man-made earthquakes or other natural disasters).

What we’re seeing today is “Unrestricted Warfare Lite”, if that, as China will need for its economic supremacy the West to help it get there, voluntarily or involuntarily. Pundita – a new blogger to me but one that you should check out regularly – sums it up compellingly:

“ ... it's easy to understand why some observers are seeing a new cold war developing, along the lines of the struggle against the Soviets. However, the situation is completely different; e.g., the Soviets did not hold US debt. And American businesses didn't depend on cheap Soviet labor to help US companies stay competitive in global markets. The Cold War was a pre-globalization struggle”

Therefore no clash of titans, armed struggle or replay of Cold War style scenarios and hyperventilating about China being a new fascist power is equally ludicrous. China is a shaky and corrupt nation which has had some luck in combining Communist power structures with capitalist reforms and a steady influx of capital from successful neighbors such as Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. China is an opportunity, not a threat.

China and the US have now become too interdependent to risk letting relations descend to the level of an armed conflict. We should also seriously question certain components of “Unrestricted Warfare” although an ecological attack on the US directed from Beijing would make a nice Hollywood script. The focus will be on making money first and we’re up against a potentially strong economic player who doesn’t necessarily want to play according to the rules of the game and that requires some serious attention. But we’re light years away from an armed struggle or a Chinese economy that is so successful that it can erode the American ability to fund and operate the world’s strongest armed machine.

NOTE: As it happens China just announced it would let its currency, RMB, move into a managed floating exchange rate regime, effectively revaluating it by a few percent. Dan Drezner has a round-up with comments.

UPDATE: Via Roger I discovered the Carnival of Chinese Blogs. Take a look.

Michelle Malkin reminds us that today is the 16th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. If you're interested, take a look at the piece I wrote about it last year, the Long Road to Democracy. The conclusion is as valid today as it was a year ago, meaningful democratic change in China still has a long way to go.

Last week one of the remaining members of the Gang of Four died and the Economist ran a memorable obituary on Zhang Chunqiao. The madness and mindless destruction for which the gang was responsible during China's Cultural Revolution are best summed up by one of Zhang's remarks:

“Socialist weeds are more fragrant than capitalist grain”

Unique stuff.

It's an issue that I have long avoided, even after being prompted about it by some readers because I never believed that we are steadily drifting towards a new Cold War with China being the opponent. Robert Kagan outlines why we should start thinking in those terms rather than be surprised later on:

Once again we see an Asian power modernizing and believe this should be a force for peace. And we add to this the conviction, also common throughout history, that if we do nothing to provoke China, then it will be peaceful, without realizing that it may be the existing international system that the Chinese find provocative.

Read the whole thing.

Former Chinese leader Zhao Ziyang passed away earlier today. He was Deng Xiapoing’s second pick to lead China after his death into a new era after his first choice Hu Yaobang fell from grace in 1986. It was Hu’s death in 1989 that sparked the Tiananmen protests which in turn became Zhao’s undoing after he sided with the student demonstrators. He spent the remainder of his life under house arrest and was only allowed to leave his house for the occasional round of golf, giving the press a rare opportunity to once in a while snap a photo of him. One of these pictures emerged in the Hong Kong press in 1997 shortly after Deng’s death with the suggestion that Zhao might return to lead China after the old man’s death. The possibility of that happening was remote as the hard-liners around Jiang Zemin had consolidated their grip on power by, among other things, ensuring that Zhao remained well out of the public eye. Zhao Ziyang grasped the urgent need for reform, he did not grasp that its first phases were to be restricted to the economy only.

UPDATE: Dan Drezner makes it clear why Zhao's death will not spark the same protests as Hu's death.

Ever since Russia started to participate in G-7 (or after that G-8) get-togethers, I often wondered when China would be invited by the world’s economic powerhouses. Dan Drezner today points us to the fact that that process has started. China in my opinion would be a far more logical member than Russia but given the interrelatedness of markets and politics I presume we would want to have Putin at the table. And it won’t be long before we can welcome Hu Jintao.

Yesterday marked the 15th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on the pro-democracy movement on Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Any commemoration on Chinese soil was of course nipped in the bud by Chinese security officials, however the special administrative region of Hong Kong remains an exception and as usual a massive crowd gathered in Victoria Park to hold an impressive candlelight vigil. The remembrance in Hong Kong is poignant as freedom of expression, as well the likelihood of an expanded democratic franchise in the territory, have come under intense pressure from mainland China in recent months.

Looking back to the Spring of 1989 I have come to the conclusion how terribly naïve many of us were, believing that the reforms from Gorbachev and the rapid collapse of communism in Eastern Europe would be a template for further liberalization of a country that was pushed decisively in the direction of a free market economy by its visionary leader, Deng Xiaoping. Reading this account from one of the prominent demonstrators, Wang Dan, I realized that long before that fateful night when Deng ordered the People’s Liberation Army to fire on everything that moved in central Beijing, the decision to crack down had been taken. Once the chain of violence had been set in motion I also remember that at one point media were reporting that various factions of the PLA were fighting one another, suggesting that the cause of the student demonstrators was not lost, indeed some army units had sided with them. However it soon turned out that the latter was manipulation of an unusually strong kind and it helped the Chinese leadership to not only confuse the outside world but also flush out many dissenters and bystanders who were subsequently arrested and detained in an all encompassing state of emergency. Deng reasserted his authority and the first piece of filmed news out of Zhongnanhai showed the paramount leader congratulating and decorating military leaders after the successful crackdown. This brings me to my second thought.

There are probably very few, if any, world leaders that have survived violent purges at the hands of their erstwhile partners only to regain absolute power through which they could implement a great vision to steer their country to a better future, yet having to spill innocent blood to secure that very route. Deng is really the only one that comes to mind and in some inexplicable way the man and his legacy have somehow managed to get away with these bloodstains on his record. Both inside and outside China the evil genius behind Tiananmen has always been perceived to be former Prime-Minister Li Peng who at the time - and after the dismissal of reformist leader Zhao Ziyang - was the most visible figure of the leadership. His name will forever be linked with the massacre, yet by a miracle Deng almost seems to have been absolved from his clear culpability both inside and outside China. Deng’s defense to date has always been that he had no option but to quench what in his mind was an eerie replay of the student revolts he suffered during the Cultural Revolution some twenty years earlier. He was not going to let his achievements go to waste this late in life and it was an argument that was often used by the Chinese leadership in its drive to exculpate itself from foreign criticism over the events of June 1989 in Beijing. And to a large extent that has worked, China’s renewed economic vigor was for many too tempting a prospect to dwell on the death of a number of students and civilians on the path to prosperity. In the past I have on these pages pondered my amazement when I heard Hong Kong based Western businessman comment on the necessity to restore order in China and preserve the reforms that Deng had wrought from the wreckage of Maoism. It conflicted with my moral compass but in the days around Deng’s triumphant visit to Southern China Tiananmen was not exactly a major feature of the discussion. Yet, the issue has always been present and every year around this time the Chinese leadership steps up security, the resident of Hong Kong gather to commemorate and so do many around the world.

The bitter conclusion is that for the Communist Party of China reassessing the events of June 1989 would be tantamount to dissolving itself, and that is something that very few in the leadership would dare to take on. Staying in power is hardly defined by ridding yourself of the source of your authority and that was the reassertion of the supremacy of the CCP in 1989. It appears that the case for democratic reform as well as respect for human rights in China still has a very long way to go. And unfortunately, naivety still governs the outlook of many Chinese:

A neatly dressed mainland man standing at the edge of the vigil said that while he was not expecting quick political change on the mainland, he was nonetheless impressed by the commemoration here of the military crackdown on pro-democracy students in 1989. "Hong Kong should become the foundation for Chinese people to pursue democracy," said the man, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

We would all hope for that, but don’t count on it.

If we are talking about Bush taking certain positions on foreign policy and sticking by them even in the face of serious criticism, then here’s another example. Playing the regional card in order to deal with North Korea seems to be yielding some results according to this piece of news (link via Conrad), with Chinese President Hu Jintao calling on Pyongyang to stop its continuous war preparation and start focusing on its economy. While the approach to ensure that China takes on a significant load of the work and responsibility of dealing with North Korea seems logical, there were many who doubted the effectiveness of this approach. It remains to be seen if it will work, but the news from Beijing is nonetheless encouraging. The Economist (subscribers only) this week underlines this development by commenting on the fact that the Chinese appear to have woken up to the fact that nuclear proliferation in Asia (North Korea, India, Pakistan) may start to have a negative impact on its own security. It is interesting to note that some of North Korea’s nuclear capabilities came directly from Pakistan which in turn benefited from complete design documents it got from the Chinese, the latter resulting in India testing its weapons in 1998.

Yesterday’s bombings in Bombay are a clear reminder that if ever there is a nuclear conflict in the making (and many seem to have forgotten about that when focusing on Kim, Saddam and Osama), the tense stand-off between Pakistan and India is probably the most dangerous one and the area of direct concern. Escalating conflicts with nuclear potential on the fringes of its empire, be it the Sub-Continent or the Korean Peninsula, is not what China needs. China is a key strategic partner for the US to stabilize the many flashpoints in Asia and it seems the new Chinese leadership is now realizing that it can play a meaningful role on the global scene. In fact, it may be a unique opportunity for them.

China is often viewed around the blogosphere as the evil red bogeyman and some have tried to cast the country as the next adversary of the US following the demise of the Soviet Empire. Indeed, Bush’ first foreign policy crisis was the forced emergency landing of a US spy plane on Hainan Island in the summer of 2001. The 9/11 attacks of course shifted all the attention away from China and rightly so as I never believed the country to be a direct adversary of the West. China historically has been more of inward-looking entity rather than an outward oriented aggressor with empire ambitions. Given its path to economic freedom it has become a major trading partner of the free world and given the international strategic challenges (North Korea, Islamists in Asia) the Chinese leadership may well become a close ally in stabilizing the post cold-war world.

I have discussed the country’s journey before, Jeff over at Caerdroia gives a good summary as to where things are headed in the Middle Kingdom, although I suspect the country will in the near future more likely end up as a democracy Singapore-style than as a multi-party Western-style democracy.

Here’s another thought (or rather memory) I had about Deng Xiaoping following my response to Seablogger yesterday. Deng by 1992 had turned into a very old and nearly deaf man and was always accompanied by his daughter, Deng Rong, who acted as his assistant and translator. In this period he paid a historic visit to Shenzhen, China’s special economic zone just across the border from Hong Kong. He wasn’t able to walk unassisted and it was not easy for him to produce any coherent sentences or long speeches, but apparently he mumbled something along the lines of “seize the moment” or “seize the opportunity”. Those words uttered right in the heart of China’s new economic engine, Shenzhen, were to many observers the ultimate validation of China’s economic reforms, the seal of approval for the unfettered money culture that had developed in Shenzhen and the birth of a new China. It also served as a warning to the Maoist remnants in the Chinese Communist Party that there was essentially no way back for the country and that only the capitalist reforms would enable the country to go forward and conquer a place among the world’s modern nations. To me it had always been fascinating that Deng consolidated his power to such an extent that, even in the absence of having a formal government or party function, he was able to have a phenomenal impact on both policy and the public mood in China and beyond. There’s little doubt that Deng by initiating agricultural reforms first, he was able to move the Chinese away from famine to a state of self-sufficiency. Once that was achieved he opened the country’s borders and implemented the reforms that essentially turned China into a free-market economy, “socialism with Chinese characteristics” as the new direction was coined.

If anyone is interested in the background to Deng’s rise and how it intertwines with Mao’s rule there are of course numerous books, but the one that sticks in my mind, and it is to the month exactly ten years ago that I read it, is Harrison Salisbury’s New Emperors, China in the Era of Mao and Deng (although my copy has a different subtitle, Mao and Deng, A Dual Biography). This book makes it very clear how Mao and Deng differed and why Deng was ultimately able to turn things around in China. I know a lot of people are reading up on Iran and Saudi Arabia, but if you have room during the summer months for Salisbury’s take on Deng, I highly recommend it.

The Economist this week juxtaposes China and India as a prelude to the visit of India’s Prime Minister to China. The analysis is not entirely new, back in my Asian days I was involved in a similar comparison when the bank I was working for had to break new grounds in the wake of saturation and collapse in South-East Asian markets, which I happened to discuss yesterday. There were two key countries in Asia on the radar screen for what it seemed were endless opportunities and thus new deals, India and China. Inevitably, there emerged two groups within our team and in the financial community at large: the pro-India group and the pro-China group. The experiences we had up to 1996 already led many to believe that our efforts would yield better results in China. As the Economist correctly points out, bureaucracy, corruption, influential lobbying groups as well as an overly protective economic system have prevented real success, growth and investment in India. Compared to India, China has prospered. This argument points to the fact that democracy in itself is not always a guarantee for economic success and that the authoritarian former communists in China have been able to achieve quite a bit over the past two decades, although we have to take Chinese economic statistics with a grain of salt.

Here's an interesting piece on SARS. Not only have the Chinese covered up the epidemic, it also turns out they have not responded very well. The Singaporean government is on top of things and it proves that the outbreak of this disease can indeed be managed. Following the cover-up of both AIDS and SARS in China one wonders if any lessons have been learned and what we can expect from mainland China in the future when it comes to health issues.