Re: EJ & China

[Giles Peaker <G.Peaker@derby.ac.uk>]

Dear Bertil and others,

Forgive a lurker bursting into polemic, and forgive the tone of the 
following, but I had to respond to Bertil's post on China.

>But if the United States forestalls a Chinese domination it might not
>come to war.
>Don't forget Huntington and the prognosis of cultural conflict. A PRC
>allied
>to the Muslim world could certainly pose a danger to the west. But China
>has many weaknesses: only the coastal zones are so far developed,
>communication and infrastructure is weak, and large parts of the
>interior
>are still an underdeveloped country. 
This is sheer paranoia. All the fantasised 'enemies' of 'the west' are 
going to gang up on it. Of course, the oil rich islamic countries (few of 
which are fundamentalist) are going to abandon their western markets and 
join an atheist (or pantheist) China in an (un) holy war against... what? 
the western nations? christianity? european culture? the white race? What 
does 'the west' mean for you?

'If the United States forestalls...' Not, I hope,  a new cold war. We now 
know the cold war for the charade it was, massively encouraged by the US 
military industrial complex. (The evidence is that there was *never* a 
missile gap in favour of the USSR, quite the reverse). So now we (I 
presume 'we') must gird our loins against a new threat - also, naturally, 
one which is implacably opposed to 'our way of life'. Does anyone 
remember that 1950s US B movie in which the chinese were about to invade 
the US by tunnelling under the pacific?

>"...China and the United States will be adversaries in the major global
>rivalry of the first decades of the century. Compertition between them
>will force other countries to take sides and will involve all the
>standard
>elements of international competition: military strength, economic
>well-being, influence among other nations and over the values and
>practices that are
>accepted as international norms". So Bernstein - Munro.
U.S. paranoia. They have tried Japan in the role, once the gulf war had 
eliminated other claims to global power (heavy irony). Now it is China. 
This has been said since the 1960s. Let us accept that it is entirely 
possible that China will be a major economic force. The lesson of the 
'american century' is that economic imperialism has replaced military 
imperialism for any major power (c.f. Vietnam, Suez and the various ends 
of the British empire). So, perhaps you are concerned about domination by 
foreign capital.... unfortunately you are too late. We could play spot 
the remaining national capital, but there is little left of any 
significance. (c.f. Sony rebuilding Berlin Mitte). I will admit that it 
is possible that  paranoid and declining US capital might force a resort 
to military means. But it seems unlikely - on the whole they will be 
looking for investment opportunities. Let us watch Hong Kong and wait for 
the first major Chinese exportation of capital, before we decide on the 
nature of any confrontation. What if a chinese group follows Sony and 
buys a Hollywood studio? This seems a more more likely course of events 
to me.

>Oswald Spengler predicted that a culture that once was burnt out could
>never be revived. But a cyclical scheme like the one underneath might
>not be wholly impossible:
>
>1000 - 1500    First Chinese Far Eastern Cycle
>1500 - 2050 (?)First European Far Western Cycle
>2050 -   ?     Second Chinese Far Eastern Cycle
Oh please, not millenial cycles.

Yours in kynical thought,

Giles

Giles Peaker
Historical and Theoretical Studies
School of Art and Design, University of Derby, Britannia Mill, 
Mackworth Road, Derby. DE22 3BL (U.K.)
+44 (0)1332 622222 ext. 4063    G.Peaker@derby.ac.uk
Editorial Collective:Detours and Delays. 
An occasional journal of aesthetics and politics