Oceania is at War With…China?

Myanmar
[click on photo to enlarge]

“If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition into the target zone on China’s territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons,” Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu, a dean at China’s National Defense University, told visiting Hong Kong-based reporters…

…If the Americans are determined to interfere ... we will be determined to respond, and we Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all cities east of Xi’an,” a major city in central China, Zhu said.

“Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds of, or two hundreds of, (or) even more cities will be destroyed by the Chinese,” he said.[emphasis added]-- Chinese Nuclear Comments Prove
Explosive, MSNBC July 15, 2005

Here’s "Modern China course 101" in a nutshell: the country is run by a dictatorship, the economy is expanding extremely fast, and with a policy that harbors little regard for human rights, it is willing to do international business with other countries which also have no regard in this area.

Because China's record on human rights is so unacceptable, President Bush has already imposed sanctions on Chinese companies 62 times. By comparison, President Clinton – who also held China's record on human rights to be unacceptable – imposed sanctions on Chinese companies on only eight occasions in eight years.

Of course, many Chinese companies are not private sector companies at all. Many are owned or controlled by elements of the People's Liberation Army. Unnamed US officials charge that many of these same companies have re-exported imported technology – that could conceivably be used to make "weapons of mass destruction" – to such nations as Pakistan, Iran, and Libya.

Chinese exports to Iran are certainly understandable. Once a net exporter of oil, China now imports 60 percent of its needs. Its oil imports have more than doubled over the past five years, growing by 7.5 percent per year, seven times faster than the US.

China's increasing reliance on Iranian energy – including a recent zillion-dollar oil and gas co-development deal – has certainly put a hitch in the neo-crazies'[neo-cons] plan to destabilize – much
less invade and occupy – Iran.—Condi Desperate to Stop EU-China-Iran Chain Reaction by Gordon Prather AntiWar.com

China needs to import huge amounts of oil to support an expanding manufacturing base gone wild. The effect of the use of energy on the environment has also become monumentally overlooked.

China first became an oil importing country in 1993. Its insatiable hunger for oil has since been an important factor in driving up world oil prices. China must create some 24 million jobs a year to absorb Fresh labor…According to British Petroleum (BP) statistics, in 2003 China's total energy demand leaped by 13.8% following its GDP Growth of 9.1%.[US GDP GROWTH STEADY AT 3%] China alone
accounted for 41% of the growth of the total world oil demand, its oil imports rising 32% to 2.6 million bpd.—Energy Bulletin Sept 23, 3004

Myanmar, the former Burma, is a military-run government notorious for its complete lack of consideration of human rights.

Myanmar government is run by military. US sanctions against the military government have been largely ineffective, due to loopholes in the sanctions and the willingness of mainly Asian business to continue investing in Myanmar and to initiate new investments, particularly in natural resource extraction.--Wikipedia

Booming China, with its voracious appetite for oil and urgent need for oil security, is considering a China-Myanmar oil pipeline and one through Thailand. Energy Bulletin Sept 23, 3004

A Chinese oil company, CNOOC, 70%-owned by the Chinese government, tried to buy UNOCAL this month:

CNOOC Ltd, China's third-largest oil producer, plans to scuttle its bid for Unocal Corp as early as next week because political pressure from Washington has made the deal impossible, a Hong Kong newspaper reported Friday citing unidentified sources. Report:--CNOOC set to scuttle bid, CNN Thursday, July 28, 2005

This is just the beginning. China has a population of 1,306,313,812 according to the CIA. US consumers reap the discount benefits of cheap Chinese manufacturing all through retail goods from Wal-Mart, Target and others from children’s back-to-school clothes to garden accessories to…whatever. But the US company outsourcing of manufacturing is costing more than we save in discounts at the cash register, in wages, benefits, taxes.

The metastasizing out-of-control manufacturing sector in China is practically a modern version of post-industrial-revolution Europe, with all of its associated problems of pollution and human abuse. Meanwhile the rest of the world's advanced economies move into technology and look for alternative energy.

While cooler heads in the Chinese government hierarchy try to dispel the doomsday talk of Gen. Zhu, Condi, Dick, and George W would be well-advised to focus more attention on the far-East, and get out of the middle.

Let’s not bury our heads in the sand, again. We, the people, were not prepared for the events of 9/11. Let’s not be unprepared for the real threats we face, and the great solutions that can be offered. By extending hands across the Pacific, and working with the Asian governments to help us all, our government could set a new standard of international cooperation and profit.

Americans fret about open borders, immigrants, and terrorists. They reflect, and react to, the MSM which report the “party line.” The real costs, and the ultimate source of harm, are not in the aims of terrorists or the aspirations of an enormous foreign country—they lay right in the midst of our fellow citizens’ greed.