Tag: China

North Korea: Time to Get Serious

korea3Could we just hit “Pause” for a second and think about this thing?  Maybe stand down the Stealth Bombers, unlock the lock and load and tone down the rhetoric?  I realize that when a punk like Kim Jong whatever-he’s-calling-himself-this-week is kicking sand in your face, it’s difficult to calm down – but let’s give it a try.  We need to remember a few things before somebody forgets what we’re dealing with and all hell breaks loose.

Okay, folks!  All aboard the reality train.

First of all, don’t let the tough talk fool you.  Ever since Dougie MacArthur, Truman’s ten-star general, threatened to turn Pyongyang into a mud puddle, the Kim boys of North Korea have been yipping a good fight without ever throwing down.  That’s not to say they won’t, but history has shown us that, like the elementary school bully, these guys are professional bum biters.  They pick their spots and never do anything serious enough to risk major retaliation.  They might talk like hard men and take a few cheap shots, but grandfather, father and now son are smart enough to know just how far they can push it.  They realize that if they ever did take a real run at the United States or any of her allies, they’d be out of a job by close of business Tuesday.  Cold War stalemates may have been all the rage in the 50s, but they’re pretty much passé these days.

Secondly, anybody who thinks Kim Jong-un is running the show north of the 38th parallel has got another think coming.  Yes, he’s the current Glorious Leader and latest member of the Kim dynasty that Stalin put on the throne back in the 40s — but that doesn’t mean much.  There’s an entrenched state apparatus in North Korea that’s been calling the shots for over sixty years.  These folks are the descendents of Kim il-Sung’s (Un’s grandpa) original band of gangsters revolutionaries.  They keep everything that’s worth controlling firmly in their grasp, and they’re not about to lighten up on that grip of steel any time soon.  In short, Kims may come and Kims may go but the high-end folks of The Hermit Kingdom have a pretty good gig, and they’re not going to jeopardize it by taking a flyer on this kid’s nuclear adventuring.

Finally, and most importantly, North Korea is a “sovereign state” in name only.  In theory, it might have a flag and a nationalModels of a North Korean Scud-B missile and South Korean missiles are displayed at the Korean War Memorial Museum in Seoul anthem, but in practical terms, it’s about as independent as Nebraska.   I doubt very much if the powers that be in Pyongyang go to the toilet without telling Beijing what they’re up to.  Unless you flunked history, economics and current events in high school, you realize that North Korea is China’s surrogate.  It is North Korea’s only serious trading partner, and, as such controls over 70% of its economy – such as it is.  Besides, it’s not even close to plausible that the Chinese would allow a nuclear arsenal within spitting distance of The Dragon Throne if they didn’t have it on a leash.  And speaking of nuclear weapons, how does a “nation” without enough hard currency to buy a Happy Meal™ get its mitts on weapons-grade plutonium, never mind build the facilities it takes to make it work?  It’s obvious that China is pulling the strings south of the Yalu River.  This latest bit of sabre rattling may be nothing more than a no consequence test of American resolve in the area.  Personally, I think it’s more than that (remember: China just launched its first aircraft carrier into the South China Sea.)  But then I’m not getting the big bucks from the State Department for my opinion.

However, if I was, I’d mention that this new kid in the Petty Little Dictator Club is trying to impress the neighbours and make a name for himself with the locals.  He’s talking a good fight, but like his daddy, he isn’t likely to launch anything more than his mouth — if he does, China spank.  We need to let him know, in no uncertain terms, he should back off before somebody (mostly he) gets hurt.  However, we also need to take our fingers off the trigger just in case somebody gets twitchy and this whole thing blows up – by accident.

China: Money for Nothing

chinaI’ve taken a lot of flak over the years for my abhorrence of government programs and/or government intervention in anything beyond the bare necessities – education, health, security etc.  I have argued (sometimes successfully) that my government should keep its fingers off most of the stuff it’s currently up to its elbows in, and should never — under any circumstances — even look at new programs.  My point is, since the only people keeping an eye on the government are the government, they aren’t in the best position to assess the damage they’re doing–and they’re doing plenty.  This is because not only is every politico in all directions wasting money as fast as they can tax it, but while they’re playing Daddy Warbucks on extracurricular activities, they’re neglecting the essentials.  Governments should confine themselves to things like minimum standards for clean water (which BTW, my country does not have) national standards of education (oops, don’t have that one either) or perhaps overhauling our antiquated Catch-and-Release justice system (I’m not even going to go there.)  If my government would quit dickin’ around and do what they’re supposed to, between the money they’d save and the money they’d never spend in the first place, my country would be a veritable paradise.  The problem is the government is the problem not the solution — and now, I can prove it.

This week, austerity budget week in Canada, buried on page 352, my government has declared it’s about to save me 30 million dollars a year because it’s going to stop sending aid to China.  Wow!  Good on ya, folks!  That’s 30 million I didn’t have yesterday.  [Incredulous Pause]  Hey, wait a minute!  We’re sending foreign aid to China?  WTF?

Anyway, one quick Google later and you betcha, folks, not only does Canada send piles of money to China, we’ve been doing it for decades.  This is insanity on such a biblical scale it’s impossible to discuss it rationally.  My only option is to use the infamous rhetorical question.

First of all, somebody had to think this up in the first place.  Who in their right mind would even conceive of giving – GIVING! —china1 the second largest economy in living history financial assistance?  That’s like me sending a cheque to Bill Gates. (“Here, Bill. I thought you could use the extra cash.”)  Were the politicos all sitting around Parliament Hill, blasted on peyote?  China has more US currency in its banks than America does.  It has launched a guy into space and an aircraft carrier into the Pacific. It hosted the Olympics and won them.   It has factories bigger than most of our towns and could, if it so chose, swallow our economy whole and spit out the GST.  What Carlos Castaneda dream do we think we’re living in?

Secondly, who approved it?  What committee came to the incredible conclusion that giving China buckets of money was the very best allocation of my nation’s wealth?  What overwhelming argument convinced them?  Whatever it was, it must have been smack-bottom good.  After all, it obviously beat out spending that money to feed the hungry, house the homeless or even educate the stupid – which might have helped us out, in this case.

Thirdly, what good did it do us?  What was the cost-to-benefit ratio for those ordinary Canadians the politicos are always yipping about?  Is there one Canadian out there who can lift his Molson and say, “I’ve had a better life since we starting sending millions of dollars to China.  Salud!”  Perhaps, but I doubt it.

Fourthly, this squander has been going on for decades. Why didn’t somebody – somewhere — put a stop to it?  Why didn’t at least china2one of the several successive governments we elected in the last 40 years ever eyeball the cancelled cheques and say, “What the hell is this?  We’re cutting EI benefits to send money to China?  That’s just wrong.  We should discontinue this waste.”  Oddly, nobody did.

Finally (there’s more, but I have to stop this somewhere) who possibly ever thought this was a good idea?  I don’t think anybody.  I think everybody from Trudeau (not Justin, the real one) to Stephen Harper thought it was unbelievably stupid to give – GIVE — millions to China, but they just kept doing it anyway — government inertia at its absolute finest.

There is one good thing that’s come out of this monumental cock-up, though.  I’m waiting in the weeds for the next person to tell me what a utopia government programs could create if they were just given the chance.  It will be an interesting conversation.

Anti-Americanism: The Changing of the Guard

As the Olympic Games continue and China and the United States duke it out for world supremacy in training and nutrition (nudge-nudge/wink-wink) something amazing is going on.  Ever so slightly, ever so carefully, the world is shifting its attitude away from blatant anti-Americanism.  It’s not a tectonic shift, by any means; just a subtle hint now and again.  Make no mistake, hating America is still the world’s #1 leisure activity, but every once in a while, at these Games at least, they’re not the ad infinitum root of all evil they’ve been accused of for more than half a century.

Anti-Americanism was born in the mid 60s when an entire stratum of pampered young people (with incredible buying power) went on a five-year temper tantrum.  They were pissed because, for the first time in their lives, they couldn’t get their own way.  Unfortunately, their sheer numbers and economic impact turned what was ordinary youthful discontent into a cultural revolution.  Half-educated, they were unable to distinguish between theoretical Marxism and the real thing and thus saw capitalist America as the big bad bogeyman.  America, run by the veterans of a simpler time, never understood the situation and exacerbated it by stumbling around the rice paddies of Southeast Asia in an idiot attempt to contain communism.  By the time Vietnam’s General Giap unleashed The Tet Offensive in 1968, America had squandered most of the prestige it had accumulated from World War II.   Richard Nixon and Watergate finished it off.

Today, three generations later, anti-Americanism is a worldwide institution.  All political, spiritual and economic arguments end when America gets the blame.  They are responsible for Global Warming, Globalization and every other global godawful anything that happens to wander by, including poverty, famine and Justin Bieber.  Hell cannot hold half their nastiness, and their stupidity is beyond the ability of Charles Darwin to figure out.  American leaders are schizophrenic in their cunning, both dumb as the proverbial box of rocks and capable of creating any number of complex and nefarious conspiracies.  These plots are conducted by the shadowy and “omnipotent” CIA and are intricate in their planning, massive in their scope and have never (at the time of this writing) worked.  They are usually discovered, after the fact, by a dedicated team of sceptics, operating from the relative comfort of their parents’ basements.

Popular wisdom has it that America has both faked the moon landing and destroyed the ozone layer.  The greedy bastards have sent their corporate lackeys out into the world to destroy all indigenous cultures and to fast-food the fitness out of innocent children.  They have alien technology they won’t share and a cultural bankruptcy they’re forcing on the rest of us.  They are gun-happy cowboys who like nothing better than buggering up everything they touch.  In short, when America wakes up, Satan hides under the sofa.

The weirdest thing about anti-Americanism is, though, even in our uber-sensitive world, it’s not seen as bigotry, prejudice or even ignorance.  It is so ingrained in the world’s thinking that nobody even questions it.  Many people don’t even admit it exists.  The most common statement to that end is, “I’m not anti-American … but” and then the speaker launches into an anti-American tirade worthy of Jon Stewart and Bill Maher combined.  Like prejudice everywhere, it doesn’t matter what bigots say before they get to the “but.”  It’s what comes after the qualifier that counts.

Of course, up until recent history, America has been a catchall for a lot of people’s dissatisfaction.  They get the flak because, for the last sixty years or so, they’ve always been front and centre.  They may not be omnipotent, but they’ve certainly been omnipresent.  And that’s what’s changing in our little world.  Slowly but surely, China is reaching its fingers into the international community, and they’re discovering that there’s a whole lot more to being a world power than selling toasters to Italians.  Many people have gone from looking at China through a telescope to putting it under the microscope.  China has already played the racist card (a time-honoured tradition, pioneered by the Japanese) a couple of times to deflect criticism, but that’s not going to last forever.  As more and more people discover China — up close and personal — there will be criticism.  It’s inevitable.  After all, there is no Chinese utopia – any more than there was an American one.  However, for now, it’s interesting to watch the world tiptoeing around the coming Chinese Colossus and hearing a collective American sigh of relief as the spotlight shifts across the Pacific.