In my last post, I spoke about and gave you a history of the Vietnam War. I’ve also written about North Korea.
Together, these three post and countries – as well as the other countries that dot the landscape of the Sea of Okhotsk, Sea of Japan, Yellow Sea, East China Sea and the South China Sea – signify a stark reality that until recently, was for the most part, swept under the rug by world governments that just did not want to deal with what China has been doing over the course of the last 100 years.
All countries have long histories, some much longer than others with China being one of the ones with a very long history dating back to 1600-1050 B.C., being that of the Shang Dynasty.
Along the way in their history, and not like every country, China has a long history of massacring it’s citizens and I do not mean one hundred here or there, we are speaking about millions. I should point out early – we’ll get into more detail in a minute – in this post that those massacring events are taking place as I write this post. Each and every day, thousands are killed by a dictatorship, hard rule government.
As we look deeper into the history of China, leading up to present day, it will be easy for the reader to understand why this post came to be.
So what is it about China that has it so messed up in the eyes of any normal thinking person. China is a country that is land-locked, sharing it’s boarder with that of fifteen other countries, those being: Russia, North Korea, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand.
With this in mind, there are a number of circumstances that come into play. 1) All of the countries to the west of China have been at war with each other since the beginning of time for religious reasons, leaving a constant mind psychologically filled with grief. 2) There has always been a tug-of-war with the neighboring countries over land markers and 3) The dictators of North Korea and Russia have played a big part in the human rights abuses, long before there was the outcry of human rights.
Despite all of this influential turmoil, there has also been internal turmoil with attempted configurations of government as well as the rebellion of those governments. For example:
551–479 B.C.: Confucius – The teacher, politician and philosopher. He entered into politics in 501 B.C. as a town governor after gaining attention as a teacher, but in 498 B.C. lived in exile to escape political enemies.
221-206 B.C.: Qin Dynasty – The Qin Dynasty, from which China derives its name, (Qin is pronounced “Chin”) was the first official empire in its history.
850 A.D.: Gunpowder – Alchemists working with saltpeter for medicinal purposes mixed it with charcoal and sulfur. The explosive properties that resulted were used in warfare to propel arrows by the Tang Dynasty, as well as fireworks.
1260 A.D.: Kublai Khan – The grandson of Genghis conquered the Song Dynasty and established the Yuan Dynasty, unifying China and bringing Mongolia, Siberia and parts of the Middle East and even Europe into the Chinese Empire.
1856-1860: The Second Opium War – Britain and France demanded that China legalize opium, invading Guangzhou and advancing into Beijing. Desperate to end the conflict, China signed a treaty giving the west more business power and the control of ports.
1894-1894: The First Sino Japanese War – The Qing Dynasty clashed with Japan over Korea. China’s regional dominance plummeted after losing and influenced a series of internal clashes over the next 16 years. As part of the defeat agreement, Taiwan was handed over to Japan.
1899: The Boxer Rebellion – Under the rule of Empress Dowager Cixi, the secret society the Harmonious fist began slaughtering foreigners. Known as the Boxers, they won Empress Dowager’s support when eight European countries sent troops. China lost the conflict, and the West imposed sanctions that permanently weakened Qing rule.
1912: The Republic of China – Fueled by western-educated revolutionary Sun Yat-Sen, the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 culminated in the Wuchang Uprising, and 15 provinces declared their independence from the Qing Dynasty. Sun took control in 1912, announcing the republic.
All of this eventually leads up to a more current Chinese society within the last 100 years. For starters, there is the The Communist Party of China that was formed in 1921, which was a result of the May Fourth Movement protesting the Chinese government response to the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.
And of course, what this post is emphasizing the most, the Shanghai Massacre of 1927, where millions of executions took place when Nationalist Party leader Chiang Kai-shek orders the massacre of Communists, which inadvertently causes the creation of the opposing Communist Red Army.
And last, but not least, before we move on, the Civil War of 1931, where fighting between the Red Army and the Nationalist Party escalates into an 18-year-long conflict that ended in 1949.
Since that time, there have been a number of other conflicts to note:
The Second Sino-Japanese War, (1937-1945) Taiwan returns to China, following the Japanese surrender of World War II in 1945.
The People’s Republic of China was formed after a violent end of the civil war. The Communist Party declared the People’s Republic of China. Two months later, two million soldiers followed Chiang Kai-shek into exile to Taiwan where he set up a provisional government claiming to be the legitimate ruling body of China, leading to communist party chairman Mao Zedong becoming China’s new leader in 1949.
And in 1966, the Cultural Revolution took place, initiated by Chairman Mao to erase Capitalist and traditional Chinese influences of the People’s Republic and introduce the philosophy of Maoism to fill the ideological gaps, this resulted in youth gangs known as the Red Guards attacking undesirable citizens. Chaos led to martial law, and the Communist Party purges, resulting in 1.5 million deaths.
To say that there were a lot of unhappy times in china would be an understatement, but then again, most countries on this planet have had their fare share of unhappy times. But what is it about China that keeps them so unhappy and why are they continuously attempting to draw other countries into their rule.
One could only speculate, but it would be easy to compare it to the vast number of religions that attempt to draw-in new members, eventually leading into a new way of thinking, praying, living and what to believe and what not to believe, which is where my next post about the Separation of Church and State will come into play.
For this post though, I’m going to concentrate on what is happening now, using what we just discussed in our history lesson as a base of which to draw from.
First, China wants to be recognized as a world leader and they have not been able to do so due to their failed internal policies. The internal turmoil continues as China’s government continues to grapple with it’s continuous abuses to it’s own people.
Second, there are still a large number of it’s citizens that rebel against failed policies, political stance and the consistent lies about an economy that is flourishing, new jobs, tech, etc, while at the same time, struggling to make ends meet.
Case-in-point being that China is heavily vested into the worlds’ stock markets. In the US, that would be the New York Stock Exchange. The New York Stock Exchange also serves as a thermometer, or gauge as to how well world governments are doing financially. In the case of China, if their stocks are doing well, they will deflate their currency, resulting in cheap stocks in the hopes that US or other country specific investors will invest in the stocks that are placed on the market.
This, in theory, seems like an interesting idea to raise capital, but the result is that companies in China suffer the consequences and pass those consequences on to the people that work for the company, hence why factory workers are paid 10 cents per hour or in some case, per day for grudging through a 10-14 hour work day to make $300 Nike shoes that US athletes can squawk and boast about because the shoes have their name on them.
On the other end of the spectrum, the Chinese government will offer to invest in the land of other countries to raise the pendulum of the bean counters spreadsheet by being able to boast about their assets, making it appear that the country is wealthier than they really are. This often, and has many times before been attempted to be used as a tool to leverage other countries to sway them into other favors such as trade agreements, citing the old mantra of “you owe us and don’t forget, if you want your land back.”
This has led to many lopsided trade agreements that look great for China, but look really bad for other countries as now those countries’ spreadsheets show large deficits, while China reaps the benefit of cheap labor, shipping and over inflated prices on the products they are exporting.
So why has China become aggressive to other countries since the start of the trade war with the US? A simple theory would be, if you place a cat in the corner and the threat becomes to much, knowing that the cat is not going to come out of this alive, the cat will go ballistic in a show of defiant strength, praying that the prey will back off and if not, fight till it’s last breath.
A look at the exchange of words between China and Taiwan is a perfect example. Taiwan has made it perfectly clear that if China decides to invade its country, it will fight to it’s last breath, making sure that the Chinese casualties are as high as possible before the complete takeover is emanate and you can be sure that China took note of this, despite the card game bluffing that is still taking place.
Other countries too have come forward to state that they feel they are being played and are on the losing end of the agreements that were made some time ago. Europe for one has stated that they are sorry they entered into any agreements with China as it is now a losing show for them, meaning that they now realize they have been taken advantage of.
All of this, plus the continuous massacre of the Uighur people. Recently, more than 400 pages of internal Chinese documents provided a look at the “absolutely no mercy” policy and war against the Uighur people, with leaked files exposing how China has organized the mass detentions and massacres of Muslims. Further adding fuel to the fire is the discovery of detention camps built to hold Muslim ethnic minorities.
Knowing that this could escalate to a quick war with the neighbors to the west of them, this leaves Beijing’s Xi in a really bad spot – backed into a corner – with no way out, but to threaten all of it’s neighbors in an attempt to cover up what has been happening in the cloak of darkness for decades.
If the Chinese people were to come together against China’s government, that would spell disaster for Xi and Xi taking all of the blame and quit possible, the end of the regime. The end result would be the same as toppling any large governing body, there would be trillions of dollars lost and another internal war, opening up the doors for a takeover and this is why their diaper is full.