In the current environment we cannot consider a merging of the two, yet multiple existential threats are at play, with cooperation and dialog being the only way out.Ī statement from a young tour guide in China in 2000, “ Now how I save face?” clued me in to the art of respectful interactions. We see the flaws of democracies in maintaining order and the potential overuse of control in authoritarian systems. Competing ideologies, democratic versus authoritarian, are not straightforward. China is now large enough, militarily and economically, that they are not prepared to accede number 1 status to the US. The main impediment is the US need to be Number 1 economically and militarily. With the amount of coverage of the topic, plus social media exchanges, it was striking to see a news correspondent express surprise at the change in poll numbers over two weeks! Wow! For two weeks, you continuously tell Canadians that their sacred democracy has been tampered with and it changes their views on China? Grant the man a PhD!Īlthough I see a potential course of action (left for another post), I have little faith that it is implementable. The calls for hearings on Chinese interference in the last Canadian election is raising the ire of many. The propaganda machines have been put in place and there too, a causal chain is put in place that will result in people abusing Chinese “looking” people in the US and Canada. As you can likely surmise, my orientation toward the Western stance is negative. The way the west is playing the game, the former seems to be the likely scenario. Will it be the scorched earth Ukrainian scenario or an evolution of compromises over a longer period of time? We do need to look at what we do with China today as it will inevitably determine how the reunification of China will occur. It is not right to just look at a single issue like NATO either, there were a host of other issues that led to the current situation. The causal explanation for Russia-Ukraine was not the invasion, but the history that included NATO expansion after the fall of the Soviet Union. In a nutshell, whatever happens at this instant is determined by what happened in all preceding time. In the west, it’s much easier to create narratives of Chinese cheating and stealing than to evaluate the history behind Chinese acquisitions.Īllow me the pivot to the philosophical concept of determinism. Huawei was gaining an edge on 5G, and TikTok was winning over Instagram and other social media platforms, thus challenging the supremacy of the US tech sector. One theory that might explain this, is the real security threat is primarily a commercial one. No doubt one remembers the Huawei fiasco, where Canada “sequestered” Meng Wen Zhou at the request of the US. The TikTok ban is the latest salvo in the new cold war. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine last year, there are many narratives from talking heads that have pivoted toward China, building an equivalence between the Ukraine situation and Taiwan. This inevitably leads to the nuclear clock ticking towards midnight once again. In recent news items, the countries in the west, starting with the US, are gradually banning the use of TikTok on government issued phones. If memory serves me, 11:59 was the Cuban Missile Crisis. During my lifetime it varied between 11:50 and 11:59. The nuclear clock was a mainstay during the cold war.
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