One Belt and One Road
Initiative of the Communist Party of China (CPP), An Epic Quest to Capture
Dominant Geopolitical Power - to Lead to China Achieving Its Strategic
Political & Military Goals OR Result to Epic Failure and Disastrous Financial Mess
for Some Poor Countries? (Draft ... leisurely typed during a lazy
afternoon)
>>> in2strat.blogspot.com (new blog for vetted readers)
>>> in2strat.blogspot.com (new blog for vetted readers)
(This is from our May 14, 2017 Facebook post, the rest of photos / graphics from our old Facebook posts)
What is this initiative? It's a very ambitious dream of the top officials of the Communist Party of China (CPP), rather vague in its overall goals, to build a series of linked massive logistical infrastructures to more efficiently facilitate transport of goods & people mainly across the vast EurAsian continent.
What is this initiative? It's a very ambitious dream of the top officials of the Communist Party of China (CPP), rather vague in its overall goals, to build a series of linked massive logistical infrastructures to more efficiently facilitate transport of goods & people mainly across the vast EurAsian continent.
In reality, it aims to
serve the economic & geopolitical objectives & goals of the CPP in the
next few decades that includes undermining the national interests of mostly 3rd
World & mid-income countries by first dominating their economies &
making them much more or overwhelmingly dependent to China for trade and
manufactured goods (fake and genuine ones). It is present China's grand &
crass attempt to not just match but surpass the US as the region's, & the
world's pre-eminent superpower.
---
SOON
A new article about the Philippines
at seeThroughAsia.blogspot.com
A new blog about our reviews of products
& services
A site about our life stories...
---
The goals of the CPP initiative also include weakening the economic then political ties between the participating countries & the West, easier access to new markets where China can dump its surplus products and even billions of dollars worth of counterfeit & imitation products that now flood markets in the Philippines. Not the least, literally pave the way for China to make inroads to geographically strategic spots, gaining controls of many of it and that can help accomplish its goals of expanding its capability to project military power in the future.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1967862123489783&set=a.1384033165206018.1073741828.100007980430332&type=3
Do we buy the idea? There
are hundreds of cultures, dozens of governments (from sectarian to communist
ones), a myriad of internal & regional conflicts within nations &
sub-regions of Asia & the MidEast. A few countries have populations &
governments with entrenched zero-sum & MAD thinking against their neighbor
countries. There is a universe of potential triggers for conflicts & wars
between many countries & population groups within nations. Once China
pushes for its imagined and expected benefits, economic and then political, the
whole Road & Belt idea collapses.
The CPP's initiative, the
programs & projects, can crumble in its own massive weight, political
complications & costs - especially social costs. Or the CPP's dream come
true, neat & beautiful. But as a long-time student of business, life &
governance, and & an experienced founder of (little) things, Murphy's Law
is something to keep in mind in an ambition to try to re-arrange the present
universe.
Sometimes, the status quo,
shaped by a myriad of natural & other forces, is after all the most ideal
& better scenario or at least the only viable or sustainable one. &
really, sensible & experienced real-world private-sector actors don't
easily & excitedly bet on anything no one completely understands after all,
except the nationalistic leaders of the Communist Party of China.
If the Indian-Americans
from India really get their acts together, & laser-focus on building-up
upon India's vast human resources to accelerate the economic growth and overall
rise of India, & that they get even more so very nervous, feel threatened
& insulted by China, India is a country Europe, Japan, South Korea, the US
& the rest of the West can rally & push to emerge as an alternative new
giant market for the world. And oh, Russia, eventually, more naturally to ally
with the West, is both a present & future problem for this initiative,
& China's power plays. Global Warming brings immense benefits to Canada
& Russia, & all kinds of curse to many parts of southern China.
There are many likely
scenarios & Black Swan events when one can expect the world will come
rushing back to the warm embrace of the US, & the West in general. Global
epidemics that can erupt, as many other kinds of global problems that
occasionally shock the entire humanity, will have far less drastic impact to
the North American societies. The US and Canada are 2 of the world's most food-
and energy-secure countries, and geographically isolated from presently failed
or failing societies across the Eurasian continent. The population density is
far less than in China, & more dispersed.
China should first act
responsibly, & do things like return territories it seized from the likes of
the Philippines & Vietnam, before it can gain a good level of regional
& global trust from among nations, thus having the moral ascendancy to be
looked up and accepted as regional & global power. But the Communist Party
of China won't, for the same reasons it didn't enforce UN sanctions specific to
the North Korea's nuclear weapons program (that the West, & Japan &
South Korea have adapted to & more than prepared, now).
Those who want to
permanently move to the CPP-ruled China raise your hands please? Some of those
who have a patent hatred of the US & the West have made their ways to the
US & Europe, and now they even help advance the interests of China in the
South China Sea, helping China undermine the national security interests of the
Philippines & of course the US too. (Yes, screenings should be more
thorough now.)
China is a super-giant,
and a super-hungry one for natural resources & new markets for its surplus
of manufactured goods. If it is not restrained, it can act as a super-monster,
like how it behaved in the South China Sea as it embarked to seize territories
of other countries and build up its Great Maritime Wall of Missile & Other
Military Facilities in the Sea. Former Secretary of the Department of
Environment & Natural Resources in the Philippines madam Gina Lopez, and
her likes - if not liked by China, stood no chance of even moderating the bad
& illegal practices of illegal mining firms illegally exporting to China.
Chinese firms are also set
to game the local environmental laws & regulations-compliance mechanisms in
the Philippines for its infra projects, which judging by the similar projects
in parts of mainland Southeast Asia & even mainland China (hydro-power/dam
project in Myanmar, new high-speed railroad project in Laos, widening of parts
of the Mekong River, etc.) barely cared about the drastic environmental impact
& high potential for future man-induced catastrophes of its projects, some
of it components of the pet project of the CPP, One Road One Belt.
Is the Philippines without
better alternatives? Many, & meanwhile it should not get very excited in
the prospects of tens of billions of promised Chinese aids & investments.
The universe has a fixed set of mathematical laws, making things calculable
& predictable. The dynamics of the present China-Philippine relationship is
guided by dreams, shifting emotions, a universe of personal & group
sentiments, a presently high-level of artificial desire between the 2 countries
to exchange practical benefits (semi-permanent territorial gain at the expense
of the Philippine territorial integrity, for China), & the status quo of
the Philippines being a security partner of the US in the region, among others.
(But if, in a hypothetical scenario, the US really takes a bit of a step off
the Philippines now, or even temporarily let go however it's unthinkable right
now, then the Philippines loses a key negotiating leverage to ensure China
complies with its recent promises of aids & investments).
WHAT CAN STOP THE BELT
& ROAD FROM SHAPING?
Unlike southeast Asian
countries, where millions of Chinese & half-Chinese in each of the top 5
economies dominate the economic landscape and not of a few of them also
entrenched in the government & national & local politics, Iran,
Pakistan, Turkey & some central Asian countries have distinctive
governments, religions, ideologies & cultures far from China's familiarity
& affinity with ASEAN East Asian countries & its societies.
The United States &
Europe have sizable populations from these countries, plus there are countless
decades-long of nurtured professional, business, political & personal
relationships between persons & entities in the West and MidEastern &
central Asian countries. It will take decades for as many for China to forge
resilient & strong relationships in these countries. China can't
effectively navigate its way to smooth cooperation & approval of its
desired special relationships and arrangements with large segments of
populations of these & other countries by merely using its financial,
manufacturing & trading muscles alone, without an underpinning decades-long
deep & broad relationships.
When regimes, or
leadership change in some of the countries in-between China & Europe, or
relations between neighbor countries deteriorate or become very hostile,
Chinese money & bribes can't easily overcome political, social and economic
issues that can hound, stall or end the implementation or completion of some of
its big-ticket projects. Later revelations of illegal transactions, revival of
controversies over projects attended by irregularities or big issues can spell
disaster to one or many of China's projects, after new governments take over in
some countries.
Then there's security and
sustainability issues. Can China effectively mitigate, or shoulder costs for a
myriad of organized crime, political, tribal and insurgency (even terror)
groups who can be expected to later commit organized acts of extortion against
these China-built owned and controlled mega-infrastructures? Only the United
States have the capability to do that now and in the foreseeable future. The
way special operatives of China for decades blessed and aided the Philippine
communist movement to commit organized extortion activities against big
ventures of Japanese, American and European (even local) firms and their
operations, posing active organized threats against the safety and security of
their officers and properties - can hundreds of terror and organized crime
groups, some of which plausibly aided or abetted by public officials in corrupt
countries, do the same to the components of the One Belt One Road projects?
In the Philippines, the
costs of transporting goods and doing business in remote areas, partly inflated
by extortion & "revolutionary" taxes imposed by the Philippines
communist movement (we call CPP too), makes even the prices of basic commodities
even less affordable to millions of poor families they end up victimizing in
their organized-crime activities. Will this practice be emulated by state &
non-state actors & entities in-between in some countries where the CPP is
laying the figurative & physical tracks to railroad its projects? Until
last year, 2016, maybe even until some time this year, ultra-wealthy
Filipino-Chinese invested more in China in total than the Chinese invested in
the Philippines.
Interestingly, the
Philippine communist movement was and still is involved in organized broad
extortion activities that count as major victims multinational companies from
Japan, Europe and the United States. Now that China is into promises of
investing across some Philippine industries, will the Communist Party of China
now dictate the Philippine communist movement to stop, spare the Chinese-funded
projects and ventures or simply make it appear the Chinese firms and their projects are also falling victims to
the extortion activities of the Philippine communist movement? The CPP is
making it appear the Philippine communist movement still need the funds from
extortion and other criminal activities when in fact in so many ways and for
some time now the Communist Party of China can now more than sustain the
subversive activities of the CPP-NPA. (I hesitated to articulate the thoughts
in the last 2 paragraphs in this public piece, but did.)
China's top-down approach
in conceiving of mega-projects, or prescribing specific projects in some
countries, lacking in organically-grown support or sensible determination for
perceived actual needs from local populations (or solicited inputs from
affected sectors and communities for its plans and project implementations),
can't be expected to withstand occasional or routine social & political
pressures in some countries or regions within some of the countries. Subdued,
or silenced opposition (by bribing officials to cause this) and the relevant
grievances of large segments of populations can suddenly erupt & magnify to
become greater dilemmas for Chinese projects after changes in governments /
leaderships in some countries. Political realities on the ground, that can
suddenly shift in drastic ways, prevails upon governments & individual
leaders more than the mighty cash & favors China can bestow upon the key
officials.
Then there's the
historical & brain tendencies for same-race populations at some point in
time to naturally end up being allies in the face of a potential foe that poses
as as an existential threat to their ways of life, prosperity & survival.
Regardless of how advanced human civilization is today, the brain has tribal
tendencies, no matter how much we deny it for being politically incorrect &
unpalatable. Can China realistically expect that the Germans, the British, the
French, the Italians, Australians & most in Europe really entertain a
political & military alignment with it within a century? Lines will be
drawn, inevitably creating a militarily, politically (& economically -
inevitably) anti-China alliance of traditional modern-day powers that include
Japan & South Korea, maybe even Taiwan. Their (Western nations plus Japan
& South Korea) combined advanced research capability, their technological,
financial & human-resource might, and the very strong fabric of their open
societies not artificially controlled by an authoritarian regime can make a
quick shift to India, Vietnam, Brazil & Indonesia as priorities for trade
& investments & new markets.
OTHER INTRACTABLE DILEMMAS
FOR THE CPP
The Communist Party of
China must have assumed a present-day regional & global scenarios to
improve & become more conducive to its China-led new global order. Sweet
and kind, history isn't to even the most noble of aspirations, ambitions &
plans. The Roman Empire set out to build vast new networks of roads, ports,
trading centers (am I correct on this?) and new systems - successfully. But
China is trying to re-order an already well-evolved (but unpredictably
still-evolving) global order that in the first place was kind & conducive
to its rise to its present respectable economic status.
The West, notably the
United States, helped propel China to its mighty economic standing now starting
with its aids (famine or food shortage periods), preferential trade status
& support to join the WTO even with selective compliance by China to its
terms in the past. The overall geopolitical situation in today's modern world
is incomparably far more competitive than at any time in human history. The
world was conducive for the shaping of the Silk Road & the thriving of
trade, today many markets suffer not from the lack of goods & services but
from the huge surplus of it all.
China has gone this far, a
an n economic giant in Asia and the world able to buy impunity in many things
including in its support of the North Korean regime (& its nuclear program)
threatening regional and global peace and stability, and keeping parts of
Philippine sovereign territory it so treacherously seized and judged by the
world as outright illegal. The question is not about how far it has gone and
how mighty it has become today, BUT MORE ABOUT HOW FAR IT CAN STILL PUSH ITS
WAY TO its desired goal of regional and global strategic dominance not only in
economic but social and political realms.
China's economy is slowing
down, and never to recover its average growth rate in the last 3 decades. After
China's drive to dump its surplus products crosses a certain threshold of
tolerance from among the populations of the affluent countries of the West (already
more and more leaning towards economic nationalism in some countries), and its
appetite to devour natural resources and overwhelmingly dominate most
industries, then many in the West takes drastic protective measures.
If history tells us
something clear, like the longest relative global peace before WWI, then it's
that we are supposed to expect the unexpected, not our picture of a perfect
world. The United States of America selflessly led the world, & humanity,
to its present status of being in its most level of development and capability
to heal most of what afflicts it for all of history. When there are no clear
alternatives, I do think that unlike in the realms of business, you can easily
tamper with what's in the status quo, and disrupt things and orders and
systems.
China will later find out,
decades from now, what it's supposed to do and not do. And what it can
positively contribute to the world a major part of it its peoples occupy and
many parts of it millions of other Chinese call home and work in. Meanwhile,
don't bet on the One Road One Belt initiative of the Chinese Communist Party
largely influenced by its members who are billionaires in a country with as
staggering level of inequality as many other 3rd World countries like the
Philippines.
One Belt One Road
initiative can give China a series of strategic gains (even political ones),
even before it reaches half of its presently-imagined scale, and regardless of
the extent of its overall final success it must realize much benefit from it -
but it's likely to fail to achieve the strategic and long-term gains Chairman
Xi of the CPP desired and sold to the Chinese people and leaders of countries
enticed to participate. Along the way in its bigger-scale implementation
(soon), the $20+ trillion of debts of the Chinese firms so many are
state-controlled or owned, can (although not expected by most economists now)
wreck havoc to the Chinese economy creating a domino effect of crushing the
lofty dreams of the top honchos of the CPP.
I'm not sure what the
underpinning ideas & info I had to make my initial judgments or
speculations here, but the archipelago of the country of the Philippines needed
more than connecting infrastructures to unite the islands of cultures, tribes,
political groups, ideologies and opposing aspirations of peoples. China's One
Belt One Road project won't end up as beneficial and impactful, and successful
as the great Interstate Highway System Project in the mid-twentieth century in
the US.
When great
socio-political, and cultural divides (and irreconcilable ideological and
religious differences) long existed between peoples, and had scarred societies
over generations of conflicts between groups of people - no amount of
financing, no number or scale of infrastructure projects, and no lofty dreams
of a strong mutually beneficial relationships between a large number of diverse
nations can overcome the enormous odds in getting peoples and nations rally
behind an original idea of a single nation, and in the case of the One Belt One
Road initiative, of a single corrupt communist party not concerned about first
helping improve social conditions in other countries before embarking on
building up on projects being sold as developmental ones that as claimed can
improve the lives of hundreds of millions of poor families even in poorly
governed nations. China has gone a long way from being a poor and poorly
developed country to what it is today, but it has to realize how far further it
needs to understand and work to help the basic common causes of humanity that
should certainly help the causes of its citizens too.
A capitalist-authoritarian
model has yet to prove it didn't simply get lucky to have worked in China up to
this time, and to employ its mechanisms to force the adoption of its One Belt
One Road projects in other parts of the world is far from what's practical. The
world is consciously aware of the ulterior motives of the Communist Party of
China, its ultimate personal (for its top officials), political and military
objectives obscured by the vague terms and plans of the Belt and Road
initiative and coated by the promises of windfalls of cash and favors to some
officials in some corrupt countries - no amount of trolling & massive
global propaganda campaign can change what the leaders of countries enticed to
participate know and think.
China does not preach
values, lecture on & much more imposed its ideologies (at least visibly)
& good governance practices to sought partner-countries, perhaps borne out
of the CPP's tendency to force compliance by the tools of an authoritarian
regime (cash bribes, in many instances for its big-ticket projects in many
countries). If and when key components of the initiative were built, what is its
compliance mechanism? China teached countries, by example, to nit oblige to
rulings of international bodies when it is against its special interests.
China is on massive
stealing frenzy of industrial secrets and technologies of hi-tech companies
from the West, & buying spree for desired key players in hi-tech sectors in
the US and Europe even as it restricts inroads of Western companies in its
protected industries. China bullied its neighbors to stay docile during a
frenzy to build up a Great Maritime Wall of Missiles and Military Facilities in
the South China Sea that now pose active threats against any efforts by any
claimant countries to assert ownership of territories it grabbed. It punished
South Korea for welcoming a mitigating measure against the existential threat
posed by North Korea.
There's no iota of a sign
of respectable behavior for a kind of non-threatening regional and global power
being displayed by China's Communist Party. The imagined fruits of Belt and
Road, disproportionately in favor of China and the CPP's grand global
ambitions, will remain just that in a generation.
(I leisurely wrote this
piece, in a lazy afternoon when I'm supposed to work on writing about a few
serious issues but discouraged by the lack of a better working tool. Lechon,
how I wish I had more of it early today, but Rian disapproved. I wanted to swim,
climb a hill, play basketball, but ended up tending to our clothes I decided to
let dry in the sun in today's cloudless sky to get that feeling of wearing
ultraviolet-sanitized clothing.)
---
"...Am I, or others,
crazy?" Einstein.
---
I was supposed to
continue, but got distracted by the idea of picking some malunggay leaves to
add to our instant noodles later. I'm not sure...it contains more calcium than
milk, per gram? Densed with Vit C? Whatever, we always treat ourselves to meals
enhanced with it (sometimes letting it upset the taste we sought from our
food). I just said, this, to give an idea to poor Filipino families struggling
to get their adequate daily nutritional needs that they should never pass a
chance to pluck a handful of available malunggay, to add to their meals to help
sufficiently nourish their sometimes food-deprived bodies craving or wishing
for whatever foods, even unhealthy kinds.
An Epic Quest to Capture Dominant Geopolitical Power - to End In OR Financial Disasters for Some Poor Countries? iDisrupt.blogspot.com
An Epic Quest to Capture Dominant Geopolitical Power - to End In OR Financial Disasters for Some Poor Countries? iDisrupt.blogspot.com
What is the One Belt One
Road initiative? It's a very ambitious plan of the top officials of the
Communist Party of China (CPP), rather vague in its overall goals, to build a
series of linked massive logistical infrastructures to more efficiently
facilitate transport of goods & people mainly across the vast EurAsian
continent.
In reality, it aims to
serve the economic & geopolitical objectives & goals of the CPP in the
next few decades that includes undermining the national interests of mostly 3rd
World & mid-income countries by first dominating their economies &
making them much more or overwhelmingly dependent to China for trade and
manufactured goods (fake and genuine ones). It is present China's grand &
crass attempt to not just match but surpass the US as the region's, & the
world's pre-eminent superpower.
The goals of the CPP
initiative also include weakening the economic then political ties between the
participating countries & the West, easier access to new markets where
China can dump its surplus products and even billions of dollars worth of
counterfeit & imitation products that now flood markets in the Philippines.
Not the least, literally pave the way for China to make inroads to
geographically strategic spots, gaining controls of many of it and that can
help accomplish its goals of expanding its capability to project military power
in the future.
Ultimately, it is the
CPP's attempt to buy its way to indispensability among the governments of the
participating countries, gaining global blanket impunity in anything, including
in the advancement of the vested & selfish interests of its many corrupt
billionaire members, & CPP's nationalistic goals (that includes hegemony in
the South China Sea & Western Pacific).
Do we buy the idea? There
are hundreds of cultures, dozens of governments (from sectarian to communist
ones), a myriad of internal & regional conflicts within nations &
sub-regions of Asia & the MidEast. A few countries have populations &
governments with entrenched zero-sum & MAD thinking against their neighbor
countries. There is a universe of potential triggers for conflicts & wars
between many countries & population groups within nations. Once China
pushes for its imagined and expected benefits, economic and then political, the
whole Road & Belt idea collapses.
Hundreds of millions of
people from China to the MidEast simply want to leave their home countries
& permanently move to Europe, North America & the rest of the West.
Meaning, that whatever their governments & public officials do they have
lost trust in them, & barely harbor any hopes for a better future for
themselves & their families (including at least tens of millions of
mainland Chinese).
The CPP's initiative, the
programs & projects, can crumble in its own massive weight, political
complications & costs - especially social costs. Or the CPP's dream come
true, neat & beautiful. But as a long-time student of business, life &
governance, and & an experienced founder of (little) things, Murphy's Law
is something to keep in mind in an ambition to try to re-arrange the present
universe.
Sometimes, the status quo,
shaped by a myriad of natural & other forces, is after all the most ideal
& better scenario. & really, sensible & experienced real-world
private-sector actors don't easily & excitedly bet on anything no one
completely understands after all, except the nationalistic leaders of the
Communist Party of China.
If the Indian-Americans
from India really get their acts together, & laser-focus on building-up
upon India's vast human resources to accelerate the economic growth and overall
rise of India, & that they get even more so very nervous, feel threatened
& insulted by China, India is a country Europe, Japan, South Korea, the US
& the rest of the West can rally & push to emerge as an alternative new
giant market for the world. And oh, Russia, eventually, more naturally to ally
with the West, is both a present & future problem for this initiative,
& China's power plays. Global Warming brings immense benefits to Canada
& Russia, & all kinds of curse to many parts of southern China.
There are many likely
scenarios & Black Swan events when one can expect the world will come
rushing back to the warm embrace of the US, & the West in general. Global
epidemics that can erupt, as many other kinds of global problems that
occasionally shock the entire humanity, will have far less drastic impact to
the North American societies. The US and Canada are 2 of the world's most food-
and energy-secure countries, and geographically isolated from presently failed
or failing societies across the Eurasian continent. The population density is
far less than in China, & more dispersed.
China should first act
responsibly, & do things like return territories it seized from the likes
of the Philippines & Vietnam, before it can gain a good level of regional
& global trust from among nations, thus having the moral ascendancy to be
looked up and accepted as regional & global power. But the Communist Party
of China won't, for the same reasons it didn't enforce UN sanctions specific to
the North Korea's nuclear weapons program (that the West, & Japan &
South Korea have adapted to & more than prepared, now).
Those who want to
permanently move to the CPP-ruled China raise your hands please? Some of those
who have a patent hatred of the US & the West have made their ways to the
US & Europe, and now they even help advance the interests of China in the South
China Sea, helping China undermine the national security interests of the
Philippines & of course the US too. (Yes, screenings should be more
thorough now.)
China is a super-giant,
and a super-hungry one for natural resources & new markets for its surplus
of manufactured goods. If it is not restrained, it can act as a super-monster,
like how it behaved in the South China Sea as it embarked to seize territories
of other countries and build up its Great Maritime Wall of Missile & Other
Military Facilities in the Sea. Former Secretary of the Department of
Environment & Natural Resources in the Philippines madam Gina Lopez, and
her likes - if not liked by China, stood no chance of even moderating the bad
& illegal practices of illegal mining firms illegally exporting to China.
Chinese firms are also set
to game the local environmental laws & regulations-compliance mechanisms in
the Philippines for its infra projects, which judging by the similar projects
in parts of mainland Southeast Asia & even mainland China (hydro-power/dam
project in Myanmar, new high-speed railroad project in Laos, widening of parts
of the Mekong River, etc.) barely cared about the drastic environmental impact
& high potential for future man-induced catastrophes of its projects, some
of it components of the pet project of the CPP, One Road One Belt.
Does the Philippines have
alternatives? Many, & meanwhile it should not get very excited in the
prospects of tens of billions of promised Chinese aids & investments. The
universe has a fixed set of mathematical laws, making things calculable &
predictable. The dynamics of the present China-Philippine relationship is
guided by dreams, shifting emotions, a universe of personal & group
sentiments, a presently high-level of artificial desire between the 2 countries
to exchange practical benefits (semi-permanent territorial gain at the expense
of the Philippine territorial integrity, for China), & the status quo of
the Philippines being a security partner of the US in the region, among others.
(But if, in a hypothetical scenario, the US really takes a bit of a step off
the Philippines now, or even temporarily let go however it's unthinkable right
now, then the Philippines loses a key negotiating leverage to ensure China
complies with its recent promises of aids & investments).
Unlike southeast Asian
countries, where millions of Chinese & half-Chinese in each of the top 5
economies dominate the economic landscape and not of a few of them also
entrenched in the government & national & local politics, Iran,
Pakistan, Turkey & some central Asian countries have distinctive
governments, religions, ideologies & cultures far from China's familiarity
& affinity with ASEAN East Asian countries & its societies.
The United States &
Europe have sizable populations from these countries, plus there are countless
decades-long of nurtured professional, business, political & personal
relationships between persons & entities in the West and MidEastern &
central Asian countries. It will take decades for as many for China to forge
resilient & strong relationships in these countries. China can't
effectively navigate its way to smooth cooperation & approval of its
desired special relationships and arrangements with large segments of
populations of these & other countries by merely using its financial,
manufacturing & trading muscles alone, without an underpinning decades-long
deep & broad relationships.
When regimes, or
leadership change in some of the countries in-between China & Europe, or
relations between neighbor countries deteriorate or become very hostile,
Chinese money & bribes can't easily overcome political, social and economic
issues that can hound, stall or end the implementation or completion of some of
its big-ticket projects. Later revelations of illegal transactions, revival of
controversies over projects attended by irregularities or big issues can spell
disaster to one or many of China's projects, after new governments take over in
some countries.
Then there's security and
sustainability issues. Can China effectively mitigate, or shoulder costs for a
myriad of organized crime, political, tribal and insurgency (even terror)
groups who can be expected to later commit organized acts of extortion against
these China-built owned and controlled mega-infrastructures? Only the United
States have the capability to do that now and in the foreseeable future. The
way special operatives of China for decades blessed and aided the Philippine
communist movement to commit organized extortion activities against big ventures
of Japanese, American and European (even local) firms and their operations,
posing active organized threats against the safety and security of their
officers and properties - can hundreds of terror and organized crime groups,
some of which plausibly aided or abetted by public officials in corrupt
countries, do the same to the components of the One Belt One Road projects?
In the Philippines, the
costs of transporting goods and doing business in remote areas, partly inflated
by extortion & "revolutionary" taxes imposed by the Philippines
communist movement (we call CPP too), makes even the prices of basic
commodities even less affordable to millions of poor families they end up
victimizing in their organized-crime activities. Will this practice be emulated
state & non-state actors & entities in-between in some countries where
the CPP is laying the figurative & physical tracks to railroad its
projects? (I hesitated to articulate the thoughts in the last 2 paragraphs in
this public piece, but did.)
China's top-down approach
in conceiving of mega-projects, or prescribing specific projects in some
countries, lacking in organically-grown support or sensible determination for
perceived actual needs from local populations (or solicited inputs from
affected sectors and communities for its plans and project implementations),
can't be expected to withstand occasional or routine social & political
pressures in some countries or regions within some of the countries. Subdued,
or silenced opposition (by bribing officials to cause this) and the relevant
grievances of large segments of populations can suddenly erupt & magnify to
become greater dilemmas for Chinese projects after changes in governments /
leaderships in some countries. Political realities on the ground, that can
suddenly shift in drastic ways, prevails upon governments & individual
leaders more than the mighty cash & favors China can bestow upon the key
officials.
Then there's the
historical & brain tendencies for same-race populations at some point in
time to naturally end up being allies in the face of a potential foe that poses
as as an existential threat to their ways of life, prosperity & survival.
Regardless of how advanced human civilization is today, the brain has tribal
tendencies, no matter how much we deny it for being politically incorrect &
unpalatable. Can China realistically expect that the Germans, the British, the
French, the Italians, Australians & most in Europe really entertain a
political & military alignment with it within a century? Lines will be
drawn, inevitably creating a militarily, politically (& economically -
inevitably) anti-China alliance of traditional modern-day powers that include
Japan & South Korea, maybe even Taiwan. Their (Western nations plus Japan
& South Korea) combined advanced research capability, their technological,
financial & human-resource might, and the very strong fabric of their open
societies not artificially controlled by an authoritarian regime can make a
quick shift to India, Vietnam, Brazil & Indonesia as priorities for trade
& investments & new markets.
The Communist Party of
China must have assumed a present-day regional & global scenarios to
improve & become more conducive to its China-led new global order. Sweet
and kind, history isn't to even the most noble of aspirations, ambitions &
plans. The Roman Empire set out to build vast new networks of roads, ports, trading
centers (am I correct on this?) and new systems - successfully. But China is
trying to re-order an already well-evolved (but unpredictably still-evolving)
global order that in the first place was kind & conducive to its rise to
its present respectable economic status.
The West, notably the
United States, helped propel China to its mighty economic standing now starting
with its aids (famine or food shortage periods), preferential trade status
& support to join the WTO even with selective compliance by China to its
terms in the past. The overall geopolitical situation in today's modern world
is incomparably far more competitive than at any time in human history. The
world was conducive for the shaping of the Silk Road & the thriving of
trade, today many markets suffer not from the lack of goods & services but
from the huge surplus of it all.
China has gone this far, a
an n economic giant in Asia and the world able to buy impunity in many things
including in its support of the North Korean regime (& its nuclear program)
threatening regional and global peace and stability, and keeping parts of
Philippine sovereign territory it so treacherously seized and judged by the
world as outright illegal. The question is not about how far it has gone and
how mighty it has become today, BUT MORE ABOUT HOW FAR IT CAN STILL PUSH ITS
WAY TO its desired goal of regional and global strategic dominance not only in
economic but social and political realms.
China's economy is slowing
down, and never to recover its average growth rate in the last 3 decades. After
China's drive to dump its surplus products crosses a certain threshold of
tolerance from among the populations of the affluent countries of the West
(already more and more leaning towards economic nationalism in some countries),
and its appetite to devour natural resources and overwhelmingly dominate most
industries, then many in the West takes drastic protective measures.
If history tells us
something clear, like the longest relative global peace before WWI, then it's
that we are supposed to expect the unexpected, not our picture of a perfect
world. The United States of America selflessly led the world, & humanity,
to its present status of being in its most level of development and capability
to heal most of what afflicts it for all of history. When there are no clear
alternatives, I do think that unlike in the realms of business, you can easily
tamper with what's in the status quo, and disrupt things and orders and
systems.
China will later find out,
decades from now, what it's supposed to do and not do. And what it can
positively contribute to the world a major part of it its peoples occupy and
many parts of it millions of other Chinese call home and work in. Meanwhile,
don't bet on the One Road One Belt initiative of the Chinese Communist Party
largely influenced by its members who are billionaires in a country with as
staggering level of inequality as many other 3rd World countries like the
Philippines.
One Belt One Road
initiative can give China a series of strategic gains (even political ones),
even before it reaches half of its presently-imagined scale, and regardless of
the extent of its overall final success it must realize much benefit from it -
but it's likely to fail to achieve the strategic and long-term gains Chairman
Xi of the CPP desired and sold to the Chinese people and leaders of countries
enticed to participate. Along the way in its bigger-scale implementation
(soon), the $20+ trillion of debts of the Chinese firms so many are
state-controlled or owned, can (although not expected by most economists now)
wreck havoc to the Chinese economy creating a domino effect of crushing the
lofty dreams of the top honchos of the CPP.
I'm not sure what the
underpinning ideas & info I had to make my initial judgments or
speculations here, but the archipelago of the country of the Philippines needed
more than connecting infrastructures to unite the islands of cultures, tribes,
political groups, ideologies and opposing aspirations of peoples. China's One
Belt One Road project won't end up as beneficial and impactful, and successful
as the great Interstate Highway System Project in the mid-twentieth century in
the US.
When great socio-political,
and cultural divides (and irreconcilable ideological and religious differences)
long existed between peoples, and had scarred societies over generations of
conflicts between groups of people - no amount of financing, no number or scale
of infrastructure projects, and no lofty dreams of a strong mutually beneficial
relationships between a large number of diverse nations can overcome the
enormous odds in getting peoples and nations rally behind an original idea of a
single nation, and in the case of the One Belt One Road initiative, of a single
corrupt communist party not concerned about first helping improve social
conditions in other countries before embarking on building up on projects being
sold as developmental ones that as claimed can improve the lives of hundreds of
millions of poor families even in poorly governed nations. China has gone a
long way from being a poor and poorly developed country to what it is today,
but it has to realize how far further it needs to understand and work to help
the basic common causes of humanity that should certainly help the causes of
its citizens too.
A capitalist-authoritarian
model has yet to prove it didn't simply get lucky to have worked in China up to
this time, and to employ its mechanisms to force the adoption of its One Belt
One Road projects in other parts of the world is far from what's practical. The
world is consciously aware of the ulterior motives of the Communist Party of
China, its ultimate personal (for its top officials), political and military
objectives obscured by the vague terms and plans of the Belt and Road
initiative and coated by the promises of windfalls of cash and favors to some
officials in some corrupt countries - no amount of trolling & massive
global propaganda campaign can change what the leaders of countries enticed to
participate know and think.
China does not preach values,
lecture on & much more imposed its ideologies (at least visibly) & good
governance practices to sought partner-countries, perhaps borne out of the
CPP's tendency to force compliance by the tools of an authoritarian regime
(cash bribes, in many instances for its big-ticket projects in many countries).
If and when key components of the initiative were built, what is its compliance
mechanism? China teached countries, by example, to nit oblige to rulings of
international bodies when it is against its special interests.
China is on massive
stealing frenzy of industrial secrets and technologies of hi-tech companies
from the West, & buying spree for desired key players in hi-tech sectors in
the US and Europe even as it restricts inroads of Western companies in its
protected industries. China bullied its neighbors to stay docile during a
frenzy to build up a Great Maritime Wall of Missiles and Military Facilities in
the South China Sea that now pose active threats against any efforts by any
claimant countries to assert ownership of territories it grabbed. It punished
South Korea for welcoming a mitigating measure against the existential threat
posed by North Korea.
There's no iota of a sign
of respectable behavior for a kind of non-threatening regional and global power
being displayed by China's Communist Party. The imagined fruits of Belt and
Road, disproportionately in favor of China and the CPP's grand global
ambitions, will remain just that in a generation.
(I leisurely wrote this
piece, in a lazy afternoon when I'm supposed to work on writing about a few
serious issues but discouraged by the lack of a better working tool. Lechon,
how I wish I had more of it early today, but Rian disapproved. I wanted to
swim, climb a hill, play basketball, but ended up tending to our clothes I
decided to let dry in the sun in today's cloudless sky to get that feeling of
wearing ultraviolet-sanitized clothing.)
//
"...Am I, or others,
crazy?" Einstein.
//
I was supposed to
continue, but got distracted by the idea of picking some malunggay leaves to
add to our instant noodles later. I'm not sure...it contains more calcium than
milk, per gram? Densed with Vit C? Whatever, we always treat ourselves to meals
enhanced with it (sometimes letting it upset the taste we sought from our
food). I just said, this, to give an idea to poor Filipino families struggling
to get their adequate daily nutritional needs that they should never pass a
chance to pluck a handful of available malunggay, to add to their meals to help
sufficiently nourish their sometimes food-deprived bodies craving or wishing
for whatever foods, even unhealthy kinds.
___
___
___
___
Amidst Widespread Food
Shortages, & Chaos - Venezuela Abandoned by Key Ally China? China's Communist
Rulers Knew All Along that the Same Ruling Families Allegedly Plundering
Billion$ of Venezuelan People's Money, Also Allegedly Involved in Billion$ in
Drug Transactions? // Can Drug Lords Fool the US Treasury Department?
iDisrupt.blogspot.com // http://www.businessinsider.com/us-sanctions-venezuela-vice-president-drug-charges-2017-2
// Venezuelan President's Relatives Guilty in US Cocaine Trial
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/19/venezuelan-presidents-relatives-guilty-in-us-cocaine-trial
How a Politician Accused
of Drug Trafficking Became Venezuela’s Vice President
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/world/americas/venezuela-tareck-el-aissami-drugs-sanctions-maduro.html?_r=0
---
---
---
The Model Government of
the Philippine Communist Movement
Report Alleges China
Killing Thousands to Harvest Organs
("...China...plundering
the bodies of prisoners of conscience...")
https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/report-alleges-china-killing-thousands-of-prisoners-to-harvest-organs/article30559415/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com& // Thousands of religious prisoners in China
had their livers, kidneys and corneas ripped out while they were ALIVE to sell
to 'transplant tourists', claims new film
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3257383/Thousands-religious-prisoners-China-livers-kidneys-corneas-ripped-ALIVE-sell-transplant-tourists-claims-new-film.html#ixzz4ZgJj7ZLO
___
___
[Gruesome, Murderous,
Mass] Organ Harvesting in China
Across China, a gruesome
trade in human organs is taking place on a mass scale. Like something out of a
horror movie, livers, kidneys, hearts, lungs, and corneas are being cut out
from prisoners of conscience while they are still alive. The victims are then,
if still living by that point, executed. If anything proves the meaning of the
term “crime against humanity,” it is this bloody, ghoulish practice.
This week, two new reports
are being launched in the British Parliament in London that expose the range of
China’s appalling human rights abuses. One of them lifts the veil on the scale
and nature of forced organ harvesting in China.
Three researchers –
distinguished human rights lawyer David Matas, former Canadian member of
parliament and government minister David Kilgour, and journalist Ethan Gutmann
– have published a detailed tome that argues, on the basis of forensic research
into the public records of 712 hospitals in China carrying out liver and kidney
transplants, that the scale of organ harvesting is far, far bigger than
previously imagined. All three have previously published reports on the topic,
but they now conclude that between 60,000 to 100,000 organs are transplanted
each year in Chinese hospitals. The numbers and the extraordinarily short
waiting times for transplant patients suggest that prisoners of conscience,
from the spiritual movement Falun Gong as well as Uyghur Muslims, Tibetans, and
house church Christians, may be the primary victims.
___
___
___
Still suffering from
trauma. How come every time I lie down I get dizzy for some moments? Anxiety,
it turned out... That man who victimized us now a danger to many others, and I
feel the responsibility to do something to try to stop others from being
harmed, with whatever remained of us now... But he is a highly capable cunning
man who demonstrated his arrogance to commit elaborate, deceitful acts...
No comments:
Post a Comment