The Roots of Global Paranoia about the Awakened Dragon: The Western and Pro-West Politicians

It pains me to pen this article. Much of the information you are going to read below is extracted from published sources. But I think it is important for me to bring it up again – basically to remind ourselves of the need not to be complacent about our future - if you are of Chinese descent. This call is made in the wake of the relentless efforts by the West and pro-West forces to demonize China and the collateral damage arising therefrom – on a future Chinese both inside and outside China, in particular, the ethnic Chinese in East and Southeast Asia, may have to live with.

I always argue that all of us are racist to some extent. But the decent ones in us would contain our prejudices – principally out of disagreements or unfamiliarity with the way people “not our kind” seem to be acting or behaving under circumstances that we think they should – to ourselves. We don’t go about throwing punches at them. Racists make up stories to hurl accusations. Even if a fact is already known, they will still twist and distort to make people whom they do not like look bad. China is the West’s relentless target now. I do not suppose there is a need for me to cite examples, since I have already done so many times before.

 

I have American, European, Australian, Japanese, and Indian friends. On a one-to-one basis, I find friendships even with the more off-colour ones tolerable. I still cherish my friendship with an old Japanese man by the name of Rohyai Nonaka even though he had passed on many years ago. Nonaka-san was an expert in electro-plating. He came in the mid-1970s to help the Malaysian Industrial Development Authority (MIDA) to do some development work under the sponsorship of the Japanese External Trade Organisation (Jetro). He was already in his late 50s. I was a young desk officer in MIDA then. At that time, there was a strong anti-Japanese sentiment, and nobody would go near him. Somehow, we became friends, even though he was about thirty years older than me. He would come to me each time an office circular was handed down, for his command of English was too rudimentary for him to fully understand the message, and Malay totally nil. He would share his Japanese-style management concepts and practices with me. From him, I had an early understanding of what made Japan and Japanese different. (This was well before several Japanese management books became the must-read stuff in business schools.) His hobby was to go around the country looking for samurai swords. He knew a great deal about Chinese history and classics, especially those parts on the Warring States and the Three Kingdoms. He was also an expert in watercolour painting. (I still have two paintings he did for me when he visited me at home). We became lifelong friends and communicated even after he returned to Japan. My colleagues must have thought I was crazy to be so friendly with an “enemy”!

 

Back to the subject. What I am seeing in the West and pro-West countries are disturbing – if history is our teacher. I would like to share what a da-jie (big sister-like friend) once said to me.

 

This da-jie’says even as third or fourth generation diasporas in a seemingly harmonious country like Malaysia, we cannot afford to be too complacent about our future. But she laments that her very successful corporate lawyer daughter would always tell her not to worry too much, saying that most of us are “on top of the food chain” here. Maybe, but I prefer to take my da-jie’s wisdom seriously.

 

It is not the people per se we are worried about, no matter what colour his or her skin is, or what religion he or she professes. It is the Western and pro-West POLITICIANS and their accessories that I am most unhappy about. By accessories, I mean their journalists and reporters.

 

But politicians are not born to be evil or untrustworthy. They got sucked in over time. I read Barrack Obama’s own account of his earlier years. He was not brought up in a political family. I could see that he just wanted to do good even when young. In many ways he was to me a through-and-through socialist. But the moment he entered the White House, he had to realign himself. There were too many traditions or “must observe” conventions, systems, and practices that he had to follow, let alone change. And largely because of his inability to change the “institution”, he ended up as not having done too many great things during his presidency, despite his formidable intellect. I believe Joe Biden was also a decent man; but the moment he became the president of the United States of America, he had to act more aggressively or stupidly than Donald Trump, lest he goes down as a one-term president (even if his health allows him to run for a second term). Be that as it may, some, if history is of any guide, were actually born evil, as Mer-tze argued two thousand years ago.

 

America was the John Wayne to many Chinese during World War II. Its Flying Tigers did a wonderful job in helping to bring supplies over the Himalayas when Nanning was cut off by the Japanese. George Marshall tried to reconcile Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao Zedong and introduce a “Marshall” plan to help China rebuild after the war. And in the 1970s, Richard Nixon’s visit paved the way for China to return to the world stage.

 

However, if the worldviews of America’s last three presidents, and the way the country has abandoned Afghanistan to its own devices, were to be of any guide, then the pro-Independence young in Taiwan and the misguided Hong Kongers should think more deeper about their beliefs. It is still certainly not too late for them to come to their senses.

 

Let’s be reminded of the following chapters in history and if possible, let our young know about them, especially on the background leading to them to see my da-jie’s advice is timely:

(1) The Boxer Uprising by the Eight Nation Alliance (1899-1901)

The Boxer Uprising was an armed insurrection against the increasing foreign intervention including Christian missionary work in China towards the end of the Qing dynasty. The ruling Manchu court was ambivalent about the movement. However, after a siege of the Legations by the Boxers, a 20,000-strong Eight Nation Alliance of American, Austro-Hungarian, British, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Russian troops was organized to lift the siege. They whacked the Qing Imperial Army in Tianjin and went on to plunder Beijing and summarily executed those suspected of being Boxers. The Boxer Protocol of 7 September 1901 saw the execution of government officials who had supported the Boxers, the provision for foreign troops to be stationed in Beijing, and the payment of indemnity of 450 million taels of silver – about $10 billion at 2018 silver prices and more than the government's annual tax revenue at that time – over the course of the next 39 years to the eight nations involved.

 

Many of us were led to believe the Boxers were a bunch of ugly Chinamen going around the country looking for foreigners and Chinese Christians to slaughter. But weren’t they Chinese patriots in their own way, albeit misguided in some respects – like believing in their impenetrability by firearms and their anger at Christianity?

Let’s carve out China

(2) The First Opium War (1839-42)

There were two opium wars. The first was fought between China and Britain and the second, by Britain and France against China.

The first was: British traders had been illegally exporting opium mainly from India to China since the 18th century. The trade exploded from 1820, resulting in widespread addiction and causing serious social and economic disruptions in China. In 1839 the Chinese government confiscated and destroyed some 20,000 chests (about 1,400 tons) of opium that were warehoused at Guangzhou by British merchants. In the same year, some drunken British sailors killed a Chinese villager. The British government refused to turn the accused men over to the Chinese courts. Hostilities broke out. The British conducted several campaigns against the inferior Qing forces which finally ended with the former’s capture of Nanjing.

Under the Treaty of Nanjing, China had to pay Britain a large indemnity, cede Hong Kong Island to the British, and increase the number of treat ports where the British could trade and reside to five. Other Western countries quickly demanded and were given similar privileges.

The Treaty of Nanjing, cessation of Hong Kong

(3) The Second Opium War (1856-60)

While the Qing government was trying to quell the Taiping Rebellion (1850-64), the British took the opportunity to look for new concessions. Over a relatively minor incident in 1856, a British warship sailed up the Pearl River and began to bombard Guangzhou. In December, angry Chinese in the city burned foreign warehouse and hostilities escalated. The French decided to join the British, using the murder of a French missionary in the interior of China in early 1856 as an excuse. They quickly captured Guangzhou. Upon reaching Tianjin, the Chinese were forced into negotiations.

The treaties of Tianjin, signed in June 1858, saw more trade, travel, and residence concession to the foreign powers, including the freedom of movement for Christian missionaries. In further negotiations in Shanghai later that year, the importation of opium was legalized.

However, the Chinese subsequently refused to ratify the treaties, and the two allies resumed hostilities. In August 1860 a larger force of warships of British and French troops captured Beijing and plundered and then burned down the Yuanming Garden (Summer Palace).

China had no choice but to sign the Beijing Convention, in which they agreed not only to observe the treaties of Tianjin but also to cede the southern portion of the Kowloon Peninsula to the British.

                                                The plundering and burning of the Summer Palace

(4) First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95)
The war marked the emergence of Japan as a major world power. The war grew out of conflict over Korea which had long been China’s client state. Its strategic location opposite the Japanese islands and its natural resources of coal and iron attracted Japan’s interest. In 1875 Japan forced Korea to open itself to foreign, meaning Japanese, trade and to declare itself independent from China. Japan was welcomed by Korea’s more radical modernizing forces, while China continued to sponsor the conservative officials gathered around the royal family. In 1884 a group of pro-Japanese reformers attempted to overthrow the Korean government, but Chinese troops under Yuan ShiKai came to their rescue. Both sides signed a convention to withdraw troops from Korea.

But In 1894, Kim Ok-Kyun, a pro-Japanese Korean leader was lured to Shanghai and murdered. His body was then put aboard a Chinese warship and sent back to Korea, where it was quartered and displayed as a warning to other rebels. The Japanese government and public were outraged. The situation was made more tense later in the year when a rebellion broke out in Korea, and the Chinese government, at the request of the Korean king, sent troops to help to disperse the rebels. The Japanese considered this a violation of convention agreed earlier and they duly sent in 8,000 troops to Korea. When the Chinese tried to reinforce their own forces, the Japanese sank the British steamer which was carrying the reinforcements, further aggravating the tension.

War was finally declared on 1^st August 1894. Japanese troops scored quick and overwhelming victories on both land and sea. By March 1895 the Japanese had successfully invaded Shandong province and Manchuria. They blockaded the sea approaches to Beijing. The Chinese sued for peace.

In a treaty, China recognized the independence of Korea and ceded Taiwan, some adjoining islands, and Liaodong Peninsula. China also agreed to pay a large indemnity and to give Japan trading privileges on Chinese territory. This treaty was later modified under the combined intercession of Russia, France, and Germany which forced Japan to return the Liaodong Peninsula to China.

 

China’s defeat encouraged the Western powers to make further demands of the Chinese government. It also hastened the demise of the Qing dynasty.

 

(5) The Second Sino-Japanese War (1931–1945) [Part of World War II]

In 1931, Japan detonated a small bomb close to a railway line owned by Japan near Mukden (now Shenyang) to create an excuse to stage a full invasion. This incident led to the occupation of Manchuria where Japan established a puppet state called Manchukuo where the Qing court’s last emperor Pu-Yi was installed as its emperor. 

 

Six years later, Japan again cooked up a somewhat similar pretext to wage war against China. A Japanese soldier was found missing from his unit opposite Wanping, a town southwest of Beijing, and the Japanese commander demanded the right to search the town for him. This was refused and when the Chinese army fired on the Japanese army, all hell broke loose. (The Japanese soldier later returned to his lines.) This is the Marco Polo Bridge incident (or the 7-7 incident because it happened on 7^th July) which many historians regard as the actual beginning of the second Sino-Japanese War or the start of Pacific theatre of the World War II.

 

Following this incident, the Japanese captured Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing. Widespread atrocities were committed by the Japanese army, the most horrendous of which was described by Iris Chang is her book The Rape of Nanking. After failing to stop the Japanese in the Battle of Wuhan, the Chinese relocated its government to Chongqing.

With some Soviet help, China was able to put up some strong resistance against the Japanese offensives. The war actually reached a stalemate by 1939, after Chinese scored victories in Changsha and Guangxi. The Japanese were also unable to defeat the Chinese communist forces in Shaanxi. But the Japanese ultimately succeeded in the year-long battle to occupy Nanning, which effectively cut off the last sea access to the wartime capital of Chongqing. While Japan ruled the large cities, they lacked sufficient manpower to control China's vast countryside. In November 1939, Chinese nationalist forces launched a large-scale winter offensive and in August 1940, Chinese Communist forces started a counteroffensive in central China. The United States’ Flying Tigers also lent support to China. However, Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 sealed its fate. The United States declared war. After the two atom bombs were dropped, Japan formally surrendered on 2 September 1945.

The Second Sino-Japanese War accounted for the loss about 15 million military and civilian lives in China. Some put the figure even higher.  

(6)  Japanese Invasion of Southeast Asia during World War II (1941-45)

Conflict in this theatre began when Japan invaded French Indochina in September 1940. It simultaneously attacked Pearl Harbor, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaya, and Singapore in early December 1941. However, Thailand chose to ally itself with Japan.

 

The Allies suffered many defeats in the first half of the war. Two major British warships, Repulse and Price of Wales, were sunk by a Japanese air attack off the coast of Malaya.

Japanese forces overran Malaya by the end of January 1942. The Allied forces in Singapore, under the command of Lieutenant General Arthur Percival, surrendered to the Japanese on 15 February 1942. About 130,000 Allied troops became prisoners of war. The fall of Singapore was the largest surrender in British military history.

 

The Chinese living in Malaya particularly suffered from the Japanese occupation, some 100,000 were killed. (Japan actually favoured the Malays; many of the latter’s elites were made sword-carrying officers under the Japanese administration. Some were even encouraged to massacre the rural Chinese.)

The Japanese were less successful in its Indian Ocean raids, but it did force the British fleet to relocate from British Ceylon to Mombasa in Kenya. In 1942.

 

Japan occupied the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) from March 1942 until after the end of the war in September 1945. Japan overran the entire colony in less than three months. Initially, most Indonesians welcomed the Japanese as liberators from their Dutch colonial masters. The sentiment changed after several million Indonesians were made forced labourers. Hundreds of thousands were sent away from Java to the outer islands, and as far as Burma and Siam. Of those taken off Java, not more than 70,000 survived the war. Four million people died in the Dutch East Indies as a result of famine and forced labour during the Japanese occupation, including 30,000 European civilian internee deaths.

 

During the 1944-45 period, the Allied troops largely bypassed the Dutch East Indies and as such, much of the colony was still under occupation at the time of Japan's surrender in August 1945.

 

The occupation led to the ending of the Dutch colonial rule in December 1949.

 

It is believed many ethnic Chinese suffered under the Japanese rule.

Left: The Tiger of Malaya: General Tomoyuki Yamashita; Below: Japanese atrocity in Malaya

Stocktaking…

Had China been the aggressor in any of the above conflicts, I would certainly withdraw the title of this article and apologize for it. All the pains were inflicted in China or on Chinese by extension. Some may argue that the Boxers were barbaric and deserved condemnation. Yes, maybe, but the West did use it to extract out-of-proportion reparations and concessions from China. They should not be in China in the first place!

 

Now that China has been awakened, it is time for Chinese all over the world to keep it awake. Chinese will only be safe in the Western and pro-West world if China is strong and respected. To us it is simply a no brainer choice!

Left: Spiritual, mythical… soaring high to help bring better living and prosperity to the world. Right: Real, gentle… looking keenly to help build trust and create harmony…

  

Above: From the horse’s mouth: We Lied, We Cheated, We Stole. Below: End of an empire

HOPE THIS WOUNDED LION IS NOT A DANGEROUS ANIMAL

Each time Joe Biden spoke about the China threat, he reminded me of my late father-in-law.

My father-in-law was a through and through Peranakan – a local born Penangite, totally English educated and worked his entire life for the Penang Port Commission. Besides English, he spoke only Penang Hokkien, and did not know how to read or write a word of Mandarin.

After his retirement, he and my mother-in-law came down to Kuala Lumpur to live with us. They helped bring up our two children. He loved to read papers. I used to subscribe both The Star and The New Straits Times; he read almost everything in them, including the classified advertisements. I also subscribed magazines those days – Newsweek, Fortune and The Economist – which he would also read if they hanged around. He also kept to his “office” hours – religiously at one of the stockbroking houses in town. He brought back many stories and gossips from there.

However, as he grew older, I noticed that he tended to repeat things with a strange frequency. On a piece of misinformation about a politician which I had taken pain to explain to him that was not true, he would still say the same old thing when the politician’s name came up each time. Other than that, his mind was as sharp as ever. As he aged into his 80s, another phenomenon surfaced. He would many a time insist that my eldest brother-in-law was going after his life. But this brother-in-law of mine, a retired engineer, must be the mildest, most harmless person in this whole universe. No matter how hard my wife tried to correct him, my father-in-law would repeat this fear from time to time! Of course, by then we knew he was in his early stage of dementia. He lived to a ripe old age of 95.

Doesn’t Biden sound like my father-in-law when the talked about China? No matter how much the world or his intelligence community told him about the falsehood about the genocide and force labour situation in China, and about the need to leave it to science on the origin of Covid-19, he would point his finger at China regardless. China is your enemy which you must destroy at all costs, Donald Trump seems to be whispering into his ear all the time, even though Trump is his enemy No 1.

When a person is entering into a pre-dementia stage, I suppose the neurons in his or her brain will rearrange themselves to give him outlandish conclusions and fears. Isn’t Biden going into this phase now?

I was most perplexed when he hailed America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan as a great success. What success? And what sort of twisted logic is that?

We all have heard that amid chaos at the Kabul airport, CIA Director William Burns had to fly all the way to meet Taliban leaders ahead of the August 31^st deadline. If not for the courtesy extended by the Taliban, the evacuation would surely have been a disaster. Yes, some 6,000 Americans and 120,000 others were flown out. But could it be said to be a great success? It was an operational feat given the way he shot himself in the foot with the timing of his withdrawal announcement, thanks to the resources that they had had in their command. Nothing more than that. Yet Biden could go on TV to crow “success” to the world. This speaks volumes of the state of his mind and the competence of his “world-class” team like Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan and Llyod Austin. To us in the orient, aren’t these a bunch of “fun-shis” or sweet potatoes?

By any standard, the US’s capitulation from Afghanistan will surely go down in world history as one of the most glaring defeats of American exceptionalism. On America’s response, I only watched CNN and read the bits and pieces from its papers. I seemed to sense that the burden of humiliation has yet to be felt by the American masses. Of course, no sooner after the Afghan debacle, they were hit by hurricane Ida and now floods in New York and New Jersey. As if these are not enough, they also have their Supreme Court’s decision on Texas abortion law to debate.

On Afghanistan Blinken had also telephoned Wang Yi. The State Department’s readout on the matter apparently was a one-sentence statement to say there was a need to rein in the Taliban in view of the development there, hence the exchange. However, the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s readout was a tongue-lashing record of what Wang Yi had reiterated to Blinken. It bluntly said to the effect that “the call was requested by you Blinken, you came to us when you needed our help, and if you were sincere and genuine, you should first and foremost do what we had requested you to do in the list which we had given to your Sherman. Period. I have not really read the two readouts; but the fact has been disclosed by a credible source. Anyway, they should be on the relevant websites for anyone who cares to check.

And we are now reading that John Kerry has flown to China to talk about Climate Change. Obviously, these Americans don’t even understand body languages let alone rebukes. After flying all the way, he could only meet with Wang Yi on zoom. The Chinese must have felt a little bad, since Kerry has always been thought of as a decent man. He was subsequently arranged to see the redoubtable Yang Jiechi and later Vice Premier Hang Zheng. However, the message was the same: Don’t waste our time unless you do what is expected of you first. We know what we are doing. He left for home emptied handed. How embarrassing!

If their reaction to world opinions on the recent Afghan capitulation debacle is reflective of their ability, or the lack of it, to form good conclusions, let alone learn anything, then I suppose to these top guns in the Biden administration the meaning of humiliation is definitely not in their vocabulary. Or thick skin-ness is actually a part of their collective DNA. Remember the lecture given by Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi to Blinken and Sullivan in Alaska, and the protocol that was accorded to Sherman in Tianjin? Luckily, Llyod Austin’s request to visit his Chinese counterpart has gone unanswered, lest he gives us another case in point to cite.  

Nonetheless, a wounded lion is always a dangerous animal. A humiliated Biden can also be one. The only consolation I take is that judging from those incidents that I have enumerated above, I suspect he might not possess that sense in his faculty.

Let’s hope it is the case.

Dear America, stick to what you can do best for the world, that is, continue to help the world with your universities’ fundamental and cutting-edge research. This also means you must welcome the best and the brightest to your soil. And trying to teach the world what democracy is all about will surely bring you nowhere. It takes a mere spokesperson at China Foreign Ministry to explain this: Coca-Cola indeed tastes the same everywhere. But democracy is NOT Coca-Cola. It has to be different for different country. The world will certainly be safer without America going around preaching and upholding Democracy.

Look into your backyard first; there is much to be cleaned there in the first place.