A Growing Chinese Confidence

Blitzo

Blitzo

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
bladerunner said:
In this instance, i all the other participants see and advantage and want to be in the same room together.
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Is China wanting to negotiate unilaterally (and therefore it will be best for China) to be called arrogant then? I already made the distinction between purusing strategic interests and pursuing said interests while honking your horns saying "I'm the best!!11111!".

bladerunner said:
M. F.Y said in the interview.: "Our own sufferings in history have taught us that we should never try to impose on other countries"

TElling the other claimants that "Its my way or the Highway" is Imposing and arrogant in my book
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That is a real stretch, nearly nonsensical. You're comparing potential leadership change through military intervention to be as arrogant as simply setting terms/format of a negotiation?
Again, even if China was saying "it's unilateral, or the highway," that's still a ridiculously trivial conceit compared to what VFM talks about wrt the west. I swear I've typed this before.

bladerunner said:
China can probably afford to play the waiting/stalling game as she can afford to get her oil elsewhere, whereas to poorer countries eg Vietnam Phillipines etc, a few billion annually would be a godsend for them. In this sense China is no better than the West.
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And what sense may that be...?
 
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solarz

solarz

Brigadier
bladerunner said:
In this instance, i all the other participants see and advantage and want to be in the same room together.
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If the South Asian countries want to negotiate as a whole, there is nothing stopping them. China is merely advocating unilateral negotiations. China is not doing anything to stop those countries from deciding that they want to negotiate together after all. That is a decision that those countries need to make, not China.

Strategic thinking and conceit are two different things, and neither are they mutually exclusive. Conceit is not when you try to pursue your own interests. Conceit is when you have become so arrogant that you start believing your own BS, and can't for the life of you understand why other people don't.

Conceited (and hypocritical):
Saying with a straight face that China's building of an aircraft carrier is "alarming", while being part of an alliance that deploys the world's largest fleet of aircraft carriers.

Not conceited:
Advocating unilateral negotiations because they believe that it's the best way for two nations to settle territorial disputes.

Bladerunner, if you can't (or refuse to) see the difference between those two situations, then there really is no point in debating the issue with you anymore.
 
I

i.e.

Senior Member
bladerunner said:
TElling the other claimants that "Its my way or the Highway" is Imposing and arrogant in my book
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Exactly,

so telling china, openly, in an international forum, while beating the war drum of military alliance against china , to "go multi-lateral or else", when CHina has bi-laterally settled land borders amicablly with most of its neighbors (vietnam included) is....???


so, advocating China should do what its being told is not conceited.
while, China advocate something else is conceited.

I got it.

...
and,
Look,
last time an international conference that settled alot of borders in one shot is in Versaille 1919.
I think it is sufficient to say that it didn't turn out too well that time. you know, the whole bulkan thing and czech-slovakia etc etc. no one was truly happy so everyone went to war 20 years later.

given the stellar record of the multilateral approach, I think it would be bit conceited for anyone advocate something like that in South China Sea. unless ofcourse, some one wants another regional war 20 years later. ;)
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Engineer

Engineer

Major
bladerunner said:
Nope , the idea of unilateral negotions is the same as the "divide and rule strategy. That is when you prevent smaller groups from linking up, and China can then pick them off one by one. First offer the first one or two such good deals they can't resist and less favourable ones to the foot draggers, they will more or less agree to anything for fear of being left out. The end result is that on balance China comes out winning.
Dealing with smaller weaker countries in this "its my way or the highway" can indeed to be seen as arrogant, high handed or conceit(They all have a similar meaning) Perhaps its the Western bashers who need to get off their high horses.
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"It's my way or the highway" is indeed arrogant, but unilateral discussion is not an example of such. What you think China is doing is classified as stratgey, whereas being conceited is an attitude, so there isn't a valid inference in your argument. By seeing each party as fully capable of one-to-one discussion, China isn't showing a sign of conceit; quite the opposite, China recongizes that seeing the negotiating partner as an equal at the table plays a big role in having fruitful discussion. You expect China to be conceited because the West acts in an arrogant manner in similar situations, yet China has its own philosophy in diplomacy, so you are simply projecting here. Furthermore, if South Eastern nations view unilateral discussions as being one sided, they could simply not participate until all nations are involved. The fact that these nations are willing to go into unilateral discussion shows that they see benefits for doing so as well.
 
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Engineer

Engineer

Major
bladerunner said:
M. F.Y said in the interview.: "Our own sufferings in history have taught us that we should never try to impose on other countries"

TElling the other claimants that "Its my way or the Highway" is Imposing and arrogant in my book.
Click to expand...
Nope. China hasn't told the other claimants that "it's my way or the highway".

bladerunner said:
China can probably afford to play the waiting/stalling game as she can afford to get her oil elsewhere, whereas to poorer countries eg Vietnam Phillipines etc, a few billion annually would be a godsend for them. In this sense China is no better than the West.
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Rubbish. Some of these countries are already tapping oil. Also, your attempt to portrait China as being conceited like the West is also flawed, as you provided absolutely no relevant example of what China is doing that is showing conceited.
 
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R

Red Moon

Junior Member
cirvine11 said:
Good interview...

2) She talks extensively about "a diffusion of power in the world." To me this seems to signal a desire to rewrite some international laws and change some accepted norms. We may first see the results of this in The Law of the Sea conventions.
...I think this could be the first area of contention.
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This is a military forum, and from your posts I gather you're a navy person... so I'm not surprised to see this view.

There are a lot of 'rules' China and others would like to see rewritten, and yes, she does point out the current rules were made by and for a fraction of the worlds states and people. "Law of the Sea" would be somewhere between number 10 and 20, if its on the list at all! Mind you, it is the US that has not signed that one.
 
AssassinsMace

AssassinsMace

Lieutenant General
Diffusion of power is relative. Not surprised it would be interpreted as some sort of threat to those that benefit the most from it. I love the schizoid thinking. Some in the West relish looking forward to China being the "policeman of the world" just so the Chinese can experience the headache the West suffers. That's diffusion of power. But the reality is they would never allow nor the Chinese would want to be policeman of the world. Policeman of the world is power yet we know their interpretation of it is they give the orders and the Chinese are their cannon fodder. It's just like today expecting China to carry out their foreign policy that serves their interests first.
 
Engineer

Engineer

Major
AssassinsMace said:
Policeman of the world is power yet we know their interpretation of it is they give the orders and the Chinese are their cannon fodder. It's just like today expecting China to carry out their foreign policy that serves their interests first.
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It also shows that these people are self-centered. These people expect China to do so-and-so because they would be doing the samething when placed in similar situations. They are unable to grasp the concept that China is completely free and independent from the West and doesn't think or act in the same way. This is why almost all of the prediction they come up with regarding China turns out to be incorrect.
 
AssassinsMace

AssassinsMace

Lieutenant General
Engineer said:
It also shows that these people are self-centered. These people expect China to do so-and-so because they would be doing the samething when placed in similar situations. They are unable to grasp the concept that China is completely free and independent from the West and doesn't think or act in the same way. This is why almost all of the prediction they come up with regarding China turns out to be incorrect.
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The problem from their perspective is they actually think of themselves as the "good guys" as if written in the laws of the universe. They're not good because their actions say it. They're good because of simply who they are. Which is why many of them think nothing of the hypocrisy of expecting everyone else to follow their rules and values while at the same time not following it one bit themselves. Why? Because they're the good guys and no matter what you think or see how much hypocrisy they commit, all you need to know is they do it for the good so don't question it. If you challenge them directly or just from not obeying them blindly when they give you an order, it must be because you're evil. Good will follow good without question. That's the black and white trap. Obey or you're evil. People who want conceited power always think in simply black and white. Because it gives no other choice but obedience or they'll seek to destroy you. Seriously... this is what it comes down to. They don't really care about China having an aircraft carrier because we all know they can easily destroy it. They even brag that a Seawolf is sitting next to Varyag right now and can easily be destroyed with a simple push of a button. Then what are they afraid of? The carrier is just an excuse to exercise power on a China that doesn't put their interests before its own. China puts everything they've been taught to believe into question. You already see it in economic theory. What's next? Innovation? Religion? That's why China is a threat.
 
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