Monday, December 21, 2009

China a great nation?

China is flexing its muscles as it emerges as a power on the world scene. Consider its swaggering at the UN Copenhagen conference on global warming. Consider, too, the puff pieces, it transmits on its own Phoenix television channel. It ran a programme on the plight of fishermen of Hainan islands who when they venture in Vietnamese or Filipino territorial waters to fish, are caught for poaching on another country's fishing waters. Vietnam and the Philippines are portrayed in the darkest of lights for 'extorting monies' from these Hainanese, who once they greased the palms of greedy and venal authorities are let go. If Vietnamese or Filipino fishermen are caught in Chinese waters, well, they are well treated, and fined according to the law, and once the fine payed are sent gently on their way. Why? Because China is 'a great country'. Need one say more?
Wink, wink, wink...China is a past master on bribery and extortion and unbridled greed. Read China's own newspapers with summary execution of even Communist Party officials for malfeasance, bribery, extortion, the trampling on China's legal code.
Today China exports its own workers on projects in neighbouring Vietnam or faraway Africa. The Chinese act like the colonialists of 19 and 20 century European nations. Quickly even the lowliest Chinese labourer takes on the airs of a superior being like his European or American cousin of yore.
The locals of the country China invests in, grow to risent them, and realise how these representatives of 'the proletariat' exploit them with a fig leaf of saving appearances. Ask a Zambian, for example. He will fill one's ear with hours of complaint. Talk to Vietnamese, they will say the same thing.
Yes, China may be a great country who has crowned itself with the trappings of the old rotten Middle Kingdom, and with the racial superior attitude and ways of its own checkered past!

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