U.S. China-Bashing Countered by Scholars

The following is a report on a CSIS conference designed to prepare for a US war on China. It is published in the current EIR. A second  article, by Helga LaRouche, titled

The New Silk Road Is Creating A New, Just World Economic Order, on what China is actually doing to benefit the entire world, will be in my next e-mail.   Mike Billington

---

 

CSIS Conference

U.S. China-Bashing

Countered by Scholars

by Michael Billington

 

July 14—Leaders in Congress and the Washington

thinktank Center for Strategic and International Studies

(CSIS), among others, have rapidly escalated their war

hysteria against China. The CSIS, which occasionally

promotes reasonable strategic positions, went into hy-

perbolic extremes of China-bashing in a July 10-11

conference on “Recent Trends in the South China Sea

and U.S. Policy.” The persistent underlying assumption

of the panelists (with the exception of two Chinese rep-

resentatives and a Malaysian spokesman), was that

China, under President Xi Jinping, has become a serial

aggressor, threatening peace in Asia and, to some

speakers, the entire world’s peace and prosperity.

    There is a certain perverted irony in CSIS’s sponsor-

ship of a conference in the U.S. capital, defining China

as one of the world’s most dangerous aggressors, due

primarily to their drilling for oil and building facilities

on contested islands in the South China Sea, with nary

a mention of the Obama Administration’s multiple

criminal wars of aggression against nations that pose no

threat to the United States, threatening global war by

the massing of U.S. and NATO forces and anti-ballistic

missile systems along the Russian and Chinese borders,

adopting a first-strike doctrine against China, known as

Air-Sea Battle, carring out drone killings worldwide

without any legal or political oversight or justification,

and spying on every nation on Earth—to name but a

few of Obama’s impeachable crimes.

    In fact, while 80 Congressmen from both parties

sent a letter to Obama demanding that he stop his

newest illegal war—yet another war in Iraq—CSIS

chose to invite Republican hawk Rep. Mike Rogers (R-

Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee,

who is calling for immediate U.S. air strikes against

Iraq, to open their “confront-China” conference. He did

not disappoint.

    China, said Rogers, after 20 years of investing in its

military prowess, believes that “now is the time, while

the world is distracted,” to expand at the expense of its

neighbors. “This has to change,” Rogers inveighed.

“This is death by a thousand cuts,” creating “brewing

clouds of conflict—this is as serious as it gets.” He

praised the U.S.-Philippine agreement to allow U.S. air,

sea, and land forces to occupy bases in the Philippines;

he praised Japan’s decision to scrap the postwar pacifist

constitution, and to prepare to join in a U.S. war in Asia;

he praised Vietnam for sending military ships to disrupt

a Chinese oil rig near the Paracel Islands, which are

under Chinese control; but, he said, “This is not enough,

it is getting more serious every day. This could lead to

outright conflict—we’re on that matrix.”

    Rogers added that the U.S. “must aggressively

pursue deterrence,” and provide Japan with “state of the

art weaponry.” We must stop normal diplomatic ap-

proaches, “be more direct, more aggressive, empower

our friends—now is the time to confront China’s glut-

tonous, naked aggression.”

    Incredibly, Rogers charged that China is not only

strategically dangerous, but that it is responsible for de-

stroying the economies of the region—in fact, of the

whole world! China, he said, “uses its power to bully,

intimidate, and destabilize the economy of the world.”

    This points to the real target of this exercise. China,

together with Russia, India, and other Eurasian nations,

including all of the Southeast Asian nations other than

the Philippines and Vietnam, are engaged in collabora-

tion with China in massive infrastructure develop-

ment—in energy, rail, water, space, nuclear, and more,

even while the U.S. and Europe are in economic freef-

all, pumping trillions of newly printed dollars and euros

into bailing out the gambling debts of the trans-Atlantic

banking system, while massively cutting investments

into the real economy. Obama and his British/Wall

Street controllers would rather have war than accept

Eurasian growth and new international economic insti-

tutions, such as those coming into being at the BRICS

meeting in Brazil this week, while the West collapses.

 

                China’s Response

    To the credit of CSIS, they did invite two prominent

Chinese scholars from Tsinghua University to address

the conference: Jia Bingbing, a law professor who de-

fended China’s legal position regarding the contested

territories, and Chu Shulong, a political science profes-

sor. Professor Chu provided a cogent and damning

analysis of the U.S. intentions and actions in the South

China Sea, notably directly contrasting them to the “last

Democratic Administration” under President Bill

Clinton.

    Under Obama, Chu said, the policy in the

South China Sea is not actually about the South

China Sea, but is part of the “larger strategic

framework” of the Asia Pivot, or Rebalancing,

pronounced by Obama in 2012. In the past, U.S.

policy in the region included economic issues,

human rights, and strategic concerns—but now, it

is “almost all strategic, dependent on troubles,

disputes between Asian countries.” When the

Philippines or Vietnam construct things on the is-

lands, or send warships to the islands, “the U.S. is

silent—only China is the bad guy in Asia.”

    Chu noted that there is much talk about inter-

national law, but that “the U.S. will not join the

International Criminal Court, or the UNCLOS, or

even some human rights conventions—the U.S.

wants international law for others, but ignores it

for itself when it wants to, including Iraq and other

countries.”

    Of course China is building its navy, Chu said, as a

maritime country with rapidly expanding trade. But is

there a reason, he asked, “for the massive build up of

U.S. military forces in the South China Sea, which

threatens China? Is this not coercion?”

 

        The Empire’s Toadies

    From British Commonwealth member Australia,

where the U.S. is setting up extensive air, sea, and land

military facilities directed at China, Cabinet Minister

Malcolm Turnbull went further even than Congress-

man Rogers. Speaking at Australian National Univer-

sity on June 20, Turnbull claimed China has no friends

in Asia! “It has really no allies in the region, apart from

North Korea,” he said. “And the consequence has been

[that] now China’s neighbors are drawing closer to the

United States than ever before.” Ironically, Chinese

President Xi’s visit to Seoul in early July demonstrated

that China is closer to U.S. military ally South Korea

than it is to the North, while nearly all the nations of

Southeast Asia and Central Asia, including India, are

strengthening their cooperation with China.

    U.S. Secretaries of State and Treasury John Kerry

and Jack Lew, along with Adm. Samuel Locklear, head

of the Pacific Command, were in Beijing July 9-10 for

the annual U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dia-

logue. Despite the Obama Administration’s growing

confrontation with China, the U.S. military has insisted

on maintaining close relations with China—Joint

Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey has re-

peatedly warned against the “Thucydides Trap” (be-

lieving that because China is a rising power, it must

necessarily lead to conflict with the U.S.), and Admiral

Locklear invited China, for the first time, to the recent

Rimpac naval exercises in the Pacific, and has invited

them to return next year.

    Otherwise, the Dialogue provided far less an ex-

change of ideas than what is required by the current

state of the global war danger. Kerry again demanded

that China submit the territorial issues to international

arbitration under the UN Convention on the Law of the

Sea (UNCLOS)—a Convention which the U.S. has

itself refused to ratify, based on the claim that it would

entail a loss of sovereignty! Yet, China has signed the

Convention, and is following its rules precisely, includ-

ing that arbitration is only allowed when both parties to

a dispute agree to it.

    In fact, the Philippine spokesman at the CSIS con-

ference, after extended denunciations of China’s re-

fusal to submit to supposedly impartial international

arbitration, admitted in his closing statement that he

had met with the Chinese 120 times, and that China has

repeatedly called for “joint development” of the

region—which the Philippines rejects. Clearly, Obama

doesn’t want development—he wants imperial “divide

and conquer” conflict.

        mobeir@aol.com