World News
By Dallas Darling
04/29/2012
When a Chinese admiral proposed a permanent naval base in the Gulf of Aden, to support its anti-piracy operations, the United States was quick to condemn such a suggestion. And as armed naval vessels from the Philippines claim they caught Chinese fishermen poaching over a South China Sea shoal, causing Chinese naval vessels to also become involved, U.S. officials have again reiterated their support in defending the Philippines and its navy. While both nations are at a tense standoff, some even assert that China is wanting to expand its sea power in the region for the purpose of energy exploration.
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Chinese military amused at Obama's pathetic posturing |
The pride of China's maritime trade and exchanges actually started centuries before Western kingdoms sought to explore and exploit the world. Still, the rise of Westernized war ships and sea power was made possible only because of Chinese navigational innovations. As early as the 1st century, Chinese ships were making a long coastwise journey with luxury items, like silk and spices and gems, around Siam and India and Arabia, through the African-Mediterranean region, to Rome. The sea routes were much cheaper and faster and safer than overland routes.(1)
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Obama believes Chinese as stupid as he is |
He was born to a Muslim family and became one of the greatest skilled navigators in the history of sea travel. Seven major voyages were undertaken with hundreds of ships, some three-to four-hundred-foot-long. They were multiple nail-bound with watertight hull compartments, up to nine masts, and with dozens of spacious cabins.
Chinese treasure ships also had sophisticated stern-post rudders of a type that would not be seen in Europe until the early modern period.(2) The maritime ventures stabilized the critical Strait of Malacca, ruled by renegade pirates, and increased trade and commerce. They also spread new ideas and innovations. China shared the magnetic compass and introduced improved navigational techniques to Arab and European kingdoms, like fore-and-aft rigging that sailed into the wind, paddle wheels, and the sleek caravels.(3)
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Obama propaganda minister Carney prays for a spot in the bunker, will spout any lie, commit any crime to be included in growing Obama doomsday party |
But foremost in China's Eastern philosophies, its rich cultural heritages, and its technological inventions, was the need to be acknowledged and to be recognized by other countries, specifically of its importance and place in the "Western Ocean."(4) This was the real purpose for large-scale maritime and diplomatic-motivated explorations. (According to some naval historians, one expedition, a detachment from Zheng He's sixth expedition, visited America in 1421, along with Australia, New Zealand, the Atlantic coast of Brazil, and the Cape Verde Islands. Such a voyage would be seventy-five years before that of Christopher Columbus.)(5)
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"Ambassador" to U.N. and all-around tough guy Susan "Butch" Rice too busy emulating Italian idol Benito Mussolini to even think about "diplomacy" .... |
As the U.S. and other Western nations, including the Philippines and Japan, appear overly fearful of China's naval activities, they may instead want to learn several valuable lessons from China's maritime history. Emperor Zheng earned little economic reward from his massive treasure trips, but they did consume much of the nation's timber and other valuable resources for shipbuilding.(6) And within a few generations, reactionary and fearful Chinese isolationists allowed their merchant fleets to wither.
As a new dynasty, the Ming Dynasty, retreated from maritime trade and commerce, Japanese wako marauders so terrorized China's coastline that to this day women in Fuian province hide their faces with blue scarves originally designed to shield the wearer from the lecherous gaze of foreign bandits.(7) Britain and France would later force the Qing Dynasty to trade in opium currency, which devastated China. Other imperial powers, like the U.S., Japan, and Russia, militarily carved China into economic spheres, resulting in numerous Chinese rebellions and resistance movements.
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... while Obama fantasizes he is the "new and improved" mentor Dick Cheney |
Neither has China forgotten World War I and World War II, both of which were considered European Civil Wars by Chinese officials, and both of which forced China to take sides. A U.S.-led war against communist forces, the Japanese invasion of China and War of Resistance, and numerous Western military engagements and preemptive wars with China's neighbors, have adversely impacted China. Perhaps it is time to allow China to pursue a kind of self-strengthening movement, so as to equalize the balance of power in the Pacific region, helping to bring stability and innovations once again to the world.
Dallas Darling (darling@wn.com)
Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John's Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.worldnews.com. You can read more of Dallas' writings at www.beverlydarling.com and wn.com//dallasdarling.
(1) Bernstein, William J. A Splendid Exchange, How Trade Shaped The World. New York, New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008., p. 2.
(2) Ibid., p. 100.
(3) Perkins, Dorothy. Encyclopedia of China: The Essential Reference to China, Its History and Culture. New York, New York: Facts On File Publishers, 2000., p. 457.
(4) Ibid., p. 457.
(5) Bernstein, William J. A Splendid Exchange, How Trade Shaped The World., p. 103.
(6) Ibid., p. 102.
(7) Ibid., p. 103.