20 POLITICS
gairrhydd | POLITICS@GAIRRHYDD.COM MONDAY FEBRUARY 15 2010
Like a bull in a China shop...
Ayushman Jamwal has a bit of a look at the uneasy relationship between the United States of America, China and Taiwan
CHINA VS USA: what do you mean you don't love me anymore?
T
he nation of China at the beginning of the 20th century was referred to as the ‘sick man of Asia’, when its social, political and economic affairs were subjected to relentless foreign intervention from Europe and the United States. Since Communist Party rule was established in 1959 by Mao Zedong after the nationalist regime of Chang Kai Shek was exiled to Taiwan, unprecedented economic and military growth, as well as a strict control of the massive population, has propelled the nation to become a global superpower that is challenging contempo-
rary global American and European prominence by flexing its geopolitical muscle in international affairs. In the regional sphere, the communist regime has kept Tibet under its thumb, quashed dissident Uighur Muslim revolts in its western Xinjiang province, given the Indian government sleepless nights with troop buildup across the border and aimed to suppress the sovereignty of Taiwan by lobbying for a union territory system, claiming sovereignty over ethnically Chinese Taiwan, even though its cooperative president, Ma Ying-Jeou, has fostered trade and economic cooperation between the two nations.
In the international sphere, China is fuelling its powerful economy through an established industrial empire in Africa with a near monopoly over its vast untapped natural resources, which in turn has given it economic leverage over the United States by currently holding $800 billion dollars of the nation’s ballooning debt. Such leverage prompted Barack Obama to refrain from meeting the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, when he was in Washington last year and to turn a blind eye to Chinese human rights violations before his diplomatic mission last
November, aiming to seek the government’s cooperation in sanctions against Iran because of its ‘rogue’ nuclear program. Unfortunately for the US, the Chinese government has failed to cooperate on the Iran issue and recently, it has come under fresh international criticism for its cyber hacking operations, which prompted internet giant, Google, to pull out of the nation this year when it was discovered that email accounts of Chinese activists were being hacked. Further to this, the government was last month accused of the 2008 cyber heist of information on worldwide oil discoveries from three major US oil companies: Marathon Oil, ExxonMobil, and ConocoPhillips. In the light of this situation, Obama’s patience has grown thin. Along with creating a cyberspace conflict schedule in the new $762 billion defence budget that was pitched to Congress last month, the Obama administration has pledged $6.4 billion dollars worth of arms, consisting of patriot missiles, gunships, helicopters and military telecommunication technology, to Taiwan under its 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, to level the military playing field where China currently has more than 1,000 ballistic missiles aimed at the neighbouring island nation. Barack Obama is also set to meet the Dalai Lama, who is on a tour of the US starting this month. The Chinese government strongly reacted to the US’s moves, immediately announcing the suspension of military exchanges between the two nations, and has threatened sanctions against the arms corporations involved in the sale if the pledge is fulfilled. Through Obama’s move, SinoAmerican relations have entered dangerous waters. If the pledge is fulfilled, the military aid will escalate
tensions between China and Taiwan, with China reacting in all probability with its current trend of ‘whatever it takes’, to maintain its regional dominance. According to noted Chinese economist, Hu Angang, China can effectively use its economy to bring Taiwan to its knees through sanctions and by pulling out investments. In a military situation, even though Taiwan can inflict considerable damage on China with the military package in the short run, it cannot defend itself against the sheer numbers and range of capabilities of the Chinese army in the later stages of an engagement. At that stage, the US will think twice before engaging adversely with its prime benefactor beyond the diplomatic sphere. Within the US, according to American political scientist, Samuel Huntington, arms corporations have great influence over politics, directing government decisions towards soaring profits. If sanctions are placed against US arms manufacturers, the Obama administration can face considerable heat in circles of power to overturn the pledge. With this whole ordeal, one can’t help but see the possible repetition of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis where the US, by arming Taiwan against China, may play the role of the Soviet Union which armed Cuba against it when it was suffering from American encroachment at the height of the Cold War. Could this be the beginning of another Cold War, where again, two superpowers with differing political ideologies clash for the upper hand? So far, at the onset of this clash, Obama is gambling with the repercussions of souring relations with China, which currently holds the most powerful economic cards in the geopolitical game.
Bring me the head of Elliott Morley
Damian Fantato has a think about MP's expenses and worries about the consequences of the vendetta against our politicians
L
ast week it was revealed that three MPs and a Peer would face prosecution for their actions in relation to the expenses scandal. Elliott Morley, David Chaytor, Jim Devine and Lord Hanningfield will be charged with false accounting under the Theft Act. All four deny any wrong-doing and will defend their positions despite their dubious claims amounting to around £50,000. None the less, Morley has been suspended from the
Parliamentary Labour Party and Lord Hanningfield has had the Conservative whip taken away from him. The developments that the expenses scandal has taken, however, give reason to be concerned. Last year Anthony Steen claimed that the expenses scandal was borne out of jealousy. He went on to say that he had a very large house that looked like Balmoral. There's definitely no denying that Steen has a very nice house, and his claims about jealousy have some ele-
ments of truth. Of course we'd all like to have access to the priviledges that our MPs used to have access to. Who wouldn't? The fact that the story broke during a recession only compounded the feeling of envy. I'm not defending the actions of some of our MPs: they acted like money-grabbing lice. Having said that, this scandal was a particularly bourgeois one. The things that some of the MPs claimed for were laughable. Government deals in massive sums of money. Would the price of
that ruddy duck house really have funded a new hospital ward? In fact it's unlikely that the £50,000 that the above MPs claimed for would make a difference in the long run - Simon Cowell alone pays more than £21.7 million a year in tax. The problem is that MPs aren now genrally conceived to be bastards. This is not good for democracy. People will be less willing to confide in their MP, less people will turn out to vote. MPs must obviously take some of the blame for this scandal, how-
ever our priorities are seriously out of wack. This story needed to be broken, but didn't need to run for as long as it did. There are more worrying things in the world than an MP claiming for a duck house. There are countries with more corrupt politicians than ours: in the grand scheme of things, we're quite lucky. None of us can claim that we would not have acted similarly in their situation. This has gone on for long enough.