The Celestial Empire

The most important historical issue is the rise of China as a great power, possibly the greatest ever. Australia is in China's hemisphere and the nearest Western outpost, and is worried. Kevin Rudd, an Aussie sinologist diplomat, says that the Chinese people feels humiliated (it was colonized in the past) and to maintain relations on a rational, non emotional basis, the West should apologize.

On the other hand, John Mearsheimer, an American public intellectual, sees the situation in black and white: It is war and Australia must be part of the Western alliance. China knows only tribute-paying barbarians and enemies. Both speakers are very impressive.

I have been many times in China and like it. The first Israelis in China were TAHAL experts, they travelled in secret under different passports because we had no diplomatic relations. I wanted very much to go but they sent Dr. Moshe Mizrahi instead. He was the first to introduce Israeli heifers and establish a dairy farm. I was so bitter that attacked the project, saying that Chinese lack the lactose enzyme and will vomit the milk. I was wrong, of course, and the local milk industry has developed tremendously since. We could have maintained our primacy but did not. New Zealanders are there.

China was known then as facing famine, and the question was if they could feed themselves. What they did was to forbid second child. I told my counterpart that it was a very wrong policy, and I think I was right. Today they are in need of those unborn babies. I told them that Chinese poverty is a temporary aberration, they were a hardworking intelligent people, and Chinese prosper everywhere they are. They were very afraid of the future. And yes, they feared Western colonization and division of the country.

They have good reasons to fear the West and Japan. But they are easy to live with, should the West let them to. Whites (and Blacks even more, but they lack intelligence) have aggressor genes and cannot stay quiet.

Tacit Corollary: (1) Both American and Australian thinkers assume as certain that China and America are in (cold) war, (2) China's economic size equals America and will be two times larger in twenty years. It is unsaid that for America, it would be advantageous to precipitate the confrontation as soon as the conditions become propitious.