Analysis

China: cauldron of Bush administration anxiety

By Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor

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September 24, 2005—In delivering the Bush administration's most caustic and telling China policy statement to date, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick demanded that China address a "cauldron of anxiety," and warned that his administration would "ensure that China becomes a responsible player on the world stage."

Zoellick's list of demands include the following:

• China must "explain its defense spending, its intentions, doctrines and military exercises."
   
• China must desist from "increasing mercantilism," and stop "directing markets rather than opening them."
   
• China must stop "locking up energy supplies"—not a "sensible path to achieving energy security," according to Zoellick.
   
• China must change its foreign policy to focus on "peaceful prosperity" rather than "national interest."
   
• China's dealings with "troublesome states," which suggest, in Zoellick's words, a "blindness to consequences, and at worst, something more ominous" must end.

The hypocrisy of this Bush administration knows no bounds.

The US is guilty of every Orwellian charge that Zoellick leveled at China, and the entire world, including the Bush administration, knows it. It is the US that has devoted decades of aggression and corruption to the "locking up energy supplies" all over the world. It is the US that has tossed international diplomacy out the window (and, with the gift of John Bolton, down the toilet). It is the US that threatens mankind with unilateral terrorism and military aggression, in its own "national interest." It is the US and the West's international financial institutions that oversee a "global economy" that is based on corruption—a "directed" and "not open" system—and designed to consolidate wealth and power, while globalizing poverty and social/political apartheid. It is the US, long the most "irresponsible" and "troublesome" super power, that thrives on relationships with the most "troublesome states" in the world.

It is the openly criminal Bush administration that has single-handedly created the greatest "cauldron of anxiety" ever experienced in world history with its "war on terrorism."

What is more dangerous is the fact that this administration's desperation knows even fewer bounds, as its power slips with every mushrooming scandal, and every new catastrophe (manufactured as well as natural).

Meanwhile, to the aggravation of the West's hard liners, China's economy continues to grow (in spite of constant outside efforts to shackle it), while the US economy teeters. As American legitimacy around the world continues to collapse under Bush, China continues to deftly forge more extensive alliances all over the world stage. As China successfully signs important energy deals, America's own energy security (energy policies based on illegal war) wanes by the hour. The bottom line is simple: an emerging China has taken concrete and dramatic action to serve its "national interests." The more "explanations" Zoellick demands, the more laughter will emanate from Beijing.

Zoellick, and the China confrontationists he represents, are panicking in their own "cauldron of anxiety," a cauldron largely of their own creation; a cesspool the result of many decades of destructive policy. With desperation comes thrashing violence. Whether the US will start a Cold War with China is no longer an issue. It has begun. The question now is when and how this most short-sighted and violent of US administrations will push further past the point of no return.