China and Provincial Secessionism
Lee on Sep 02 2008 at 2:45 am | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Lee's Page
Extremely interesting post from Seth Weinberger on the opportunity for pulling China in the pro-Georgia camp, after the SCO failed to endorse Russian actions in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Seth is as mystified as I am that the Russian foreign ministry could possibly have believed it would persuade China to endorse ethnic separatism and provincial secession. If there is such a thing as an enduring Chinese ideology from ancient times, it is the idea of struggle against separatist disorder and provincial independence. A fear that is only amplified to extraordinary degrees by the prospect of other great powers assisting in the dismemberment of traditional territorial unity.
China is a nation of potential South Ossetias, with a distinct memory of different provincial warlords being propped up from abroad to the humiliation of Chinese central government. Indeed, so troubled is the Chinese imagination by the specter of provincial secession within them (and not only in Taiwan and Tibet), that many are willing to forgive Mao forty million murders for his unifying the country.
After many good sentiments it’s sad however to see Seth wanting to trade Taiwan for the favor of opposition to Russian expansionism. As a practical matter Chinese opposition should be relatively axiomatic. Taiwan would not be an equitable or moral trade on our part.
It’s lamentable, but ‘how to betray Taiwan’ is probably the longest running parlor game for foreign policy conversations in the United States. Everyone always seems to have a new idea for how to throw the little democratic island under the bus in order to gain this or that transitory advantage with China. It’s one of the many reasons I frequently caution foreigners about becoming too close an ally with the United States. Unless you can bring enormous economic advantages to the table, as an ally, we can sometimes be so deceitful and undependable on such a fundamental level, that we don’t even realize we are.
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