Chinese Editorial Takes Aim At U.S.

From China Real Time:

China Editorial Takes Aim at U.S.




.China is keeping up its barrage of words directed at the U.S., this time with a fiery editorial written by a general in the country’s state-run military newspaper, which calls for the country to be prepared to respond if it is attacked by the U.S.



“If someone does not harm me, I won’t harm him,” said Maj. Gen. Luo Yuan in Thursday’s Liberation Army Daily. “If someone harms me, I must harm him.”



The subtle challenge was the climax to a piece that focused primarily on assertions of U.S. military hegemony. Such claims have gained traction in the Chinese blogosphere and in much of the country’s mainstream press since the U.S. announced earlier this year it would go ahead with $6.4 billion worth of weapons sales to Taiwan.



The rhetoric intensified as tension on the Korean peninsula mounted and the U.S. and China have sparred over how best to deal with North Korea. Luo’s editorial appears to be the People’s Liberation Army’s embrace of a worldview that was not long ago considered outside the Chinese mainstream.



To be sure, an editorial in a newspaper run by the military is not in itself an indication of how the Chinese government forms a foreign policy. Nonetheless, China’s military retains significant political power, and the military leadership’s increasingly aggressive view could divide political leaders. Those hoping to win the military’s backing may be forced to support its more aggressive foreign policy as a result. As political faction-building has already begun in the lead-up to the country’s 2012 leadership swap, China’s military continues to be a powerful political force.



“This is one of the moments the PLA are in more power,” Brad Glosserman, executive director of the Pacific Forum Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Honolulu-based think tank, told The Wall Street Journal in June as tension over planned U.S. military exercises in the Yellow Sea was mounting. “No political leader can afford to be seen as weak.”



Several Chinese experts have speculated in recent months that China’s political leaders feel hamstrung by the country’s relationship with North Korea. Its unwillingness to take on a role of political leadership in the wake of the Cheonan’s sinking as well as China’s inability to resolve territorial disputes with its neighbors in the South China Sea has precipitated a reemergence of the U.S. in Asian affairs. China calls that hegemony.



“This is absolutely not a joke,” Luo said in the editorial. “Does the United States not advertise itself as the most democratic country? Then it should know that in the 21st century today it should learn to respect others, listen to public opinion in other countries, and learn to use wisdom rather than gunships to solve problems.”



– Brian Spegele







Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2010/08/13/pla-editorial-takes-aim-at-us/