Ni Hao.
That is Mandarin Chinese for hello. Mandarin is the official language of the People’s Republic of China. If the present trend in China’s behavior continues, it may well replace English as the lingua franca of Planet Earth.
Imperial China always referred to itself as the “Middle Kingdom,” around which all other kingdoms revolved. Chinese emperors demanded tribute from these lesser entities and had the manpower to back up their demands. Even if one dynasty replaced another, either by warfare or by lack of heirs, the mind-set remained; the new emperor assumed the delusion of grandeur as his right.
Tribute was not the only source of wealth for the imperial court. The emperors endeavored to control the trade routes and to extort traders, even traders from far to the west along the famed Silk Road, for the privilege of buying and selling whatever wares were the most profitable. One such ware was gunpowder which the Chinese used to make fireworks in order to frighten off “evil spirits.” The Europeans had a different use for gunpowder, however, which changed the face of warfare forever. At the other end of the trade spectrum was a Chinese dish which the Italians dubbed “pizza.”
Fast forward several centuries.
Imperial China has been replaced by an imperious Chinese Communist Party. BTW, whatever chairman Mao Ze-Dong originally had in mind insofar as government was concerned no longer exists. As soon as he was dead and buried, the Party took a sharp turn to the right; the “socialism” it now practices is the same “national socialism” practiced by Adolf Hitler with the same results. “Communism” is a complete fiction, and the Chinese leadership fools itself by thinking otherwise.
Nevertheless, the ancient mind-set still rules. The present regime believes that China is still the “Middle Kingdom” around which all other entities revolve and to which all must pay tribute.
The first thing the new so-called republic did was to industrialize. New factories producing every sort of goods conceivable popped up like mushrooms. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants found work on assembly lines for dirt wages. “Made in China” became an international catchword for cheap plastic doo-dads.
The second thing the new so-called republic did was to apply industry to upgrading its military. The manufacture of weapons, military equipment, and munitions meant additional hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants working assembly lines.
Meanwhile, the new republic sought to enter into profitable trade agreements throughout the world, including the United States. Foreign companies were enticed into re-locating their operations to China to take advantage of cheap labor and low taxes.
Meanwhile, the new republic set about to use its military might to expand its territory. It threatened Taiwan with invasion if the breakaway nation refused to re-join the fold. It claimed all of the South China Sea as its private lake, in order to covet the area’s natural resources, ignoring the claims of its neighbors. It invaded and occupied Tibet in order to establish a buffer zone in South Asia. It forcibly transferred thousands of ethnic Han Chinese to the western province of Xinjiang in order to stifle an independence movement by the indigenous Uyghurs.
To be continued