"Meanwhile, China is helping the world with no strings attached"
"Meanwhile, China is helping the world with no strings attached"
Part I
China together with the Philippines will come out from this pandemic much stronger. If economists predict there is a cycle in the economy, so is the case of pandemic.
It is almost unanimous that China will not only emerge from the ravage of economic recession caused by global pandemic of COVID-19, but will come out even stronger to avoid derailment to its economy. This early China already exhibited signs it has the capacity and the might of a superpower in ably contain the virus. Right now it is donating to no less than 84 countries all at the same time which means they are given for free.
For whatever one would say, China has spent more than the US Marshall Plan when it was manufacturing more than 50 percent of the world’s output. No country has ever done that feat of exceptional economic assistance except for that period when the US tried to save Europe from being overrun by the then Soviet Union in the early ‘50s.
The financial cost China is now spending to help humanity hurdle the crisis if one will add all its expenditures since it implemented the Belt and Road Initiative and the generous loans extended through the newly created Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank that would have exceeded that of the US.
China is doing all these without quid pro quo or in the lingo of the West “without strings attached." Not a single military base has been built, or an alliance created to join their cause. Rather, China is banking on traditional practice of establishing goodwill not of the Machiavellian approach which is anchored on self interest.
The sharing for mankind’s future is indicative that China is looking forward to realizing a dream that is universal for mankind. This can be asserted much that China is observing a totally different parameter in its diplomacy and dealings with other countries. It is parameter not based on ideology or alliance but a return on the basics that mankind have one and the same aspiration, and are living in a single planet.
China knows how the world was geopolitically divided. That it was built on conquest motivated by race, religion or economic interest. That man-made paradigm in turn created an uneven economic development that today has its residual effect on ignorance, hunger, deprivation, poverty, scarcity and unemployment in many areas. Unfortunately, most of the major religions always stand in defense of the vested class represented by the elite and the oligarchy.
China as much as possible tries to reach out to all countries irrespective of religion, race or social system not by away of detente that characterized US-Soviet relations during the Cold War but some kind of rapprochement to cultivate deeper understanding with the West. But it seems the West distances itself. There is in the West a combination of discrimination, envy, feeling of superiority and worst the fear of being economically overtaken. US President Trump accuses that country of being China-centric, a flimsy reason for him to halt funding the WHO.
The attitude of arrogance and superiority is revitalized today by the Trump administration which is an outright rejection of the Christian faith representing the core values and moral ethics of the West. Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism and other religions that originated in the East have closer similarities to our Asian values which are anchored on peace and harmony.
Some scholars even say Christ went on sabbatical leave from the age of 18 to 33 which reason why nothing is written of him during that period. Some say he travelled to Iran, Pakistan, India and Central Asia and there discovered the oriental practice of asceticism, or the practice of severe self-discipline and abstention from all forms indulgence. This prescribes the teachings of the New Testament which in deeper analysis is a deviation from the Old Testament which subscribe to the Jewish practice of an “eye for an eye.”
As one would put it, China may change the political orbit of its thrust to history but it is one of peaceful development. The changes taking place in China is evolving, and dynamically committed to interacting peacefully with the community of nations.
If President Xi emphasis an era of China’s national rejuvenation, this compliments to the revival of the old Chinese saying that “harmony in diversity is a law of nature in the development of all things.” He said, “We should preserve the diversity of the civilizations of different countries and nation; do more to communicate with them, learn from, and borrow from one another; and not to put up barriers, excludes or even displace one another.”
What Christianity teaches is exactly the opposite from the practice of their rulers which is determined to subjugate, enslave and dominate fellowmen. There is no trace in human history that China has conquered or occupied other territories. It is not according to President Xi in the DNA of the China.
Slavery, oppression, colonialism, imperialism and today's most greedy ideology of neoliberalism all represent the ugly scars of Western rapacity. The West has committed many atrocities and inhumanity to man. Murder it seems is the hallmark of western civilization. China has none of these in its more 5000 years of civilization.
Fear of an end to the American empire is fear to white supremacist thinking deeply canalized into their brain. They fear that the end of the Pax Americana would crumble alongside with the superstructure of the Western civilization. Some see it as akin to the collapse of the Roman Empire. They fear the English language as the mother tongue would come to an end and with their residual apparatus about philosophy, music, paintings and culture.
The totality of what represent the American and Anglo-Saxon culture would fade away like dust of history. They see it as akin to the fall of the Western empire like the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks that brought to end the millennium Roman Empire.
The problem is people initially do not understand and refuse to concede that empires come and go. Whether there is war or peaceful transition, it is always accompanied by change of civilization accepted by many as qualitative change of society to a higher level.
The nearest that could be cited as a truly Asian empire was the Mongolian empire. The Mongolian empire was not in the strictest sense an empire with political connotation for right after the death of Genghis Khan no sooner did his empire disintegrate into several independent kingdoms from China, India, Central Asia to the fringes of Europe. The Mongolian empire was personality-oriented like the Greek empire that faded fast after the death of Alexander the Great. The Manchu dynasty of China never openly identified itself as rooted with the Mongol Empire.
As backdrop, Western historians fear to acknowledge that a break in the continuity of tyranny and dominance of the white men represented by the US. The US fear the rejuvenation of China will give mankind a chance to indict them for enslaving humanity that ensued in the building of their empires that brought the greatest and untold misery to mankind.