No point in arguing with a fearful propaganda machine. I give up. A total complete waste of my time!

As a guy who served Korea this is what I have to say about China.
China must be contained. They do not respect its neighbors sovreign rights. They, for example, want to annex Taiwan and see Koreans as just one of many Chinese ethnicities.
Although there is not much talk of this outside of Korea or outside circles that talk of reunification, there is much reason to believe that if North Korea falls, the Chinese will intervene and take North Korea. This is true if US forces pull out of the Korean peninsular. If the Chinese can get Korea to become its virtual satellite state, it can take advantage of the high tech industry and the ship building industry of Korea and use it to advance itself. A Chinese invasion of South Korea is extremely unlikely for the next 50 years perhaps, but already with the Chinese claims of Korean history being Chinese history, they are perhaps laying groundwork for finding legitimacy in taking North Korea in the event of collapse. This is in fact, one of the reasons why South Korea actually PAYS North Korea to stay alive and is doing all it can to prevent collapse. The Chinese also pay, but its most possible that they do it so that the North Koreans can keep quiet and stop stirring so much chaos in China´s back door.
This sort of move is motivated by their need to get China back to the days of superiority and glory it once enjoyed in the past.
It is hard to explain but this is how it is.
You have to realize that in many Asian countries, the face they show and the intentions they have are very different. The Japanese are most famous when it comes to showing great friendship and hospitality, even when in fact they want to rip your guts out.
It is not fear mongering.
It is not so much the Chinese government that we must fear but rather the people. The Chinese government do not want to be confrontational and actually they want a more rational and diplomatic relationship with foreign countries such as the US, Korea or Japan. But it is the public. encouraged by the progress they have been making as of late which wants China to be far more aggressive. It is a very different situation to which Europe and the US experience. The government is trying to keep a lid on its on people and the people are the ones demanding expansion and aggression to assert itself as a superpower. Actually this part of the argument is stated in the book CHINA RISING... can´t remember who the authors were but they were Chinese.

Schools sending under age students to work
A Sichuan middle school has set up eight-month internships with a company in Guangdong. Many of the students are under 16. Scheme is ostensibly designed to help students pay for school fees. Working 14 hours a day, they make US$ 65 a month, far away from home. Fear of publicity forces company officials to send the kids back home, but that might not last.

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – About 300 Sichuan students—mostly under 16, working 14-hour days (8 am to 11 pm with a lunch break) for 500 yuan (US$ 65) a month, without the right to call home—have been sent back to school before a team of county investigators arrived to look into child labour claims.

A newspaper report said that the Longzheng Connector Component Factory in Dongguan's Shijie Township (Guangdong) bussed out more than 300 Yilong county students after a tip-off from the township labour bureau. But they might not stay in school for long.

According to the South China Morning Post, the students had been working in the factory under an eight-month internship scheme backed by their school, the Dayin Middle School. The scheme is designed to help poor students earn enough money to cover school fees.

A Yilong County Education Bureau official said the team of education and labour department officials went to the factory and found no abuses of the students still working there, but ordered the students back to school because the issue had become public.

“We will let the students study in school [for] at least one year first. If they need to, we may send them to do internships at the factory again next year.” He did not explain the long hours and low pay, half the minimum wage for adults, but simply said that working conditions are decided by the Education Department.

In Guangdong, one of China’s most industrialised provinces, labour shortages have led to high wages. But in the case of Longzheng students’ wages were withheld. In some instances, those who wished to call home could not do so.

China does have laws against child labour, but for work-study programs, there are no specific rules, and no limitations on age, working hours or job description. In Guangdong children as young as 12 end up working in factories.

Yuan Guangyao, Longzheng deputy manager, defended his company. “This internship is a form of cooperation between our company and the school,” he said. “This initiative of having students work here is a win-win strategy for both of us.”

Modern-day slaves are beaten and buried alive as police looks the other way
Freed “slaves” tell their horrific stories. Rescued by relatives they talk about police indifference. Children lured with promises of jobs are kidnapped and forced to work like adults. Factory owners threaten and beat parents who try to rescue their children and those of other parents.

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Zhang Yinlei was lured into slavery with promises of a job at a brick factory. Instead he worked for months seeing his fellow workers beaten to death. Only by accident did his father find out and came to his rescue. His story of enslavement is not unique; it is one of many in 21st Century China, the new land of prosperity and boom times.

Yinlei’s father, Zhang Shanlin, told the South China Morning Post that his son was trapped when he tried to find a job after graduating in March from a vocational school in Zhengzhou (Henan). The boy was forced to work 15 to 16 hours a day and anybody who tried to escape was beaten. Workers “were treated like the dead.”

On April 26 his son and five other workers were almost burned alive when they were forced to move bricks in a searing hot kiln. All six were severely hurt but were locked up in the factory and given no treatment for over a month.

It was only after a client from Hongdong County told police about the injured workers that the owner sent the six to a hospital for treatment. But the police still did not contact the victims' families.

Using a cellphone borrowed from the relative of another patient, Zhang Yinlei called his father who arrived on May 29. In the hospital the factory owner even demanded Mr Zhang pay his son's medical bill. The police instead did nothing.

Since the factory's owner was a village party secretary “he was protected by local officials and police,” Mr Zhang said.

When he went to pick up his son's student identity documents at the brick factory, he saw several dozen workers, including four to five aged around 12 to 14, he said.

Stories like this are not exceptional. Zhou Yong said that he went to work in a brick factory in Hebei province when he was 17; that was seven years ago. He was beaten as soon as he arrived and forced to work 16 hours a day for little food.

He was able to escape and go to the police who simply sent him to a bus station but refused to rescue the other kids at the factory. There were at least 20 other boys working there, malnourished and thin, he said.

Jiu Wenjie was 15 when he went missing in January in Zhengzhou. His parents have been looking for him ever since. His mother Zhang Xiaoying said that she visited hundreds of kilns where she saw children working like adults.

Chai Wei, whose son went missing in April, said he knew of other parents who had rescued about 100 workers since March, including 41 children—one just eight years old. But kiln owners tried their best to intimidate and beat them up in order to chase them away.

The cost of “child slaves”: 17 euros each, better again if mentally retarded
For years there have been groups dedicated to trafficking human beings. The police admits that it knew of factories using child labour, but fails to explain why it did not intervene. Children may have been stolen from other provinces.

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Following the liberation of hundreds of slaves in Shanxi and Henan, a humiliating reality is emerging: in the China of the economic boom, there are groups who have been abducting and selling human beings into forced labour for years. Investigations reveal that the child and adult “slaves” were kidnapped from many provinces. The police has admitted that it has been aware of the problem for years, but failed to intervene.

Zhou Jinghuan in under three years circulated 3 thousand workers, selling them for a mere 170 Yuan (17 Euro each) to brick factories or mines in Henan. In 2006, a report carried by state TV spoke of how human trafficking was widespread in Henan, but this coverage did not result in police intervention.

The television report spoke of Zhou, who “worked” in Zhengzhou and preferred the mentally retarded, easier to circulate and control, “obedient and happy if you give them some wine”: 30% of her merchandise. Those who refuse to be sold are beaten; those who try to escape are forced to knell on broken glass. Those who flee are often found near railway stations, given that they have no money or documents. The report says that the slave trader has been arrested, but fails to speak about the aftermath.

Meanwhile yesterday, Zheng Baigang, director of the Ministry for Public Security admitted that Henan police discovered that child labour was flagrant in brick factories in 2004, following reports filed by the parents of kidnapped children. At the time the police made preliminary investigations, but “stopped” when the factory “owners” fled to nearby Shanxi, because – Zheng explains - “the problem was solved in the province under the instructions of our leaders”. That pushes many to the conclusion that kidnapping and exploiting minors is not a series crime, if the authorities were contended by having “sent away” the perpetrators. Either way it fails to explain why there have been no controls since then.

From information emerging in recent days it appears that human trafficking is widespread. In Henan on June 8th Ji Xiulan a wanted criminal, was arrested. Shanghai Daily reports that she had been hunted for years together with her husband for having trafficked at least 118 babies from Guangxi selling them on to Henan, Hubei and Anhui. She was discovered by chance in March 2003 when the car she was transporting 13 children broke down in Henan.

At least 68 parents have contacted media in Hebei fearing that their disappeared children may be among the slaves of the brick factory.

www.asianews.it

Are $15 dollar watches from Wal-Mart still ok with you when it was assembled by a 12 year old slave? Still got a warm fuzzy feeling about the Chinese market when the government is practicing degentrification?

Hong Kong (AsiaNews) – The bloody repression of the anti-corruption and pro-democracy movement ordered by Deng Xiaoping on June 4, 1989, highlighted problems of corruption and lack of democracy that continued to afflict today’s China. If the Chinese government does not want to fall as a result of the repeated blows of the various autonomous civil rights groups and increasing mass protests it has to repair the damages of the past.

Eighteen years since the Tiananmen massacre civil rights activist and founder of the first free Chinese trade union Han Dongfang expresses a harsh judgment of the current leadership. After years in prison following the Tiananmen massacre, he was “freed for medical reasons” (practically expelling him) to the United States. On his return, border guards confiscated his passport. Stateless and living in Hong Kong, Han today runs the China Labour Bulletin, which features news about the plight of workers in China.

In his commentary on the anniversary of the repression (published here in its entirety), the trade union leader warns President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao that to build an “harmonious society” it is necessary to go back to the beginnings and protect workers first and foremost and guarantee human rights to the entire population.

EIGHTEEN years have passed since the bloody suppression of the 1989 democracy movement in China. Among the most memorable images of that time - alongside the chilling scenes of the dead and injured on the streets of Beijing, and the inspiring vision of the young man in a white shirt standing in front of the tanks - were those of a frail and trembling Deng Xiaoping, the man who ordered the crackdown, at a televised meeting on June 9 with the soldiers and leaders of the People's Liberation Army. This footage revealed another side of the "great man": that of someone haunted by the tragic consequences of his own actions and in desperate search of historical vindication.

Hoping to wash the blood from his hands and calm his troubled soul, Deng needed an explanation for the crackdown - in essence, a justification for wholesale murder - and the mantra he came up with was "safeguarding social stability". Increasingly over the past 18 years, the Chinese government has cited China's spectacular economic development as a way of justifying the crackdown on the 1989 democracy movement, claiming that social stability has been the key to economic growth. This flawed logic has underpinned the authorities' relentless suppression of political dissidents, arrests of labour rights activists, and persecution of civil rights advocates that continues to this day.

In recent years, however, the policy of using terror tactics to maintain a fragile façade of social stability in China has begun to backfire. Eighteen years after the suppression of a democracy movement that was opposed to corruption, corruption has become an incurable illness at the heart of the Communist Party. At the same time, the breakneck pace of economic development has brought about clear and tangible evidence of social disintegration on all sides. As a result, an autonomous civil rights (wei quan) movement has now sprung up and begun to penetrate cities, towns and villages around China. Too many citizens have been adversely affected by the government's corruption-ridden paradigm of growth without democracy, and more and more of them are now fighting back, using the language of rights and rule-of-law as their weapon.

China's post-Tiananmen economic success story has caught the imagination of the world; but in fact, the increasing gap between rich and poor since 1989 has been equally spectacular. Take the reform of state owned enterprises (SOEs), for example, and in particular the creation of the SOE share system that forced workers to pay to become shareholders, since having no shares would mean losing one's "rice bowl." Those without savings even had to borrow to take part in this scheme. The workers knew it was a trap, but one they had no way of avoiding. In the end, the great majority of the reformed enterprises made losses or went bankrupt, and the workers' accumulated life savings simply vanished into thin air. In most cases, the money ended up in the pockets of corrupt enterprise bosses.

Although murmurs of resentment could be heard everywhere, for many years China's workers dared not openly give voice to their anger, largely because of the officially prolonged "June 4 crackdown effect", which was like a sharp sword hanging constantly over their heads. Any organized attempts at protest or resistance were branded as "threats to social stability" and were met with harsh repression. The resultant lack of any effective, organised opposition from the workers left individual SOE bosses free to gradually reshape the entire businesses to their own personal ends.

In effect, the government's post-Tiananmen policies became a protective shield for the wholesale and unopposed transformation of China's public wealth into private assets. In the seven years between 1998 and 2004 alone, 30 million workers were forcibly laid off from SOEs. A huge proportion of them and their families were reduced to a state of permanent poverty, while in the process countless government officials and SOE managers became multi-millionaires.

Deng Xiaoping's hard-line policy of repression in 1989 was a mistake; trying to justify murder and the use of political terror in the name of stability was another mistake; and maintaining that political repression in exchange for rapid economic growth over the past 18 years has been a third mistake. As a result of these major policy errors, the Chinese government lost the golden opportunity that arose in the late 1980s to initiate political reforms and start building a democratic system. And now, two decades later, as the façade of social stability begins to crumble under the weight of growing worker anger and the rise of the civil rights movement, the Party is finding it has no option but to fundamentally reassess its ability to govern and to re-examine the very basis of its legitimacy.

Hence, in an attempt to assuage growing public anger and defuse the mass protests erupting all over China, the country's leaders have been obliged to put forward the goal of creating a "harmonious society." However, it is impossible to create a harmonious society unless one enjoys the trust and confidence of the people. And President Hu and Prime Minister Wen cannot secure such things by fiat or repression: they will have to earn them by actually implementing the "people-oriented" policies that they claim to espouse.

The man who ordered the June 4 crackdown passed away a decade ago, and both China's leadership and the government's socio-economic policies have changed conspicuously since then. But politically, the terror tactics remain in place and the "June 4 crackdown effect" still persists. China's current leadership now needs to make some bold new choices and stop repeating the mistakes of the past. Only thus will they be able to truly establish a "harmonious society" and re-establish the Party's popularity and legitimacy. The great mistakes of the past cannot be undone, but today's leaders could, given sufficient political wisdom and foresight, at least begin to repair the damage. Until that happens, the curtain will remain unclosed on the national tragedy prompted by the events of 18 years ago in Beijing.

www.asianews.it

06/06/2007 10:21
CHINA
The Communist Party is in crises and the government has no more answers
by Willy Lam
Eighteen years after Tiananmen square, the Chinese communist party finds itself in the midst of its worst crises of social credibility. Veterans urge the adoption of a socio-democratic political system, while state press agencies denounce flagrant corruption among communist officials. The leadership responds with fruitless, Maoist style- ideological campaigns.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is undergoing its worst crisis of confidence since the Tiananmen Square crackdown 18 years ago. While President and CCP General Secretary Hu Jintao is currently preoccupied with the means by which to consolidate the power of his faction at the upcoming 17th Party Congress, a loss of faith in the party as well as a dramatic decline in probity and old-style "combat-readiness" has hit the nation's 71 million party members. Yet, even as a number of retired cadres have proposed relatively radical solutions to these woes, such as the suggestion that the CCP gradually transform itself into a Western European-style socialist democratic party (SDP), Hu has instead chosen to implement Maoist-era ideological campaigns to revive the party's fortunes.

Party morale has deteriorated to such a degree that even official mouthpieces have admitted that the quality of CCP members has declined to new lows. The journal Qiushi ("Seeking Truth") noted earlier this month that some within the party "believe in gods and ghosts rather than Marxism-Leninism and they put their faith in personal [connections] rather than the collective." The journal also stated that for an unspecified number of CCP officials and members, "their loyalty regarding the party's nature, goals, programs and road-maps has become attenuated," while others had become "decadent and degenerated, and [have engaged in] corrupt and illegal activities" (Qiushi, May 2007). The recent bullish growth in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets has reinforced the mentality—prevalent among CCP members as well as among the public—of "looking at everything with only money in mind." Moreover, the party's disciplinary and anti-graft offices are investigating a record number of cases in which official funds have been diverted toward "playing the bourses"—the crime allegedly committed by former Shanghai Party Secretary Chen Liangyu and his associates.

President Hu's response to this crisis of faith and confidence has been to recycle ideological movements formulated by his large group of political commissars and propaganda specialists. In 2004 and 2005, cadres of all levels were required to sit through weekly ideological classes on "how to uphold the advanced nature of a Communist." The latest indoctrination sessions have centred on the so-called "education about the Three Consciousness." This is a reference to Hu's dictum that party cadres and members must raise "their consciousness of living in dangerous times, their sense of duty as public servants, and the virtue of thriftiness." While talking to officials in Beijing and the provinces, Hu has stressed that party members must "further boost their awareness of [impending] hardships and dangers" and that they should "exemplify the spirit of 'plain living and hard struggle'" (Xinhua, March 9). Indeed, during his four-and-a-half-year-old administration, Hu has conducted more propaganda campaigns than did former President Jiang Zemin—usually deemed more conservative than Hu—during his 13-year tenure.

Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao have also tried to purify the party by introducing several regulations with regard to moral standards, anti-corruption practices and politically correct behavior. For example, numerous statutes and codes have been issued forbidding the spouses, children and relatives of senior cadres from going into business. Late last month, Wen unveiled yet another set of penalties for cadres and civil servants who have run afoul of not only the law but also commonly accepted moral precepts. According to the new regulations, officials who have failed to render support to their ailing parents, or who have acquired "second wives" will be censured, and in serious cases, sacked (Zhongguo Xinwenshe, April 30). Earlier stipulations had already barred party cadres and civil servants from gambling, visiting nightclubs and bathhouses and worshipping in temples or churches.

The apparent failure of Hu and Wen to improve the quality and rectitude of CCP cadres and members has resulted in bold calls for the party to make a clean break with the past. The retired vice-president of the People's University, Xie Tao, created a stir in the spring when he noted in a party journal that "the CCP's only way out is through [embracing] democratic socialism" of the West European variety. "Only constitutional democracy can fundamentally solve the ruling party's problems of corruption and graft," he wrote in the respected journal Yanhuang Chunqiu [Across the Ages]. "Only democratic socialism can save China." Xie cites Switzerland as a model for a largely egalitarian society with adequate welfare benefits as well as full protection of the rights of workers and farmers (Yanhuang Chunqiu, February 2007). After all, the central plank of the Hu-Wen administration's "putting people first" platform is precisely raising the socioeconomic standards of the country's disadvantaged classes, a goal that has remained illusory so far.

Continues...

In a similar vein, Chairman Mao's one-time secretary Li Rui has openly called for the adoption of Scandinavian-style democratic socialism. Li, one of President Hu's early mentors, said he agreed with late patriarch Deng Xiaoping that most party members were not even sure what socialism meant. "Yet we can be sure of one thing," Li wrote recently. "Socialism cannot do without democracy; and it cannot do without rule of law" (Wenzhai Bao, February 17). Like-minded professors and retired officials have also "resurrected" the sayings of liberal icons such as deceased CCP General Secretary Zhao Ziyang and the former head of the CCP Propaganda Department Lu Dingyi. Articles and talks by Zhao and Lu relating to comprehensive political reform, or at least allowing the people to speak freely, are being circulated on websites or blogs that have eluded the censors thus far.

Xie, Li and other liberal intellectuals have quite a few things in common. First, they are mostly second- and third-generation cadres who joined the CCP much earlier than did either Hu or Wen. While Hu has used draconian methods to prevent the pro-Western views of young or middle-aged intellectuals from emerging into the public sphere for debate, the president is forced to tolerate these occasional outbursts from the Long March veterans. Moreover, these progressive elders are not organized politically. They are not linked with political organizations or non-governmental organizations abroad, thus denying the authorities any pretext to silence them.

Therefore, to stem the tide of "bourgeois liberalization," the propaganda and censorship establishment under senior Politburo member Li Changchun has given carte blanche to the party's "leftists," or remnant Maoists, to attack the likes of Xie and Li Rui. This is despite the fact that Hu and Li Changchun had clashed with the leftists only last year—and used means that included the closing down of a few of their websites—when these arch-conservatives attacked the Hu-Wen leadership for allowing private and foreign capital to purchase state assets and "exploit" Chinese workers. Since Xie's article was released in February, leftist research institutes associated with the former director of the CCP Propaganda Department Deng Liqun have held four conferences to savage Xie for his "wholesale betrayal of Marxism and socialism." The conservatives have also rallied behind prominent individuals, such as the former director of the CCP Organization Department, Zhang Quanjing. In a widely circulated article, Zhang charged that Xie had "openly gone against the state constitution and the party charter." Zhang added that Xie's article had made not only "political mistakes," but also errors not befitting the former professor's status as a senior retired cadre (Gongnong Zhisheng, April 9).Yet, to convince the world of the CCP's pro-reform inclinations, the Hu-Wen team has rushed through various measures in the period leading up to the 17th Congress in the fall. Last month, party and state authorities appointed Professor Wan Gang, a non-CCP member, to serve as the minister of science and technology (Shanghai Daily, April 28). This is the first time since the 1950s that a non-party member has been given a ministerial-level job. The leadership has also elevated several so-called "returnees," or Chinese with Western post-graduate degrees, to top positions. Wan received his doctorate in Germany, and the new Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi studied in London for a few years. Moreover, through calculated leaks to the foreign and Hong Kong media, members of Hu's personal think tanks have suggested the possibility of significant political reforms at the 17th Congress. There has been speculation, for instance, that the size of both the Politburo and the Central Committee would be slightly expanded to accommodate more sectors of the population, especially the fast-rising business community.

Liberal intellectuals who are disappointed by President Hu's perennial foot-dragging on reform point to the fact that a few years before he became the head of the CCP, the then vice-president had demonstrated considerable interest in the socialist democratic party (SDP) model. Hu, who was also the president of the Central Party School at the time, had assembled a team of researchers to study the ideology and organization of a number of European SDPs. A retired party cadre noted that Jiang Zemin, Hu and current Vice President Zeng Qinghong have toyed with the idea of borrowing individual elements of the SDP model. Discussion on this topic among members of official think tanks petered out by 2003, however, and Hu is known to have privately scolded the likes of Xie Tao and Li Rui for "adding confusion to the political climate." Political observers fear that if Hu and his associates remain single-mindedly focused on boosting the political fortunes of their own factions, the largest and richest political party in the world would degenerate into a hodge-podge collection of cabals interested only in power, perks and prerogatives, and little else.(taken from New Century Net del 17 maggio 2007)

www.asianews.it

Another fact that current sinophiles have conveniently forgotten is that Hu JinTao is the former provincial head of Tibet and under his tenure some of the most heinous acts were committed in the name of "social stability". He is a hard-liner in businessman's clothing. With China you must never believe what you see up front. Deception is an artform in China whose prowess in our world is unequalled.

I tend toward the ambivalent when it comes to PDRC. Yes, they could, some day, rise cause problems that could be hard to handle, but not now and not anytime soon.

Folk like to throw around the big numbers of PDRC, how many millions of soldiers and such, but those numbers are meaningless. There is zero logistical infrastructure to allow PDRC to go to any extent expeditionary.

PDRC could build any number of ships with nice sounding stats and if aggressive, it'll just be that much tonnage put to the bottom about as quickly as the orders can be given.

There is no experience in any real naval warfare, outside of individual frigates and destroyers preying on civilian shipping as pirates in the seas bordering China.

The "old guard" in PDRC is very much anti-American in thought and speech in an unthinking knee jerk kind of way but so are France and Germany. Almost to the same degree. Yes the PDRC arms our current enemy in our fights but again, so do european nations.

From my limited perspective, on the outside, looking in, the more prosperous PDRC gets, the less likely the "old guard" will be in holding onto power. And the more closely PDRC economy is tied to US and other western nations, the less likely the PDRC shot callers will be to get stupid.

I have much less trust for most western eruo nations than I do for China.

Originally Posted by Grimmy

I tend toward the ambivalent when it comes to PDRC. Yes, they could, some day, rise cause problems that could be hard to handle, but not now and not anytime soon.

Folk like to throw around the big numbers of PDRC, how many millions of soldiers and such, but those numbers are meaningless. There is zero logistical infrastructure to allow PDRC to go to any extent expeditionary.

PDRC could build any number of ships with nice sounding stats and if aggressive, it'll just be that much tonnage put to the bottom about as quickly as the orders can be given.

There is no experience in any real naval warfare, outside of individual frigates and destroyers preying on civilian shipping as pirates in the seas bordering China.

The "old guard" in PDRC is very much anti-American in thought and speech in an unthinking knee jerk kind of way but so are France and Germany. Almost to the same degree. Yes the PDRC arms our current enemy in our fights but again, so do european nations.

From my limited perspective, on the outside, looking in, the more prosperous PDRC gets, the less likely the "old guard" will be in holding onto power. And the more closely PDRC economy is tied to US and other western nations, the less likely the PDRC shot callers will be to get stupid.

I have much less trust for most western eruo nations than I do for China.

One major difference between western European nations and China is that western European nations do not use violence or threats of it to carry out their will/policies today whereas China does it on a daily basis (to their neighbors too!). Better to deal with a looming threat than to confront a full-fledged one in the future.