Aiming For Hegemon

WONDER WHAT the Chicoms are doing and why? It’s not to hard to figure out, according to William Hawkins. It’s the simple “divide and conquer” strategy that goes all the way back to the Qin dynasty. If you recall the Qin were the chaps who unified China in 221 BCE at the end of the Warring States period. Qin Shi Huang, the chappie buried at the terra-cotta soldiers burial complex near Xian, was the first Qin emperor.

Beijing has adopted a traditional Chinese strategy dating back to the ancient Warring States period. This era, when Qin rose from a weak position within a system of competing powers to unite China in 221 B.C., plays a role in Chinese thinking similar to that of the Founding Fathers in America. In the winter Chinese Journal of International Politics, Wei Zongyou, a professor at the Shanghai International Studies University of Foreign Studies, has described Qin’s strategy as one of "divide and conquer" as it sought to prevent other states from uniting to block its rise as the new, dominant hegemon.

So that’s all right then.

Beijing has been using this strategy to isolate the United States in the six power talks over North Korea, and in stirring up trouble among the thug dictactor trouble-makers throughout the world. And, of course, you haven’t exactly seen the Chinese helping in Iraq.

No doubt we shall see this start to work it way out as the Chinese move northwards into Siberia and penetrate the longest flank in the world, the Russian Empire.

The question is, will the dog hun? It’s one thing to have a strategy as a rising power. It’s another thing to actually become the future hegemon. One thing that the Chinese are a little short of is a surplus of young men. The One Child policy kinda took care of that. You can’t really create an expansionist empire upon an aged and declining population.

But you can certainly try.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Action

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Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

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[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

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Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

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What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
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Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

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Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

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