WikiLeaks: Secret Cables Show Growing U.S. Concern Over China
The People’s Republic of China constantly warns against any return to “Cold War thinking” as inappropriate because Beijing is committed to a “peaceful rise” that does not threaten the interests of any other country. In a joint appearance with Chinese President Hu Jintao at the G20 summit in South Korea on Nov. 11, President Barack Obama seemed to agree, saying, “The U.S.-China relationship I think has become stronger over the last several years.” State Department cables released by WikiLeaks reveal, however, a competition for influence between the U.S. and PRC in strategic areas very reminiscent of Cold War intrigue with the Soviet Union.
A Feb. 23, 2010, cable from Johnnie Carson, asst. secretary of state for African Affairs, reported:
China is a very aggressive and pernicious economic competitor with no morals. … There are trip wires for the United States when it comes to China. Is China developing a blue water navy?
Have they signed military base agreements? Are they training armies? Have they developed intelligence operations? Once these areas start developing then the U.S. will start worrying.
A cable from U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Michael Ranneberger sent six days earlier indicates it is time to start worrying. Ranneberger reports:
China is also providing weapons to the GOK [Government of Kenya] in support of its Somalia policies and increasing their involvement with the Kenyan National Security and Intelligence Service.
As in other parts of Africa, Beijing’s motive is finding and exporting energy and mineral resources back home to power Chinese industry. “The China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC) is drilling for oil in the Isiolo region. China may be a potential partner in the development of the new mega-port at Lamu,” writes Ranneberger. Furthermore, “Kenya’s leadership may be tempted to move ever closer to China in an effort to shield itself from Western, and principally U.S, pressure to reform.”
China’s involvement with the brutal regimes of Sudan and Zimbabwe, noted by Carson, is based on oil and minerals, respectively. And as Beijing adds Africa to the Middle East as a source of raw materials, its need for a “blue water navy” will increase. As the Pentagon’s 2010 annual report on China stated, “Civilian leaders, PLA Navy officials, government writings, and PLA journals have argued that China’s economic and political power is contingent upon access to and use of the sea, and that a strong navy is required to safeguard such access.” Chinese warships have been deployed off the Somalia coast to combat piracy.
The willingness of Beijing to deal with dictators, war criminals, and corrupt regimes has proven advantageous. The initial response of the U.S. to increasing Chinese activity in Africa was to propose cooperation. Beijing was not interested, and most African governments have been cool. A Feb. 11, 2010, cable from U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman reported:
African countries principally fear that the U.S. and other Western countries will use trilateral cooperation to try to attach governance conditions to Chinese development. [South African Minister Plenipotentiary Dave] Malcolmson echoed [Kenyan Ambassador to China Julius Ole] Sunkuli’s comment that African countries also fear losing their bargaining power. China’s emergence in Africa as a counterbalance to U.S. and European donors has been very positive for Africa by creating “competition” and giving African countries options.
Africa is not the only place where Chinese actions have sent up warning flags. A May 13, 2008, memo from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice complains:
We have demarched China repeatedly on its conventional arms transfers to Iran, urging Beijing to stop these transfers due to unacceptably high risk that such weapons would be diverted to militants and terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere. Beijing has typically responded by asserting that its sales are in accordance with international law, that it requires end-users to sign agreements pledging not to retransfer the weapons.
Rice finds Beijing’s argument “disingenuous.” The WikiLeaks documents also contain numerous references to China’s growing cyber warfare capability, and the fears of other countries about Beijing’s aggressive behavior.
A March 23, 2009 memo, on a meeting between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd expresses hope that China can be integrated into the international community. But Rudd said they should be
…preparing to deploy force if everything goes wrong. The Australian intelligence community keeps a close watch on China’s military modernization, and indicated the forthcoming Australian Defense White Paper’s focus on naval capability is a response to China’s growing ability to project force.
In July, when WikiLeaks exposed U.S. concern for support of the Taliban by elements of the Pakistan military and intelligence services, China reasserted its “all weather friendship” with Islamabad. Pakistan is armed primarily with Chinese weapons and Beijing has aided Pakistan’s missile and fighter aircraft programs to forge strong bonds with its military. Beijing has built port facilities at Gadwar and several airfields which could be available for Chinese use.
The revealed cables indicate a State Department more worried about China’s rise than President Obama has shown in public. Last summer was marked by a series of diplomatic clashes along the Pacific Rim backed by shows of air and naval force by both China and the U.S. The American initiatives, particularly in Southeast Asia, were led by Secretary Clinton, whereas Obama seemed reluctant to send a carrier group into the Yellow Sea until December in response to repeated North Korean provocations and against Chinese protests. To the extent that WikiLeaks draws public attention to Chinese ambitions, it should strengthen Clinton in administration debates over policy.
For its part, Beijing blocked internet access to WikiLeaks documents. An editorial in the Communist Party newspaper Global Times asked whether there might be a “tacit understanding between the website and the U.S. government.” It then states, “Countries like China … must have a line of defense against a hurtful information campaign.”
The US ought to be more than concerned over China. China is going to be the Enemy in the future, and one day we will have to slug it out with the communists. We ought to prepare for that war, buy all the F-22s we can … but that would require an intelligent leadership with c.o.jones.
That we lack.
What the hell happened to the United States of America?
China is spreading into areas that will serve its national interests. We should do the same. Do we really have an national interest in places like Zimbabwe or Sudan? Not at all. Kenya, though, is another story. It has some strategically placed ports and has porbably the only semi-stable black African government next to the explosive Horn of Africa. We should not take this country for granted and should do everything in our power to keep it within our sphere of influence.
As for other parts of the world, China may be branching out simply to obtain additional vital natural resources for its growing economy, rather than trying to spread its brand of communism. This is not an idealogical play here. China is expanding to keep its one billion plus people fed and in business, not to spread its form of government elsewhere.
We should be offsetting this Chinese expansion by developing our own natural resources, both on land and off our coasts, as well as building a lot more nuclear energy plants all over the country. If we did that, it would go a long way from enabling us to break ties with a lot of the corrupt dictators in the Middle East we now have to stand by simply to obtain the oil we need to fuel our industry and our cars. The best weapon we could have in fighting the Chinese is by being more self-sufficient. But the insane environmentalists would rather see us destroyed by China rather than be free of her. Pity we don’t have a president who takes energy independence seriously. Forget the stupid and inefficient windmills and solar panels. Time to show China we don’t need a lot of the countries they are trying to go after.
Does this surprise anyone? Their “fearless” leader even said a few years ago that the eventual goal of china is to build up their military and attack the US. But congress and corporate America simply ignored the threat/warning because there was too much money to be made.
If it does come down to a war with china, every corporate CEO,CFO, board of directors and members of congress need to be forefully suited up and sent to the front lines.
Wouldn’t it be funny if a large percentage of those ‘unregistered commercial aircraft’ were counterfeit aircraft made in China? China has been counterfeiting everything they could get their hands on for decades.
This ‘Wikileaks’ crap is nothing more than tabloid journalism. If they really had any bona fide ‘secrets’, they would embarrass the Obama Regime by posting his high school and college grades, essays and attendance records. (Yea; I know; there aren’t any essays.) And a certified copy of his birth certificate. And this would prove the claims that he really is the dunce we have been calling him for years. (And if he was certified born in Kenya? Man, what fun!)
So far, the garbage that has been published sounds like any ordinary MSM, Left Wing Kook ‘news’; Nothing but immature conjecture and fantasy.
There were always three major players in the cold war, now one’s changed it’s name, one’s changed it’s tactics and one’s elected a leader who’s heart and mind are on the side of the other two. Guess which is which?
1. Tim Ackerman
What the hell happened to the United States of America?
See this trailer for AGENDA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH8LkIqu1c8
Thanks for the link. Very interesting video.
Gee,just look at the countries we are currently “at war”with and then look at the countries that our government tells us are terrorist “hotspots” and then connect the dots between them. You will find it encircles a certain country.
The Chinese Government is quite sophisticated, and no way would it wage
any war with the West. But it could take control over trade and resources? However, in last years address to Congress, State
of the Nation,(?) the US President, stated the US of A didn’t want to be out competed by Europe and China in clean energy. When your economy recovers you’ll be OK.
China is one of the overseas investors in NSW electricity supply that the NSW government has just sold out or privatised, much to the horror of the State’s citizens already faced with 35% increase in domestic electricity supplies of late. And I don’t think they will be signing
any carbon emissions agreement, like Japan, as thought up in Mexico.
FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE: PUTIN, WIKILEAKS AND JULIAN ASSANGE
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Still waiting for a revelation from the Wikileaks document dump…
Anyone who hasn’t been leary of China for the last decade, or thought Pakistan or Saudi Arabia’s efforts to stop global terrorism are sincere needs to get their head checked.