Re: China- Avoiding the Lime Light

[yellow knife]

Member states of the World Trade Organization
From Wikipedia,

The original member states of the World Trade Organization are the parties to the GATT after ratifying the Uruguay Round Agreements,[1] and the European Communities. They obtained this status at the entry into force on 1 January 1995 or upon their date of ratification. All other members have joined the organization as a result of negotiation, and membership consists of a balance of rights and obligations.[2] The process of becoming a World Trade Organization (WTO) member is unique to each applicant country, and the terms of accession are dependent upon the country's stage of economic development and the current trade regime.[3]

As is typical of WTO procedures, an offer of accession is only given once consensus is reached among interested parties.[4] The process takes about five years, on average, but it can take some countries almost a decade if the country is less than fully committed to the process, or if political issues interfere. The shortest accession negotiation was that of Kyrgyzstan, lasting 2 years and 10 months. The longest were that of Russia, lasting 19 years and 2 months,[5] Vanuatu, lasting 17 years and 1 month,[6] and China, lasting 15 years and 5 months.[7]

As of 2007, WTO member states represented 96.4% of global trade and 96.7% of global GDP.[8] Iran, followed by Algeria, are the economies with the largest GDP and trade outside the WTO, using 2005 dat

[yellow knife]

A world map of WTO participation:
Green- Members
Blue- Members, dually represented with the European Union
Yellow-Observers
Red- Non-member

[yellow knife]

China and Sri Lanka share many common things.. One unique feature of China is , even 4000 years ago, China was like it is today..
even before 4000 years ago China was a civilized nation.

As per Henry Kissinger, many civilizations have their own myths about the beginning of their Civilization. Rome would talk about Roma and Wolf mother. We at Sri Lanka would talk about Sinhabahu , but for China there is no beginning of the Civilization. Its Civilized from the days un- known.

Few common factors between Chinese and Sri Lankan history are
Both nations never wanted to invade another nation and create empires.. Even small nations like Macedonia or Japan wanted to capture and invade other states. But neither China no SL ever wanted to invade other nations.

Both nations had no interest in naval forces. During Ming dynasty a navy commander by the name of Admiral Zheng He explored many countries. ( 1405-1433). In all countries he visited he gave gifts to the State heads and described about the Greatness of China. Yet other than bringing back the gifts from respective countries and inviting such rulers to visit China no aggressive invading efforts were done.


Henry Kissinger says today American exceptionalism is missionary. It holds that the United States has an obligation to spread its values to every part of the world. ( Preface xiv -Henry Kissinger on China )

China never wanted to make other countries Buddhists or followers of Confucius.

[Hybrid]

Like any dynasty or world empire from the time of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iraq (Babylon), Persia, Rome and the Anglo-American dual power, each dynasty is transcient and will eventually lose its stronghold.

China is also one.
Their existence for these millennials of time are due to the clutches of rule as has been highlighted in many of the posts under this thread.

However, China's demise will be their own progress or sheer population explosion. The population explosion may give them more life.

[WasteofTime]

http://www.scienceinquran.com/book/chapter%208.pdf

Like any dynasty or world empire from the time of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iraq (Babylon), Persia, Rome and the Anglo-American dual power, each dynasty is transcient and will eventually lose its stronghold.

China is also one.
Their existence for these millennials of time are due to the clutches of rule as has been highlighted in many of the posts under this thread.

However, China's demise will be their own progress or sheer population explosion. The population explosion may give them more life.

[yellow knife]

China was humiliated and bullied by all powerful nations since 1830s. China struggled to get Wealth and Power.



In this process by now we can accept they have succeeded. However there is one trait of Chinese Power that is not using the power to harass, humiliate or bully others. Buddhism and Confucius may be the cause of that.

Even in Sri Lankan history the Chinese once captured and took a Sinhala King alive to China after the Sinhala King, Mihindu the Fifth ill treated a Chinese envoy. Even after capturing the King, China never wanted to make SL a colony of Chinese .

All other nations want to impose their thinking, culture and religion on others after gaining economic wealth. Thus Sri Lanka may soon have to implement Federal System as Provincial Councils were created after infamous India-Lanka pact in 1987.

However before discussing about these relationships let me first discuss on how China failed , what efforts done to regain Wealth and Power .

China after Zhu Rongji became the real economic power house. So lets go back to Chinese history.

[HUNTER]

We are reading!
Keep going YK!

(Oh it progressing like a bed time story of heros and dragons...!! Lot to learn in a very interesting way)

[yellow knife]

Ok...thanx

In China , there is a nice popular statement.

Neiyou waihuan

内忧外患
nèi yōu wài huàn
internal trouble and outside aggression (idiom); in a mess both domestically and abroad


That is " Anxiety within, calamity without".. ( this is the first time I came to know without is the opposite of within , contrast to the use of " without you " etc..)

It can be expressed nicely with a popular Sinhala term

අන්තෝ ජටා බහී ජටා ( අතුලත් ගැට පිටත් ගැට )
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So many leaders of China faced this situation when dealing with the world. China is too big to control within . It is also too big to guard the borders of the state. Dynasties, National Government, Communist government all face the same issue.

[yellow knife]

Now about borders of China

As the most populous country in the world and third largest in area, China also has the largest number of neighbours (14) sharing its 22,000km land borders namely: North Korea, Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam

[yellow knife]

According to the canonical versions of Chinese history , 1842 is year one.

Every high school student preparing to take the intensely competitive and dreaded college entrance examination is now required to memorize the official national narrative that divides Chinese history neatly into pre-Opium war and Post-Opium war periods.

Of course the Opium war did play a cirical role in drawing a line between past and future and also how the country should survive and acquire Wealth and Power.

Regarding Opium War one best thing is to watch the movie by the same name. Yet for those who don't have time lets talk about Opium War that humiliated China.

[yellow knife]

There were two opium wars and China was humiliated in both . We can't use the term China was defeated as the dynasty and the kingdom remain untouched. But the ports and island Hong Kong was acquired by British.



Initially British who controlled the biggest empire were afraid to conquer China as China represent unbroken 4000 year old history. Chinese were the first to innovate and use gun powder. Yet unlike other Chinese innovation of gun powder was limited to festival crackers.

China was the biggest market for Britain. As British factory owners said if a China man reduce the arm length of a shirt by one inch 30 British garment factories have to close down.

Yet China was self-sufficient and the trade account of British Empire was always losing to China. British who got addicted to tea always spent its earning on Chinese tea. Those days no other nation produced tea.


Have a tea break with FLCH.N0000
http://forum.lankaninvestor.com/t6361-flch-n0000-f-l-c-holdings-plc?highlight=flch+n0000

[yellow knife]

So the British came with two headed strategies

1. Plant tea in its colones... ( so we hold FLCH, TPL, ELPL, BOPL etc thanks to that strategy)

2. Get Chinese addict to Opium.

British produced opium in India and exported that to China.

[yellow knife]

Chinese got so much addicted to Opium that almost 20 million out of 400 Million country became addicted and British now found that their trading account in surpluses even after China trading.

[yellow knife]

Chinese emperor of Qing Dynasty offered the job to his army commander Lin Zexu to get rid of this Monster which make his country the Sleeping Giant. Lin Zexu initially succeeded and later found that Opium War is lost. He was out-lawed by the emperor after handing over Hong Kong to British.

[yellow knife]

Lin Zexu while walking off from the Kingdom of Qing Dynasty sent a globe as a present to the king and remind that there are many powerful nations in the world and that " we the Civilized have a lot to learn from the Barbarians" who mocked us.



Lin Zexu



He insist on learning from the Powerful nations. He insisted learning English, wearing the comfortable and efficient clothes of British, to learn their cuisine, to follow their education and to really find out why China really lost to a small number of Soldiers who come from a far away island which is smaller than a province of China ?

[yellow knife]

Even though today we hear a lot about money laundering , of course that was the main purpose of some banks then.

Better I quote directly

Source : https://philebersole.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/hsbcs-history-and-the-original-drug-cartel/

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HSBC — formerly the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation … is today one of the world’s largest banking groups.  But it began with maritime business and the opium trade. … …

Opium made up 70 percent of maritime freight from India to China, where it was sold to the Chinese by British compradores, despite all efforts by the Chinese authorities to stop it.

Sutherland understood that the time was right for a commercial bank.  In 1865 he and a few others founded the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.  The board …  included the remarkable Thomas Dent, founder of Dent & Co

In 1839 a senior Chinese government official, Lin Zexu, known for his competence and moral standing, issued a warrant for Dent’s arrest in an attempt to close his warehouses, which infringed the Chinese ban on opium.  That helped trigger the first opium war, which ended in August 1842 with the unequal treaty of Nanking.

With this I will end on Opium War , the beginning of humiliation of China, yet for young people its better to study the subject in detail. This movie will be really useful. At the same time remember it is not a random event that even in SL that the government had to depend heavily on Tobacco and Alcohol for its revenue in each budget. Just argue yourself , if we were never been a part of British would we smoke this much to pay tax.. At the same time remember when we were talking about South Korea, I said British never started a factory in any of its colonies but large estates of plantations.



this movie is freely available in youtube.

[HAL9000]

Thank for the great posts !

[කිත්සිරි ද සිල්වා]

Snowden is correct then.
( What others do, seemingly legal are more worrying than the much hyped illegal stuffs).  
Thanks YK.  
(We are reading / learning quite a lot here).

Even though today we hear a lot about money laundering , of course that was the main purpose of some banks then.  

[yellow knife]

One serious weakness among us Sri Lankans is we don't have serious intellectuals to study seriously on economics, military etc with patriotic view. Those who become professionals are free to work in any place on behalf of anyone at a fee. Yet that is not the way Patriotic Intellectuals behave.

Along with the humiliating defeat Chinese Patriotic Intellectuals started to seriously study the reasons for their failure. For generations intellectual meant some one who by-hearten Confucius style books. Now they are eyeing outside and studying the real world. The big economic power houses like England, France, Germany , US are their subject matters.

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Wei Yuan is one such writer who could speak English and serving under Lin Zexu . He interrogated a captured British surveyor Captain Peter Anstruther   and he drafted a report " A Briefing of England " and he boldly mentioned.
" England neither produce nor consume opium, but rather by enjoying the profits of opium smoking, leads the West in terms of Wealth and Power "

Wei was assisting Lin to develop strategies like buying and installing of foreign bought artillery to safeguard Canton from British ships.

Using barbarian weapons, techniques , machines and developing barbarians relationship to fight other barbarians were Wei's thinking.

Wei Yuan: Study Them, Master Them, and Defeat Them!

http://history.cultural-china.com/en/50History5504.html

[yellow knife]

Feng Guifen is another writer who came up with  " Self Strengthening" contrast to Weis views.

Qing Dynasty was happy with this new concept. They strengthened themselves and soon made over estimates. Armed with Kung Fu and other traditional self strengthening the Chinese took hostage of a small Anglo-French negotiating party.

For the first time Anglo-French joint army of 3500 soldiers entered Beijing almost unopposed and found that negotiating team was tortured and 19 dead.

West wanted to retaliate and to hurt the pride of Chinese Dynasty. They destroyed the most valued Yuanmingyuan garden.

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Feng Guifen
Feng Guifen was a scholar during the Qing Dynasty that was a strong contributor to the philosophy of the Self-Strengthening Movement undertaken in the late 19th century. Wikipedia
Born: 1809, Wu County
Died: May 28, 1874, Suzhou, China

[කිත්සිරි ද සිල්වා]

Interesting observation and I endorse too.
(I have said this before, the so-called professionals have failed us).

What could be the reasons for the dearth of such people,

1 - Our looking galss,
2 - Education system,
3 - (So-called) Think Tanks are full of Colombians (who only believe the villages folks are frog in the well because they have not seen an Opera singer or Enriquo making a fool of himself on stage),
4 - Religious orientation and leave all to past Karma,
5 - any others ?

One serious weakness among us Sri Lankans is we don't have serious intellectuals to study seriously on economics, military etc with patriotic view. Those who become professionals are free to work in any place on behalf of anyone at a fee. Yet that is not the way Patriotic Intellectuals behave.  

[yellow knife]

While agreeing on all you mentioned I suggest to postpone discussing on above until we ourselves study as much as possible...

[yellow knife]

Destruction of " Garden of Perfect Brightness" or Yuang Ming Yuan of Beijing is local tourist attraction in China. It is not much popular among foreign tourists to China. Each day Chinese visit this once Perfect Garden to estimate themselves to see what will happen to a country if it fails to have economic power and how the big economic powers humiliate them.

[yellow knife]

[yellow knife]

For those who prefer to do a detail study.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30810596

The Palace of Shame That makes China Angry