Tuesday, May 01, 2007

To answer Hans Morgenthau

I strongly agree with Hans Morgenthau about Chinese military is mainly defensive in nature. Of course, there maybe offensive diplomatic language about Taiwan because Chinese think Taiwan is a domestic issue.But I really think Taiwan issue is the only one that chinese government announce that it will not give up " military might".

I want state three points here:

First, it is a common sense that a healthy and normal individual can not only grow with increasing flesh but with no growth of bones. China's military budget grows by 14-18% everyyear with the rapid growth of economics.

Second, China was a continental power countries in history. Great Wall was built over 2000 years ago to defend its territory from Mongolian and Tujue minority nationality. The politics and diplomacy in China Empire in the history was based on continental prosperousness rather than maritime prosperousness. USSR former Navy General Admiral Sergey G. Gorshkov thinks that navy is the essential tool for any empire in history to expand politlical and diplomatic influence. But that is not true for China. The only one historical issue for chinese maritime activity is Zhenghe , a chinese mariner , who sent their marine into Africa with trading and culutual exchange. Until 1860-1870, China began to build navy, Li hongzhang and Zuo zongtang, the chief administrator of Qing Dynasty built a weak navy to defend itself against aggressive Japan.

Third, China has ten different countries in its boundary. Geographic character is the main obstacle for chinese to focus all attention on maritime development. It is impossible for chinese to practice intensive strategy like Great Britain and the United States.

Of course, security dillema happens in East Asia when China began military modernization. So for chinese, I think military transparency and military coopeation like Thousand-ship Navy may be two good ways to settle the doubts.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yes but buying and building so called "floating casino's" is hardly transparent!