Balaurul galben din rasarit isi inalta capul …

by Amy Joy Hess

China has growled and told the United States to back off regarding tensions in the South China Sea, accusing the US of increasing trouble between China and countries like Vietnam and the Philippines. In response, the United States has responded “No. You’re The Problem.”

This weekend at an ASEAN meeting in Burma, the United States proposed that China voluntarily freeze its controversial activities in the South China Sea in order to diffuse tensions in the region. China has been stepping on toes, reasserting itself in disputed islands and moving oil rigs into disputed waters. Yet, rather than backing off, China has criticized the U.S. for poking its nose into other peoples’ business.

“We’re not the ones that are

fomenting instability there (South China Sea),” State Department spokesman Marie Harf responded to China’s complaint. “It’s the aggressive actions the Chinese have taken that are doing so. Everything we are doing is designed to lower tension, to get people to resolve their differences diplomatically, and not through coercive or destabilizing measures, like we’ve seen Chinese take increasingly over the past several months,” said Harf.

In May, China placed a deep-sea oil rig off the coast of the Paracel Islands in disputed waters claimed by both China and Vietnam, a decision that raised some ire in Hanoi. China has also made it difficult for the Philippines to bring in new troops to the Second Thomas Shoal, a part of the Spratly Islands off the west coast of the Philippines. China claims the islands, but so do a variety of other nations. The Second Thomas Shoal is within 200 nautical miles of the Philippines, but China won’t back off. During the past several years Chinese ships have harassed Filipino mariners and naval personnel trying to get to and from the shoal.

“What they do is they block the provisions that would be delivered to us, so that we don’t have food to eat and we don’t have supplies or even water,” said Lt. Earl Pama, commanding officer of the ship the Sierra Madre.

China has also aggravated the Philippines by reclaiming land and allegedly building an airstrip on Johnson South Reef. China has reportedly started doing work on several other disputed reefs in the Spratly’s chain.

China’s brash moves have caused dissension in the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), but no single country has made an uproar, preferring to maintain fairly calm relations with rude but powerful China. The United States’ meddling at the recent meeting in Burma therefore earned some griping from China, which accused the U.S. of creating “chaos” in the Middle East and urged America to keep its opinions to itself regarding the South China Sea.

The ASEAN regional forum involved a total of 27 countries, including China, Japan, Russia, India, and Australia. The United States did not confer with the ASEAN nations before offering its proposal for China to restrain itself, but the ASEAN secretary-general Le Luong Minh offered support for the U.S. position. In 2002, ASEAN and China signed the Declaration of Conduct (DOC), an agreement to exercise self-restraint in order to prevent the escalation of tensions in the region. “This clearly shows that the essence of the proposal of the U.S. is already reflected in the DOC,” Minh said.

Regardless, experts have expressed little hope that China will stop its aggression. China does what it wants to do, and the United States’ influence in the region has deteriorated.

Pavin Chachavalpangpun, an associate professor at Japan’s Kyoto University Center for Southeast Asian Studies, argues that China will continue its bullying in the South China Sea. “What I’m trying to say is that, even though the US has come out firmly in regard to resolving South China Sea [disputes], we’ve seen ASEAN, in recent years, sliding into the warm, embracing arms of China to the point that, even as a regional organization, [it] has been reluctant to deal with this issue perhaps because of the interest between each individual ASEAN country with China in terms of its own political interest to the point that this interest has eclipsed regional interests,” said Pavin.

Chinese Christianity
China is well-known for its tendency to ignore the rights of others to benefit the communist state. The people of Tibet and Taiwan are thoroughly familiar with China’s control issues, as are China’s Christians.

Recently, officials in the Zhejiang province of China have been removing crosses from churches, calling them, “building code violations.” The cross at Longgang Township Gratitude Church in Wenzhou was taken down recently as church members gathered nearby, praying and sobbing. Wenzhou has a significant Christian population, so much so it has been called “China’s Jerusalem.” Efforts to remove a cross from a church in Pingyang county in July ended with riots. “We did not want them to get close, so we joined up to stop them getting in, but they came at us and beat us,” a protester told Reuters.

There were an estimated 58 million Protestant Christians in China in 2011 and 9 million Catholics in 2010, according to Pew Research, and Christianity continues to spread in the atheistic nation. In fact, Christianity is having such a widespread influence, the Chinese government has decided to create its own version of Christianity to keep the religion under state control. Rather than fighting Christianity head-on, the government is developing a socialistic version of the Christian faith for popular consumption, one that makes sure Communist ideals are mixed with the message.

“The construction of Chinese Christian theology should adapt to China’s national condition,” said senior religious affairs official Wang Zuoan, according to China Daily. The danger, of course, is that unwitting Chinese will receive a watered-down, dilute version of the Gospel, one that removes the true power of God’s Word and replaces it with corrupted communist philosophy.

Whether building on disputed islands or creating its own version of Christian theology, the Chinese state has long held the attitude it can do whatever it wants to do — and world powers like the United States won’t hold it back.

(From KI Research )

Related Links

China Plans Its Own ‘Christian Theology’
— BBC News
Standoff in The South China Sea
— CNN
China Crackdown Against Christianity: Removes Church Cross, Cites Building Code Violation
— International Business Times
US Says China, Not Washington, Responsible for South China Sea Tensions
— Voice of America
U.S. To Monitor South China Sea For De-Escalation After China Rebuff
— Reuters
China rebuffs U.S. efforts on South China Sea tensions
— Reuters

Categories: Articole de interes general