Kitty (guest) 12 Jan 2011 04:07
I'm going to be upfront and honest here. I'm a college student studying East Asia and International Leadership in college. I've always loved the culture and the history of China and I've wanted to be a foreign relations officer that deals with them for a while. But today in class, suddenly this idea of the China "threat" was presented to me. It was the idea that China was going to either a) slowly overtake the West and use the US as a puppet on a string by holding all that debt over our heads, or b) outright attack us with the policy of mutually assured destruction. Our professor didn't go into great detail about it, but when I got back to my room I googled it and I found a lot of stuff I didn't want to see. I guess you could call me biased in my belief that China would never attack us, but logically (for lack of a better example), why would a loan shark wipe out their biggest debtor? Why would a merchant wipe out their best consumers? Also I know people from China and people who have studied abroad in China, and they all passionately proclaim the same thing: China loves the American people. They feel fortunate that we are one of the few countries who has put such effort into having a diplomatic relationship with them, and they are excited that many of our young people are starting to become interested in China. So this brings another point. Like any government, even a Communist one, the leaders of China are eager to keep their people happy. So if their people are on wonderful terms with our people, would China really risk attacking us, when many Chinese citizens have friends, significant others, and even family living here?
Or I could be totally misled about all of this. The problem with teaching critical thinking; people like me start to criticize their own thinking and get lost in a downward spiral about any and everything. So what I'm really asking here is…. Opinions? Thoughts? You're all educated people from what I've seen, not the nuts that overpopulate the internet, so I figured this would be a good place to reach out for responses. My father was in the military for 20+ years and lived through the Cuban Missile Crises, and he describes our relations with China as "two feuding siblings who talk big and pinch each other when Mom isn't looking, but who have a 1 in a million chance of actually damaging each other". He's not really a good source for the political atmosphere with China, but considering he experienced the Cuban Missile Crises, I'd think he would know the difference between a dangerous diplomatic situation and one that's only a little tense… Right?
Again, you all can pass this off as the over-tired ramblings of a brain-fried college student (which it probably is), but I'd be interested in responses and opinions from the group of educated people that I've encountered on this site. I admire you guys already because thankfully my 12-year-old niece found your site before she became too traumatized from the 2012 hype, so I trust you guys to give me honest and thought out opinions.