"Appeasement" and Infant Mentality

Permit me to be brave enough to introduce a new term into the lexicon of international politics.

Liu Xiaobo - this years winner of the Nobel
Peace Prize and ongoing embarassment to China.



Infant mentality.

When one wishes to teach a young child the difference between right and wrong, one must sometimes be cruel to be kind.

Children need to learn very early that they can't always have what they want. They must realise that they need to share things with others, and that sometimes they do things which are wrong - and must suffer the consequences.

These things are instilled into children through a number of methods; not rewarding bad behaviour is important, persistance in seeing punishments and the threat of punishments through to actuality is vital, and the ongoing hope is that they will learn from those around them, rather than fight to do everything in their own, dangerous and destructive way.  

Quite which methods are used to teach these lessons varies from family to family, but the values I mention are necessary for the child to grow to be a caring, responsible and moral person.

The situation which we currently have in the world is very reminiscent of a particularly inspired episode of The Twilight Zone called 'It's a good life', in which adults tiptoe around a spoiled young child who posesses the power of a God - continually telling him how happy they are with him, for fear of suffering his wrath. People die in this episode, and the community lives in continual terror of the childs threats.

China is this monster.



"We are appeasing China, but I don't think it should be all
about trade"  - Wu'er Kaixi, Chinese dissident.



On BBC's Newsnight today, Wu'er Kaixi, one of the student leaders of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre made the comparison between modern day China and Hitler's Germany. Indeed he even brought up Neville Chamberlain's policy of 'appeasement', saying that the world today treats China in much the same way that 1930s England treated Berlin.

While this may be a startling comparison, and I fear one which may have discredited his following words in the eyes of many viewers, his reasoning is sound and he is absolutely correct.

It is important that this way of engaging with China ceases however, and imperative that countries take a much firmer stance with the impetuous state.

With Norway having bravely awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo, China have retaliated in such a way as to make one think that the honour was a declaration of war. They now boast that they have stopped "the vast majority" of countries from attending the ceremony on Friday whereas in actual fact, there are only 19 countries which have declined to attend, for varying reasons, out of the 65 which were invited.

Sir Christopher Hum, Her Majesty's former Ambassador to the People's Republic of China joined Kaixi on Newsnight, saying "the [Chinese] Maths don't add up". In addition to these two, a rather obnoxious lady called Siu Siu Cao added her fragmented views, achieving nothing but appearing argumentative. Between them they talked and talked and kept everything very balanced, in a disturbingly similar way as one might see on CCTV 9 - the Chinese government's state-run English language channel. Although topics were broached which never would be on Chinese TV, the format and ultimate unwillingness to state the disturbing facts remained present.

Kaixi, however did note something which he called 'the Dalai Lama' affect wherein: "If you offend China over a forthcoming visit [of the Dalai Lama], you can actually see a measureable [negative] affect over what happens to trade [in your country] over the next few years".

It is this childish behaviour from China which warrants the term 'infant mentality'. It is not difficult to hear a whining child's voice exclaiming "If you don't do what I want, then I'll do something bad to you!"

Although for many decades, China has longed to have a native winner of the Nobel Prize, now that it has finally happened and was most certainly not to the government's liking, they have decided that they have no respect for the award at all, and will most likely put all records of their previous admiration for it into Orwell's 'memory hole'.

A demonstration in Hong Kong last month

And, like a true child who was told they couldn't have another cookie from the jar, they sneaked up to the shop and bought their own.

The 'Confucious Peace Awards', was hastily dreamt up by the Chinese government as a way of clawing their way into a faux 'Chinese' appreciation of peace. These awards are almost certainly only a way of galvanising further nationalism amongst the masses in an attempt to show their people that, while many don't have enough to eat and suffer from unimaginable hardships, anything 'the West' can do, they can do too (but, as is often the way with the Chinese, usually missing the point entirely in the process).

And even funnier than this immature and laughably petty act? They've already awarded it to Lien Chan, former Taiwan vice president who they said had "built a bridge of peace between the mainland and Taiwan" - which in other words actually means 'helped us to facilitate the gradual and inevitable claiming of the island by the Chinese government'.
Peace indeed.

The awards committee said that the prize was created to "interpret the viewpoints of peace of Chinese [people]"

What a bone chilling thought...

For all Nobel's faults, I still undoubtedly prefer Norway's 'viewpoints' on peace to that, thank you very much.

As Kaixi said on TV earlier while discussing the bullying of other countries by China:

"thats not the conduct of the rest of the world"

Indeed, it's the conduct of a small child who has much to learn, and needs very much to be punished occasionally - not pandered to.

Chinas place on the world stage very closely mirrors the effects of it's own 'one-child' policy.
The country, like the single offspring of it's families, is spoiled, selfish, petty, and greedy.
And the 'West' only encourages it.