"But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under
your feet;" and I am treading softly.
Yes, it does make sense to review the past. As Professor Paul
Eidelberg says, "When I visited China, I learned that the Chinese word
for China means "center of the universe."
Now, you can't say of today's China, " Things fall apart, the centre
cannot hold" etc. etc.
Whilst not reviling any of China's past ( Professor Eidelberg doesn't
talk about it ( China's past) in the article I am referring to and
can't find at the moment ) but he does however show a lot of
animosity towards China for China being the only nation emerging in
today's world, with the potential of making even greater strides in
the coming decades if not centuries, to challenge Western dominance in
the near future. That's real not just potential fear.
Once upon a time in this world my best friend was was a gentleman by
the name Dr. Michael Tunkel, a Lithuanian Jew (of Lithuanian parents)
who was born and bred in Harbin, China which he left in 1950 at the
age of 34 - after Mao & the Communists took over – as a result of
which they lost their business and he emigrated to Israel. He
emigrated to Sweden in 1983 and I met him in 1995. from which point
on until about nine months before he passed away at the age of 92, I
saw him at least two to three times a week. He taught me a lot. He
played Chinese piano. He said that unlike us normal mortals, the
Chinese people have a sixth sense in their hands ,greater dexterity
of the hand - a more developed tactile sense... He was a great admirer
of Mao and the Chinese people with special emphasis on the fact that
Mao united China. He was also a devoted hardliner fan of Vladimir
Jabotinsky.
I'm talking about the China that produced Confucius and Li Po, the
same China that the United States owes four trillion dollars.
We are talking about the same China, the same continuum, many epochs
of development, a strong foundation, the more recent China of which
Gavin Menzies, wrote these two books:
"1421 The Year China Discovered the World"
"1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and
Ignited the Renaissance."
The China of which one of my English teachers in secondary school,
Major A.T. Von S. Bradshaw ( an Englishman ) used to spend the first
few minutes of every English Literature lesson lecturing us about and
telling us – believe it or not , this was around 1962 – that "the
future belongs to China!"
Now of course we are talking about the Great China in the same breath
that we are talking about Christopher Columbus' discovery of America
in 1492, the same year that the Jews suffered the Inquisition and all
those who refused to convert to Isabella's religion were expelled from
Spain and many found refuge in Turkey and what is now the latest
greatest newcomer, to the world stage, the United States.
You are the one raking up not a glorious past, but one riddled with
Chinese ills.
I do have Chinese friends and relatives here – and friendship is
something especially of great value to a person from China, something
to be cultivated, so I had better pay much more attention to them.....
I think that the people relationships also have to be developed , not
just between Israel and the Arabs...
On Sep 8, 4:45 am, kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu> wrote:
> dear cornelius
> i wonder if it makes much sense to go back to the past to evaluate where
> a country is now.
> think of japan just 70 years ago, compared with now?
> and which china, in the past, are we to celebrate? the ming dynasty, the
> long long feudal periods, the rise of chang kai shek and incipient
> modernism, the communist revolution, the american collusion and mao's
> great march, the cultural revolution, the great leap forward, and the
> repression, the backward anti-intellectualism that killed a generation
> of artists and thinkers, or what, the globalization pragmatists, with
> their soft repressive authoritarian state now? is there anything left
> for us to embrace?
> where is the china we want to love and celebrate in this? now???
> and as for myself, having seen the great brotherly b.s. of chinese 3d
> worldism in cameroon in the 70s, the chinese maybe the most racist of
> any foreigners on the continent at that time...
> ok, now it's different; they are richer. but also, from what we have
> seen in senegal, again almost completely indifferent to african culture,
> indifferent to learning african languages, being with african people,
> unless those are people working for them. there for the money, short
> term pain, long term profits
> what is there to love?
> i really wonder what others experience of the chinese on the continent
> in our times has been. can others on the list give us something to hang
> onto, to have hope for a positive result? i mean from personal
> experience, not more propaganda
> ken
>
> On 9/7/11 4:34 PM, Cornelius Hamelberg wrote:
>
> > Dear Ken,
>
> > Thanks for the details. Hopefully the Chinese weapons if they ever
> > arrive on Libyan soil will be delivered unto the hands of the NTC and
> > stay with them and not be passed on and find their way into the hands
> > of eager terrorists ,be they affiliates of Palestinian Jihadists, al-
> > Qaeda or the ambitious elements cloaked as Boko Haram.
>
> > About your concerns about China's future in Africa/Africa's future in
> > China I'm afraid that what you'll get from some of the powerless
> > AfriKanists of the Gaddafi's hue is more toothless ideology (mostly
> > theoretical building of castles in the air about e.g. The
> > Constitution of the United States of Africa which they say will be
> > implemented , latest 2017) ) and about liking China more than
> > America which has given them everything, because China turns a blind
> > eye on Human Rights Transgressions being committed by many of the
> > African leaders with whom they do business whereas the US and the best
> > of the West at least would like respect for human rights as a
> > condition for doing business or giving development aid.
>
> > The Chinese civilisation has been around for a very long time and
> > the Chinese are said to be thinking and planning for the next five
> > hundred years. Like,
>
> > Well, I don t know, but I ve been told
> > The streets in heaven are lined with gold
> > I ask you how things could get much worse
> > If the Russians happen to get up there first
> > Wowee! pretty scary!
>
> > For some people, the idea of China/ the Chinese taking over in Africa
> > within 150 years of the Berlin Conference, that too is pretty scary,
> > especially since the Chinese have the advantage in the eyes of all
> > those who look at the past and chime, The Chinese never colonised
> > us ; China doe not have that back-load, so today the Chinese don't
> > use big grammar - they can speak the same Broken Palm Wine
> > Drinkard metaphorical English as Amos Tutuola : all the Chinaman has
> > to do is to take Mugabe by the left or right arm , hook up with him
> > arm in arm and ask him this question :
> > We make friendship? - we make friendship and we do business and the
> > deal is done.
>
> > Indeed, Chinese weapons could be very big business in Africa.
>
> > This news flashed from the Tripoli to the cape and I' sure that it
> > must have resonated a worrisome chord in you too: David Cameron warns
> > Africa about China:
>
> >http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=sv&sugexp=gsis%2Ci18n%3Dtrue&cp=38&gs_id=...
>
> > Stretching my imagination a little further ahead and should China
> > want to take it all....I suppose that Africom could come in useful if
> > the West and China will be battling it out on mainland Africa in the
> > not too distant future not for the souls ( Human Rights) but mostly
> > for gold in Ghana and South Africa and it will not be an ideological
> > or religious battle.
>
> > he comes for your gold,
> > watch out for your soul. :
>
> >http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Rock-%27N%27-Roll-Is-Music-Now...
>
> > The war mongers among the AfricKanists who want a unified African
> > continental army of their own mostly speak English and have still not
> > got around to adding Chinese to their secret language
> > repertoire.....who knows, one day every Chinese will be a professor of
> > English - but not every colonial subject is yet ambitious to be a
> > professor of Chinese hieroglyphics yes, but not Chinese to write
> > competent linguistic analyses, not even those who would like to be
> > somewhere in the chain along the Chinese military chain of command at
> > a time that they could want to be fighting side by side with China for
> > possession / mastership of their own homelands
>
> >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQXqgk_GPxc
>
> > Others are a little more cautious and say, Better the devil you know
> > than the devil you don't know...
> > Me? No more hide and speak, I'm going to get that Skype; I'll
> > continue to be me but like Leonard Cohen, I'm staying home tonight
>
> >http://www.google.com/search?q=Leonard+Cohen%2C+Democracy&ie=utf-8&oe...
>
> > On Sep 7, 4:49 pm, kenneth harrow<har...@msu.edu> wrote:
> >> dear cornelius
> >> just reading the bloomberg account of this issue, on the site you
> >> provided. it does make it seem that private companies in china made
> >> deals; it isn't clear if they were carried out, or if a variant of the
> >> deal was consummated by the flow of chinese arms previously stocked in
> >> algeria. further, the ntc alluded to weapons used against them that they
> >> thought were chinese.
> >> it seems to me that if the chinese govt says they are now going to make
> >> sure that arms are not shipped without their approval they are conceding
> >> that this might have occurred beforehand.
> >> the globe and mail reporter, whom i heard discuss this on the radio,
> >> alluded to papers he saw that indicated a deal had been struck.
> >> if that is true, it seems less relevant whether they were able to
> >> actually ship them over in time to meet their contract.
> >> this is part of our larger question, still a question open for
> >> discussion, of the role of china in africa. i hear pros and cons, and
> >> remain interested in knowing ultimately whether this will benefit
> >> african states or not.
> >> china built a great road in mauretania. what did they get in exchange?
> >> who will benefit from it? i want concrete answers to concrete questions,
> >> not ideological posing, in this debate. i am truly curious about what
> >> the chinese money means for africa.
> >> ken
>
> >> On 9/7/11 9:40 AM, Cornelius Hamelberg wrote:
>
> >>> There's no good reason for this drawn out debate about whether or not
> >>> China has recently been selling arms to Gaddafi when China has made
> >>> it clear that they have not.
> >>> First of all we must make a distinction between private firms and the
> >>> government of China which in the end is the authority that grants or
> >>> denies permission to do business - even a potentially lucrative
> >>> business possibility such as taking over Sweden's SAAB - not to
> >>> mention a major foreign policy affair such as selling arms to Gaddafi
> >>> in the middle of an arms embargo against Gaddafi which they
> >>> themselves supported when the UN voted.
> >>> What actually happened is that in desperation some of Gaddafi's big
> >>> guns went over to China and tried to make some arms deals there with
> >>> the firms that they contacted, and they did not succeed .
> >>> The media is replete with these denials and explanations about what
> >>> actually happened : Gaddafi's unsuccessful attempts to buy more
> >>> weapons:
> >>>http://www.google.com/search?q=China+%3A+we+did+not+sell+arms+to+Gadd...
> >>> There are a number of other issues here that have been erroneously
> >>> reported along with spurious claims that will be vengaged most
> >>> vigorously if those erroneous reports persist
> >>> On Sep 7, 10:35 am, Olayinka Agbetuyi<yagbet...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >>>> Thanks for the clarifications on the specific issue of voting on the arms embargo, but the jury is still out on the veracity of its violations by China. Whichever way that eventually unravels, my point is that Gaddafis and Chinese models of governance (given the American issues with human rights violations in the latter) should leave no one in surprise if the latter goes to any length to prop up the erstwhile regime in Tripoli. This was my connection with the proxy wars. We know how much surreptitious support the French gave the Continentals in the American War of Independence from England even though a large section of American historigraphy represented that as the sole victory of the colonies against England.
> >>>> Olayinka Agbetuyi
> >>>> Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2011 19:02:57 -0400
> >>>> From: har...@msu.edu
> >>>> To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
> >>>> Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - chinese arms for ghaddafi
> >>>> china voted to accept the arms embargo which it itself violated
> >>>> ken
> >>>> On 9/6/11 7:00 AM, Olayinka Agbetuyi wrote:
> >>>> Ken:
> >>>> Having read some of Abdul Bangura's opinions and the view of Friedman in the article supplied by Cornelius Hamelberg I do not know whether the comparison between China and Walcotts poem is entirely
>
> ...
>
> read more »
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