Most of what I hear about China in Sudan from the Western media makes China look bad, because they are supporting Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir, who has been charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes by the ICC (International Criminal Court).
After reading an extensive post about this at China Matters, my opinion changed.
I learned that in 2000, President Clinton was opposed to any kind of rapprochement with Sudan and spared no effort to further isolate the African-Arab country at both regional and international levels.
Then G.W. Bush became president and reversed U.S. policy toward Sudan, an oil-rich country.
China Matters reproduced a 2006 post called “The Twisted Triangle” that had a wealth of detail about the Bush administration’s “forgotten” courtship of Omar al-Bashir.
In short, America was competing with China for access to Sudanese oil and the Chinese won the chess game.
Curious, I turned to Western media sources to see what they were currently saying about China in Sudan.
In an August 2010 Reuters piece, China was portrayed as uncooperative.
Then the Telegraph in the UK says that China’s stake in Sudanese oil has made China Mr. al-Bashir’s only friend among the leading powers, while human rights groups have called for an oil embargo on Khartoum.
Without mentioning what President G .W. Bush’s administration did in Sudan, the Telegraph concludes by saying that America formally banned its companies from investing there and European firms avoid the protests that would accompany any involvement with al-Bashir’s militant Muslim regime.
Did America put that ban in place before or after the Bush administration lost the chess game over Sudanese oil to China?
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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Apart from China and Russia all of the other countries are western countries or allies of the US. Interesting, does all this military spending actually benefit them in the end? Somehow I highly doubt it.
I suspect most of those weapons go to dictatorships that support American and/or Western interests.
Even if that wasn’t the case, why does China suddenly have to be the world peacekeeper? I don’t recall anyone giving a shit when the US endorse dictatorships. At least China doesn’t pretend that it cares about other countries, whereas the US does so while just exploiting others for their own selfish needs.
The US elected itself global peacekeeper (was there ever a global election and how many countries asked the US to be the global marshall) as long as that U.S. pecekeeping was in the national interest of multi-national corporations such as BIG OIL, which includes spreading Christianity without any restrictions.
As for china stepping up to play global cop, the US is going bankrupt and cannot afford to be the self-appointed peacekeeper (in the U.S. national interest) any longer so they need someone else to stand in for US interests so who better than China, America’s landlord.
If that were to happen, then the U.S. would also expect China to buy all of its weapons from U.S. corporations but only weapons on an approved list. I read once that U.S. and its defense contractors are the largest “merchants of death” in the world–selling weapons to other countries.
This link shows who the world’s largest arms exporters are (although it is from Wiki, the information is linked to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry#World.27s_largest_arms_exporters
Here are the top15 weapons exporters (MERCHANTS OF DEATH) in the world. Do you notice anything interesting about this list that sets China apart from the others?
1. The United States
2. Russia
3. Germany
4. France
5. United Kingdom
6. China
7 Netherlands
8. Sweden
9. Italy
10. Israel
11. Ukraine
12. Spain
13. Switzerland
14. Canada
15. South Korea