The United States versus the People’s Republic of China — Who is more AGGRESSIVE?

September 3, 2012

Here’s an “AGGRESSION” comparison between People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the United States (USA). To keep score, I will only count casualties (those killed on both sides—the wounded and cost of the wars will not be counted).  The most aggressive nation will have the highest score.

First Tibet (1950): Technically Tibet was an independent country from 1911-12 to 1950—thirty-eight years.

Before that, Tibet was ruled over by China starting with the Yuan Dynasty (1277-1367) ), Ming Dynasty (1368-1643) and Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) —five-hundred-forty-three years.

To read about this from a reputable Western source (because few in the West trust PRC sources), I suggest the October 1912 issue of The National Geographic Magazine.  There’s a piece in the magazine written by a Western trained, Qing-Dynasty doctor that the Chinese emperor sent to Tibet in 1907 for two years. His name was Shaoching H. Chuan, M.D. ( I have an original copy of this almost 100-year-old magazine).

When the Chinese Communist Party won the Civil War against Chiang Kai-shek’s KMT Party, in 1950, Mao sent the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to take Tibet back. For a comparison, when the United States declared its independence from the British Empire, the revolution lasted from 1776 to 1783—seven years.

Casualties and losses comparing the America’s Revolution with the British Empire to Tibet’s Revolution with China

Total American causalities 25,000 dead
America’s allies: The French and Spanish lost about 8,000 in Europe and America

The British lost about 20,000.

In comparison to America’s Revolution that cost 53,000 lives over seven years, in 1950 after the PLA reoccupied Tibet, the war was over in a matter of days/weeks.

The Tibetan government in exile exaggerated the number killed in Tibet at 1.2 million and has accused China of genocide.

However, Michael Parenti wrote this in his book Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth: “The official 1953 census–six years before the Chinese crackdown–recorded the entire population residing in Tibet at 1,274,000. Other census counts put the population within Tibet at about two million.”

Source: http://thenewvoice.wordpress.com/2008/04/17/the-myth-of-tibet-genocide/

In addition, China puts the actual combat losses at 114 PLA soldiers and 180 Tibetan troops, while a Western source, Thomas Laird, claims 5,000 (for the comparison, I will use Laird’s number) Tibetan troops were killed.

“Tibetan prisoners of war were generally well treated. After confiscating their weapons, the PLA soldiers gave the prisoners lectures on socialism and a small amount of money, before allowing them to return to their homes. According to Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, the PLA did not attack civilians.”

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_Tibet_into_the_People’s_Republic_of_China#Behavior_of_the_PLA

Note: In 1949, the average life expectancy in years in Tibet was 35 years.  Today it is close to 70 years. The average life expectancy in a nation may indicate the quality of life.

Korean Conflict (June 1950 – July 1953) – this war never resolved. Technically, America and South Korea are still at war with North Korea.

America and its allies lost 776,360 troops (America’s share of those losses was about 40,000 dead)

China and its allies lost 1,545,822–1,648,582 (easily twice the other side)

America’s Vietnam War (1955 – 1975) – It has been proven that America’s President L. B. Johnson started this war with a lie—watch the video.

America and its allies lost 676,585 – 1,035,585 (America’s share 58,220 dead)

North Vietnam and its allies–the PRC and the USSR lost 588,462 – 1,672,462

Civilians = 486,000 – 1,200,000.

China’s Vietnam War (1979) Note: China occupied and ruled over Vietnam for 1,000 years

“The first major threat to Vietnam’s existence as a separate people and nation was the conquest of the Red River Delta by the Chinese, under the mighty Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), in the first century B.C. At that time, and in later centuries, the expanding Chinese empire assimilated a number of small bordering nations politically and culturally. Although Vietnam spent 1,000 years under Chinese rule, it succeeded in throwing off the yoke of its powerful neighbor in the tenth century.”

Source: http://countrystudies.us/vietnam/2.htm

China’s casualties = 6,954 – 26,000 (depending on who you believe)

Vietnam’s casualties = 10,000 to 30,000 (depending on who you believe)

China’s War with India (1962 for about two months)

Note: China has clearly been successful in resolving border disputes with most of its neighbours in a ‘win-win’ situation since the 1990s.

However, India has had border wars with three of its neighbors: China, Pakistan and Nepal. In comparison, China has negotiated border disputes peacefully with North Korea, Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Burma/Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam.

Source: http://www.eu-asiacentre.eu/pub_details.php?pub_id=46

India’s casualties = 1,383

China’s casualties = 722

America’s War in Iraq (March 2004 – December 2011)

America and its allies:

Iraq Security Forces = 16,623 dead

Coalition Forces (America and its allies) = 4,805

Contractors = 1,554

Awakening Councils = 1,002 or more

Documented civilian deaths from violence = 103,160 – 113,729.

America’s enemies:

Iraqi combatants during the gulf war = 7,600 – 11,000

Insurgents killed = 21,221 – 26,405

America’s War in Afghanistan (2001 – present)

America and its allies: 14,446+

No way to reliable estimate how many Taliban, Al-Qaeda, etc have lost.

Civilians killed : 12,500 – 14,700

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Final Score: (Note: In most cases, the low estimate was used—the only exception being Tibet versus China)

The United States = 2.7 million deaths (the low estimate) and forty-eight years of war

The People’s Republic of China = 1.6 million and about three years of war. (about 1.5 million of those killed were in Korea)

Some more facts to help measure AGGRESSION – nuclear warheads

The USA = 8,500
The PRC = 240

Private industry weapon sales to the world:

USA = 30% of all global weapons sales—isn’t capitalism great?
PRC = about 5% of the global weapons sales

Note: The world’s biggest weapons suppliers are the USA, the UK, Russia, Germany and France.  China doesn’t even make the top-five.

Source: http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-top-ten/world-top-ten-countries-by-nuclear-warheads-map.html

Who won the AGGRESSION contest between the USA and PRC? — YOU DECIDE

Discover The Tiananmen Square Hoax

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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16 Comments | America, American culture, capitalism, China, Chinese Culture, Communism, democracy, history, India, United States | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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Closed Minds and Culturally Blind Missionary Zeal

June 21, 2011

Recently, my wife bought me a copy of Henry Kissinger On China. She said if you read anyone that is not Chinese writing about China, Henry Kissinger is the only Westerner to trust.  The reason, she explained, was that the leaders of China trust and respect few in the West.

However, Kissinger is the exception, and from what I’ve discovered since 1999, I don’t blame most Chinese or China’s leaders.

I haven’t read that far into the book but Kissinger’s Preface has a revealing quote in it.

Kissinger said, “American exceptionalism is missionary. It holds that the United States has an obligation to spread its values to every part of the world. China’s exceptionalism is cultural. China does not proselytize; it does not claim that its contemporary institutions are relevant outside China.”

What Kissinger didn’t say, which I may discover later as I read further into the book, is that America is spreading more than its spiritual, ethical, and moral values but is also importing its middle class unsustainable, consumer, debt-ridden, fast food, disease ridden lifestyle, which is more popular outside America than US cultural values.

The Economist for May 21, 2011 reviewed Kissinger’s book and said, “The Western politician who understands China best tries to explain it–but doesn’t quite succeed.”

In fact, it isn’t easy to overcome the Western prejudices that refuse to accept that people from other cultures are different from America and the West, which may be one reason why The Economist is so cynical and critical of almost everything they write about that does not fit their British cultural bias.

Another example is when a friend and expatriate living in China sent me a link to a Site called The Middle Kingdom Life written by a person that lived and taught at universities in China for seven years then left feeling bitter and disappointed, because China didn’t measure up to what he felt it should be, which is a reaction that has a lot to do with that American obligation to spread its values to every part of the world (even when other countries and cultures are not interested in those American and/or Western values).

Then another Blog I follow (but hold little respect for) sent me a notice that someone had left a similar comment.

That other Blog is called Understanding China, One Blog at a Time (should be “One Post” at a Time).

One Blog at a Time doesn’t understand China or the Chinese and is another emotional, biased rant criticizing China for not being a mirror image of American culture and does not take into account that China is a different culture with a different history and is still a developing third-world country with a large segment of its population that, until a few years ago (as early at the 1980s), lived as people had for centuries with a medieval lifestyle—meaning no electricity, no running water, no schools, no toilets, no sewers, or paved roads, etc.

It seems that little has changed from the 19th century when Robert Hart was the same as Kissinger is today to the Chinese except that today China stands on its own feet and is powerful enough militarily not to be bullied to cave in to Western demands to change the Chinese culture due to that American (and Western) obligation to spread its values to every part of the world, which may explain why we are fighting Islamic fundamentalists that wants to destroy Western Civilization.

That same Western missionary zeal (from Europe) that drives America today destroyed the Aztecs and Incas, enslaved tens of millions of Africans, colonized North America leading to the American Indian Wars of the 19th century, started two Opium Wars in China, killed a quarter of a million in the Philippines, meddled with Japan’s culture leading to World War II in the Pacific and China where The Rape of Nanking  took place, invaded Vietnam where millions died, fought the Korean Conflict, and imported American values with nation building by invading Iraq and Afghanistan.

What’s next?

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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.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

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How a Unified Korea becomes a Win-Win for China and the U.S.

March 21, 2011

I subscribe to Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.  While finishing my morning exercise routine on the stationary bike, I read an essay written by Sung-Yoon Lee of Keeping the Peace: American in Korea 1950 – 2010.

Professor Lee is an adjunct assistant professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and an associate in research at the Korea Institute at Harvard University.

He writes of the pressure North Korea has applied on the United States to sign a peace treaty that might require US troops to leave South Korea.  Professor Lee feels this would be a mistake, and I agree.

He says, “It is important for Washington to hold quiet consultations with Beijing to prepare jointly for a unified Korea under Seoul’s direction, a new polity that will be free, peaceful, capitalist, pro-U.S. and pro-China.”

This is the first I’ve read anywhere in a Western media source (and Hillsdale College is decidedly conservative in its political stance, which I don’t always agree with) that it is possible a country could be both pro-U.S. and pro-China at the same time.

In fact, Hillsdale College is often anti-leftist (liberal) and anti-entitlement to the point that it has rejected accepting Federal aid even in the form of student scholarships since almost every entitlement dollar from the Federal government comes with strings.

By saying that a unified Korea under Seoul would be both pro-China and pro-U.S. admits China is not the evil dragon so many in the West believe.

When Mao ruled China, North Korea and Communist China seemed as if they were evil twins.  However, today that is not true. In the 1980s, China emerged as a hybrid one-party republic with term limits and age limits so one man would never rule the Middle Kingdom again as Mao did for 26 years.

China became a hybrid capitalist-socialist economy while politically it was an authoritarian one party republic guided by the 1982 Constitution.

Prior to 1911, there was the imperial aristocracy, a “small” middle class (with an emphasis on small) and a huge peasant class living in severe poverty with hard labor and short life spans.

Today, China’s middle class has reached about 300 million and almost 500 million are connected to the Internet, and China’s attempt at censorship does not totally control the flow of global information to those that want it who then share what was learned through Chinese Blogs and e-mails with friends, fans and family.

North Korea is frozen in time, but South Korea and China have evolved and adapted to the global economy.  It would be in China’s interest to see North Korea merge with South Korea and become a capitalist nation open to the world for trade.

In fact, China does more trade with South Korea than the North, which by all accounts is a burden since China often feeds many of North Korea’s citizens to avoid famine sending food grown in China that should have gone to Chinese consumers.

If Korea is unified under Seoul’s leadership, the threat of war in Korea will evaporate.

However, under Pyongyang’s leadership. Korea becomes a larger threat to both China and the US and more difficult to contain.

The US must maintain a military pretense in South Korea and I’m sure China agrees even if it never says so publicly since a war between Pyongyang and Seoul would not be in China’s interest economically.

Learn of China in 1950 Korea Protecting the Teeth

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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.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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China Protecting its Teeth in 1950 Korea – Part 9/9

March 2, 2011

Harry Truman (the 33rd president of the United States) lived in the White House for seven years from 1945 to 1953.

As the Korean Conflict entered its third year, Americans were afraid the war would never end. The majority of people wanted a leader that would end it soon.

While campaigning for the White House in October 1952, Eisenhower said, “I shall go to Korea. Only in that way could I learn how best to serve the American people in the cause of peace.”

After his victory, President-elect Eisenhower dressed in army fatigues and went to Korea to meet with UN troops near the front lines.  He ate rations with privates and listened to their thoughts on ending the war.

Rumors spread in the media that Eisenhower was considering using nuclear weapons as Truman did to end World War II. He even hinted that this was a possibility.

The Chinese Communists under Mao’s leadership took the warning of a nuclear strike seriously. Three months after President Eisenhower moved into the White House, the Chinese sent a letter declaring their desire to end the war.

After the letter arrived, it took four months to reach an agreement. The Armistice was signed on July 27, 1953 more than three years after the war began. It divided the Korean peninsula along the front lines giving the UN a small victory since the line was not the same as the one that divided Korea when the war started.

Counting civilians and troops, there were more than three million casualties (wounded, killed or missing) during the war.

The Korean war was never resolved. Neither the UN nor China won.

The front line along the 38th Parallel also acts as a border where a war that started in 1950 never really ended.

Countries that sent troops to serve with North Korea were China and the Soviet Union. Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungry, Bulgaria and Romania provided medical support.

Countries that sent troops to serve with the United Nations were the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Ethiopia, France, Greece, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, South Africa, Thailand and Turkey. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Italy and India provided medical support.

Return to China Protecting its Teeth in 1950 Korea – Part 8 or start at the beginning with Part 1

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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.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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China Protecting its Teeth in 1950 Korea – Part 5/9

February 26, 2011

During war, it is the job of a nation’s media to stir up nationalism and support the troops. When this happens, often the enemy is demonized on both sides, which stirs paranoia and hate, but the truth is more complicated.

Considering China’s history since the First Opium War in the early 19th century to 1949 (a century of war, rebellions and civil war), when UN forces neared China’s border, China’s leaders feared an invasion and reacted.

It’s possible if the UN had not moved beyond the Chongchon River and allowed North Korea’s communist government to survive in the area between that river and the Yalu River, China might not have attacked. It also didn’t help that the US moved forward to attack the Chinese positions after both sides had retreated after China’s first assault.

Meanwhile, at the Chosin Reservoir, the troops of the US 10 Corps celebrated Thanksgiving and dealt with the cold and harsh conditions. An offensive was planned for November 27. Having heard what was happening to the UN forces to the West, the Marines got ready for the worst possible combat situation. The objective of the operation was to take the city of Kanggye where the North Korean government had fled.

The offensive stalled against stiff Chinese resistance and the 10th Corps fell back. Then the Chinese attacked with six divisions.

Soon the 10th Corps was surrounded. The commanding General Oliver P. Smith said, “Gentlemen, we are not retreating. We are merely attacking in another direction.”

The situation was dire. On December 1, elements of the 10th Corps moved from the Chosin taking the wounded with them. The Chinese attacked from all sides.

After thirteen days of fighting while moving toward the ocean and the waiting US Navy, the first of the 10th Corps reached safety.

McArthur wasn’t near the combat as the UN forces retreated from North Korea with great losses. To make matters worse, the UN field commander General Walker was killed in a jeep accident.

Walker was replaced with General Matthew B. Ridgway. His levelheaded wisdom and experience brought a vital balance to the battlefield. He quickly discovered that the moral and confidence of UN troops was poor.

Ridgway attempted to hold the line at Seoul but on January 3, 1951, Seoul fell for a second time.

Return to China Protecting its Teeth in 1950 Korea – Part 4

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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.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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