A Chinese two-star general has warned his conservative Communist Party masters and firebrand People's Liberation Army colleagues that China must either embrace US-style democracy or accept Soviet-style collapse.
As officers of similar rank rattle their sabres against US aircraft carriers in the Yellow and South China seas, General Liu Yazhou says China's rise depends on adopting America's system of government rather than challenging its dominance off China's eastern coast.
''If a system fails to let its citizens breathe freely and release their creativity to the maximum extent, and fails to place those who best represent the system and its people into leadership positions, it is certain to perish,'' writes General Liu Yazhou in Hong Kong's Phoenix magazine, which is widely available on news stands and on the internet throughout China.
The fact of General Liu's article suggests China's political and ideological struggles are more lively than commonly thought, ahead of a rotation of leaders in the Central Military Commission and then the Politburo in 2012.
''The secret of US success is neither Wall Street nor Silicon Valley, but its long-surviving rule of law and the system behind it,'' he says. ''The American system is said to be 'designed by genius and for the operation of the stupid'.
''A bad system makes a good person behave badly while a good system makes a bad person behave well. Democracy is the most urgent thing, without it there can be no sustainable rise.''
General Liu was promoted recently from deputy political commissar of the PLA Air Force to political commissar of the National Defence University. His father was a senior military officer and his father-in-law was Li Xiannian, one of Chinese communism's ''Eight Immortals'' - and a one-time president of China.
While many of China's ''princelings'' have exploited their revolutionary names to amass wealth and power, General Liu has exploited his pedigree to provide protection to push his contrarian and reformist views.
But General Liu's latest writings are extraordinary by any standards. His article urges China to shift its strategic focus from the country's developed coastal areas, including Hong Kong and Taiwan - ''the renminbi belt'' - towards resource-rich Central Asia.
But he argues that China will never have strategic reach by relying on wealth alone. ''A nation that is mindful only of the power of money is a backward and stupid nation,'' he writes. ''What we could believe in is the power of the truth.
''The truth is knowledge and knowledge is power.''
But such national power can only come with political transformation. ''In the coming 10 years, a transformation from power politics to democracy will inevitably take place,'' he says.
General Liu inverts the lesson that Chinese politicians have traditionally drawn from the collapse of the Soviet Union - that it was caused by too much political reform - by arguing that reform arrived too late.
Since 2008 the Communist Party has steadily tightened the political screws to stifle dissent.
Many Chinese are concerned that reforms have been blocked by powerful military, security, corporate and family groups that benefit from the status quo.
General Liu was famously outspoken until he stopped publishing his essays about five years ago.
It is unclear how his latest article appeared and whether he has backing within the system.
Last year Hong Kong's Open magazine published a leaked report of one of General Liu's internal speeches which raised the taboo topic of how some generals refused to lead troops into Tiananmen Square in 1989.
General Liu returned to the subject of Tiananmen in his Phoenix article, saying ''a nationwide riot'' was caused by the incompatibility of traditional power structures with reform.
Link here:
http://www.smh.com.au/world/chin ... 20100811-11zxd.html

pretty gutsy move by publishing such an article. i wonder if it got censored?

on a side note, did anyone else hear the news that china developed a missile that could take out aircraft carriers? i'll try to find it and post it on here if i have time. but supposedly, china successfully built one, but im not sure if its true or its just to scare US out of the china sea.

Even if true the U.S. can't be seen to be scared off by anyone anywhere.

You only have to see how much money and men the continue to expend to avoid this appearance in Iraq and Afganistan.

are you kidding?  EVERYTHING published in PRC is censored ... so he clearly got political support at a high level for his views ... even if they're just testing the waters ...

I thought I saw somewhere that the patrol routes of the carriers in the area have been adjusted ... they're being more cautious ... quite rightly ...

Believe the carrier-killer has not yet been tested, but there are a couple of conceptual designs that have been around for a while - one a tactical ballistic weapon, the other a super-sonic cruise missile.  

Apropos, there is an interesting story in "Blink" about a set of wargames run by the USA - the "enemy" team was run by a guy who launched a preemptive strike on the second or third day, leaving so much of the "friendly" forces sunk and disabled they had to stop the wargames and start again from the beginning.  Clearly a carrier fleet is far from invulnerable, even from a conventional attack ... I seriously hope USA learned a degree of caution from that one ... arrogance so often leads to miscalculated aggression ...

Let us avoid any conversation about China government.  Politics are just way too much to think about.     It's way over my head!  

Thats the big problem in that the USN thinks it is invulnerable because of its prior victories against tin pot dictators who had no way of fighting back.

Saddam for instance, so enemy just plays asymetric warfare. Which is why the US army cannot defeat a bunch of blokes with beards in Afghanistan for all their firepower.

Look up the battle of Osan or specifically Task force Smith.

Post WWII the Americans were so bullish they sent woefully underequipped  troops and were annilated by the NK forces.

They were told once the NK forces see American troops they'll turn and run.

Interesting about Task Force Smith - just read up about it ...

except that there are some radical differences between the situation today and the situation in Korea in 1950 ... at the time the US military had been disbanded, run down and neglected ... and faced a very real attack by an army that saw their weakness and chose to take advantage of it.  

Today by contrast we have a military that is exceedingly well funded, highly developed and (importantly) since the collapse of the USSR does not itself face a credible opponent.  Taking the parallel to the situation in Korea, the US military today looks a heck of a sight more like the army in North Korea in 1950 - which was well funded, well equipped, highly trained and disciplined, and stood a very real chance of winning the war.  No wonder they invaded, and history shows that although they failed in their objective they nonetheless managed to fight off the forces of the rest of the World ... they were right about their strength, even though it turned out to be insufficient to win outright.  

The biggest danger to peace today is that nobody ever wins medals in peacetime.  

In the World we have a huge force of men, with unprecedented resources and equipment, who spend their days preparing themselves for a conflict that never happens and cannot happen because noone will pick a fight with them ... This lack of fulfillment is creating a situation that leads to disillusionment, depression, and can lead to outbursts of violence as a direct consequence of their desire to prove themselves worthy.  A warrior without a war dies alone and unknown.  

It's a bit early to be writing the history books, but looking at Bush's invasion of Iraq; the Argentinian invasion of Falklands; the German invasion of Poland; British assaults against China; and many other past conflicts: the parallels are too close for comfort.  How long before another nationalistically-minded president of USA is facing an economic crisis at home and needs to divert blame to an artificial enemy "out there"?  All human beings do it.  It's not a question of "if?" so much as "when?"

Personally, I'm really glad to be living on the borders of China, knowing that the Chinese have a credible defense against an American battle-group.  No sense in being an easy target.

[ Last edited by  DArtagnan at 13-8-2010 09:04 ]

Well...if China ever had it's act together at any point in time during history, they would rule the world right now. History being the best teacher, I don't see anything changing soon.

As for Russia, it only looks democratic. Consider the Yeltsin years, where "capitalism"=same shit different day, just different people to bribe. All that happened was a changing of the guard. Just like before, the KGB still runs the place, but now as civilians associated with OC.

Does any of that sound familiar to you?

You are simply looking at the past few hundred years of history where the West has dominated.

If you really take a step back and see the big picture, China was on top for quite some time.

That being said, I do believe everyone gets complacent after a while at the top, and everyone else gets their turn sometime in history sooner or later.