2 things

March 4th, 2008

About this article.

  1. Why does every Al Jazeera article about China- or at least those connected in some way or another with ‘security’ (be it “public security” or “defence” or whatever)- have to accompanied by a photo of People’s Armed Police in or near Tiananmen Square? Serious question. I mean, what message are they trying to subtly insinuate into our consciousness of China?
  2. Take a look at the little box divvying up countries’ defence expenditure as a percentage of total global defence spending (figures attributed to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute). America wins with a whopping 47.77%, UK comes a very, very, very distant second with 4.83%, France third with 4.61%, then 4.2% followed by China on 4.1%. Of course, these figures are not presented in numerical order, and there could be other countries that should be inserted in the gaps, but still: Do you see why I don’t take any American complaints about China’s defence spending even remotely seriously? Do you see why such complaints send my hypocrisy detector way off the scale and into rehab?
Posted in ranting, tilting at windmills | 6 Comments »

  • Pingback: The Hegemon’s Prerogative « Like Cooking a Small Fish

  • http://expat.wordpress.com Matthew Stinson

    Appropros of your first point: Richard Spencer on the propagandistic nature of media coverage of the Chinese military and the propagandistic Chinese response to the Pentagon’s criticism of the spending increases — to wit, “publishing a report = interfering in another country’s repairs.” Jackasses all around.

  • http://expat.wordpress.com Matthew Stinson

    Repairs = affairs. The Chinese response is here. I’m reading the Pentagon report now, and it’s pretty bland laundry list stuff except for the part of the 24 character strategy of Deng Xiaoping, which is interesting.

  • http://wangbo.blogtown.co.nz/ wangbo

    Cheers, Matthew. Haven’t had time today to explore these issues myself, trying to look up those links now. Your Richard Spencer link is giving me some “bad request” response, but I’ll have another go. Almost wish I didn’t open the China Daily link: The word ‘predictable’ springs to mind for whatever reason. Ah, finally got the Richard Spencer piece (I think)- if it’s his blog you were referring to, it was a good read, can’t say I disagree with any of his points. Coulda done without the comments, but his comment threads seem to be taking the Peking Duck route, unfortunately. The Telegraph article also makes for good reading. Spencer is rapidly becoming one of my favourite journobloggers.

  • http://expat.wordpress.com Matthew Stinson

    Something weird happened to the URI. You can read Richard Spencer’s blog directly to see the post in question.

  • http://wangbo.blogtown.co.nz/ wangbo

    Aye, I think I got it.