Communist China Claims All Pandas in the World, Which Illuminates a Larger Story

The fine details of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s visit to Washington this week may not fully break through the fraught news cycle, but the visit was nevertheless important — and could have profound, historic consequences.Mr. Kishida committed his country to a closer alliance with America on space exploration, technological development, military coproduction, and other important areas. Indeed, it is likely that the first non-American to visit the Moon will be Japanese.However, Mr. Kishida and President Biden also met with the president of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., to deepen the multinational effort to protect the South China Sea from Chinese Communist aggression.This deeper purpose was made clear Sunday as the first combined United States-Philippines-Japan-Australia Task Force patrolled the South China Sea.For years, Communist China has aggressively tried to own the South China Sea. It has built and armed artificial island chains. It has created armed fishing boat militias to intimidate its neighbors. Its leaders have drawn new maps and claimed the South China Sea as exclusively Chinese territory — despite clear international legal rulings to the contrary.China’s belligerence — and the multinational alliance against it — are easy to understand. The South China Sea has vast oil and gas potential and is host to some of the world’s most trafficked trade routes. Japan gets 90 percent of its oil and gas through the South China Sea and the waters around Taiwan. So, it has a survival interest in keeping the sea lanes open.And Chinese Communist aggression goes beyond the South China Sea. Consider the case of Fu Bao. Fu Bao is the first Giant Panda born in South Korea. Her parents are on loan from China. The Chinese Communists claim that China owns all the Giant Pandas in the world — even if they are born in another country.Many South Koreans had fallen in love with Fu Bao. The departure ceremony when China took the bear back involved people crying and a nationwide sense of loss. While this is a small event it is typical of the Chinese Communist insensitivity to the feelings and views of others.You must wonder why Beijing felt it had to reclaim a young panda at the expense of good will in South Korea. You also must wonder why using force to try to claim sovereignty over rusting old ships in the South China Sea makes sense.Ironically, the growing alliance against China might never have emerged if the Communist dictatorship had been more cautious and less of a bully (recently the Chinese Communists used water hoses and injured several Filipino sailors in a struggle over an artificial island that both countries claim).In many ways, the Chinese dictatorship’s attitude reminds me of another point in history. In the early 1900s, Wilhelmine Germany isolated itself and ultimately encouraged its competitors to band together into an anti-German alliance.When modern Germany was created by Prussia unifying the various Germanic states outside the Austria-Hungarian Empire, an anti-German coalition was far from inevitable.The British and French had been fighting off and on from 1066 through the Napoleonic Wars. The last British-French confrontation was the Fashoda crisis of 1898. Yet, a mere six years later, in 1904, the British and French were signing an Entente Cordiale clearly aimed at opposing Germany.By 1906, William Le Queux wrote “The Invasion of 1910,” a novel in which Germany invades Britain. It was a sign of how much the world had changed. A mere 12 years earlier, the same author had written “The Great War in England in 1897,” describing a fictional French invasion of Britain.The most popular of these anti-German novels was Erskine Childers’ 1903 book “The Riddle of the Sands,” which became a runaway bestseller warning that Britain was unprepared for a surprise invasion from Germany.The German Empire’s economy was growing rapidly. Its industrial and technological might were so much stronger than its competitors that German officials felt they did not have to listen to Germany’s (presumably inferior) neighbors.German imperial arrogance — and Germany’s effort to become the strongest land and sea power — forced all its neighbors except Austria-Hungary to band together. Ultimately, the German bid for dominance failed — but only after two world wars.A more cautious Germany with a greater concern for the interests, feelings, and opinions of others might have naturally become the dominant country in Europe. Instead, it forced its neighbors to band together to survive what they came to see as a mortal threat.The parallels between German imperial behavior and the psychology and policies of Chinese Communist Party’s general secretary, Xi Jinping, are fascinating.It would serve China well to learn the history of Kaiser Wilhelm’s arrogance. Otherwise, China will presently find its alliances with North Korea, Russia, and Iran are more than outweighed by the growing allied coalition against its totalitarian bullying.

Communist China Claims All Pandas in the World, Which Illuminates a Larger Story

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