With its crackdown on Hong Kong and aggression towards those who get in its way, China has no fear of making enemies The aphorisms and maxims of Sun Tzu, the 6th-century BC Chinese general and philosopher, have become staple fare in business management classes. Yet his pithy sayings, even if a trifle hackneyed, still resonate in the febrile context of the deepening stand-off between China and the western democracies. “To know your enemy, you must become your enemy,” Sun Tzu reputedly counselled aspiring leaders more than 2,500 years ago. China’s modern-day Communist _caudillos_ have taken his advice to heart. They have done exactly that. This, in a nutshell, is the basic problem underlying the seething tensions sparked by China’s security coup in Hong Kong last week, its refusal to accept responsibility for the Covid-19 catastrophe, its increasing aggression towards nations and peoples that get in its way, and its fierce rejection of any attempt, by the US or others, to deny its manifest destiny as a global superpower. In sum, China is behaving exactly as emerging powers have always behaved since empires and satrapies were first invented. The Persians, Greeks and Romans did it. So did Britain, Germany and Japan. More recently, the Soviet Union and the US also tried their hand at global domination. The victims include China itself. Continue reading...
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