Insincere Denials of the Great Powers
Dec. 8th, 2018 05:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jamesqThe CFO of Huawei was arrested at YVR a few days ago. I'm really not up on what the issues are, other than something to do with espionage, but it did make me notice something odd.
China is, by any measure, one of the great powers, and has been for awhile. That means they engage in all the great power actions - dominate their neighbours, maintain a large military in case they want to rough someone up, and espionage. Lots and lots of espionage.
But here's the thing, when they deny doing these things, they still sound shocked and offended that someone would suggest it. I mean, of course they're going to deny it. Still, it seems like they're genuinely hurt by the accusation.
By comparison, the USA generally makes a flat denial. The Russians are even better - they usually deny it with a wink and a nudge that suggests "What are you going to do about it?". These are the guys who go after their enemies with nerve gas and radioactive chemicals when a knife in a dark alley will do. They want you to know it was them.
I wonder why the Chinese government are like that. Do they just play the game really well, or do they really think everyone else is that dumb?
China is, by any measure, one of the great powers, and has been for awhile. That means they engage in all the great power actions - dominate their neighbours, maintain a large military in case they want to rough someone up, and espionage. Lots and lots of espionage.
But here's the thing, when they deny doing these things, they still sound shocked and offended that someone would suggest it. I mean, of course they're going to deny it. Still, it seems like they're genuinely hurt by the accusation.
By comparison, the USA generally makes a flat denial. The Russians are even better - they usually deny it with a wink and a nudge that suggests "What are you going to do about it?". These are the guys who go after their enemies with nerve gas and radioactive chemicals when a knife in a dark alley will do. They want you to know it was them.
I wonder why the Chinese government are like that. Do they just play the game really well, or do they really think everyone else is that dumb?
no subject
Date: 2018-12-09 03:37 am (UTC)The Chinese sound offended because of this weird thing that takes a bit of explanation.
From more or less 1949 until Mao's death, Chinese (in the sense of Communist China, not Nationalist China) foreign policy was (on its face anyway) really committed to non-intervention in other countries' affairs, and really avoided interaction with the world in a lot of ways altogether - like, sure they had diplomats and embassies and did espionage (and so on), but it was pretty central to their way of thinking that they were the same China who had been kicked around in the Opium Wars, etc.
Then, come Mao's death, and Deng Xiaoping, etc, and they realize both how far behind they are in some ways, how much power they wield and could wield in others...and their internal propaganda only sort of keeps up, the way I understand it. Like, they're very aware now that they are a superpower and big and mighty.
At the same time, they think of themselves as the weak country that gets bullied. In a real sense, too, they don't see the Huawei CFO's actions (which are technically a fraud case - bank fraud to be precise, she lied to US banks about Huawei's connections to a subsidiary that did business with Iran to get loans (which would not be possible for US banks to give if they knew Huawei, through a subsidiary, was violating US sanctions on Iran)) as criminal or espionage. They see it as just normal business practices. (It helps to understand that what Westerners would consider various forms of bank fraud are rampant in China nowadays, and so there's actually an argument that it is normal business practice in China, however unconvincing.)
Add in the realities (as I'm sure you know) about Chinese financial influence in Canada, and yeah. I think they do think people are that dumb and/or scared of them.