China at Bali

EARLIER THIS YEAR, pollution drifting over from China caused alerts in Northern Kyushu. Some Chinese rivers run black, with the sludge floating up on the shores of Taiwan and South Korea. The country spews mercury into the atmosphere, which winds up as far away as Massachusetts. Polluted water causes 750,000 premature deaths annually. And they ditched their Green GDP index when the results showed some regions posting negative growth.

Nevertheless, as Gordon Chang writes in Contentions, the blog for Commentary magazine, China is doing some world-class lecturing at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali.

“I just wonder whether it’s fair to ask developing countries like China to take on binding targets,” said Su Wei, a member of Beijing’s delegation, referring to mandatory caps on emissions of greenhouse gases. “I think there is much room for the United States to think whether it’s possible to change lifestyle and consumption patterns in order to contribute to the protection of the global climate.”

There should be no question by now that the Chinese are causing the world more harm than good. They never pass up the chance to pass up a chance to be cooperative. How are other countries to deal with behavior of this sort? This question is particularly pressing in northeast Asia.

Some might think it a short-circuit in logic to jump from environmental intransigence to weaponry, but the only way to protect oneself from people–or nations–such as this is to arm oneself with a big stick, just in case.

The time might not be far off when Japan concludes that the United States is an inconstant ally, and that the Chinese are an unstable and unpredictable neighbor whose immensity and endemic ethnocentrism mean that it will always insist on having its own way. There is no point in holding discussions with people who talk like Mr. Su.

And the biggest stick around is nuclear weapons.

How else to keep the Chinese at bay?

Note: Sorry for the blog-style posts, but translation work is still keeping me busy.