Aiming For Hegemon

WONDER WHAT the Chicoms are doing and why? It’s not to hard to figure out, according to William Hawkins. It’s the simple “divide and conquer” strategy that goes all the way back to the Qin dynasty. If you recall the Qin were the chaps who unified China in 221 BCE at the end of the Warring States period. Qin Shi Huang, the chappie buried at the terra-cotta soldiers burial complex near Xian, was the first Qin emperor.

Beijing has adopted a traditional Chinese strategy dating back to the ancient Warring States period. This era, when Qin rose from a weak position within a system of competing powers to unite China in 221 B.C., plays a role in Chinese thinking similar to that of the Founding Fathers in America. In the winter Chinese Journal of International Politics, Wei Zongyou, a professor at the Shanghai International Studies University of Foreign Studies, has described Qin’s strategy as one of "divide and conquer" as it sought to prevent other states from uniting to block its rise as the new, dominant hegemon.

So that’s all right then.

Beijing has been using this strategy to isolate the United States in the six power talks over North Korea, and in stirring up trouble among the thug dictactor trouble-makers throughout the world. And, of course, you haven’t exactly seen the Chinese helping in Iraq.

No doubt we shall see this start to work it way out as the Chinese move northwards into Siberia and penetrate the longest flank in the world, the Russian Empire.

The question is, will the dog hun? It’s one thing to have a strategy as a rising power. It’s another thing to actually become the future hegemon. One thing that the Chinese are a little short of is a surplus of young men. The One Child policy kinda took care of that. You can’t really create an expansionist empire upon an aged and declining population.

But you can certainly try.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.