By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
There is one major country that only has one overseas military base: China. It is a supply base in Djibouti for supplying its ships that are assisting in patrolling the East African coast for pirates. In contrast, Britain, France and Russia have roughly 30 foreign military bases combined. The United States has nearly 800 military bases overseas.
Therefore when U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo spoke on July 23 declaring that the “Freedom-loving people of China' don't want 'Marxist-Leninist' rulers,” and continued to speak of China working to “...expand a Chinese empire,” the Secretary of State failed to do his homework. He went on to assert that as a “Marxist-Leninist” nation, China has a “central understanding of how people interact and how societies ought to interact. And it is certainly the case today that the leadership in China believes that.”
That such a high government official is clueless about modern Chinese history and official policies, presents us with the dilemma that our top government foreign representative is supremely ignorant.
The Maoist form of Marxism in China came to an abrupt end by 1980 when Deng Xiaoping ended communes and launched their market driven economy. That was forty years ago. Along with their huge investment in education, China has undergone the most rapid rise out of poverty in modern history.
And quite the opposite of Pompeo’s delusions about China wishing to impose its system on the rest of the world, China has a long-standing written policy of non-interference that is quite in contrast to the continual interventions by the United States in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.
Unlike our ongoing history of overseas military actions, China actually has a formal declaration of “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” that forbids interference in other countries affairs and which they have formalized in treaties with various countries.
The Five Principles consist of:
-mutual respect for each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty,
-mutual non-aggression,
-mutual non-interference in each other's internal affairs,
-equality and mutual benefit, and
-peaceful co-existence.
These were first laid down in April 24, 1954, in an agreement between India and China, and then extended to Myanmar (then called Burma) and several other nations. In 2014, President Xi Jinping celebrated the 60th anniversary of these “Five Principles.”
Xi declared: “In the new era today, the spirit of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, instead of being outdated, remains as relevant as ever; its significance, rather than diminishing, remains as important as ever; and its role, rather than being weakened, has continued to grow.’
These Chinese Five Principles provided the basis for additional actions among other governments, and form the basis of the Non-Aligned Movement established in Yugoslavia in 1961.
The Chinese view is that each country is responsible themselves for building their future based on their history. Unlike Soviet Russia, China has never attempted to impose its political value-system on other countries. In its substantial contributions to the infrastructure of Africa as well as the Belt-and-Road initiative, China has left their wide range of different political systems to evolve on their own.
In contrast, the U.S. often places strings to any aid to foreign countries, expecting them to become more like us.
It is inexcusable that a powerful high-ranking Secretary of State is so ignorant as to not know of China’s Five Principles and accuses China of doing something they will not do, but which we do all of the time.
. . .
John Richard Schrock has trained biology teachers for more than 30 years in Kansas. He also has lectured at 27 universities in 20 trips to China. He holds the distinction of “Faculty Emeritus” at Emporia State University.