Brussels Journal notes that while Islam is sweeping across Europe, Christianity is claiming converts in China — proving “that if God exists He must have a sense of humor.”

Buddhism and Taoism still claim most worshippers in China but the state-sanctioned churches count up to 35 million followers. The underground churches are estimated to have 80 million members or more, about 12 million of them Catholics, the rest Protestants.

The author quotes Han Dong-fang:

I think human beings need something at a spiritual level. We don’t want to believe we are coming from nowhere; going nowhere. In China we have traditionally followed Buddhism. We had quite a deep religion. But communism destroyed everything. When communism became this corrupted thing which failed everybody, people still needed a belief. I think that’s the reason for Christianity in China.

I have a Chinese colleague who says very much the same thing. Communism became the religion of the people, but over time the culture became “get it while you can” because, after all, without a belief in a higher power, there is no reason not to.

While I didn’t believe that religion is necessary for moral behavior, my colleague believes differently. Which leads me to question my thoughts on the matter. After all, my view is purely philosophical. His is based on experience.

In the country that executes more prisoners per year than any other (over 1,700 in 2005 alone!), the organ market is booming.

According to the BBC, a liver can be purchased for £50,000 ($126,326). [Watch the video report.]

And this is a nation that our elected servants decided to reward with favored trade nation status.

An excellent article from Foreign Policy detailing why China is not what it appears to be, The Dark Side of China’s Rise. Read the whole thing, but here are a couple of points:

To most Western observers, China’s economic success obscures the predatory characteristics of its neo-Leninist state. But Beijing’s brand of authoritarian politics is spawning a dangerous mix of crony capitalism, rampant corruption, and widening inequality. Dreams that the country’s economic liberalization will someday lead to political reform remain distant. Indeed, if current trends continue, China’s political system is more likely to experience decay than democracy. It’s true that China’s recent economic achievements have given the party a new vibrancy. Yet the very policies that the party adopted to generate high economic growth are compounding the political and social ills that threaten its long-term survival. …

State enterprises are also miserably unprofitable. In 2003, a boom year, their median rate of return on assets was a measly 1.5 percent. More than 35 percent of state enterprises lose money and 1 in 6 has more debts than assets. China is the only country in history to have simultaneously achieved record economic growth and a record number of nonperforming bank loans.

HT to non-blogging Advised by Wolves.

Technorati Tags: China,
Chinese Economy.

Speaking of aircraft carriers in China (see previous story), the International Herald Tribune wonders when China will commission an aircraft carrier of its own:

The two 50,000-metric-ton conventionally powered carriers now under development for Britain’s Royal Navy are expected to cost a minimum of $2.5 billion each. To outfit them with aircraft could cost that much again.

And, aircraft carriers do not operate alone. They need a fleet of warships, submarines and supply vessels along with advanced electronic surveillance for support and protection.

For these reasons, most experts assumed a Chinese carrier was decades away.

But after double-digit increases in defense spending over much of the past 15 years, evidence is now emerging that China has a more ambitious timetable.

Which is why I do my absolute best to boycott goods made in China, even when shopping at Chinamart Walmart.

Technorati Tags: China,
Chinese Military,
Aircraft Carrier.

Once the flagship of the USSR Navy, the aircraft carrier Minsk was sold to a Chinese firm in 1998 to be turned into a theme park:

A Chinese travel agency describes the theme park as “a harmonious combination of carrier appreciation, military recreation, typical seaside lifestyle in south China and military atmosphere.”

The ship’s attractions included torpedoes and a Russian dance troupe that performed folk dances, the agency says.

But a Shenzhen court declared the company bankrupt last year and so the Minsk will go on the auction block on March 22^nd.

Save your pennies. Bidding is expected to start at $16 million.

Technorati Tags: China,
Chinese+Military,
Minsk.

Samizdata says:

I believe that the Chinese banking sector’s dire straits constitute the gravest threat to global stability in the coming years.

He goes on to explore some rather dire possible outcomes; I recommend reading the entire thing.

One commenter had an interesting observation:

The US will be reluctant to let China collapse because, as much as China needs Western investment, the US needs Chinese support to bring about a controlled devaluation of the dollar to inflate away US debt. A Chinese collapse would precipitate a US$, and Wall St. crash.

Thus, whilst I expect a crisis of some sort in the coming years, mutual interest might delay the inevitable more than might be expected. We have two great nations who hate each other, but need each others co-operation for future stability.

That’s a valid point. And I’m going to be really pissed if my tax dollars go to help keep a foreign nation afloat. Especially one that I have been boycotting for six years.

I have been following this topic for some time and also recommend China’s time bombs: the banking system from The Glittering Eye (April 2005) and Casting A Cold Eye On China’s GDP Numbers from Forbes (from way back in November 2003).

Technorati Tags: China,
Chinese Banking.

The US embassy has learned that Chinese police are on alert because it is believed that Islamic extremists are planning attacks on four and five star luxury hotels in China sometime over the course of the next week:

The warning came ahead of US President George W. Bush’s visit to China on November 19.

A host of other US government officials are due in China next week, including Californian governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is due to arrive in Beijing for a four-day trip on Monday.

George Bush Snr, the former US president, is also due in Beijing for a China-US relations forum, while US Trade Representative Rob Portman is scheduled to arrive in the capital for trade talks.

Of course, the Chinese foreign ministry was unable to confirm or deny the truth of this report.

TCS tells us why the European economy is much more important to the United States than that of China:

The economy of the single-currency eurozone is five times larger than China’s and per capita income is more than 20 times higher. U.S. exports to the larger European Union (EU) region, at $193 billion in 2004, were more than five times greater than to China but have grown a measly 3 percent since 2000. Imports from the European Union last year, $321 billion, were more than 60 percent higher than from China. U.S. foreign direct investment into Europe last year was $97 billion compared to just $4.2 billion into China. By virtually any measure, Western Europe is the most important trading partner, investment partner and strategic partner in the world for the United States. And the European economy is floundering.

I boycott China to the greatest extent possible because of human rights violations and their military threat. And I will continue to boycott France and Germany because of their leader’s and media anti-American rhetoric. However, I will continue to buy U.K., Italian, Polish and “new Europe” goods whenever possible — they are good allies.

BTW, Donald Rumsfeld has boycotted China for the last four years as well.

Update: American Thinker outlines Bill Clinton’s abetting of the Chinese military program:

China is fighting a new Cold War, borne up by trade surplus dollars, which it fully intends to win. This time however, the administration of President Bill Clinton played the same role as did the Rosenbergs in the last one. Just as the infamous couple delivered critical nuclear technology to the Soviets in the late 1940’s, the Clintons allowed the sale of critical missile technology to the Communist Chinese in return for campaign contributions, the dubious nature of which vastly eclipses any accusation against Delay from even his most wild-eyed critics.

Counting on the technical ignorance of the X-Box generation, Clinton dismissed the strategic technology transfers as merely benefiting “commercial satellite technology.” But as any marginally savvy space enthusiast knows, the technology required to orbit a satellite is identical to that necessary to hurl a Chinese nuclear warhead into the American heartland.

Chinese General Zhu said that if the United States attempts to interfere in a confrontation with Taiwan that China will respond with nukes:

“We . . . will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds . . . of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese.”

Clayton Cramer notes that this isn’t the first time we’ve heard this kind of rhetoric out of China and warns:

Remember that, when you buy Chinese-made goods. If the labor unions that are so hot to destroy Wal-Mart would recast their objections to it as, “You are arming a country that we are likely to go to war against,” it would probably get more traction than the excuses that they use now. The problem is that the DNC (a wholly-owned subsidiary of the PRC) would probably not allow the labor unions to do so.

This rhetoric becomes particularly troublesome when one considers this prediction by Vodka Pundit [HT to Les Jones], driven by the fact that China’s economy appears to be stalling:

But what happens if China’s economy tanks? Well, they’d probably do what most dictatorships do: Send in the tanks. …

And when Beijing runs out of Japanese to run out of town? If history is any guide, then Taiwan will be the next target.

One other thing: consider this insane recommendation from a government panel:

The country’s nuclear weapons plants and sensitive material such as plutonium should be consolidated at a single site to increase security and reduce targets for terrorists, a federal advisory task force says.

Sure, let’s put all our eggs in one basket so General Zhu can wipe out our entire future nuclear weapons capability with a single missile. Smart.

Today’s must read is a column by Henry Kissinger, China shifts centre of gravity. Among other things:

China’s emerging role is often compared to that of imperial Germany at the beginning of the last century, the implication being that a strategic confrontation is inevitable and the US had best prepare for it. That assumption is as dangerous as it is wrong. …

Military imperialism is not the Chinese style. Carl von Clausewitz, the leading Western strategic theoretician, addresses the preparation and conduct of a central battle. Sun Tzu, his Chinese counterpart, focuses on the psychological weakening of the adversary. China seeks its objectives by careful study, patience and the accumulation of nuances – only rarely does China risk a winner-take-all showdown.

It is unwise to substitute China for the Soviet Union in our thinking and to apply to it the policy of military containment of the Cold War. The Soviet Union was heir of an imperialist tradition, which, between Peter the Great and the end of World War II, had projected Russia from the region around Moscow to the centre of Europe.

The Chinese state in its present dimensions has existed substantially for 2000 years. The Russian empire was governed by force; the Chinese empire by cultural conformity with substantial force in the background.

There is much more. Read it all.

Kissinger must be on to something, because QandO agrees:

As I noted at the Neolibertarian.net blog, China is building economic hegemony, not a military empire. Sure, they’re increasing the size of their military, but their oil-related economic reach is extending far more quickly. And much of their military build-up seems focused on maintaining their access to oil and oil sea-routes. What’s more, China is “building its first strategic oil reserve storage tanks“, which indicates some clarity on the importance, and uncertainty, of access to oil in the relatively near-future.