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China's rising confidence is becoming more apparent. Here is a Drudge heading (from the Financial Post): China rebuffs US offer on disputed islands, where China appears to be going beyond normal territorial claims and may be antagonizing the U.S. as well as a number of other Asian and non-Asian countries.
Recently, I've written several posts on China's saber rattling, and even actually entering a foreign land to acquire precious materials (references are at the end of this posting).
But I've been collecting files on China and the Chinese (whether in Asia or here in Canada and the U.S.) since about 2004. I don't know what triggered off the initial search, but I think it was a vague unease at the green light we have been giving Chinese to enter and do as they will in Western society, and also clearly a kind of off-shore colonization they're performing in African countries.
Part of my awareness of these issues is due to my teaching post as an English as a Second Language instructor, where I taught for four years at a Chinese community center. I asked to be placed there because I thought there would be better students, and I wouldn't have to go through mind-numbing elementary material.
Well, I was relatively impressed with the students' progress; I was able to enter discussions (with pronunciation and vocabulary exercises) dealing with politics, culture, Canada - of course, the United States - it was always interesting to watch how much these students would malign America which I countered forcefully and often with winning arguments, and a whole myriad of things.
Finally, I left (abruptly to my supervisors) after some months of reflection. My main reason (which I of course didn't disclose) was that I didn't find any sense of commitment to Canada by these Chinese immigrants (or Chinese newcomers, as the ESL crowd called them). In fact, I thought I was giving them too much information with which they can continue their Chinese alliances (and affinities) while seeing what they can claim from Canada. I got this impression from discussions during the class. In one class I got the students to sing the Canadian national anthem, partly as a reaction to their anti-Canadianism during a discussion, standing up. Some refused to sing, others made a fuss about getting up. That's when I knew my days were numbered.
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REFERENCES:
A. Below is the list of articles I have compiled, mostly in the early 2000s, probably as a reaction to 9/11. Oh yes, around this time, and a few years later, there were heated discussion in my classes where the Chinese students were condoning the Muslim hijackers with the cliché that "America got what it deserved."
1. BC Report - Cover Story - Article link no longer works
2. Canada Wide Open for Terrorists, Charles R. Smith, July 10, 2002, World Net Daily
3. China Reform Monitor No. 312, June 12, 2000 - Article link no longer works
4. Chinese Dreams, American Dreams, Sacha Matuszak, November 22, 2004, Antiwar.com
5. China targets Caribbean trade - Feb 19, 2005, CNN.Com. The link appears non-functioning at CNN, but here is a synopsis of the article still available at CNN:
China is waging an aggressive campaign of seduction in the Caribbean, wooing countries away from relationships with rival Taiwan, opening markets for its expanding economy, promising to send tourists, and shipping police to Haiti in the first communist deployment in the Western Hemisphere.6. Finding the Real Source of Sept. 11, Dr. Aleksandr Nemets and Dr. Thomas Torda, October 17, 2001, NewsMax.Com
Here are the first paragraphs of the Nemets/Torda article:
A month has passed since the Sept. 11 strikes. The world's focus has been on Osama bin Laden and his network -- but the connections to Russia and China exist and need more investigation.7. CIA issues warning on China’s military efforts, February 16, 2005. FT.Com
A Chinese military handbook advised the use of civilian airline jets as "flying bombs" -- and evidence has surfaced about Russian "mafia" ties to bin Laden
8. Chinese Spies. Although I couldn't retrieve this article from the National Post, here is a list of google references when I typed in "Chinese Spies Canada"
9. The Fate of the Immigrant Ships, 2003. Pacific Rim Magazine
10. Tycoon to create $1.2B charity to Canada, The Star.com [Article link no longer works].
11. China lays the 'Bush Doctrine' ahead of U.S. poll. Originally from Reuters, November 2004.
B. On a much more current note, a few weeks ago, the news channels were filled with reports of China's saber waving in the south seas:
China stages live-fire war games in South China Sea amid slow-burning territorial disputes
C. Below are recent blog posts at Our Changing Landscape on China's current relations with Canada, and with the world:
China Rising
China Rising [Cont.]
Land Grab from the Poor to the Poor
D. These are the news program "The Agenda" videos of recent, full-hour episodes on China, on which I based some of my blog posts:
Fear and Facts about China
China's Economic Worries
Political Change in China?
Reinventing China's Economy
China's Undervalued Renminbi