So Fucking Bored with PRC....

If you're a Clash fan then the title makes perfect sense- assuming you also know that the PRC stands for the People's Republic of China. I'm getting a bit sick of the place right now. China's latest global fit? They're pissed that the US has welcomed and honoured the revered Dalai Lama. China's response?: To act like a petulant little brat. They're pulling out of conferences and threatening that this act will damage US-China relations (no, I think selling us lead tainted children's toys, poisoned toothpaste, poisoned animal food, and who knows what else will have a much more damaging effect- but maybe that's just me).

For a long time now I've been pondering the bizarre behaviour of states concerning what most people would consider asinine issues. Some states do this without being a global dick while others do not or cannot. For example, Spain has some pretty wack ideas about claiming Gibraltar, a completely British lump of land at the most southern point of Spain- even the loos and post boxes are British! Then there is the stupid argument by China that it must own Taiwan and that Tibet is not only theirs but that any discussion on the matter is an internal matter. China aims missiles at Taiwan just in case they claim they are a state (how dare they?) and they maintain a large military presence in Tibet to make sure no one entertains the idea that the place isn't Chinese. There are probably a lot of other examples but I'll stop there. I'm currently racking my brain for some theoretical perspective on how to approach this (and maybe crank out a paper on it). But I digress...

China's response in all of this (including on Taiwan) is that these are internal matters and, thus, fall under their sovereign right of non-interference by other powers. This is a stretch of the notion of sovereignty on the one hand, and an example of why our notion of sovereignty is quite outdated on the other- but I'll save the theoretical/philosophical exercise for my students. The question here is can Tibet and the Dalai Lama's visit truly be considered an internal matter? If we invade a country, make it our own against the wishes of the population, and exile it's former leaders, can we rightfully claim that the issue is now internal and protected by our sovereign rights? Then there is the Human Rights perspective.

Historically, states have been the guarantor of human rights. This worked fine when rights were conceived primarily in civil/political forms of freedom from. By this I mean, rights were individualistic and simply defined as the right to not have the government intervene in your right to speech or religious choice, etc. We've moved beyond those limited rights. But in the process we've also confronted a sticky issue. What do you do when it is the state itself that is violating human rights? Does sovereignty prevent another state from intervening? In Darfur, not so much. In China, well....

This is why all of this matters, though. China is one big, childish brat with a lot of toys we all want (literally) and a lot of money and economic weight to be a global royal pain in the ass. China, as I've noted before, wants nothing more than to be seen as a serious player, a powerful state. Yet this is their reaction when someone entertains someone they don't like: they throw a tantrum. As I've also said before, this is not Sino-phobia. There is a real reason to lament China's rise and not toss in asinine caveats that economically we need to embrace the place because we all like cheap goods (a la the Economist). China is no democracy and doesn't even bother to try and act like a powerful state except to throw their weight around when they can. It wants its cake and to eat it too. The rise of China ought to be a concern on those grounds alone. But in the meantime their global temper tantrums are starting to bore the fuck out of me and like any annoying brat, sometimes you just want to spank him (though not a real child; I'm opposed to that!).

So thems my thoughts...