ASEAN Summit & No to Asian NATO

Can the West define China's ideology?

Very curious seating arrangement at the beginning of “Summit Week” in Vientiane, Laos—the 27th China-ASEAN Summit, the 27th ASEAN Plus Three Summit and the 19th East Asia Summit, along with the 45th ASEAN Summit—that ends on the 12th of October. The theme for Lao’s chairmanship is "ASEAN: Enhancing Connectivity and Resilience," which means that attempts to disrupt the theme will be very unwelcome and show the provocateur as unworthy of ASEAN membership. Here’s one POV:

A peaceful solution of the South China Sea dispute is what most ASEAN members want to see and those countries are against further escalation of the situation, said Ge. That said, the hyping of the South China Sea issue at the summit is not welcomed by all except a few certain countries. 

Chen noted that Laos, as the current chair of ASEAN, is not directly involved in the South China Sea issue and holds significant influence over the agenda for the ASEAN Summit. As a result, discussions regarding the South China Sea issue are expected to be relatively moderate and will not be dominated by the position of any single country.

Blinken will provide the usual garbage aimed at disturbing the theme and Summit agenda as usual. However, this survey cited at the above link shows the Outlaw US Empire’s inferior regional position:

In the State of Southeast Asia 2024 survey conducted by the Singapore-based ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in April this year, more than half of people in Southeast Asia said they would side with China over the US if forced to choose. China was also chosen as the most influential economic power in the region by most respondents, with 59.9 percent of respondents picking it over the US.

This article reviews how China’s BRI projects have transformed Laos:

The China-Laos Railway has helped transform the country's predicament into a growth opportunity, turning Laos into a land-linked hub on the Indo-China Peninsula.

The only thing the Outlaw US Empire did for Laos was to pollute it with tons of bombs and agent orange defoliant, killing and maiming thousands with occasional detonation of bombs still killing and maiming. Why its participation is welcome is always a puzzlement.

On October 5th, the editorial board of Indonesia’s largest English language newspaper, The Jakarta Post, published an important editorial, “No to Asia’s NATO:”

When introducing himself to ASEAN leaders during their annual summit, which will be held in Vientiane next week, newly elected Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba should refrain from promoting his grand idea to establish an Asian version of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in order to avoid self-humiliation.

As Japanese media and pollsters have predicted that his government could be short-lived, it is likely that his hosts will give him a warm welcome as a courtesy without expecting much from him, since the ASEAN leaders are not sure how long he can survive,

Even if he does stand the test of time, like his predecessor Fumio Kishida, Ishiba does not have much to offer in order to lure ASEAN leaders amid Japan’s declining economic power and the rising economic scale of ASEAN. All nations in the region still consider Japan their major investment source and key trading partner, but ASEAN now has greater bargaining power.

Japan, as well as other major powers, has repeatedly assured that ASEAN will remain the center of the Indo-Pacific. But words and actions are two very different things. Western countries and their allies, including Australia and Japan, want ASEAN to join them in their fight against China's rise.

Japan will hold a snap election on Oct. 27, with Ishiba hoping to win enough support from a public, which has little trust in his ability to govern as even the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) half-heartedly backs him.

The idea of an Asian NATO is aimed at unifying all available forces to band together against China, which would be considered very offensive for the 10-member ASEAN. Ishiba expects a new military alliance would be strong enough as a deterrent against China, Russia and North Korea, each of whom wield nuclear power.

Geographically, it does not make sense for Japan to join NATO, though its leaders have often considered the idea. Japan is a member of the informal military alliance Quad, which also includes the United States, India and Australia. Tokyo has also considered becoming the fourth member of the AUKUS military pact along with Australia, the United Kingdom and the US.

ASEAN has more choices than the US and its allies, including Japan, may think, and Japan does not currently have an offer too lucrative for ASEAN to resist.

ASEAN ranks as the third-largest economic power in Asia after China and Japan, and is the fifth-largest economy in the world after the US, China, Germany and Japan.

Japan lost its position as the world’s third-largest economy to Germany late last year, and is now in fourth position after the US, China and Germany. Japan was the second-largest global economy until 2010, when China pulled ahead.

For ASEAN, Japan is the fourth-largest trading partner, accounting for only 7 percent of the region’s total exports and imports. Additionally, Japan’s share of foreign direct investment has dropped to just 6 percent.

Meanwhile, China, the US, the European Union and Japan are the largest trading partners for ASEAN, and since the beginning of this year, ASEAN has overtaken the EU as China's top trading partner.

ASEAN will not buy into Ishiba’s idea about an Asian NATO. As a group, ASEAN needs Japan as a reliable trading and economic partner, not a military ally that would only exacerbate tensions in the region. [My Emphasis]

Yes, the numbers for the world’s leading economies are jumbled and inaccurate as Russia’s rise is omitted, but the regional and ASEAN-China numbers are validated by China. ASEAN’s development has greatly benefitted from a mostly peaceful regional existence since the Outlaw US Empire was forced to abandon its occupation of South Vietnam and was expelled from the Philippines by Aquino only to be allowed to re-occupy it by the traitor Marcos Jr. It must be understood that the Outlaw US Empire has no allies except for the Zionists while all others are colonial vassals having no independence. Clearly, the ASEAN greatly cherishes its independence and wants that status to continue.

At the end of September, China celebrated its 75th anniversary as the People’s Republic of China, an occasion I ought to have published the following Global Times editorial, “Did 1.4 billion Chinese achieving poverty alleviation cut into Washington’s cake?” What IMO demands exploring is presented in the editorial’s opening paragraphs:

These days the People's Republic of China is celebrating its 75th anniversary. Over the past 75 years, China has grown from a poor and backward country to the world's second-largest economy, with about one-sixth of the world's population escaping poverty.

However, as China continued to rise, the US' attitude toward China has changed dramatically. Be it the "China threat" narrative or the "China challenge" theory, US politicians have become increasingly anxious about China's development. This anxiety has turned into slander and attempts to portray China as a force threatening global development.

Recently, a former American government official claimed that China aims to impose its ideology on the rest of the world, posing an unprecedented threat to the US.

Over the past few years, many US politicians have stressed the threat of China. But what exactly has China's development taken away from the US?

When China was still a poor and backward country, the US never worried about China's ideology "threatening" the world. However, as soon as China achieved economic takeoff, US politicians began exaggerating China's "ideological threat." [My Emphasis]

China’s actually the #1 economy on the planet in PPP terms and also when genuine GDP numbers are determined. I seriously doubt any member of the Outlaw US Empire’s government at any level could provide a definition of China’s “ideology” and why it constitutes a “threat.” Also do note that the Empire is the only entity viewing China as a threat. As with the Empire, China’s governing philosophy can be discerned though its policies, which is actually bad news for the Empire as its policies detail its goals. So, as the editorial’s title says, the PRC’s primary policy since its independence has been to uplift its people from poverty, an amazing feat that it achieved several years ago, while many millions in the Empire are impoverished, sleeping on streets and parks, lacking medical care and enough nutritious food to eat—numbers that grow daily. How did China do it? Very simple: It put its people to work helping its people, a concept known as People Centered Development, by keeping all natural monopolies in public hands, including banking. What China attained is Communalism since it never went though the stages prescribed by Marx that supposedly lead to Communism—a political-economic condition that’s never been attained by any polity.

Yes, there’s far more to China’s ideology than the small portion described above. However, IMO we need to examine what is it the terrifies the Western top 10% about Communism or what they clearly misconstrue as China’s ideology. My answer is related to the Marxian goal of Communism’s elimination of private property in favor of community property owned by one and all, not just the privileged few, which also meant the elimination of Social Classes—equality of all, an idea that actually made it into the UN Charter with the sovereign equality of nations concept. Whatever happened to the Christian concept of the Brotherhood of Man, which implies no hierarchies? What scared the bejezzus out of the Rich was they would no longer be exceptional as the bases for such a condition would be eliminated. That was seen by them in the late 1870s in England, which is when their reaction to the legislative aims to attaining the worthy fraternal goal of communal comradeship of all began, which is another long story.

So, the concept that began before the Russian Revolution that Red was to be deemed Socialist and then Communist was applied to the genuine Chinese nationalists that arose to attain Sun Yat Sen’s goals who happened to call themselves communists and were thus labeled Red Chinese by Western elites who didn’t know any better then or now. The US Imperialist attitude toward China is present in many places, foremost within the USA in California as they had skills and knowledge no Westerner had at that time and place in regard to solving the challenge of building a railroad through the very formidable Sierra Nevada mountains—yes, those immigrant and to Western eyes ignorant Chinese knew engineering skills and had a level of courage unmatched by the white men who employed them. And after all that work was done, the Chinses were thanked by the Chinese Exclusion Act, while a few years later China’s door was to be bashed open so the nascent Outlaw US Empire could attain the benefits from the Unequal Treaties regime that throttled China. Thus, it can be stated as fact that the Narrative toward Chinese and any Asians was formed by an elite that sought to exploit them and their nations as much as possible while banishing any thought of equality as gross heresy to the White Man’s Burden. In September 1949, the questions was “Who Lost China” as if China was the Outlaw US Empire’s to lose.

It’s plain to see for the few Western historians with their eyes open that a deep anti-China bias we could call racism deeply afflicts the ability of the Outlaw US Empire to objectively study and analyze China and all things Chinese. While imperfect, John King Fairbank came close. But the man to first see and inform general US readers about China was Edgar Snow in Red Star Over China, and it still reads well today. IMO, it’s best to conclude with the wise words of the editorial which reads as if it’s attempting to soothe shattered egos:

In 2020, the US Strategic Approach to the People's Republic of China (May 20, 2020) read, the CPC has "accelerated its efforts to portray its governance system as functioning better than those of what it refers to as 'developed, Western countries.'" Based on this assumption, then such competition should contribute to global development. Indeed, only through such competition can we show that human development is a diverse process. Every country has the right to choose its own path of development.

Isn't it good for humanity if more countries develop through self-reliance like China? China has always adhered to the principle of non-interference in other countries' internal affairs and has never attempted to export its ideology to other countries. However, China has proven that a country can achieve economic takeoff and social progress without copying Western models.

This successful approach has shaken the long-held discourse power and dominance of the West, especially the US, thus posing a significant challenge to the US' global strategy. 

Suppose the development model and path advocated by the US are no longer the only correct ones. In that case, the foundation of its global strategy and influence will be shaken.

When some US politicians claim that China's ideology poses a threat, they are actually making excuses for Washington's hegemonism. The "rules-based international order" in the mouths of American politicians is actually an order where the US makes the rules and other countries obey. Any country that attempts to challenge this order, regardless of its intentions, will be labeled an "ideological threat." [My Emphasis]

Curious the inclusion of the term competition when China places so much stress on cooperation. Now that the outlaw US Empire and its European colonies have so vastly deindustrialized themselves, how do they hope to compete with China and the Global Majority. Perhaps they aim to become the most evil and vilest group of nations ever to exist, and in that they’ll clearly win the Gold Medal.

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