Opinion

China feigns friendship; history shows it’s warlike

GOTCHA - Jarius Bondoc - The Philippine Star

July 26, 2024 | 12:00am

During Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976, his Red Guards slaughtered tens of thousands of Inner Mongolians. They accused them of seceding to the original Mongolian nation and resisting collectivization of sheep and cattle herds.

Today, Mao idolater Xi Jinping is re-subjugating Inner Mongolia by propaganda. He has dispatched thousands of Communist youths to stage “proletarian plays.” Unimpressed, herdsmen instead asked for food and cash aid, The Economist reports.

Xi’s soft approach contrasts with his imprisonment of two million Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang “re-education camps.” Predecessors forcibly repopulated Tibet with Han Chinese.

Under Communist rule, China pretends to be historically peaceful – a big lie if its invasions of neighbors are reviewed. Reprinted here is my column of Aug. 14, 2019:

In 1293, the Yuan Dynasty’s Kublai Khan tried to colonize Java, seat of the emergent Majapahit Empire, now part of Indonesia. He dispatched 30,000 foot soldiers and horsemen in 1,000 junks. It was a punitive expedition against King Kertanegara, who had refused to pay tribute and cut off the ears of Beijing’s collector.

Conquest failed. Eighteen thousand of Kublai Khan’s soldiers, including 3,000 elite Mongol warriors, were decimated. Untold number of sea craft were destroyed. The Malay defenders included farmer-conscripts.

The Majapahit was then in the midst of revolt. But Malay mastery of the terrain and superior navy – boats over 50 meters long, double the Chinese junks – prevailed. Kublai Khan demoted his cavalry, infantry and navy generals for the defeat.

The following year, he formed a larger army for a second invasion. But his death overtook events. Explorer Ibn Battuta, Portuguese friar Odorico Matiussi and Malay chieftain Aria Adikara recorded several foiled Chinese landings.

Successive Chinese dynasties subsumed Vietnam. First was from the Han to the Tang rule, for more than a thousand years, 111 BC to 938 AD. Constantly revolting, the Vietnamese routed the colonizers at the Battle of Bach Dang River.

The Ming Dynasty re-occupied Vietnam in 1407-1427, until Le Loi’s uprising. China’s Communist People’s Liberation Army held Vietnam briefly a third time, 1979, but retreated under heavy casualties.

Myanmar too was occupied during the Ming Dynasty. The Qing Dynasty invaded and was repulsed four times.

Eight dynasties invaded Korea for territorial expansion and tribute exaction. The first time, under the Han, China held Korea for four centuries. In the last, June 1950, United Nations forces repulsed 300,000 Chinese troops and halved Korea into North and South. To this day, China is communist North Korea’s foremost sponsor.

Twice, in 1274 and 1281, the Yuan Dynasty tried to take Japan. Both times it failed. Thousands of ships invaded from the mainland, but were caught in typhoon: “kamikaze” or divine wind, the Japanese call it. Trapped in Japan, the invaders were slaughtered.

Thrice China aggressed India. First was an incursion in 1962, then the Chola confrontation in 1967 and last the skirmishes in 1987. In 2019, New Delhi protested China’s penetration ten kilometers deep into Indian territory; Beijing claimed its border patrol only got lost.

Tibet was a neighboring kingdom since the 7th century. China’s last dynasty, the Qing, invaded in 1720 but was expelled in the Xinhai Revolution of 1911.

In 1950, Beijing’s new communist rulers returned to annex Tibet. When the Lhasa Revolt was crushed nine years later, the Tibetan leader or Dalai Lama was forced into exile. Beijing redrew China’s map to include Tibet.

China’s expansionism continues today. In 2009, it claimed the entire South China Sea by invented “historic right” and “nine-dash line.” Ignoring the exclusive economic zones of the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia, it incites Chinese to poach in others’ waters.

It also claims to own the Senkaku Islands and Okinawa. In 2011, it attempted to enforce air and sea defense identification zones in the South and East China Seas. Beijing told neighbors to inform it of flights and sails, or else. Dispatching bombers, Western powers silenced it.

In 2016, Beijing began deploying from Hainan province a maritime militia to spy on and harass foreign vessels, among other naval missions.

China occupies eight Philippine reefs. Three have been transformed into island fortresses and airstrips. It is trying to grab Sandy Cay off Pag-asa Island and oil- and gas-rich Recto Bank.

China is grabbing Vietnam’s Paracels and rams Vietnamese fishing boats in the archipelago.

Beijing makes Indochina’s Mekong River a flashpoint. Dividing ASEAN, it entices Laos and Cambodia to aid its hydropower dam-building spree. As it electrifies southern provinces, China chokes and dirties river flow. Threatened downstream are rice exporting Vietnam and Thailand, which depend on the river for drinking water, farming and fisheries.