The bid for power isn't an easy one. It takes strategy, appeasing a variety of stakeholders and the rallying of popular support. And, as Yaser Alamoodi has shown us, a little hookah can't hurt.
The point is, if you're trying to present yourself as the top contender, do it in a legitimate way without pulling any low punches. Last week, the relations between China and Japan reached an all-time low since the re-establishment of diplomatic ties in 1972.
Not only has China forced both Japan and the United States to declare that they would defend Taiwan in case of an attack from the Chinese mainland, now Chinese leaders are claiming that Japan lacks the moral credentials to become a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.
During his visit to India last week, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao declared: "Only a country that respects history, takes responsibility for history and wins over trust of peoples in Asia can take greater responsibilities in the international community."
Hmmm ... so a country that has starved and murdered more than 1.2 million Tibetans, has denied the existence of AIDS within its borders until it reached almost epidemic proportions and has used violence against students wanting for democratic change qualifies?
The Chinese government has even gone so far as to promote racially motivated protests against Japan. The police (known to not only deny permits for protests but often detain those seeking permits) has had a spontaneous change of heart and allowed more than 6,000 marchers in Beijing to throw rocks and yell anti-Japanese slogans.
The usual grassroots leaders were reminded to stay home, but the police retained control of the event to make it seem like an expression of the popular will of the people.
China is trying to invert the attention from its own social, political and economic policies by focusing on an outside enemy, and Japan is the easiest target. By claiming that Japanese textbooks gloss over wartime atrocities (as opposed to the Chinese history textbooks, which like all communist government-produced historical narratives are perfectly correct) and demanding a boycott on Japanese goods, China is really trying to downplay Japan's authority in Asia.
This political move may have a lot of shock value, but it does not seem to blind everyone. The European Parliament has recently voted on whether to lift the arms embargoes imposed on China after China's violent repression of the 1989 student protests. The vote came largely in favor of keeping the embargoes.
The parliament stressed the importance of demanding specific human rights improvements as qualifiers for lifting the arms embargoes. The United States, along with many European nations, opposes lifting these sanctions while German and French leaders see the embargoes as a barrier to expanding relations.
Not only should the embargoes stay in place, but the larger international community needs to remind China that before it deems itself an authority on moral and historical matters, it first has a lot of self-improvement to do.
If China is serious about gaining the kind of recognition and leadership in the international community as it is claiming, it should first clean up its own record.
Lucia Bill is a journalism and political science sophomore. Reach her at lucia.bill@asu.edu.
