The stupidity of China's hardliners

This article by the SCMP is more insightful than most I have come across so far because it could deal with motivations behind behavior.

The hardliners are obviously in control of Global Times and these blokes are shy to reveal who they are. The doves are what we do business with but we talk to all of them up and down the hierarchy.

Hardliners typically oversimplify issues just like the naive neo-conservatives in the US had also and led them into the disastrous longest war in Iraq. It is almost a given that great powers will always have such a faction and we just have to figure a way to deal with them successfully.

Hardliners are known more for their bull headed adherence to ideology than seeking truth from facts, i.e., they interpret facts through the lens of ideology and invent any missing facts to complete their conspiracy as in the latest example of what happened at the NAM meeting.

Chinese hardliners are only capable of seeing Singapore as either for them or for the USA. The reality is we are only for ourselves and also expect any half intelligent or better country to do likewise. These dumb folks are not open minded enough to to grasp that our foreign policy is consistently geared toward expanding the pie. We choose to advance our interest at the same time benefiting others as well. That is the pragmatic foreign policy of a small state in a dangerous world. We always want to contribute to a safer and more peaceful world.

So our advice to China is that its rise is practically inevitable and they ought to do so gradually and naturally so as to get buy in from everyone. Taking this path would lead to the best outcome. The myopic impatience of the the hardliners will only serve to hurt China and along with it everyone as well.

So what is happening will over the short term only prove this point eloquently: Again the tiny state of Singapore is wiser than you the Giant China. Even the militarily far more powerful Americans understood this in Obama's strategy of strategic patience. Faithless short sighted American strategists lack imagination and clarity about how to shape the future went hand in glove with short sighted editors to ridicule their President's foreign policy in the media.