China bashing by the governments and elites of the Western world has never been so strong. 

          For years China was condemned as a cruel Communist state that had no hope of advancing while it stuck to the centralised state socialist system.  Now that China  has embraced many of the features of capitalism and there are millions of capitalists within China it is hated by the West for being capitalist! It is too competitive with us!

          China was once “closed” to the rest of the world. We lectured them about the wonders of “Free Trade” and globalisation.  Now that China is becoming a free trader and building up its business connections around the world it's a menace.  It is “flooding” high-quality goods and services into “our traditional” markets and stealing our dominance.

          Within the Western countries Chinese- made household goods of all types are helping to keep the living standards of our people up a bit in these bad times and contributing to  political stability in the West.   But oh no  this is “destroying” us and throwing our current account deficit into free fall.  It is largely Chinese money that has kept the US government afloat post-GFC but all this Chinese Government bond-buying is responsible for our massive national debt.

          Chinese technology and science are advancing rapidly but does the West acknowledge this as something that will benefit all mankind in the years ahead? 

          We're not sure really.  Are their research methodologies  as rigorous as ours?  

          Human rights and military affairs in China all swirl in double standards when it comes to comparisons with the West.. In the nineteenth century China was broken apart by foreign invaders and internal crisis. A combination of eight countries（UK, US, Russia, France, Austria, Italy, Germany and Japan）together invaded China, looting, burning and killing along the way.  China was defeated and humiliated. The image of the “sick man of Asia” is very well known. This state of affairs persisted well into the twentieth century. But then when China started to get its act together and put all pieces back together, a great hullabaloo arose in the West about “independence rights” for some of the once shattered bits.

          Tibet became the classic case taken up by some Western governments and media.  A “Dalai Lama” was made into a wise spiritual figure fighting for his people's “freedom from Chinese oppression”.  Some very good people too in the West were conned into this and helped promote all manner of “honours” being bestowed on this man as he travelled around the world on “official visits”.  The Western rulers see  this “Tibet independence” issue as just another little point where they can apply some pressure in their relations with China.

          On the overall topic of human rights in China there is much hysteria in the Western world and its media. For so long the West portrayed China as a nation overwhelmed by chaos even though it often resulted from foreign invasions.  Now  some social and economic stability has come to China, and it is being generally of benefit to most people, there is a loud  screech  in the West about “human rights violations  in China”.  No one would say that China has no problems in human rights, that everybody is entitled to the same treatment legally and has much the same share of national wealth. There are many wrongs and inequities everyone knows and a long way to go.

          But again attention has to turn on the double standards of the Western governments. They have the “rule of law” and most have parliamentary democracies but money, position-held, connections, ethnic background and social class are all big factors in determining  whether everyone has equal rights in the society. To quote the old saying “everyone is equal but some are more equal than others”.  Things are hardly lily white in all Western societies and the role of many of the Western countries throughout the rest of the world is far from honourable.

          There is a long list of wars, coups,  massacres and torture practices across Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa that have been engineered or directly supported by the West（often by military operations）over the past decades. There are recently released accounts of the extent to which some of the Western forces directly carried out torture of local peoples in the Iraq and current Afghanistan war. The West's human rights record is not very rosy. It might be best if the West first spent time to sort out its own way of operating in the world and put its lecturing of China aside until that first task is complete.

          In the minds of the Western elites is a lingering resentment that they are no longer “running the world” as in the past few centuries. They see once colonised or dominated countries becoming stronger and they don't like it of course.  There is some rethinking to do. There is also an emerging phobia in the West about Chinese military power. If we don't siphon more and more billions away from our people's social needs and put it into our militaries, China will  takeover our world. This is what the military elites tell their people in the West. The double standard again applies.

          The U.S. is presently fighting large scale wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It dominates NATO still and has “defence pacts” of various kinds covering big parts of the Middle East, the South Pacific, North East Asia（Korea and Japan）, Africa, the Caribbean and and South America.

          The Base Structure Report（2,003）and the Active Duty Military Strengths by Regional Areas  and Countries（2,003）, both official documents of the U.S. Defence Department, provide some startling figures.  They are not quite current but it is doubtful that any of the measures have reduced in  size. The U.S. has about 1,000 defence installations（bases）in 192 of the world's countries. There are some 1.4 million U.S. troops  in all and 252,764 of them are overseas. The U.S. Navy sails the oceans with 278 warships.  Its tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 navies of the world combined. There is also the U.S. Air Force with its 3,700 warplanes.

          Then there is China that has no military forces in any other countries and a much smaller quantity of military hardware.  It has not invaded other countries and  conducts military exercises, on its own land and largely in adjoining seas. Its international stance is scarcely warlike.  It needs a pretty dark imagination to see a China poised to takeover the world.  The only line in the sand they draw is about protecting their own territorial integrity.  For those who have spent a century moving into other people's territory it is time too for a rethink. The Chinese are pretty good at taking it on the chin and staying calm amidst the insults from abroad. There is no need to get in too much of a fuss, they say. They will be patient in their wait for the West to change its outlook on the world.

          It is hoped the Australian government will continue to build a genuine friendship with China and its people. The recent Wikileaks release of cables revealed  the Foreign Minister's attempts to ingratiate himself with the U.S. Secretary of State by providing his smart alec ''advice'' on “being ready to apply force to China if needed”. It was just too much. The day has long arrived when Australia cannot  go on being a puppy dog of the U.S .（Malcolm Fraser, Australian P.M. 1975-1983, ABC TV Q & A 30 August 2010）.  The Australian public want  a much more grown up manner of building relations with other countries than came from the Foreign Minister in this “special briefing” of Mrs Clinton last year.  It is difficult to see how Mr Rudd can remain in this position any longer.

          For our Chinese community in Australia the job remains to further carry on developing links and good relationships between the Australian and Chinese peoples.