Thursday, September 23, 2010

It's All Right To Go All Tokugawa Romantic But Not When Someone Bangs Up Two Coast Guard Ships

Could somebody please pull this poor fellow aside and help him understand that the Sinocentric international relations system that brought peace and stability to East Asia during the Qing Dynasty/Tokugawa Period:

1) had a focus in Beijing on the nomads of the West, always striving to keep them from sweeping in and ravaging China's western borderlands

2) endeavored to keep European imperial expansion to the north and the south at arms' length

3) ignored resource exploitation in the seas around China as a fundamental challenge of international relations

None of which are true anymore and are sort of significant, especially item #3.

Oh, yes, and could somebody ask the police to keep an eye on this poor fellow's house? He is a professor of Chinese Studies and he published this bit of let's-not-dwell-on-what-we-consider-our-sovereign-territory idealism in what is a widely read newspaper.

No comments: