Is China imperialistic? - Pascal's China Lens week 11

Is China imperialistic?
https://www.pascalcoppens.com/

CONTENT: In this video I explore whether China could have imperialistic intensions such as we see in Africa or South China sea as well as how they dealt so far with Taiwan, Tibet, Mongolia or Xinjiang. I put this in historical context and explain why there is so far little indication of their intensions to replace America as the world's police or colonise regions like Africa. I recommend to read the book from Michael Pillsbury to get the opposing view of my own.

TRANSCRIPT
"Is China imperialistic?" is the question that many many people have asked me recently,
and it has a lot to do with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
but also what's happening in Africa.
People are always asking me if China is going to colonise Africa,
it looks it like with the debt traps, that that's what their intention is.
It was reinforced by this book, by Michael Pillsbury:
'The Hundred-Year Marathon'.
A really interesting book,
this book is all about how China has a hidden secret agenda to want to rule and control the world,
and colonise pretty much every region especially in the South of this planet.
Although I think the book is really valuable when it comes to insights and historical information,
I have a very different opinion.
In my opinion there's very little indication that China has this intention
and we have to look at the history to understand it.
Now we in Europe and especially the UK but also Germany, France, Spain, Portugal
and even a country like Belgium have colonised all over the planet.
Many of us were even going as far as China and this is what China has suffered for more than a hundred years,
that's what they say.
We have been very much on the offensive, trying to create colonies
and make them vassal states of our countries.
So I think our fear tells us more about our history than it tells about China's history,
and we shouldn't always reflect on how we behave
to understand how the Chinese will behave.
If you look at Chinese history,
the Admiral ZhengHe was the biggest admiral in Chinese history,
he had the biggest ships in the world,
much bigger than Christopher Columbus and it was also 100 years before Columbus.
He sailed the whole world and never ever took control of any region or country,
so there's no indication of an expansionist intention.
If you look internally,
what you see in the past 2200 or 2500 years of Chinese history is a lot of fights between tribes.
These tribes became big kingdoms or empires
and were often between the North, the South, the East and the West,
but it was always between Han Chinese, the same ethnicity.
This had a lot to do with the same things about why we fought in Europe at the time,
it was about land, resources, survival and stability of their country,
so this is not a sign of expansionism or imperialism in my view.
But when we look at different regions like Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia or Taiwan, that's a different story.
It's interesting to at look when these regions
were acquired or were taken by force to belong to China,
all these regions were taken at the moment that foreign invaders ruled China.
When it comes to Mongolia and Tibet, this was in the Yuan dynasty in the 13th century,
Genghis Khan, very well known as a very fearsome leader,
ruled most of the the Middle East, up to Europe and most of Asia.
He wanted everything and so he took those regions by force.
If we look at Xinjiang and Taiwan, these are regions that were taken by force in the Qing dynasty.
The Qing dynasty was also ruled by the Northeastern Manchus from Manchuria,
It's very clear that taken by force of these regions was done when China was under foreign control itself.
Let's not forget that China built The Great Wall to protect them from these people in the North,
this didn't really work
but they were much more aggressive and imperialistic than the Han Chinese.
The other story is also about why Tibet and Xinjiang are so important for China,
this has to do a lot with a natural border.
A natural border towards Russia,
In the past in the Cold War, it was the USSR or Soviet Union.
The USSR was a region that in the Cold War was very dangerous for China,
so they wanted to protect that region
or had that region protect themselves against the USSR.
Same for Tibet, this was against India
and India up to 1820 was the second biggest economy in the world,
they had natural borders that they needed to fight for or protect themselves with from invaders.

KEYWORDS

Pascal Coppens, China, innovation, trends, keynote, speaker, public speaker, imperialism, china colonising, Chinese military, Zheng He, Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan, Mongolia, Djibouti, south china sea, Paracel islands, Spratly islands, Greenland
ABOUT PASCAL COPPENS:
Website: http://www.pascalcoppens.com
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pacovision/
Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTdWsl15oEt0nZZy9Z1fnhQ?

BOOK - CHINA's NEW NORMAL

http://www.pascalcoppens.com/shop

Видео Is China imperialistic? - Pascal's China Lens week 11 канала Pascal Coppens