An IBD editorial mentions the kind of news items that won’t be making the New York Times’ front page: Chinese steal thousands of secret documents from defense contractor’s computers, and a member of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff announces that the US intends to develop methods of retaliation for such attacks.
In outlining America’s cyberwarfare strategy last Thursday at the National Defense University, Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn disclosed that 24,000 sensitive files containing Pentagon data at a defense company were accessed in a cyberattack in March, likely by a foreign government.
He didn’t disclose the identity of that government, but in a bit of an understatement he acknowledged, “We have a pretty good idea.” So do we: the People’s Republic of China. In addition to conventional and nuclear weaponry, China has invested a great deal of time and treasure in what is known as “asymmetrical warfare” — the ability to exploit an enemy’s weakness rather than just try to match it tank for tank. …
Marine Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Pentagon must shift its thinking on cybersecurity from focusing 90% of its energy on building a better firewall. “If your approach to the business is purely defensive in nature, that’s the Maginot line approach,” he said.
He was referring to the French fixed defensive fortifications that were circumvented by the Nazis at the outset of World War II. “There is no penalty for attacking (the U.S.) right now,” he added. We need the ability to retaliate and the will to do so. Call it mutual assured hacking after the deterrence doctrine of mutual assured destruction (MAD) during the Cold War.
China intentionally insulted the United States during the recent state visit by Hu Jintao by arranging for a Chinese pianist to play a Korean War-era anti-American propaganda song (referring to Americans as “jackals”) in the White House.
Well, you have to hand it to Obama. He has struck back devastatingly, and with truly Oriental cruelty, by presenting the Chinese leader with a huge and magnificently preposterous piece of modern art, a massive semi-abstract oil painting by a couple of Chinese brothers from Chicago, featuring caricature images of Ronald Reagan and seven of the worst presidents in US history plus a spiral line intended to represent the great Wall of China on a textured background.
Ownership of this noisome object (which looks like a failed elementary school art project) would be declined by the gaudiest Szechaun restaurant in San Francisco, but the Chinese People’s Republic will have to hang it in a place of honor (being a state gift from the American president, after all), where it will loom as a permanent reminder not to mess with the United States. Zhou you, China!
The Telegraph also found in the Wikileaks leaked documents the account of the United States responding to China’s showing off its Star Wars capabilities by launching a ballistic missile to destroy one of its own weather satellites by promptly popping off a missile from a US Aegis missile cruiser and potting a US satellite. Message: “Not only can we do that, too. We have been able to for a long time, and we can even launch the missile from a ship. Guess what else we can do.”
The strike, which resulted in thousands of pieces of debris orbiting the earth, raised fears that the Chinese had the power to cause chaos by destroying US military and civilian satellites.
In February 2008, America launched its own “test†strike to destroy a malfunctioning American satellite, which demonstrated to the Chinese it also had the capability to strike in space.
America stated at the time that the strike was not a military test but a necessary mission to remove a faulty spy satellite.
The leaked documents appear to show its true intentions.
Chairman Hu Jintao and the visiting Chinese delegation deliberately insulted the United States by arranging for a Chinese pianist to play a Korean War-era anti-US propaganda song in the White House.
Lang Lang the pianist says he chose it. Chairman Hu Jintao recognized it as soon as he heard it. Patriotic Chinese Internet users were delighted as soon as they saw the videos online. Early morning TV viewers in China knew it would be played an hour or two beforehand. At the White House State dinner on Jan. 19, about six minutes into his set, Lang Lang began tapping out a famous anti-American propaganda melody from the Korean War: the theme song to the movie “Battle on Shangganling Mountain.â€
The film depicts a group of “People’s Volunteer Army†soldiers who are first hemmed in at Shanganling (or Triangle Hill) and then, when reinforcements arrive, take up their rifles and counterattack the U.S. military “jackals.â€
The movie and the tune are widely known among Chinese, and the song has been a leading piece of anti-American propaganda by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for decades. CCP propaganda has always referred to the Korean War as the “movement to resist America and help [North] Korea.†The message of the propaganda is that the United States is an enemy—in fighting in the Korean War the United States’ real goal was said to be to invade and conquer China. The victory at Triangle Hill was promoted as a victory over imperialists.
The song Lang Lang played describes how beautiful China is and then near the end has this verse, “When friends are here, there is fine wine /But if the jackal comes /What greets it is the hunting rifle.†The “jackal†in the song is the United States.
Song segment from “Shang gan ling” [Battle of Triangle Hill] (1956)
I know, I know, this morning I was fretting about nuclear war. But after reading this, I think it’s time to just flatten China completely. …
Just flatten the whole Middle Kingdom. What do you say? So it would be the end of the world. At least we’d go down with honor.
Well, maybe Claire is being just a little extreme. But I do think a responsible American administration would make a point of teaching China a lesson by sinking the next Chinese naval vessel that decides to play war games with the US Navy, by swatting down hard immediately one of China’s naughty little surrogates in the Axis of Evil, by arranging to supply Taiwan with some extra special kind of advanced weaponry that China really really wouldn’t like, by hosting the Dalai Lama at the White House as soon as possible, and by making a seriously punitive change in the American economic relationship with China.
Yale Law Professor Amy Chua delighted this editor with her article in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal boldly defending the distinctly unmelted Chinese-style of parenting.
I’ve no children myself (typical Western decadent that I am), but if I’d had any I like to think I would have come within shouting distance of Amy Chua’s no nonsense insistence on performance.
I think there are three big differences between the Chinese and Western parental mind-sets.
First, I’ve noticed that Western parents are extremely anxious about their children’s self-esteem. They worry about how their children will feel if they fail at something, and they constantly try to reassure their children about how good they are notwithstanding a mediocre performance on a test or at a recital. In other words, Western parents are concerned about their children’s psyches. Chinese parents aren’t. They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently.
For example, if a child comes home with an A-minus on a test, a Western parent will most likely praise the child. The Chinese mother will gasp in horror and ask what went wrong. If the child comes home with a B on the test, some Western parents will still praise the child. Other Western parents will sit their child down and express disapproval, but they will be careful not to make their child feel inadequate or insecure, and they will not call their child “stupid,” “worthless” or “a disgrace.” Privately, the Western parents may worry that their child does not test well or have aptitude in the subject or that there is something wrong with the curriculum and possibly the whole school. If the child’s grades do not improve, they may eventually schedule a meeting with the school principal to challenge the way the subject is being taught or to call into question the teacher’s credentials.
If a Chinese child gets a B—which would never happen—there would first be a screaming, hair-tearing explosion. The devastated Chinese mother would then get dozens, maybe hundreds of practice tests and work through them with her child for as long as it takes to get the grade up to an A.
Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe that their child can get them. If their child doesn’t get them, the Chinese parent assumes it’s because the child didn’t work hard enough. That’s why the solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child. The Chinese parent believes that their child will be strong enough to take the shaming and to improve from it. (And when Chinese kids do excel, there is plenty of ego-inflating parental praise lavished in the privacy of the home.)
Second, Chinese parents believe that their kids owe them everything. The reason for this is a little unclear, but it’s probably a combination of Confucian filial piety and the fact that the parents have sacrificed and done so much for their children. (And it’s true that Chinese mothers get in the trenches, putting in long grueling hours personally tutoring, training, interrogating and spying on their kids.) Anyway, the understanding is that Chinese children must spend their lives repaying their parents by obeying them and making them proud.
By contrast, I don’t think most Westerners have the same view of children being permanently indebted to their parents. My husband, Jed, actually has the opposite view. “Children don’t choose their parents,” he once said to me. “They don’t even choose to be born. It’s parents who foist life on their kids, so it’s the parents’ responsibility to provide for them. Kids don’t owe their parents anything. Their duty will be to their own kids.” This strikes me as a terrible deal for the Western parent.
Third, Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children’s own desires and preferences. That’s why Chinese daughters can’t have boyfriends in high school and why Chinese kids can’t go to sleepaway camp. It’s also why no Chinese kid would ever dare say to their mother, “I got a part in the school play! I’m Villager Number Six. I’ll have to stay after school for rehearsal every day from 3:00 to 7:00, and I’ll also need a ride on weekends.” God help any Chinese kid who tried that one. …
Here’s a story in favor of coercion, Chinese-style. Lulu was about 7, still playing two instruments, and working on a piano piece called “The Little White Donkey” by the French composer Jacques Ibert. The piece is really cute—you can just imagine a little donkey ambling along a country road with its master—but it’s also incredibly difficult for young players because the two hands have to keep schizophrenically different rhythms.
Lulu couldn’t do it. We worked on it nonstop for a week, drilling each of her hands separately, over and over. But whenever we tried putting the hands together, one always morphed into the other, and everything fell apart. Finally, the day before her lesson, Lulu announced in exasperation that she was giving up and stomped off.
“Get back to the piano now,” I ordered.
“You can’t make me.”
“Oh yes, I can.”
Back at the piano, Lulu made me pay. She punched, thrashed and kicked. She grabbed the music score and tore it to shreds. I taped the score back together and encased it in a plastic shield so that it could never be destroyed again. Then I hauled Lulu’s dollhouse to the car and told her I’d donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if she didn’t have “The Little White Donkey” perfect by the next day. When Lulu said, “I thought you were going to the Salvation Army, why are you still here?” I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When she still kept playing it wrong, I told her she was purposely working herself into a frenzy because she was secretly afraid she couldn’t do it. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.
Jed took me aside. He told me to stop insulting Lulu—which I wasn’t even doing, I was just motivating her—and that he didn’t think threatening Lulu was helpful. Also, he said, maybe Lulu really just couldn’t do the technique—perhaps she didn’t have the coordination yet—had I considered that possibility?
“You just don’t believe in her,” I accused.
“That’s ridiculous,” Jed said scornfully. “Of course I do.”
“Sophia could play the piece when she was this age.”
“But Lulu and Sophia are different people,” Jed pointed out.
“Oh no, not this,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Everyone is special in their special own way,” I mimicked sarcastically. “Even losers are special in their own special way. Well don’t worry, you don’t have to lift a finger. I’m willing to put in as long as it takes, and I’m happy to be the one hated. And you can be the one they adore because you make them pancakes and take them to Yankees games.”
I rolled up my sleeves and went back to Lulu. I used every weapon and tactic I could think of. We worked right through dinner into the night, and I wouldn’t let Lulu get up, not for water, not even to go to the bathroom. The house became a war zone, and I lost my voice yelling, but still there seemed to be only negative progress, and even I began to have doubts.
Then, out of the blue, Lulu did it. Her hands suddenly came together—her right and left hands each doing their own imperturbable thing—just like that.
Lulu realized it the same time I did. I held my breath. She tried it tentatively again. Then she played it more confidently and faster, and still the rhythm held. A moment later, she was beaming.
“Mommy, look—it’s easy!” After that, she wanted to play the piece over and over and wouldn’t leave the piano. That night, she came to sleep in my bed, and we snuggled and hugged, cracking each other up. When she performed “The Little White Donkey” at a recital a few weeks later, parents came up to me and said, “What a perfect piece for Lulu—it’s so spunky and so her.”
Mark Steyn is lamenting the Untergang of das Abendslands at the New Criterion, arguing that Big Government inevitably results in Global Retreat, but this time he believes that the Anglo-American tradition of liberty will be retreating with us.
Decline starts with the money. It always does. … Today the people who have America’s bonds are not the people one would wish to have one’s soul. As Madhav Nalapat has suggested, Beijing believes a half-millennium Western interregnum is about to come to an end, and the world will return to Chinese dominance. I think they’re wrong on the latter, but right on the former. Within a decade, the United States will be spending more of the federal budget on its interest payments than on its military.
According to the cbo’s 2010 long-term budget outlook, by 2020 the U.S. government will be paying between 15 and 20 percent of its revenues in debt interest—whereas defense spending will be down to between 14 and 16 percent. America will be spending more on debt interest than China, Britain, France, Russia, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, India, Italy, South Korea, Brazil, Canada, Australia, Spain, Turkey, and Israel spend on their militaries combined. The superpower will have advanced from a nation of aircraft carriers to a nation of debt carriers.
What does that mean? In 2009, the United States spent about $665 billion on its military, the Chinese about $99 billion. If Beijing continues to buy American debt at the rate it has in recent years, then within a half-decade or so U.S. interest payments on that debt will be covering the entire cost of the Chinese military. This year, the Pentagon issued an alarming report to Congress on Beijing’s massive military build-up, including new missiles, upgraded bombers, and an aircraft-carrier R&D program intended to challenge American dominance in the Pacific. What the report didn’t mention is who’s paying for it. Answer: Mr. and Mrs. America.
Within the next five years, the People’s Liberation Army, which is the largest employer on the planet, bigger even than the U.S. Department of Community-Organizer Grant Applications, will be entirely funded by U.S. taxpayers. When they take Taiwan, suburban families in Connecticut and small businesses in Idaho will have paid for it.
We are accustomed to condescending to the past, but I happened to recall yesterday (in the course of arguing with my classmate) that in the 11th century, the leadership of the Christian West was able to respond so promptly and effectively to Muslim attacks and outrages against Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land that, in a mere three years, 1096-1099, they were able to organize an army, march overland to Constantinople; invade the Middle East; capture Nicea, Antioch, Edessa, and Tripoli; liberate Jerusalem and erect a new Christian kingdom, principality, and a pair of counties. How do we look by comparison? Today’s leadership cannot even rebuild two skyscrapers in the course of a decade, let alone effectively rebuke Muslim violence and insolence.
I’d take Pope Urban II, Raymond of Toulouse, and Godfrey of Bouillon over George W. Bush, Michael Bloomberg, and Barack Obama any day.
Newspaper reports are sketchy. They never mention the specifics of the testing or identify the alleged results, and they do not offer a mention of the names of the scientists doing the testing or refer to any papers. They just tell the story.
Genetic testing of villagers in a remote part of China has shown that nearly two thirds of their DNA is of Caucasian origin, lending support to the theory that they may be descended from a “lost legion” of Roman soldiers.
Tests found that the DNA of some villagers in Liqian, on the fringes of the Gobi Desert in north-western China, was 56 per cent Caucasian in origin. Many of the villagers have blue or green eyes, long noses and even fair hair, prompting speculation that they have European blood.
A local man, Cai Junnian, is nicknamed Cai Luoma, or “Cai the Roman”, and is one of many villagers convinced that he is descended from the lost legion.
Chinese and Italian anthropologists this week established an Italian studies center at a leading university in northwest China to determine whether some Western-looking Chinese in the area are the descendants of a lost Roman army of ancient times.
Experts at the Italian Studies Center at Lanzhou University in Gansu Province will conduct excavations on a section of the Silk Road, a 7,000-km-long trade route that linked Asia and Europe more than 2,000 years ago, to see if it can be proved a legion of lost Roman soldiers settled in China, said Prof. Yuan Honggeng, head of the center.
“We hope to prove the legend by digging and discovering more evidence of China’s early contact with the Roman Empire,” said Yuan.
Before Marco Polo’s travels to China in the 13th century, the only known contact between the two empires was a visit by Roman diplomats in 166 A.D.
Chinese archeologists were therefore surprised in the 1990s to find the remains of an ancient fortification in Liqian, a remote town in Yongchang County on the edge of the Gobi desert, which was strikingly similar to Roman defence structures.
They were even more astonished to find western-looking people with green, deep-set eyes, long and hooked noses and blonde hair in the area.
Though the villagers said they had never traveled outside the county, they worshipped bulls and their favorite game was similar to the ancient Romans’ bull-fighting dance.
DNA tests in 2005 confirmed some of the villagers were indeed of foreign origin, leading many experts to conclude they are the descendants of the ancient Roman army headed by general Marcus Crassus.
In 53 B.C., Crassus was defeated and beheaded by the Parthians, a tribe occupying what is now Iran, putting an end to Rome’s eastward expansion.
But a 6,000-strong army led by Crassus’s eldest son apparently escaped and were never found again.
————————-
And here we see why. The science actually debunked the legend, but the press published the legend and misreported the DNA test results.
An article in the Journal of Human Genetics 52 (7): 584–91, titled: Testing the hypothesis of an ancient Roman soldier origin of the Liqian people in northwest China: a Y-chromosome perspective. seems to explain that DNA testing proved the exact opposite of the accounts in the newspapers.
ABSTRACT:
The Liqian people in north China are well known because of the controversial hypothesis of an ancient Roman mercenary origin. To test this hypothesis, 227 male individuals representing four Chinese populations were analyzed at 12 short tandem repeat (STR) loci and 12 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP). At the haplogroup levels, 77% Liqian Y chromosomes were restricted to East Asia. Principal component (PC) and multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis suggests that the Liqians are closely related to Chinese populations, especially Han Chinese populations, whereas they greatly deviate from Central Asian and Western Eurasian populations. Further phylogenetic and admixture analysis confirmed that the Han Chinese contributed greatly to the Liqian gene pool. The Liqian and the Yugur people, regarded as kindred populations with common origins, present an underlying genetic difference in a median-joining network. Overall, a Roman mercenary origin could not be accepted as true according to paternal genetic variation, and the current Liqian population is more likely to be a subgroup of the Chinese majority Han.
This example illustrates why it is inadvisable to base one’s views on Anthropogenic Global Warming or the existence of Bigfoot on newspaper accounts.
Cleaning out a house near Heathrow Airport inherited from their deceased aunt and uncle, a British family found sitting on the mantel an old vase. They took it to an auction house, where the vase was identified as genuine piece of Chinese Imperial porcelain, probably looted from one of the summer palaces in 1860 by British and French troops during the Second Opium War.
These vases must have considerable sentimental value, as two very determined Chinese bidders proceeded to drive the sales price of this (to my eye) overly busy and noisome object into the stratosphere, establishing a new price record for a piece of Oriental art.
A Qianlong period (c.1740) Imperial yang cai reticulated double-walled vase with six-character reign mark has became the most expensive Chinese work of art ever to sell at auction anywhere in the world. It sold for £51.6m ($83m) at Bainbridge’s Auctions, in the west London suburb of Ruislip, to an anonymous Chinese buyer in the room. It is not yet known whether he represented a mainland Chinese institution or private buyer. The price beat the previous record of RMB436.8m ($65.95m) set at Beijing Poly in June 2010 for a Song Dynasty scroll by Huang Tingjian (1045-1105).
The vase was discovered during a routine valuation at a house in the London satellite town of Pinner. Its owners had inherited it from a relative, who they believe acquired it in the 1930s. “They had no idea what it was, but we could see that it was good—we gradually realized how special it was when our expert cataloguer began to do some researchâ€, said Jane Bainbridge, co-partner in the auction house.
The estimate was set at £800,000-£1.2m, but rumours began to circulate that it could reach the £15m mark after an advert was posted in the British trade newspaper Antiques Trade Gazette two weeks ago. It was timed to tie in with the annual Asian Art in London sales and exhibitions. “People began to phone us up from all over the world after thatâ€, said Bainbridge. …
The term yang cai translates as “foreign colours†and refers to the palette of enamels that were introduced from Europe around 1685, and later became associated with the famille rose export wares.
The 16-inch (40.5cm) high vase is of ovoid form with celadon glazed pierced body of interlocking chilong, through which could be seen the inner body of Ming style blue and white scrolling flowers. Four medallions around the body are decorated with varied pairs of fish set against modelled and carved waves.
“Xi Jinping, the man widely expected to succeed China’s President, Hu Jintao, was named to the country’s top military commission on Monday, further cementing his front-runner status.”
.
