User:Wellus/Miscellaneous/School/Contemp
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[edit] China and the Middle East
People’s Republic of China and the Middle East 中国 We are the People’s Republic of China, a state that is run with Marxist-Leninist and communist intentions. Administratively, we have a one party system to lead the country. Our nation has the most land mass in East Asia and is the most populous country in the whole world with about 1.31 billion people. 59% of our population identifies itself as non-religious, 33% have mostly traditional believes and the remaining 8% percent are forms of Buddhism, Amidism, Tiantai or Zen. Ethnic grouping has been largely suppressed by our communist government (due to ideological conflicts) earlier more than it is now being enforced. Secularism is seen above all so that it goes along with the ideals of the party. Even though, we have a small Muslim population in the countries part that reaches towards central Asia in the west of about 20 million people who call themselves Hui. However, seen historically China does not have strong connections with the Middle East region at all. There were no tremendous historical events that now could have strong influences on how we would react. For instance there is not really a party in the Middle East favorable for us due to non-existing common affiliations, spiritual or ethnical boundaries. We do not have any heavy strategic interests in this region, either. However, in the early years of our Chinese People’s Republic, especially in the years following the revolution of 1949 there was still a lot of initial ideological potential of the “communistic vision”. Even though there had never been a real serious political interest we had more a tendency to support Middle Eastern regimes or even little radical groups who claimed to have the atheist and secular ideology similar to ours. For instance we supported revolutionary regimes in Egypt and Iraq, and we also support small groups like the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) or the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arab. Also, we had long been excluded from world politics according to our non-recognition by the world and were a latecomer in joining the UN in 1971. When China’s ideological view points changed further and our country’s interests became more practical after Mao Zedong in 1978 we became also more optimistic with our relations to even not communistic countries. Ever since, our country oriented itself more economically to build up for a better position in the world over all. China did not really ally with both the US and the Soviet Union but saw itself rather as the leader of the Third World before. The ideological pressure was even more taken away when the Soviet Union fell. But now the modernization process was really fired up and we became really interested in reaching the status of a real world power. Mainly then up until today our interests all around the world have been mostly in a range of economical interests. Hence, China is very likely to form something what is called “bilateral alliances”. The seeking of profit all over has forced us to sometimes agree with arguments of our trading partners – because we never want to miss out on a good deal. But we are not really interested in political struggles, affairs or any entanglement of that sort. And when we get accidentally involved in such things the world is likely to assign us a side in a controversy we do not have the least interest in being a part of. Hereof, we were getting more involved in the Middle East as well. Because they have something our People’s Republic is very urgent to acquire – the resource of oil. Our booming economy relies on this black gold. But as being so late in the Middle East the presence of the USA is very strong and China has to jump of to more marginal markets were nobody else would go. Links as such to terrorist organizations or regimes in the region are there. The oil export from the Middle East to China is continually increasing and we are pretty much dependent on it in these days. A major source for China to trade is the sale of arms. Iran is our main receiver of military supply in massive quantities – conventional and unconventional. However, Iran is considered to be the main issue of instability and a supporter of terrorism in the region. Also, Iran would very much like to purchase weapons of mass destruction from us but since China does not want to jeopardize its very good trading relations with the US, and the US have a major interest in preventing Iran from obtaining this weaponry we agreed not to supply them with that what they want. We are also interested as being the growing nation that we are to acquire knowledge about technology and Israel is very good place to get it. So we have allied with them for that purpose and were compelled to recognize them in 1992. In spite of loosing good trading relations with Iraq during the first golf war we pleaded Iraq to follow the UN given sanctions on it and the US to abstain from not going to war with them. It occurred almost the same as before in the war of 2003. China’s major tactics and interests are merely to maximize the profit and not to get thrown in the same pot with a special group of interest. Therefore, the bilateral foreign policy of ours might seem contradictory politically to many people but it makes totally sense to us because we are interested in mostly supporting the steadily growing economy and we do not let anybody stop us due to petty local situations. So it is now that we have only a secondary interest in maintaining the peace. On one hand we would really like to have peace because then the region would be very stable and so we could go on with further economical exploitations mainly concerning oil and in return we can offer civil technology and can help to establish infrastructure. But on the other hand we can offer military equipment to countries like Iran for their oil. We don’t really care what they do with the armament we sold them but it is more likely to believe that they would threaten the peace in the region. For us, China, it would be the best if the trade of weaponry can be just kept up without having them applying them for uses that violate international interests. But this is unfortunately very unlikely to happen. Also, we actually initially supported the nuclear program of Iran, for we have given them technology as well, but as wanted from the US, even a deal about a nuclear reactor has been cancelled now. But thereto, we do not really have constructive proposals for a good solution that would suffice all the different interests of the involved parties in the Middle East the most. Since our status is pretty much neutral and we are very much interested in maintaining good relations with any of the countries of this region that are in conflict with each other. Thereof, China does not want to take any side in this dispute or does not want itself to be seen in connection with any sympathy of religious or political orientation. Henceforth it does not mean that we are totally shunned of things that happen. Of course, we are also interested in seeing a solution of the present conflicts that would pacify the region or at least give it a stability of any sort. We do not want to see our economical progress threatened by those local struggles of “higher concerns” as such that occur in the Middle East. Alas, it is not our main concern to vision what could be specifically done to achieve those goals since this is a very regional issue and so it has to be dealt with in those boundaries. We as China could only imagine some things that could ease the conflicts and mitigate the grievance of the conflicted parties. If, for instance, Iran would abide a little more by international demands and give in by its pressure, or if the US would not always push its western ideals so hard, or is Israel and Palestine find an agreement of some sort, or if the Arab states would finally agree on recognizing Israel as a nation. Unfortunately, some of these are very unlikely to happy due to stubbornness. Anyway, we are always interested in keeping good relations of any sort and if international help should be required we are always pleased to offer support of any material kind if wished.
[edit] Bibliograhy
Annotated Bibliography Middle East Peace Summit
C H I N A
Rubin, Barry. "CHINA'S MIDDLE EAST STRATEGY." 31/01/1999 <http://www.biu.ac.il/Besa/meria/journal/1999/issue1/jv3n1a4.html>. The source was very useful since it mainly focused on the issue I had to handle with. It took china into perspective from different point of views and always relating it to the Middle East. First it started out to explain a little bit about China’s history and relations with the Middle East thereto. Then it was more going to the involvement of China in the Middle East over all in more recent times. Since its interests pretty much shifted and are no only merely of economical nature China’s opting is strongly influences by this tilt.
Jonathan Rynhold, "China's Cautious New Pragmatism in the Middle East," Survival , 1997 It talks about the more recent occurrences of China’s involvement in the Middle East and sometimes really digresses to be very detailed in political entanglement and affairs. It could be also seen as a pretty concise chronicle of the all the relations China had in its trading with various Middle East countries. It gave me some pretty useful information for the general understanding; however, the many details were not of great use for my purposes.
Jin Liangxiang, “Energy First – China and the Middle East” . Spring 2005 <http://www.meforum.org/article/694> This here occupied itself with only most recent facts about the relations between China and the Middle East. Thereby it gives a lot of facts about specific trading relations concerning mostly China worry about serving its economy in the sector of energy winning.
Francesco Sisci . “China plays the Middle East card” . <http://www.atimes.com/china/DD23Ad01.html> This article strongly focuses on the trading relation of China with the Middle East. With this in mind it also tries to describe the diplomatic relations between China and the US about the region. Therein it pictures some conflicts that have occurred when China was setting up certain contracts with several Middle Eastern countries that the US strongly disliked. It was very informative for my purposes to see that China tries not to jeopardize its good trading relations with the US by getting involved in local struggles of the Middle East.
“China and Middle East News” . <http://www.exorthodoxforchrist.com/china_-_middle_east.htm> Mainly covering most recent events very detailed this web page was a good source for me to keep track on what’s happen in the relation of China and the Middle East. Since there are not really a lot of things happening that are on the news headlines every day it can be seen that things happen right now even if we don’t hear about it a lot.
Ji Hye Shin and John J. Tkacik, Jr. . “China and the Middle East: A new Patron of Regional Instability” . 08/26/2007 This article talks about relations of China with specific Middle East countries. Moreover, it gives a pretty good image about which countries China prefers to deal with and what the countries do with the stuffs they receive from China. Withal it tells you how those countries view China in a certain aspect and what they think they profit from the relation. This was a very helpful article because at the peace summit I have to particularly know how the connection of China to various Middle East countries is right now. So to say, it will help me in conversing with other parties of the summit and bring up certain things that occurred or are established between my country and theirs.
[edit] Community Service
Community Service
I did community service. I did it two times. One time I worked for the Crescent Lion's Club. They had a breakfast there for Sunday the 11th. People came and ate food, mostly after church. Payment for the food was required. I signed up there to work. Other students worked too. We had many different jobs to do. There were such as cleaning the dishes, serving people, cleaning up or preparing food. I did most of them at some point. It was a good experience. I hadn't have worked in an industrial kitchen before. Actually, a lot of people came over all. The time helping there was about 7 hours.
The other time working was at the Juan the Fuca festival 2007. I was signed in for Face Painting. It was set up by the “Gay Straight Alliance” Club of Port Angeles High School. There was a booth for it. I helped setting it up on Saturday morning. Then, I worked there on Sunday afternoon from 3:00-6:00 pm. We mostly painted faces of children. They were of all ages. Sometimes also older people. All kinds of motives were required. I am pretty artistic. But it was a new experience to paint faces. I had to get used to it first. It was fun interact with people. Also, I enjoyed the other offers of the festival pretty much. Here, I got there about 3 hours of community service.
Overall, I spent 10 hours serving the community.
