China's Growing Pains

China's Growing Pains. From the 1970s with Nixon and Kissinger visiting China, the US relationship with China has slowly gotten better. In the last 10 years this relationship has been financially beneficial to both countries. However, the present recession is hurting not only the US but China and the rest of the world.

This last ditch effort to regain the Dharma foothold in Tibet before the Dalai Lama passes away and is reborn (where?) is very problematic for Tibetan true believers worldwide. So in their desperation to not lose their whole culture completely they are trying one last time to take back their country so that the Dalai Lama has a free place to be reborn. However, since many Tibetan reincarnations are choosing to be reborn in Spain, Europe and the United States it is upsetting to those true believers still left alive in Tibet. So even as Tibetan Buddhism and its tulkus are reborn worldwide and Tibetan Buddhist believers are all over the world now and also when many Tibetans pass on they naturally tend to be reborn near their dearest reincarnating Buddha teachers, many if not most of the true believers are being reborn outside of Tibet. However, many Tibetans want Tibet to be for the Dharma completely and want China to leave. Whether that will happen or not now or never I cannot say.

However, I do believe that China is in the same position in many ways that the Soviet Union was in in the late 1980s when it had to divest itself of many parts of its empire and just stay with Russia.

I don't think China in the world the way it presently is can actually govern all the diverse ethnic groups at this time. I think it will have to choose to save Beijing and most of the Han and Mandarin Chinese under one umbrella so to speak but I think trying to keep all the ethnic groups in line including the Islamists and the Tibetans will cause the world to look at China and fear it. This fear will start now to interfere with good business between their trading partners. Unless China can create jobs like the US has by creating a better consumer oriented society based upon democratic capitalism I sense that it will collapse somehow either from within or without but most likely both. I think China like Russia must pare down to something that actually works because the way things are it is like a tire out of balance and as you know with a tire out of balance you can't go very fast until you either fix the wheel or change the wheel.

So I think China has a choice of either cutting loose the Islamists and the Tibetans and any other unhappy ethnic groups or losing more and more of its business trading partners as they become more and more afraid of China as its military grows.

Having a big military only makes people scared of you it doesn't do anything else. It is what you do with your military that convinces people who you are: friend or foe!