China's past maritime glory

China's past maritime glory

It is good to know that Mr. Santo does not believe the Chinese
are evil, but he believes that China is seeing increased
opportunities to reclaim its past maritime glory and, like any
other nation, China strives for power.

As one in three pirate attacks last year took place in and
around Indonesian seas, could we conclude that China and
Indonesia have ganged up together to extend Chinese and Indonesia
maritime jurisdiction through establishment of a reign of terror
by pirate attacks?

China's past maritime glory was a peaceful one. At the acme of
its maritime glory, emperor Yong Le of the Ming dynasty (1368
A.D. to 1644 A.D.) sent the Muslim-Confucian scholar Zheng-He as
the admiral to lead the seven epic voyages, with 62 vessels
carrying 28,000 men, from 1405 to 1433, to Indonesia, India,
Arabia and Africa, including a side trip to Mecca. China could
have easily seized not only the South China Sea but the whole of
the Philippines and Southeast Asia but it did not, nor was it
involved in any pirate attacks.

The appointment of a Muslim as admiral was also significant
because it was meant not to be an offensive but a trip to
befriend many Muslim states along the way. A century later,
Southeast Asia was divided among Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal
and Britain, later to include France but not China. It is
apparent that even when China was strong and had military power
and resources, it did not seize territory for colonization. Boats
with rudders dating back to the Han dynasty (206 B.C. to 220
A.D.) have been excavated and the compass was also a Chinese
invention, but all these did not lead China or the Chinese to be
seafaring pirates and a colonizing maritime power in history.

There was no war between the two world's great civilizations,
India and China, as neighbors for more than four millenniums, but
the war since 1962 over what is known as the McMahon Line is a
legacy of colonialism. For more than 350 years during the South-
North disunion period (220 A.D. to 589 AD), Tibetans and other
major nomadic people were on the rampage and looting in Western
and Northern China. Tibet was brought under Chinese sovereignty
during the Tang dynasty (618 A.D. to 907 A.D.).

In his last book China, a new history, which he submitted to
his publisher on Sept. 12, 1991, before suffering a heart attack
in the afternoon and dying two days later, J. King Fairbank
wrote: "In size and military resources the Song more than equaled
the Jin (and later the Mongols) but the Song civilian officialdom
had little taste for violence ... They could foresee that
resorting to violence would breed more violence ... Behind this
lay the Confucian disdain for the military ... regarded the
practitioners of wu (violence) as their mortal enemies ...

"Why have Chinese scholars for 2000 years gone along with this
Confucian refusal to accept the military establishment as an
occupational class ... our refusal to look at them as a military
class suggests that Chinese scholars are still under the sway of
the great Confucian myth of the state, government by virtue.
Looked at from another angle, we see here one of the glories of
old China, a reasoned pacifism."

But I would say it is cultural pacifism.

But, Mr. Santo, I cannot change your beliefs, if you believe
otherwise.

SIA KA MOU

Jakarta