Chinese White Paper

From my archive of old newspapers, I find a 2011 article discussing China’s then newly published White Paper outlining its future foreign policy. Reporting upon it in China Daily (Hong Kong English language edition), author Wang Zaibang outlines how the middle kingdom was committing to maintaining a low profile diplomatic line in keeping with its stated goal of peaceful development. Well on its way out of isolation and facing up to globalization and integration processes, this developmental approach was to proceed despite China’s clear economic and military progression towards the apex of world domination. It would be a rejection of imperial policies exhibited in the past by western powers. It would be despite the challenge of over a thousand American military bases around the world, many thought to be in place in an encirclement of said China. So since that time is it my imagination that China has been economically exploiting resource rich Africa (empire building surely) sending thousands of its engineers and scientists to undertake projects aimed at supplying the mother country’s insatiable need for commodities and raw materials? Has it or has it not through the UN Security Council impeded steps to resolve the Syrian crisis, the most pernicious war on the planet? Does it or does it not hoe a peaceful furrow in the South China Sea where it seems at loggerheads with every maritime neighbour? No respect for Law of the Sea provisions there that I can observe. Surely, too, China does not prop up North Korea, the world’s number one rogue state and potential future military flashpoint? Just asking (apologist) Mr. Wang Zaibang.