■"China Grapples With Social Ills: Leaders Fear Economic Boom's Inequities Imperil Stability, Growth," by Charles Hutzler and Kathy Chen, Wall Street Journal, 2 March 2005, p. A14.
■"U.S. Lawmakers Warn Europe on Arms Sales to China: Concerns are raised about sending military technology to Beijing," by Thom Shanker and David E. Sanger, New York Times, 2 March 2005, p. A6.
The Communist Party is gearing up for its annual session of the National People's Congress in the Great Hall of the Peoples in Beijing. Everyone on our end is concerned about the likely passage of the "antisecession" law, but the real topic of the congress will be making sure the rural poor don't fall too far behind. This is a big topic of PNM-II, and it should remind us that the Gap is all around us here in the Core, in pockets in the Old Core but in big swaths in the New Core. It reminds us that the Core can't move ahead without bringing the Gap along. This isn't neoimperialism or any of that other quasi-Marxist nonsense. This is the reality that the Core needs the Gap to get better if the Core is going to remain the Core. China is that microcosm of the whole, as is India.
We focus only on seeing the threat. We think China's going to get dangerous technology with arms sales from the EU, and we think we can control that transaction. We cannot. China is going to be a global center of high-speed computing. It doesn't need EU arms to pull that off, but the EU needs those arms sales to get access to China. We are tying to manage China's rise by negation, by interdiction, by denial. Think that would have worked for England with the U.S. in the early parts of the 20th century? Think again.
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