China Syndrome

Libertarians drive me nuts with their market magic and pie in the sky theories of doing without government. One popular meme among the libnuts is the idea that there is no important difference between Japanese corporations making cars in Ohio and a US corporation doing the same thing. They laugh off any notion that governments might be interested in something less transitory than maximizing this year's profit in the auto industry.

Meanwhile China is moving agressively to strengthen its grip everywhere with military as well as manufacturing power.

One instructive example is described in this Times Online story of how Chinese money is powering the ruthless Sri Lankan campaign to annihilate the Tamil Tigers. The Chinese don't have a real dog in that fight, but by funding that war, they not only prevent any peace negotiation but buy themselves an ultramodern naval base at a gateway to the Indian Ocean.

On the southern coast of Sri Lanka, ten miles from one of the world’s busiest shipping routes, a vast construction site is engulfing the once sleepy fishing town of Hambantota.

This poor community of 21,000 people is about as far as one can get on the island from the fighting between the army and the Tamil Tiger rebels on the northeastern coast. The sudden spurt of construction helps, however, to explain why the army is poised to defeat the Tigers and why Western governments are so powerless to negotiate a ceasefire to help civilians trapped on the front line.

This is where China is building a $1 billion port that it plans to use as a refuelling and docking station for its navy, as it patrols the Indian Ocean and protects China’s supplies of Saudi oil. Ever since Sri Lanka agreed to the plan, in March 2007, China has given it all the aid, arms and diplomatic support it needs to defeat the Tigers, without worrying about the West.

Even India, Sri Lanka’s long-time ally and the traditionally dominant power in South Asia, has found itself sidelined in the past two years — to its obvious irritation. “China is fishing in troubled waters,” Palaniappan Chidambaram, India’s Home Minister, warned last week.

The point of the Chinese action is obvious to any student of naval history, but doubtless utterly opague to the libidiots. They aim to counter American and Indian power in the Indian Ocean. Should they succeed, they will take a firm grip on the world's oil and a dominant position in Africa.