Noam Chomsky Interview - China

Noam Chomsky: China is a poor country obviously. Have a look at the human development index. I think China is ranked around 90. It would be probably lower if you cloud investigate it. They have a closed society and we don’t pretty much know what’s going on in the peasant areas. 90 is pretty low, India another possible threat is 120 something. These are poor countries, very poor countries with a lot of internal problems. Very severe internal problems. China has some of the worst inequality in the world. According to official statistics, which I’m sure are underestimated, China has some 50-60 thousand labor actions every year. So there is a lot of turmoil going on in the labor movement. The government tolerates them when they are targeting foreign corporations like FoxConn, but these are not problems which they can handle easily. They have tremendous environmental problems which are going to get only worse because of the global warming. It is certainly a powerful economy, which is taking control of the commodities prices around the world. Take a look at Saudi Arabia, at the moment half of its oil goes East not West. That’s a big change. So the Chinese are slowly building up a system of influence and power. For example, the United States is deeply concerned about what they call “the Chinese aggressiveness and military buildup”. Pentagon recently reported that Chinese military has now reached the level of one fifth of U.S. expanses in Iraq and Afghanistan. Well, it’s a real threat they say. The Chinese are trying to expand their control in the waters off China to 200 miles limit. Recently there was an article that China is getting very aggressive in the waters off the coast of Okinawa. They have warships going around Okinawa. The U.S. has a large military base over there, which the population of Okinawa has been trying to get rid of for 50 years now. But that’s not aggressiveness. The U.S.’s principle is “we own the world”. And since we own the world, if anybody is disturbing anything anywhere that’s called “aggressiveness”. So if Iran is trying to expand its influence in Iraq we call it “aggressiveness”. But when we invade Iraq and destroy it, we call it “stability”. It’s the same thing with China. If they have war ships off the coast of Okinawa they are “aggressive”. If we have a huge military base in Okinawa that the local population hates that’s “stability”. That’s the way imperial ideology works. Take for example France. The current uprising wave in the Arab world actually began in Western Sahara last November, before the Tunisia revolt. Western Sahara was conquered and occupied by Morocco. It was a brutal, violent occupation, pretty much like in the East Timor. Western Sahara always wanted independence but Morocco wouldn’t permit it and the main supporter of Morocco was France. When the uprising took place in Western Sahara last November, the Moroccans went in and smashed it. There was an effort for UN inquiry but it was blocked by France, which would not allow Morocco to be investigated. That’s another example of imperial ideology and still France is not as powerful as the United States. […]