- (october 2009)
The China-Iran axis.
China has signed contracts for billions of dollars with Iran, particularly
to develop new refineries. Iran's weakest point is its refineries: Iran owns
about 10% of the world's oil, but needs to import gasoline because it doesn't
have enough refineries (the places that convert oil into gasoline). This
vulnerability is well known to the West, that has repeatedly threatened a
gasoline embargo against Iran. China is the solution to Iran's problem:
the bulk of the commercial agreements between Iran and China is for building
seven to nine new refineries and a 1,500 km pipeline across Iran.
China, on the other hand, has a bigger energy problem than the USA: its
economy is growing a lot faster than its supplies of oil. Iran is the solution
to China's problems: Iran's oil could feed China's needs for the foreseeable
future.
The West is worried that Iran may become a nuclear power because a) it will
change the balance of power in the Middle East, returning Iran to a dominant
position, b) it will trigger a nuclear arms race in the region, since both
Egypt and Saudi Arabia would feel the pressure to match Iran's feat,
c) it will dramatically increase the chances of a war between Iran and Israel,
as Israel is unlikely to play the sitting duck for an Iran whose president
routinely calls for Israel's destruction, d) it will complicate the peace
process between Israel and its neighbors, as none of the groups opposed to
the existence of Israel (Hamas, Hezbollah) would feel the pressure to bend to
USA demands if they are protected by a nuclear power.
Mainland China, however, is not worried by any of these scenarios.
From China's viewpoint, the USA has won a wat in the Middle East: it has
converted all the countries from Morocco to Iraq to its imperial system,
with the only exceptions of Iran and of its ally Syria.
Even Libya has made peace with the USA. Europeans and assorted anti-Americans
may enjoy talking about the decline and fall of the USA, but China is well
aware that USA domination of the Arab world has dramatically increased over
the last decade. So has USA control of the world's oil reserves and oil routes.
From China's viewpoint the emergence of an anti-American power in the Middle
East is not bad news at all: it balances the rapid expansion of the USA in that
region. If it causes trouble with USA allies, it serves another useful purpose
for China.
For Iran the emergence of China as a competitor to the world's superpower is
obviously good news: it reduces the power of the USA and it provides Iran
with the manufacturing goods that the West does not sell to Iran anymore.
Ideologically the two countries may seem complete opposites: one of a theocracy
and the other one is a very atheistic communist-capitalist hybrid.
However they do have something in common at a higher level of description:
they are both illegitimate regimes that don't like Western interference in
their undemocratic system. The West was outraged when Iran rigged the
presidential elections, but the West has never been outraged that mainland
China never even allowed a democratic election to start with. The regime of
mainland China sympathyzes with Iran, not with the West.
(See Why Iran and not China?)
Last but not least, Iran could care less about Taiwan's independence: Taiwan
is just another infidel country and Iran would not be moved to tears if China
invaded it and annexed it. And viceversa: China could care less if Iran helps
this or that guerrilla movement in the Islamic world, as long as they keep out
of mainland China.
The more embarrassed of the two is probably Iran, that calls for "death to the USA" but then sleeps with mainland China, a much more un-religious place and one
that has routinely oppressed its Muslim minority.
The problem for China is that it is betting on the survival of this regime.
If the regime falls, the Iranian people will not forget which country supported
it and which countries opposed it. While China was signing bulti-billion
dollar agreements with Iran's illegitimate president, the students of Tehran's
Sharif University were staging a large protest against the president.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved. Back to the world news | Top of this page
- (june 2009)
Why Iran and not China?
The difference that money makes: the USA owes mainland China billions of dollars, while
it has no relations with Iran. Therefore the USA is outraged when the Iranian
regime steals and election and cracks down on protesters, but totally ignores
the fact that the regime of mainland China didn't even allow people to vote
and has been increasingly cracking down on protesters.
Liu Xiaobo, one of China's best known dissidents (one of those who have not
"disappeared") was jailed in 2008. He was one of the signers of
"Charter 08", a document written by Chinese intellectuals to demand democracy
in mainland China. While the protests go on in Tehran against the rigged
Iranian elections, the USA media has hardly acknowledged that Liu has been
convicted of the very same crimes that the Iranian regime is blaming on the
Iranian protesters:
"agitation activities, such as spreading of rumors and defaming of the government, aimed at subversion of the state". This is almost a paraphrase of what
grand ayatollah Khomenei said in Iran about the protesters.
Somehow it's ok if mainland China does it, but not ok if Iran does it.
Note of july 2009: When riots erupted in East Turkestan (a region controlled by
mainland China and renamed Xinjiang), in which the Uighur population demanded
freedom from the Chinese occupier,
the government of mainland China blocked social networking services such as
Twitter and Facebook, took down countless websites, shut down the Internet entirely in some cities, and disrupted cell phone service in order to erase any
information about the violence (the killed a lot more people than the riots in
Iran). However, not a single Western government complained about the repressive
actions of the Chinese government.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved. Back to the world news | Top of this page
- Articles about China before 2009
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