Originally Posted by Lerxstcat

Tibet has been a part of the Chinese Empire since the time of Kublai Khan, except for about 50 years when the British took it away from for reasons of their own, i.e., a buffer state for India.

You may not know that the Dalai Lama, who we consider the rightful ruler of Tibet, was first installed in that power by a Chinese emperor to rule Tibet as a Chinese province.

Us bitching to them about Tibet they take about the way we'd take it if they bitched about us being in Alaska - except that they've owned Tibet about 600 years longer than we've owned Alaska.

China wants to supplant us as a world power, but believe me, they want us to be wealthy and powerful so we can continue to be their customers. The lead in the toys and food contamination issues are bad, but they're likely using manufacturing methods and materials that WE used 40-50 years ago. We had lead paint and lead in our products too, recall.

I'm not saying we don't have to be wary of China; we surely do. But we're better off being cautious friends than open enemies. We don't want a world war with China when they have enough military and reesrves to put 100 million ground troops into the field. How do we fight those numbers?

The only way would be nukes - and you can bet they'd launch everything they've got on our mainland as soon as we nuked their troops on the ground in Asia. Good chance the Russians would launch on us as well, simply because they would expect us to retaliate against China and nukes in China mean major fallout in Russia.

Do we want to be the cause of that just because we think of ourselves as the badasses of the world? china has been around for 5,000 years in some form. We're 232 years old as a nation.

Maybe they get the long view better than we do, technology notwithstanding. We need to be careful with China and war with that country would be our worst nightmare.

I would personally rather the US pull out of Eurasia and reinforce the Monroe Doctrine in the Western Hemisphere. Let Russia, China and the EU fight over Mideast oil while we keep the Eurasian powers out of our backyard.