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What David of Ottawa believes about Sun Tzu and China's military


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By Lev Navrozov
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

Lev Navrozov emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1972 He settled in New York City where he quickly learned that there was no market for his eloquent and powerful English language attacks on the Soviet Union. To this day, he writes without fear or favor or the conventions of polite society. He chaired the "Alternative to the New York Times Committee" in 1980, challenged the editors of the New York Times to a debate (which they declined) and became a columnist for the New York City Tribune. His columns are today read in both English and Russian.
Lev Navrozov

Monday, April 23, 2007

On April 9, David Jones, saying about himself only that he lives in Ottawa, Canada, sent me an e-mail in which he quoted a whole paragraph from my column:

    On the other hand [that is, in contrast to Europeans, even such as Hitler, who declared war on the United States], Sun Tsu, the Chinese strategist of the 4th century B.C., believed that war should begin not like a European aristocrat’s challenge of another European aristocrat to a duel, but like a sudden strike (on the head) by a criminal (sealing from behind with his bludgeon (shashou jian). The beginning of a war should be its victorious end.

David Jones from Ottawa defined the above paragraph in one three-word sentence: “This is nonsense.” What is not nonsense? He explains:

    [Sun-Tsu’s book, with its title] Ping-fa, erroneously translated as “The Art of War,” denies the appropriateness and inevitability of conflict. However should engagement be necessary, ping-fa makes it emphatically clear that only a fool uses violence.

My Britannica, on my book shelves behind my desk, begins its relevant entry as follows:

    Sun Tzu, a reputed author of the first Chinese treatise on the art of war . . . . His classic Ping Fa (The Art of War) is thus one of the earliest known compilations of war and strategy.

Last September the “Online Chinese History Forum” was devoted to the question: “Is the translation of Bingfa (Ping Fa) as the Art of War the best? It was said that “fa” means “skill” (“method,” according to my Oxford Chinese dictionary) and “Bing” means “military” (“soldier, troops,” according to my dictionary). In short, nothing better than “the Art of War” was suggested.

As for as the text of “The Art of War,” it has been published in all major European languages and has nothing to do with what David Jones from Ottawa states.

David Jones exemplifies an aspect of North-American culture. Here appears an unknown inhabitant of Ottawa and without stating whether he has anything to do with scholarship or journalism, declares that what has been publicly said about Sun Tsu is nonsense and even “The Art of War” is mistranslation, but hear! hear! hear! the truth from an inhabitant of Ottawa.

Sun Tsu is basic to the geostrategy of the dictatorship of China. His precept that the beginning of a war should be its victorious end coincides with the development in China today of the post-nuclear super weapons, able to annihilate the United States (the most powerful enemy country) together with its secret means of nuclear retaliation, that is, without Mutual Assured Destruction, on which peace has rested between nuclear powers such as China, Russia, and the USA.

If Sun Tsu had been a prophet of nonviolence (like Christ or Count Tolstoy in his old age), then China could well be supposed to be the most nonviolent country in recorded history.

Yet published on the Chinese Internet, www.peacehall.com (2/15/05), www.boxun.com (4/23/05), and finally in “The Epoch Times,” a periodical of Chinese dissidents in the USA (Aug. 08, 2005) was an article entitled “War Is Not Far from Us and Is the Midwife of the Chinese Century.” The article was passed for a transcript of a speech given by Chi Haotian, Minister of Defense and vice-chairman of China’s Central Military Commission. But The Epoch Times says: “Independently verifying the authorship of the speech is not possible.”

The Chinese author who passes himself for Chi Haotian first of all describes how Sina.com’s branch, Sina Military, asked in its public opinion poll: “If you are a soldier, and under the orders of your commanding officers, will you shoot at women, children, and prisoners of war? About 80% answered that they would shoot, and “only 3.8% of the respondents said that they would not shoot under any circumstances.”

The author’s moral is that whether he is the Defense Minister or just an unknown Chinese, appropriating the Defense Minister’s name, the majority of the Chinese are as ruthless as he is.

Then the author says (p. 3): “Hitler’s Germany had once bragged that the German race was the most superior race on Earth, but the fact [!] is, our nation is far [!] superior to the Germans.”

Hitler’s Germany fell, instead of the Nazis becoming “the lords of the earth.” Why? Here the author says (p. 4) what I have been saying in my columns. Instead of waiting for “the technology of nuclear weapons” and launching “surprise attacks against the United States and the Soviet Union using them,” Hitler started war without them. The Chinese, “far superior” to the Germans, will not repeat their mistake, but are waiting for post-nuclear super weapons, able to annihilate the USA without the latter’s retaliation or to make it surrender unconditionally.

Apart from world domination, China needs “living space” even more than did Hitler’s Germany. “Only countries like the United States, Canada, and Australia have the vast land to serve our needs for mass colonization” (p. 7).

But what if China’s “first strike” will make the USA surrender, but will not kill all Americans? No problem (p. 8):

    There has been rapid development of modern biological technology, and new bio weapons have been invented one after another. Of course, we have not been idle; in the past years we have seized the opportunity to master weapons of this kind. We are capable of achieving our purpose of “cleaning up” America all of a sudden.

But what about “several million Chinese living in the United States”? Well, “in recent years we have been conducting research on genetic weapons.” So those Chinese in the former USA, now a colony of China, can be spared?

However, several years are to pass before these technologies are ready (p. 9):

    Of course, from another perspective the majority of those Chinese living in the United States have become our burden, because they have been corrupted by the bourgeois liberal values for a long time, and it would be difficult for them to accept our Party’s leadership.

So, they will have to be killed as well.

The author ends his article with Marxism (p. 11):

    Marxism pointed out that violence is the midwife of the birth of the new society. Therefore, war is the midwife for the birth of China’s country. As war approaches, I am full of hope for our next generation.

Indeed, the Chinese author combines Hitlerism and Marxism. An American, not a Chinese? Kill him! He is a Chinese, living in the former USA? He is corrupted by bourgeois values! Kill him all the same! In the first case he is killed as genetically inferior, and in the second as a class enemy.

The dictatorship of China persecutes those who do traditional Chinese gymnastics (Falun Gong) that are not endorsed by the dictators. But here a Chinese publishes in the Internet his program to exterminate all non-Chinese as well as Chinese living abroad and hence corrupted by bourgeois values. Nay, he passes his super-Nazi-Marxist program for the speech of China’s Minister of Defense. But no one tried to prevent his publication of his article of February 2005 in April of that year. So super-Nazism-Marxism calling for the annihilation of mankind except for Chinese having lived in China is not so dangerous as physical exercises (Falun Gong) that are not endorsed by the dictatorship.

Lev Navrozov can be reached by e-mail at navlev@cloud9.net.

Monday, April 23, 2007

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