Foxy, with respect to all OLO readers, I doubt there would be many (if any) here that would ever urge violence.

I think we can easily focus on the CCP now that a few of us have made it clear what we are concerned about.

So, if there is anyone out there, in the words of one Pink Floyd song, that can justify or understand the CCP's actions, let us hear them

Foxy,

The CIA has a term for innocents who are inadvertently affected by the wider damaging actions and vicissitudes of others: collateral damage.

Hi Foxy, I've fixed the title. Sorry about that. It is an issue the system has with double quotation marks in titles.

I waved your thread through, but I'd hope that no one on OLO is generally referring to "white identity". That is a racist concept.

Like many (most I would hope) I am a strong supporter of European values, but they have nothing to do with skin colour. In fact they are the basis for universal norms to which most ascribe in theory, if not in practice. Even the Chinese government pretends to be in favour of equality and the rule of law, except they quite clearly aren't.

I'm very concerned that various activists ascribe values to racial groups, which is one reason that I could never support the BLM movement.

My concern about China is not because Chinese have different physical features to me, it is because the country is being run by a criminal clique called the Chinese Communist Party. That is why I support Hong Kong democrats, and Taiwan, because they observe international norms and respect democracy and human rights.

I like to think that if I were observing Germany from here around 1936 I would have been thinking about Germans in a similar way, without giving one thought to what physical features they have.

The way race has become tangled with actions and governance is detestable, and needs to be stamped out.

One of our close friends is from China and was a student at an Australian university at the time of the Tienanmen massacre. Bob Hawke allowed students from China at that time to stay in Australia. She got her PhD and is fully aware of the authoritarian nature of the Chinese government. The CCP cannot keep Chinese students in Australia from being influenced by Australian ideas of democracy.

One of the Australian ideas of democracy in the present day is freedom of religion. I deplore the Chinese imprisonment of a million Uighurs in concentration camps. Then I think of the fact that when Aborigines were kept in mission compounds no respect was given to their religion. They had the non-indigenous religion of Christianity forced on them. A man whose son is a missionary to the Aborigines told me that the Aborigines practice devil worship. I asked how he knew that. He told me his son saw them doing some pre-Christian dances. Some Australians of today still see non-Christians as worshipers of the devil.

The Chinese government has probably informed their citizens of the former white Australia policy, the humiliation of China in the Opium Wars in which Hong Kong was detached from China and the British continued to sell opium, the Chinese Exclusion act in the US and other anti-Chinese acts. The past humiliation of China does not excuse the tyrannical nature of the current Chinese government.

However, there may be a way to make things better. The Chinese have a tradition when a dynasty is overthrown. Scholars of the new dynasty get together with scholars of the past dynasty to write a history telling what happened. Let us offer to have Australian scholars get together with Chinese scholars to write a history of what has happened between us. Let us have an agreement that such a history be made available to all Australians and all Chinese. We cannot change the past, but we can recognize it and thereby change the present.

I understand the argument put forward, with the valid concerns regarding the CCP. My question is; What is the alternative?
Had the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek won the civil war in 1949 what would China be today, another India possibly. Taiwan came about only through massive US support. Few countries suffered to the degree China did before, during and after WWII. We can point the finger at China from our moral high ground, but we have had numerous advantages that puts us where we are today.

Australia's poor attempts at sabre-rattling, finger pointing and shadow boxing, are pathetic and will not budge the CCP one inch from its belligerent position. In fact Australia has come off second best so far with a poke in the eye from the Chinese blunt stick. I see China as a danger, but how best should we deal with that danger?

Dear Graham and David,

Thank You both for your contributions to this discussion.
They are appreciated and I can only hope that it will
have some influence on others and if not, at least make them
think.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn reminded us in his book, "The Gulag
Archipelago", of an old Russian proverb:

"No. Don't dig up the past. Dig up the past and you will
lose an eye."

But the proverb goes on to say:

"Forget the past and you will lose both eyes."

So as David points out - we can certainly learn from the
past in order to move on and create the future.