COLLECTIVE TYRRANY: A MENACE GROWING & RISING. History saw conflicts and great wars initiated by tyrants.

Tyrants who were either monarchs or dictators. These people gathered their powers through their wealth, physical strength and immense charisma to command huge armies to commit the unthinkable atrocities to even the weakest of their adversaries. It is not usual to read in ancient accounts where invading armies killed all the inhabitants of conquered cities and states, from king to dogs. Recent great wars also witnessed how one man was able to order genocide. Another regional conflict enabled one man to command the extermination of one ethnic group. Such violence became possible because of the absolute powers possessed by national leaders. During the last world war, Japan invaded vast tracts of Chinese territories and pillaged cities with the soldiers indoctrinated by an imperial education system that they were invading and killing inferior human beings. China, a country molded from ancient conflicts and bloodshed, and was the recipient of brutal Japanese invasion, has risen to become a military and economic power. Today, its industrial capacity can be compared or might have already exceeded that of the United States. It has become the regional bully. It had a shooting war with Vietnam over the Spratlys. It had invaded Tibet and lingered there for such a long time, trying to erase the Tibetan identity and integrate it with China. But a regional bully, as its name implies, can only bully weaker neighbors. It cannot do the same bullying to another regional bully. This is evident in the Taiwan Strait Crisis. China apparently cooled down in its intent to take Taiwan because the US sent an armada of powerful warships. That is despite the fact that Taiwan is a province of China being run by a deposed Chinese regime. Another example is the then overstaying colonial powers of Hong Kong and Macau. China never attempted to take the territories because of the powerful states squatting there. And because the world has, again allowed despots to grow into bullies, as seen in the worlds silence in the Tibetan issue; and now the Spratly conflict, China is flexing its muscle against a weaker neighbor. Imagine a maritime territory being claimed by China which is just at the doorstep of the Philippines. Its claim in the entire Spratly Group is absurd. If unchecked by other world powers, the conflict can escalate into a shooting war. Much like the Japanese invasion of China when the world, initially, turned its head away. The world should exert effort to China to submit the conflict to the international courts. China is only powerful because the world is patronizing its cheap and inferior products. A boycott of Chinese products will cripple its economy because its local consumption cannot buy its own overproduction.

The collective tyranny governing China must be overthrown and its government system democratized, otherwise it will be a repeat of 1930s Manchuria which also led the many nations to the last world war. W.C. Mesa