Maddogg Guest Commentator, T.H. Johnson, Investigative Team Leader for the Ocean Medical Investigative Group (OMIG)

As I listened to all of the belicose bluster from conservative US politicians about a Chinese Balloon violating our sovereign airspace over the US I had a throwback memory of sitting in either my 5th or 6th grade class back in the late 1950s when our teachers used to talk so prominently about an island right off the coast of mainland China called Formosa or Taiwan. Our government referred to it as if it was the only thing of significance in the Asiatic Pacific basin that mattered, which they called the Nationalist Republic of China. This little wart of an island right off the back side of that mighty nation our government proclaimed realistically represented all of the Chinese people that mattered. Doing so while totally ignoring the billion people that lived on China’s mainland. While common sense for a 11 year old kid suggested that a billion people could not be ignored, they might be stunted maybe, in terms of advancement but struck me even then more as a sleeping giant now awakening rather than an irrelevant factor being crippled by it’s embracement of Communism. So the US put massive military support behind the nation island’s government of Taiwan and its President and Generalissimo, Chiang Kai Chek further adding insult to a century old injury from a Chinese observation within an Oriental culture that places significant importance on the ability to save face. The Americans, Great Britain and the Western European nations, in general, have not permitted China to save face. Although at best by 1950 they finally raised a Western boot up off their neck, evidence shows that the West has persistently conveyed reminders that China was still subservient to them. Thus, the question which is a natural conclusion of one’s factor analysis after witnessing an invasion of sovereign territories, is whether formal appologies long overdue are in order for China?

That little wart of an island of about 25 million people turns out that at one time belonged to the mainland of China for about 300 years before the pre-WWI Asian military power and war-mongering Japan snatched it away from China in 1876. They took advantage of abusing the Chinese giant as we ourselves, the US, were doing as well on the mainland. Then 70 years later, once the US dropped the Atomic bomb in 1945 on Japan to permanently cripple that military powerhouse at the end of WW2, the US Government took over the island of Taiwan. Even the dropping of the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan raises further questions as a need and a message meant for whom? Nagasaki sits directly across the narrow body of the East China Sea from the decadent vibrant Occidental-Oriental, Western European exotic city for the previous century, Shanghai, China. Certainly they would have seen the gigantic heights of the mushroom cloud after the massive earth shaking atomic explosion. Factor analysis suggests that this reality would give China pause for thought regarding retribution against those foreign aliens who brought their decadent life style to China. Afterall by the time US Army-Airforce bombers had virtual free access to Japan’s airspace Japan had been defanged with most if its stingers and claws clipped. So why drop an Atomic bomb, and particularly on Nagasaki? Given the covert intelligence of the strengthening CCP Army was it a signal to the Chinese commanders to use caution given the proximity of Nagasaki to the coastal city Shanghai that had become the international center for the last 100 years for thousands of Western Europeans and American residents?

Four years later in 1949 the US would give that island to the KMT Kumingtang Government that were the Nationalist government now being pushed all the way back by those they had pushed way back about 15 years earlier, the CCP, the Communist Peoples Army The horde of trained peasant fighters several hundred thousand, armed by the Soviet Union, under the command of Mao Tse Tung.

General Mao Zedong (Mao Tse Tung)

Now for about 15 years the US, Britain, France from 1935-1949, and a few other European nations who put their money behind the KMT Army and General Chiang Kai Chek could continue to enjoy their trade in peace with no serious threat or interruptions. A trade they had enjoyed now for more than 110 years, that of selling dope, OPIUM, and lots of it unconditionally to the Chinese people and making billions of dollars off of it in spite of China’s law forbidding such sales. Some of Britains largest companies got big first selling opium in China, i.e. Jardine Matherson being one. They all were getting rich off the poison including General Chiang Kai Chek who received a regular bag of money from the Al Capone of China and head of the Green Gang which was the bag man collecting the payment from all of the opium sellers.

Ever since Britain or more accurately the B.E.I.C. (British East India Company) secretly commissioned a secret weapon to bomb China’s cities into submission in 1839-1842, the First Opium War, China had no alternative but to acquiesce and give the Westerners extra territorial powers on Chinese land to do whatever they chose.

The Nemesis, was the secret weapon commissioned by the British East India Company as the first sea going iron warship that was invincible as it was turned loose to bombard China’s cities into submission so that the B.E.I.C. could freely sell opium unconditionally on Chinese soil, cutting out the middlemen, the bootleggers.

The US and France followed Britain in and demanded the same unconditional privileges granted to Great Britain on China’s sovereign territory. If a US citizen committed a heinous feloney, assault or rape on Chinese soil he was brought before a US District Court placed in Shanghai and if convicted he was shipped back to McNeal Island Federal Penitentiary in the Puget Sound of the state of Washington. He didn’t serve time in a prison in China. Furthermore, the US and Britain took their own Jim Crow policies into the zone they cut out in the Shanghai metro and denied China access to their commercial businesses and clubs which were for whites only.

So, while I listen to some of you still beating your chests about the audacity of China to invade your sovereign territory, do you think they have forgotten the violation of their own sovereign territory and the century length of time that you, the United States, with no restraints sold life altering opium they attained from Turkey to the Chinese people for its own pecuniary gain? Hence, IMO, everyday they are forced to look across the channel of the China Sea towards Taiwan it is a reminder of the intimidation, the embarrassing defeat in both Opium Wars, and Westerners exerting their power while supporting Chiang Kai Chek absonding with all of the gold in the vaults of the Bank of China in Shanghai and carrying it by ship to the newly designated island of the Nationalist Chinese Government of Taiwan. An insult heaped upon their sovereign territory for over 100 years that the US and others were there. It is a reminder of the $21 million in silver they were forced to pay Britain for the audacity of making them commission a secret weapon to sail their to kick their ass. Do you think China has forgotten all of this? Do you think that an apology and ameliaration for the massive psychic damage done to the Chinese people on the mainland.

They look and continue to get stronger commercially and militarily, as we, IMO, contiue to get weaker splintering, fragmenting and polarizing our own equally split population on the basis of race and white supremacy and beating our chests as a paper tiger. As we continue weakening with those longing for the good old days 60 years in the past, the days of LEAVE IT TO BEAVER, do you really think the Chinese have forgotten the insult? In all liklihood the flashpoint with the now militarily advanced China will be over the 75 year long insult of Nationalist China in Taiwan at a time that this culture war splintering our unity and polarizing a nation roughly equal between Caucasions and People of Color over the attempted assertion of some form of white supremacy. I am certain that China is observing and has learned from their own mistakes that weakened them and allowed the Western powers to embed themselves on the Chinese mainland and like America they were consumed in their own perennial internecine armed cultural conflicts that weakened China because they were nolonger unified but divided making it easier to be conquered and submit to abominable acts by outsiders pandering poison for their silver taels to the Chinese people ……..Just saying it might be time for an apology, you think?