This weekend, we visited our Chinese ‘family’ and together we went round to see other Chinese friends including one who has a PhD on China’s role in the United Nations Security Council. As well as deep friendship, I always enjoy seeing our Chinese friends because it gives me an insight into a very different culture and a very different way of looking at the world.<\/p>\n
This time, I raised the issue of why China is being so supportive of North Korea in spite of provocations like the sinking of the South Korean ship the “Cheonan” with the loss of 46 lives. To my surprise, my Chinese friends were not convinced that the North Koreans were responsible for the sinking.<\/p>\n
The Wikipedia essay<\/a> on the incident notes:<\/p>\n “On May 20, the investigation team (South Korea, U.S., U.K., Sweden, Australia and Canada) released their report in which they concluded that the sinking of the warship was in fact the result of a North Korean torpedo attack, commenting that “The evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that the torpedo was fired by a North Korean submarine.” The inquiry also found that a group of small submarines, escorted by a support ship, departed from a North Korean naval base a few days before the sinking. <\/sup>The specific weapon used was a North Korean manufactured CHT-02D torpedo<\/a>, of which substantial parts were recovered.“<\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n According to the same essay, the Chinese view is as follows:<\/p>\n “During talks between the American and Chinese governments in late May of 2010, Chinese officials claimed that the sinking of the Cheonan<\/em> had been as a result of an American rising mine<\/a>, which is moored to the seabed and propels itself into a ship detected by sound or magnetics, planted during anti-submarine exercises that were conducted by the South Korean and US navies shortly before the sinking. To back up their claims, the Chinese said that North Korean submarines such as the one believed to have sank the Cheonan<\/em> were incapable of moving undetected within South Korean waters, and a rising mine would have damaged the ship by splitting the hull, as was done to the Cheonan<\/em>, rather than simply holing the vessel as a conventional torpedo<\/a> does.“<\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n This discussion with my Chinese friends was yet another reminder that, however obvious or self-evident a point of view may seem, however strong the evidence may appear, others can – and frequently do – hold totally different positions on the same issue. In everything from international relations to personal relationships, one has to appreciate that others can sincerely hold very different views and one has to understand why this might be the case and what thinking – and even evidence – might explain that view.<\/p>\n In the end though, truth does matter as I have argued in my web site essay “The Reason For Truth”<\/a>. In the particular case of the sinking of the “Cheonan”, truth matters because there are several routes from this incident to a more serious conflict or even a war as set out in this piece<\/a> from the “New York Times”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This weekend, we visited our Chinese ‘family’ and together we went round to see other Chinese friends including one who has a PhD on China’s role in the United Nations Security Council. As well as deep friendship, I always enjoy seeing our Chinese friends because it gives me an insight into a very different culture […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2687"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2696,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687\/revisions\/2696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}