NANYANG GARDENS: How the Chinese won the war of the South China Sea without a shot being fired
Posted on 17. Oct, 2020 by Paul Sochaczewski in Environment, Environment EarthLove
This short article is inspired by EarthLove. The book is fiction, the issues are real.
NANYANG GARDENS
How the Chinese won the war of the South China Sea without a shot being fired
The fictional creation of Nanyang Gardens in my new novel EarthLove is a satiric extrapolation of a hard fact. China has taken over the South China Sea.
This is a key region that provides China with secure transport networks, opportunities to build military bases, and access to valuable fisheries and oil and natural gas fields.
But it is not empty–Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Vietnam, Taiwan, and the Philippines all have long-established territorial claims in the region.
The Western powers have been in agreement. Chinese aggression is against international law, we must not allow this to stand, it removes the sovereignty of our democratic allies… Yet the reality is that the West did nothing at the beginning, when the Chinese takeover began, and now it is too late. China has built navy bases, shipyards, and airports. Chinese fishing fleets sail unimpeded. They have rewritten their maps with a so-called nine-dash-line to demarcate their new territory.
For all practical purposes, the Chinese have taken over this vast, valuable, and contentious piece of real estate without firing a shot. It was a bloodless, unchallenged coup, one of the most remarkable, and uncontested land grabs in history. As one character in EarthLove says: “The countries involved chose to lie on their backs and expose their bellies to the Chinese rather than fight back. This is geopolitical genius.”
China is desperate for rare earth minerals, timber, oil and natural gas, uranium, precious stones, medicinal plants, and body parts of endangered animals. Many of these treasures are found in countries that are poor, disorganized, and run by rabidly corrupt despots. China’s main tactic has been (and no doubt will continue to be) to infiltrate such resource-rich/ethics-poor countries by offering to build airports, harbors, and roads in exchange for good terms on extraction rights. They proudly refer to this effort as the Belt and Road Initiative, a term most media in the rest of the world have blindly accepted without challenging the empire-building philosophy underpinning these actions
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In EarthLove’s fictional alternate reality, the Chinese named the vast region Nanyang, which means “Southern Sea.”
And the fictional crown in the Nanyang jewel will be a combination retirement village, tax haven, and secure final living place for the world’s rich, famous, and unloved. It’s name: Nanyang Gardens and Retirement Paradise.
Horace Wee, the director of Nanyang Gardens, puts a humanitarian spin on the project. “Throughout the world there are men and women who have served their countries but have no where to live when they retire. We’re providing a place where they can own property, safely invest their savings, build the homes of their dreams.”
“Can’t people do that anywhere?” the book’s narrator asks.
“Not the unfortunate heroes we’re targeting. Think of nation builders like Ferdinand Marcos, Idi Amin, Jean-Bedel Bokassa, and Zia ul Haq. Inspirational leaders like Hosni Mubarak and Baby Doc, Augusto Pinochet and Muammar Gaddafi, Thaksin Shinawatra and Robert Mugabe. Selfless bringers of development to primitive people such as Taib Mahmud and Najib Razak. Not to mention the entrepreneurs who deal in recreational chemicals beloved by millions–Pablo Escobar and Manuel Noriega. Innovative entrepreneurs like Donald Trump . . .
“I get the idea.”
“I could go on.” And he did. “Spiritual leaders like Jimmy Swaggart and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. The men and women who run multinational businesses that you Westerners sneer at and call evil–the Triads, the Cosa Nostra. Freedom fighters like Joseph Kony and Charles Taylor, Pol Pot and Slobodan Milosevic. Hard-working folks who have no where to go when so-called ‘civilized’ countries refuse these kind people safe haven–these good men and women are being denied their basic human rights. We’re meeting a need the United Nations has ignored–a safe haven for rich, unfairly scorned refugees. We hope to get the Nobel Peace Prize.”
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EarthLove is available at Amazon.com, or on order from any bookstore.
978-2-940573-34-9 Paperback KDP (Amazon)
978-2-940573-35-6 Paperback IngramSpark
978-2-940573-36-3 E-Book
You might enjoy watching the two-minute EarthLove video trailer. I wrote the script, it was produced and directed by Marton Varo, brandefy.com
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For more on the fictional Nanyang Gardens you might enjoy the chapter “Cheng Ho Gardens” in Paul Sochaczewski’s Curious encounters of the Human Kind-Southeast Asia.