Confucius said, “The great man sees what’s right while the small man sees what’s profitable. The gentleman is dignified, while the small man is proud.”
By the ancient Chinese sage’s standards, China’s leader Xi Jinping is the small man whose vision stops at his immediate interests and is therefore undignified.
On Aug. 3, the People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece that is at the beck and call of Xi, its general secretary, wrote an editorial that made an existential threat to its neighbor Korea and chided President Park Geun-hye, the leader of the sovereign nation, in a way that exposed the crude face of the Middle Kingdom stuck in the mindset of the feudal era.
Regarding Park’s reaffirmation of Seoul’s plan to bring in the advanced U.S. missile interceptor, the daily said, “In the event of a conflict involving China and Russia against the United States, Korea will be among the first targets.”
Then, it cited Park’s name and warned her that there was no doubt that Park knew the U.S.’ real intent for the deployment of the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in Korea _ keeping China in check.
“Park should be doubly cautious not to forgo a cause while seeking trivial interests and endangering her country’s security,” it said, poking its uncalled-for finger at Korea’s domestic politics, adding that Park’s THAAD decision passed the Korean people’s psychological Maginot line and drove them into panic.
No doubt, Xi knows that Seoul has done more than its share of pleading and prodding with Beijing to influence North Korea to stop its nuclear and missile threats. Beijing either couldn’t persuade its beneficiary state or may have had no intention to do so.
It was not until it was clear that the China option didn’t work that Korea decided to okay THAAD as the only way of beefing up its self-defense against the North’s nuclear-tipped missiles.
For Korea, the THAAD decision is a difficult and still controversial decision not just because of the geopolitical minuses it could cause Korea in its standing with the emerging power of China but because of concerns that the two countries’ hard-won friendship might be put in jeopardy.
Now, the friend’s concern has turned into a wariness about the hegemonic heart of China as shown in its aggressive behavior with its neighbors after the international tribunal sided with the Philippines on its territorial dispute with China in the South China Sea and during Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s THAAD “lecture” to his Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se in the recent ASEAN Regional Forum.
Xi and Wang may not have had proper classical teachings, their school years being interrupted by the Culture Revolution, but they should read Confucius to know that if they want to be a true leader, they need good friends such as Seoul, not a pariah like the North, and, for their company, they should stop being the short-sighted small man but start acting as the accommodating gentleman first.