I have visited San Francisco more than 20 times in the past thirty years, flying in from Montreal, Vancouver or from Europe. On my visit this year, I was struck by the number of Chinese. They have overflowed Chinatown and taken over what was not long ago the Italian district, not to speak of other parts of town. And when I got back to Europe, where I now live, I began to notice them here, too. And I began to gather reports: the Russians cannot control population movements into Siberia; in Paris the Chinese now occupy the entire 13th arrondissement, where I Iived in 1975 without encountering a single one; in every village of Western Europe there is now a Chinese restaurant; there are Chinese-operated sweatshops in Barcelona .
And I began to discern a patter: the cooking pot, to mollify the savages, then a steady flow of colonists. If I were China, and I had few dollars but an excess population of 500 000 000, I would be supporting these moves.
Foreign policy in the next century is shaping up to be a new game: 'Go', probably, and not chess. Even in 'The Clash of Civilizations', Huntingdon's great book, there is little to prepare a politician to cope with the challenge of steady infiltration accompanied by influence buying. And it is now a world-wide phenomenon.
The fate of Tibet should be our warning. |
