No greater proof of John Dalberg-Acton’s famous quote about power tending to corrupt and absolute power tending to corrupt absolutely exists today than the leadership of the People’s Republic of China.
Lord Acton added in his letter to Bishop Creighton, “Great men are almost always bad men. …”
Well, the “great men” who rule the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have achieved what Hamas, despite its endless chants of “From the river to the sea …,” was unable to do.
They have wiped Israel off the map … literally.
From the Wall Street Journal:
“Internet users in China are expressing bewilderment that the name Israel doesn’t appear on leading online digital maps from Baidu and Alibaba, an ambiguity that matches Beijing’s vague diplomacy in the region and contrasts with its attentiveness to maps generally.”
“Vague” diplomacy? It hardly seems vague when you erase an entire country. Even tiny Luxembourg is identified.
In the case of Baidu, key Israeli cities are shown but not the country in which they are located. (Baidu and Alibaba are major Chinese companies that exist by permission of and under the supervision of the CCP.)
This omission didn’t happen by accident, nor was it meant to be ignored. The WSJ isn’t the only media outlet that discovered it. Many news outlets and their audiences across the globe will know about it, if they don’t already.
The erasure of Israel is a form of twisted virtue signaling to China’s allies (Russia, Iran, and North Korea plus terror proxies such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis) that the regime is on their side, while being able to remain somewhat above the fray and avoid any involvement that these days is known as kinetic.
None of this is new, of course. China, with its Maoist roots and alignment with so-called liberation movements, has always supported the Palestinian cause.
But the CCP didn’t jump in on Hamas’s side immediately, initially calling for calm and so forth. Perhaps, they realized that the “optics” of Hamas’s atrocious barbarian behavior might not be the best.
Recently, however, the state news agency Xinhua reported, “Israel’s actions have gone beyond the scope of self-defense.”
