The crew of the MV Greenpeace deserve praise for the recent voyage to China and for the attempt to enter Shanghai to dramatise the dangers of China's nuclear bomb testing.
The fact that China's military leaders are stubbornly proceeding with A-bomb explosions despite the worldwide condemnation they arouse shows how the generals have become the de facto rulers in Beijing. Their arrogance has already cost China millions of dollars in Japanese aid funds, not to mention the diverting of resources from China's real needs - flood control, pollution reduction, medical research and urban environmental improvements.
Any Chinese scientist who serves the army's bomb efforts is wasting time and energy, in the same way that the Soviet scientists failed to help Russia face the needs of a changing world.
It is true that other nations have A-bombs and missiles, but what good are they? The days of war-mongering, of conquest, of invasions and international conflicts are over.
The new warfare is internal - civil strife caused by a struggle for resources, or racial and religious strife. The use of nuclear weapons in such struggles is insane. Will China use its A-bombs to threaten Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan or Korea? We must always remember that nuclear bombs are primarily and essentially anti-civilian. Those who died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were mostly helpless, defenceless civilians, old men, women and children. In fact, modern war has become an assault and attack, not against well-protected and forewarned military men, but against the weak and unsuspecting. For proof, just study the landmine export figures of the major UN powers. It seems soldiers take pleasure in blowing off the legs of children years after a conflict.
If China is to become an open and accepted member of the world community, a leader of culture and civilisation and a force for peace and development in Asia, its rulers must abandon the nuclear arms race and join the other powers in opposing nuclear bomb testing.
