MESSAGE
| DATE | 2020-11-15 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] Chinese Selfidentification in the global economy
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-- bloomberg.com
China’s Inexorable Rise to Superpower Is History Repeating Itself
-at-michaelschuman More stories by Michael Schuman
12-15 minutes
relates to China’s Inexorable Rise to Superpower Is History Repeating Itself
Illustration: Shuhua Xiong for Bloomberg Businessweek
Illustration: Shuhua Xiong for Bloomberg Businessweek
No foreign policy issue will plague the winner of the White House more
than China. There’s already a debate raging among China watchers over
what Washington’s next steps should be. Some favor a “reset” to tamp
down tensions and return to more constructive diplomacy. Others are
fearful of that very reset and argue the U.S. mustn’t stray from the
hard line.
The choices made by the next administration will be critical. As the
U.S. struggles to contain the coronavirus outbreak and restart its
economy, China appears to be gaining strength. Its gross domestic
product expanded 4.9% in the third quarter, an astounding rebound in a
world still mostly mired in a pandemic-induced paralysis. (Official
Chinese data have to be taken with several grains of salt, but
economists generally agree the economy is rapidly on the mend.) In its
own foreign policy, Beijing has barely flinched under U.S. pressure and
instead has become more assertive—enhancing its influence in global
institutions such as the World Health Organization, crushing the
pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, turning up the heat on Taiwan, and
brawling (literally) with India along their disputed border.
But before the U.S. and its allies can move forward, they have to look
back to figure out how the world got to this point with China in the
first place. The consensus holds that Washington’s policy of engagement
was a grave error that created a dangerous adversary to the U.S. and
democracy itself. But that’s certainty born of hindsight.
The West really got China “wrong” by understanding the country’s arrival
as a major power within the confines of its own—not China’s—historical
experience. Because of that, we in the U.S. and the West talk and think
about China the wrong way and craft policies mismatched to the deep
historical trends shaping today’s China and its role in the world.
The key is to see the country as the Chinese see it and to place China
within the context of its history, not ours in the West. With that,
another China emerges that demands a different set of policies. Without
this altered understanding of China, Washington policymakers will
struggle to contend with Beijing and its intensifying challenge to
American global primacy.
The problem starts in high school. Mine, in Clifton, N.J., offered the
option of U.S. history or U.S. history. We learned about other parts of
the world only when they drifted into the American narrative. China made
an occasional cameo: John Hay’s Open Door Policy, or Chiang Kai-shek’s
World War II alliance against Japan. A lot of us were probably taught
history in a similar manner—through the prism of our own story.
Prisms, though, distort. It just so happens Americans encountered China
at one of the darkest points in its history. China in the 19th and early
20th centuries was politically decrepit, militarily inept, economically
archaic, and, as Westerners saw it, socially backward. We were left with
an image of the country that at best was an unmodern realm of quaint
rice paddies and silk-robed mandarins; at worst, a war-torn basket case
drenched in destitution and decay. Sure, we all know something of
China’s glittering past—of bejeweled emperors, their grand palaces, and
the engineering genius of the Great Wall. But that China is beyond our
prism.
That skews the way we describe and discuss China today. We call it an
“emerging market,” which it is within the boundaries of our own view.
But twist the prism, and Chinese poverty is a fairly recent aberration.
The country had consistently been one of the world’s largest economies
over the past 2,000 years—and still was well into the 19th century.
That’s why Westerners who visited China were awestruck by riches
exceeding anything they’d witnessed in Europe. When the first Portuguese
seafarers made their way to Guangzhou in the early 16th century, they
gasped at silk flags as large as sails. “Such is the wealth of that
country,” reads one contemporary Portuguese account, “such is its vast
supply of silk, that they squander gold leaf and silk on these flags
where we use cheap colors and coarse linen cloth.”
Rather than something startling, China’s growth into the world’s
second-largest economy is a return to the norm. So is the critical role
it plays in modern manufacturing and trade. We grouse that China has
“stolen” our factories and fret over how much stuff at Target is “Made
in China.” Historically, though, the country had been a major
manufacturing center and premier exporter, capable of producing valuable
goods on a mind-boggling scale. The Song dynasty (960-1279) experienced
a near-industrial revolution seven centuries before England’s. Silk and
porcelain, both Chinese inventions, were among the world’s first truly
global consumer products, the iPhones of their age. Centuries before
Vasco da Gama felt his way to India in 1498, China was the beating heart
of a global economic system, with trade links stretching from South
China, across Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, to the Persian Gulf
and Red Sea.
We also talk of the “rise of China” as if it’s astonishing and unique.
Yet China has “risen” many times before. One of the most remarkable
features of its history is how frequently the Chinese were able to
rebuild their society into a major power after periods of decline,
political disorder, and invasion. This latest period of weakness, with
China subordinated to the Western world, hasn’t been all that long by
the standards of Chinese history. For the first 300 years of direct and
consistent contact between China and the West—beginning in the early
16th century—the emperors retained the upper hand over the seaborne
Europeans. It wasn’t until the Qing dynasty’s defeat by the British in
the first Opium War (1839-42) that the balance of power swung to the
West. From the standpoint of Chinese history, what’s unusual about
modern Asia is the dominance of the West, not the return of China as a
regional powerhouse.
A much better way to describe the country’s 21st century ascent is as a
“restoration,” not so unlike the many imperial restorations of the past.
The current regime, though not a dynasty topped by an emperor (at least
officially), is rebuilding the traditional pillars of Chinese
greatness—economic, political, military, and (less successfully)
culturally—much like the Tang, Song, or Ming dynasties had in their day.
Thinking of modern China’s growing power as a restoration forces a shift
in how we contend with it. We in the West discuss how to fit China into
the global political and economic order we created. But China was never
going to be content being a mere cog in the Western machine. For much of
its history, it sat at the center of its own world order, based on a
distinctly Chinese form of foreign relations and governed by Chinese
diplomatic ideals and practices, with roots dating back more than 2,000
years. The Chinese rules of diplomacy and trade were based on the at
least ceremonial stature of China as a superior civilization, perched at
the top of a hierarchy of societies. Other kings and chiefs had to
display their respect by giving tribute to the emperors, who then
considered them vassals. With the resurgence of Chinese political and
economic clout, Beijing is resurrecting some of these traditional
foreign policy precepts. President Xi’s pet project, the
infrastructure-building “Belt and Road” initiative, treats its
participants as little more than supplicants to the throne, which can
benefit from China’s bounty only by playing by Beijing’s rules and
performing the proper kowtows.
The first step in dealing with a Chinese restoration is to accept that
China wants to be and most likely will be a global superpower. The
notion that the U.S. can “stop” China is a nonstarter. Washington can
slow things up by withholding technology and disrupting trade. But the
Chinese believe that, based on their history, they have a right to be a
superpower, and an approach meant to “keep China down,” as they see it,
will generate conflict but few tangible results. Similarly, efforts to
compel China to “play by the rules,” as in our rules, are almost equally
hopeless. The Chinese perceive the Western world order as an imposition
on an East Asia they’d usually dominated, so they’re far more likely to
assert their own rules than follow ours.
A better route is to allow China more diplomatic space in areas where it
doesn’t fundamentally damage U.S. interests. Washington has fallen into
a pattern of contesting Beijing on everything, which makes the Chinese
feel unduly contained. If Washington stops opposing their initiatives at
every turn, and is occasionally even supportive, the Chinese will sense
they’re getting the respect they deserve, at minimal cost to U.S.
influence. So if Beijing wants to set up its own international
institutions, as it did with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank,
just let it. Maybe even join, to sway the projects from within. Ditto
with Belt and Road. If Beijing wants to lose money and alienate other
governments building uneconomic railways and roads, we should wish it
the best. Still, today’s China does present a threat. Its history
suggests Beijing will expect to be the dominant power in East Asia (at
the very least). That’s too vital a region to concede to China, and the
U.S. will need to protect its core interests there. Best to do so with
deft diplomacy through international organizations or alliances rather
than vitriol-filled, one-on-one slugfests, as the Trump administration
has attempted. A restored Chinese “empire” will likely be too strong,
and too determined, to assert its normal position in Asia to be taken on
alone. For instance, to contain China in the South China Sea, which the
Chinese consider to be almost entirely their territory, organize the
contending parties in Southeast Asia into a collective and prod Beijing
to negotiate. Perhaps cooperate with the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations as a possible forum. Working within the World Trade Organization
to influence China, rather than outside of it, is also smarter. Chinese
leaders badly crave international stature and acclaim, and that desire
can be turned against them within these bodies to alter Chinese policy.
Most of all, a U.S. policy that recognizes Chinese history doesn’t equal
a soft one. Washington must still target China’s bad practices, more
carefully but also more forcefully. Chinese companies and officials with
proven records of stealing technology or participating in human-rights
abuses, such as the mass detention of minority Uighurs, should be
sanctioned. Duties ought to be slapped on Chinese exports that are
unduly subsidized by the state. When possible, draft policies to deal
with the risks China presents without making them blatantly anti-China.
For example, instead of banning Chinese apps such as WeChat, devise a
broader policy to protect U.S. privacy and data from all possible
foreign threats. The U.S. should continue to loudly proclaim support for
civil liberties by backing Hong Kong democracy advocates and the
democratic government of Taiwan.
Contesting these outrages are not a fight with “China,” but with the
Chinese Communist Party. The party asserts the two are equivalent, but
they aren’t. The scholar-statesmen who managed imperial China, steeped
in Confucianism, believed good government was founded on benevolence,
not brutality, and Chinese history’s most tyrannical rulers were usually
looked upon with scorn by the Confucians. We should follow their lead.
I don’t believe in historical inevitabilities: Just because China has
restored itself to great power status in the past doesn’t automatically
mean it will now. Contemporary China is still a middle-income country
lacking key technologies and plagued by an artificially aging
population; it has a long way to go to become a global superpower. Yet
from a policy standpoint, it’s wiser to recognize the historical trends
propelling it forward and rejigger the world order to address Chinese
aspirations (though not its autocracy). It won’t be easy. But neither is
denying history.
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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