Posted on 02/27/2015 5:05:27 AM PST by Kaslin
In reflecting on relations between the United States and China, Henry Kissinger in his 2011 book, "On China," notes that since he and Richard Nixon ventured to Beijing more than 40 years ago, "Eight American presidents and four generations of Chinese leaders have managed this delicate relationship in an astonishingly consistent manner, considering the difference in starting points."
Kissinger diplomatically avoids saying that almost every presidential candidate over the years has campaigned against the Nixon-Kissinger policy and is perhaps taking pride in the fact that every president has continued it. Forty-plus years is a long time for a democracy to have maintained the same controversial policy.
Too long a time, says one of those elite Americans who has managed that policy in both Republican and Democratic administrations, for the policy is based on false premises and could lead to disasters a generation from now. That's the message of Michael Pillsbury, in his new book, "The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower."
This represents something of a conversion experience for Pillsbury, who not only subscribed but contributed to the dominant policy of "constructive engagement" with China for many years. He, like many others, assumed that increased economic ties with the West and the resultant greater prosperity would move China inevitably toward capitalism, human rights and democracy. That has been the hope of the last eight presidents, from Kissinger's boss Richard Nixon on to President Obama today.
But it doesn't seem to have worked out in practice. China's economy, Pillsbury argues, is still very much controlled by and directed toward the interests of its state-owned enterprises. Capitalism maybe, but not free market capitalism.
As for democracy, Pillsbury mocks former colleagues who have hailed China's local government elections. They're a sham, he argues. Control is still in the hands of Communist party leaders in Beijing and with the shadowy hardliners, especially in the military, behind them.
He doesn't doubt that the demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in June 1989 sought real democratic advances. But they were mowed down by the hundreds or thousands on the orders of Deng Xiaoping, and there have been no such risings since. More than twice as much time has passed since Tiananmen until now (25 years) as between Deng's initial economic reforms and the massacre (11 years).
Hopes that China would become a cooperative force in the world have also faded. Instead, China is threatening its neighbors over islets in the East and South China Sea and adapting U.S. technology to build asymmetric weapons to render U.S. forces ineffective.
Americans like to believe others think and act as we would. But China's leaders think like Chinese, Pillsbury says, and their models for statecraft come from China's Warring States period (475-221 BC).
Chinese strategists prize, in Kissinger's words, "subtlety, indirection and the patient accumulation of relative advantage." Chinese leaders have been pursuing what Pillsbury calls a "hundred-year marathon," patiently trudging toward a goal of replacing the United States as the world's dominant power -- "hegemon" -- by 2049, 100 years after Mao Zedong's victory in the Chinese Civil War. So far, 65 years down, 35 to go.
In the meantime, "we don't know we are losing the game." In 2049, he says, China could have an economy three times the size of ours, could suppress dissent and squelch democracy not only in China but abroad, could export pollution and proliferate weapons without serious opposition.
Pillsbury doesn't address the arguments that China's rise may slow; that with an aging population it may get old before it gets rich; that with a smaller and more expensive work force it may sink into a static and deflationary economy like Japan's. Nor does he grapple with predictions that China's difficult language and subtle culture may prove less attractive than America's more accessible English and popular culture.
He would presumably argue that it's foolish to rely on such contingencies. Better, he says, to try to encourage China's potential reformers and hope they overcome the ying pai hardliners who seem today even more dominant under Xi Jinping.
How to do that? Develop a competitive strategy and quit supporting China in acquiring technology. Support Chinese dissidents as Soviet and Eastern Bloc dissidents were supported in the Reagan years. Target Chinese corruption, censorship and pollution.
Most important, recognize that China's leaders want not only to surpass but to suppress us and our way of life. A warning to take seriously.
Well, it’s not like we gave them everything they ever needed becasue they have cheap labor. Oh well.
Neither of our political parties, are standing for America.
Nobody is standing for America.
None of this is a surprise to anyone who critically read Barbara Tuchman’s “Stilwell and the American Experience in China.”
The Chinese have a proverb: “We can always fool the foreigner.” Which means several things:
1) They consider themselves superior to everyone else;
2) Because we are inferior barbarians, they are free to screw with us
3) That means they will lie, cheat, steal, and are bound by no rules when dealing with us “foreigners.” And that means everyone who is not Chinese.
There is also a saying among savvy businessmen about dealing with the Chinese; “It’s after you sign the contract that the real negotiations begin.” That all flows from their unwillingness to “play fair.” They will smile and sign a really sweet deal...on paper. Once the deal is done they demand that you perform to the letter but they will blatantly disregard any obligation on their part and thumb their noses at you.
Any American or country who does business with the Chinese are fools. The Chinese play the game of “fool the foreigner” very well, it’s been part of their culture for millenia.
They are not, never have been, and never will be “our friends.”
If you look at China and it’s history several things become very obvious.
1. China LOVES and needs Centralized Control over it’s people. Through the various Emperors all the way to today’s Chinese Communist Party they have always looked to a central figure to lead them.
2. As long as China and the Chinese people in general FEEL/Think that they are on top and that no other civilization is superior to them they stop all progress and actively start to suppress the gathering of new knowledge. Why? Because in their history knowledge and its associate Learning and the dissemination of knowledge had/has been seen as a potential problem and even a hazard to the Centralized government.
Confucianism was accepted because it promoted the status quo and those who were sages made sure that the ‘authorities’ knew they were in support of the status quo. Otherwise they tended to ‘disappear’.
3. Also I would like to point out that the Chinese people wonderful as they can be individually have the disturbing cultural tendency to have little regards to property rights especially intellectual property rights.
3a. They will steal anything that they see as having the potential to make a profit. And to give them credit they can usually improve upon an idea.
3b. The Chinese also show as a cultural tendency to not pioneer new fields of exploration. Why that is can be seen in their history. Risk takers, explorers both physical and of new knowledge tended to lose their heads when what they have discovered goes contrary to what the central governmental authorities are comfortable with. That is now pretty much ingrained into the Chinese psyche.
Bottom line for me is this; the Chinese will continue to make gains in the areas of economics and international politics for some time to come. Until they, like the United States over-extends their reach. They won’t do it the same way as we did, theirs will be a uniquely Chinese way. But it WILL happen and when it does we will all look back and say with perfect 20/20 hindsight that that ‘point’ was their downfall.
But until that does happen the future will remain a 20/400 vision problem for all of us.
“In 2049, he says, China could have an economy three times the size of ours....”
The only problem is that half the population will be over 60 by then. How is that going to work out?
A book about China would previously interest me. But since interacting with a native Chinese naturalized pastor who divided and decimated church membership I can’t. I am painting with a broad brush and he may not represent the whole of Chinese men but if he is culturally representative as I suspect we are in trouble, more than we know. Sweet agreeable front while arrogant and hard headed demeanor-my way or the highway attitude. I believe the Chinese men (this man at least)are every bit as convinced of their intellectual superiority as the Nazi Germans.
If you think he was bad, I’ve heard the Chinese women are much worse.
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